Chūnqiū jīngquán 春秋經筌
The Fish-Trap of the Spring-and-Autumn Classic
by 趙鵬飛 (撰)
About the work
The Chūnqiū jīngquán in sixteen juan is the Chūnqiū commentary of Zhào Péngfēi 趙鵬飛 of Miánzhōu in Sòng — zì Qǐmíng 企明, hào Mùnè 木訥. The title, drawing on the Zhuāngzǐ image of the quán 筌 (a fish-trap one discards once the fish is caught), declares the work’s central method: discard the three commentaries (Zuǒ, Gōngyáng, Gǔliáng) and read the Chūnqiū directly through its own text — not “with traditions” but “without traditions.” Zhào’s self-preface explicitly inverts the ordinary slogan: xuézhě dāng yǐ wú zhuàn míng Chūnqiū, bù kě yǐ yǒu zhuàn qiú Chūnqiū 學者當以無傳明春秋，不可以有傳求春秋. The work belongs to the Sūn Fù 孫復 / Liú Chǎng 劉敞 / Dàn Zhù 啖助 sceptical-of-tradition lineage that the Sìkù tíyào identifies as inaugurated by the Chūnqiū zūnwáng fāwēi 春秋尊王發微 KR1e0026. The Sìkù editors are restrained in their estimate: useful in places but at the worst chapters falls into the same “going-too-far” patterns as Sūn Fù — the tíyào singles out Zhào’s claim of “quēyí 闕疑” on Chéngfēng 成風 as the prime example, since the Zuǒzhuàn supplies a perfectly clear context (Chéngfēng was Zhuānggōng’s concubine and Xīgōng’s mother) that any historically literate reader should command.
Tiyao
The Sìkù tíyào (translated):
We your servants respectfully report. The Chūnqiū jīngquán in sixteen juan is by Zhào Péngfēi of Sòng, zì Qǐmíng, hào Mùnè, of Miánzhōu. His view is that “the explainers of the Classic have been hung up on the three commentaries, each protecting his own teacher’s interpretation, and have largely missed the sage’s true meaning” — hence this work, principally taking the Classic to explain the Classic. His own preface says: “The student should illuminate the Chūnqiū without commentary, and should not seek the Chūnqiū through commentary. Where in the days before the commentaries did its meaning lie? It must be silently grasped through the heart-mind.” He also says: “The three commentaries are admittedly not enough to rely on; yet, with a fair-minded heart and considered judgement, there are passages in them that catch the sage’s intent.”
In our view: the three commentaries are not far from antiquity, their teachings have a transmission-line, and any inserted-master glosses that have drifted from the original meaning are admittedly there. But to “in one stroke cut them all out” — then the persons recorded in the Chūnqiū have no way of being authenticated as to their deeds, and the deeds recorded have no way of being authenticated as to their persons. To take just one or two events from the opening passages: “First year, spring, royal first month, [the prince] does not record his accession” — its missing piece concerns wife-and-concubine and primary-and-secondary heir issues; without commentarial text, even an exhaustive principle-investigating Confucian could spend a lifetime poring over the jīng and never figure out the matter of Shēngzǐ 聲子 and Zhòngzǐ 仲子. “The Earl of Zhèng triumphed over Duàn at Yǎn” — without saying who Duàn is, its missing piece is a mother-son and brother-brother knot; without commentarial text, even an exhaustive Confucian could not from the jīng alone know that Duàn was Wǔjiāng’s 武姜 son and Zhuānggōng’s brother. So talk of “explaining the Classic without the commentaries” — how easy is that?
Dàn Zhù 啖助 and Zhào Kuāng 趙匡 attacked and refuted the three commentaries, opening the bud of dissident readings; once Sūn Fù 孫復 came along and abandoned the old text wholesale, this bequeathed an inexhaustible plague to the Chūnqiū household. Cài Tāo’s 蔡絛 Tiěwéi shān cóngtán 鐵圍山叢談 records Lùxī shēng Huáng Yán 鹿溪生黄沇 saying: “Today’s Chūnqiū scholars do not seek the sage’s intent — they trace the commentaries and end up arguing about Lǔ’s ‘three Huán’ or Zhèng’s ‘seven Mù’; they exhaust the Classic and end up tabulating which entries record cyclical-day, which ‘invasion’, which ‘attack’, and so on.” Huáng Yán was a student of Chén Guàn 陳瓘 and Huáng Tíngjiān 黃庭堅 — his learning had a real lineage, yet his complaint already ran like this. All these are descendants of Sūn Fù’s habit. Zhào Péngfēi’s book is also of that lineage.
At its very worst, the book reaches the point of declaring on the entry “Chéngfēng” 成風 that we cannot tell whether she was Zhuānggōng’s concubine or Xīgōng’s [mother], and disposing of it as quēyí (a doubtful entry to be left blank). Zhāng Shàngyuàn’s 張尚瑗 Sānshū zhé zhū 三書折諸 mocks this “armchair speculation” — that he is unaware the Zuǒzhuàn records Chéngfēng’s zǐ Jì Yǒu 子季友 episode, which establishes she is Xīgōng’s mother — as “not worth a snicker.” That criticism is well-aimed. But where Sūn Fù was given to harsh judgements, Zhào Péngfēi tries genuinely to recover the original situation. His balanced passages cannot be discarded; an inch has its measure of length; it is admissible to keep his book on file as one voice among many.
Reverentially examined and submitted, Qiánlóng 43 (1778), sixth month. Chief compilers: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸鍚熊 (sic — typographic variant of 錫), Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief proofreader: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Chūnqiū jīngquán’s thesis — yǐ wú zhuàn míng Chūnqiū, “illuminate the Chūnqiū without commentary” — is a sharp instance of the Sòng radical-sceptical exegesis traceable to Sūn Fù KR1e0026 and the eleventh-century DànZhào revival, but tempered (so the SKQS editors note, with implicit approval) by Zhào’s effort at yuánqíng 原情 — “tracing the original situation” — i.e. attempting to recover historical context through close reading of the jīng itself rather than via bāobiǎn 褒貶 typology. Qīngyáng Mèngyán’s 青陽夢炎 1272 preface positions Zhào in a Sìchuān philosophical lineage: Zhōu Dūnyí 周敦頤 (Liánxī, who served at Hé 合) and Chéng Yí 程頤 (Yīchuān, exiled to Fú 涪) are figured as the Sòng sources, Xiè Chízhèng 謝持正 of Jīntáng 金堂 as the local intermediary who took Chūnqiū learning back from Yīchuān to the Mín region, and Zhào as the local capstone. Mèngyán explicitly contrasts the Jīngquán with the dominant LiánluòHú line (Hú Ānguó’s KR1e0036 Chūnqiū zhuàn) as “supplementary, not replacing, Húwéndìng’s framework” — this is essentially a Sìchuān regional defence of Zhào against the suspicion that he is a Sūn Fù epigone.
The work was composed during the final decades of Southern Sòng — exact dating uncertain, but probably mid-thirteenth century, since Mèngyán’s 1272 preface treats Zhào as already deceased and the work as already widely cited in examination essays.
Translations and research
- Sūn Wěimíng 孫衛明, Sòng dài Chūnqiū xué yánjiū 宋代春秋學研究 (Bēijīng: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué chūbǎnshè 2009), discussing the Sìchuān regional Chūnqiū tradition.
- Lǐ Wěitài 李偉泰, Sòng-rén Chūnqiū xué dōu lùn 宋人春秋學論衡 (Tāiběi: Wénjīn 1995).
- Shěn Yùhǎi 沈玉海, Sòng dài Chūnqiū xué shǐ 宋代春秋學史 (Hángzhōu 2002), discussing the yǐ wú zhuàn míng jīng school.
Other points of interest
The “fish-trap” metaphor of the title (drawing on Zhuāngzǐ, Wàiwù 外物: quán is for fish, you discard it once you catch the fish) is a striking philosophical statement: the commentaries are the quán, the sage’s mind is the fish. The image is unusual in the Chūnqiū tradition (fish-trap is more typical of Buddhist or Daoist hermeneutics) and signals Zhào’s deep alignment with Lǐxué metaphysics rather than philological scholarship.
Links
- Catalog meta:
data/catalogs/meta/KR1e.yaml - CBDB persons 51066, 530639 (Zhào Péngfēi)