Chūnqiū huòwèn 春秋或問
Doubts and Questions on the Spring and Autumn Annals
by 呂大圭 (撰)
About the work
The Chūnqiū huòwèn in twenty juan is the surviving systematic Chūnqiū commentary of Lǚ Dàguī 呂大圭 (1227–1275) of Nánān 南安. As Lǚ explicitly notes, it is the huòwèn 或問 — “and what about?” — companion to his now-lost Chūnqiū jízhuàn 春秋集傳. (The jízhuàn was the parent work; the huòwèn takes up loose ends and contested points.) Appended to the WYG edition is a separate one-juan work, Chūnqiū wǔ lùn 春秋五論 — five short discursive essays: (1) Lùn fūzǐ zuò Chūnqiū 論夫子作春秋, (2) Biàn rìyuè bāobiǎn zhī lì 辨日月褒貶之例, (3) Tèbǐ 特筆, (4) Lùn sān zhuàn suǒcháng suǒduǎn 論三傳所長所短, (5) Shìbiàn 世變. The Yuán Chūnqiū commentator Chéng Duānxué KR1e0060 called the Wǔ lùn “míngbái zhèngdà” 明白正大. Lǚ’s Huòwèn favours Zuǒ and Gǔliáng over Gōngyáng, and is especially severe on Hé Xiū’s 何休 Jiěgǔ 解詁 with its apocryphal-prophetic readings. The SKQS tíyào singles out for praise — beyond the doctrinal substance — Lǚ’s loyal martyrdom under the Mongol invasion as evidence that “he truly understood the Chūnqiū’s meaning.”
Tiyao
The Sìkù tíyào (translated):
We your servants respectfully report. The Chūnqiū huòwèn in twenty juan, with the Chūnqiū wǔ lùn in one juan appended, is by Lǚ Dàguī of Sòng. Dàguī, zì Guīshū 圭叔, hào Pǔqīng 樸卿, was a man of Nánān. He took the jìnshì in Chúnyòu 7 (1247), rising to Cháosàn dàfū xíng Shàngshū lìbù yuánwàiláng and concurrently Guózǐ biānxiū shílù jiǎntǎoguān and Chóngzhèng diàn shuōshū; then went out as prefect of Xīnghuà jūn 興化軍. He had earlier composed a Chūnqiū jízhuàn 春秋集傳, now lost; this Huòwèn in twenty juan is the elaboration of that Jízhuàn’s meanings.
Among the three commentaries, his main thrust is to follow Zuǒ and Gǔliáng, while sharply rejecting Gōngyáng; on Hé Xiū’s Jiěgǔ 解詁 he is particularly severe. Examining the three: Zuǒ has the fullest historical record; Gǔliáng has the most refined moral principles; Gōngyáng alone is a patchwork of multiple masters and is often biased and lopsided, and Hé Xiū’s Jiěgǔ drags in apocryphal-prognostic and forced readings most extravagantly of all. Dàguī’s positioning on the merits and faults of the three traditions is by no means false. Compared with the line that “discards the commentaries and follows only the Classic” he is a long way different.
The five appended essays are: (1) Lùn fūzǐ zuò Chūnqiū (on Confucius composing the Chūnqiū); (2) Biàn rìyuè bāobiǎn zhī lì (refuting the “praise-and-blame by date” rule); (3) Tèbǐ (on the special-strokes); (4) Lùn sān zhuàn suǒ cháng suǒ duǎn (on the strengths and weaknesses of the three commentaries); (5) Shìbiàn (the changes of the age). Chéng Duānxué 程端學 KR1e0060 once said the Wǔ lùn are “míngbái zhèngdà” — clear and upright — but that the Chūnqiū events Lǚ adduces sometimes do not match the meanings of the jīng. We have found that, also in the Huòwèn, his alignment with the jīng’s meaning is occasionally off: his strength is sustained argument, not evidential checking.
But Lǚ subsequently — early in Déyòu (1275) — was reassigned from Xīnghuà to be prefect of Zhāngzhōu. Before he could take up the post, Yuán troops arrived and the Yánhǎi dūzhìzhìshǐ Pú Shòugēng 蒲壽庚 surrendered the city. Lǚ resisted as a martyr and was killed. His personal integrity, exemplary across the ages, can truly be called “deep understanding of the Chūnqiū’s meaning.” The book’s claim — that to “clarify the moral distinctions, rectify the relation of name to reality, and bring out the deep ripples that constitute the sage’s special-strokes” — is argued out kǎnkǎn 侃侃, with great-meaning lǐnrán 凜然, sufficient to maintain the moral framework and defend the orthodox teaching. We cannot be petty with him about details of zhāngjù exegesis.
Reverentially examined and submitted, Qiánlóng 44 (1779), eighth month. Chief compilers: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief proofreader: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Huòwèn is a huòwèn-style amplification of Lǚ’s lost Chūnqiū jízhuàn. The dating window is bounded by Lǚ’s jìnshì (1247) and his death (1275) — Hé Mèngshēn’s 何夢申 preface to it, cited by the SKQS editors elsewhere (in their tíyào to Huáng Zhòngyán’s Chūnqiū tōng shuō KR1e0050), describes it as “rooted in Master Zhū” and as the only Chūnqiū commentary among “nearly a hundred schools” that explicitly rejects bāobiǎn as the Chūnqiū’s organising principle. (The SKQS editors point out that Huáng Zhòngyán of a generation earlier had already taken this position; Hé was unaware of Huáng.)
The Wǔ lùn — the five appended discursive essays — are independently studied as a compact statement of the anti-bāobiǎn / pro-shìbiàn (i.e., context-of-the-age) reading of the Chūnqiū that prevailed in late-Sòng Zhū-school circles. Essay (2), Biàn rìyuè bāobiǎn zhī lì, is a methodologically important refutation of the GōngGǔ doctrine that the Chūnqiū’s differential recording of dates encodes praise-and-blame. Essay (4), on the strengths and weaknesses of the three commentaries, is one of the more even-handed Sòng surveys of the sān zhuàn problem.
Lǚ’s martyrdom (1275/76) — refusing to surrender to the Yuán under Pú Shòugēng — is the moral cause given by the SKQS editors for retaining the work in the canon despite its philological imperfections; the case shows how Qián-lóng-era SKQS judgement was capable of weighting moral evidence (wèi shēn běnmò 立身本末) against philological evidence (kǎoshí 考實) in deciding what to preserve.
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).
- Lǐ Wěitài 李偉泰, Sòng-rén Chūnqiū xué dōu lùn 宋人春秋學論衡 (Tāiběi: Wénjīn 1995), with sustained discussion of the Lǚ Dà-guī / Huáng Zhòng-yán anti-bāo-biǎn line.
- Zhāng Gāo-píng 張高評, Chūnqiū shū-fǎ yǔ Zuǒ-zhuàn xué shǐ 春秋書法與左傳學史 (Tāiběi: Wǔ-nán 2002).
- The Wǔ lùn is digitally available on ctext.org as part of the SKQS reproduction.
Other points of interest
Pú Shòugēng 蒲壽庚 — the powerful Persian-descended commercial supervisor at Quánzhōu who delivered the south-east coast to the Mongols — is now a major topic of Yuán social history; Lǚ’s resistance and execution at Pú’s hand is a useful Sòng-loyalist data-point. See K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean (CUP 1985); for Pú’s career, Maejima Shinji 前嶋信次, “Senshū no Hō Jukyū” (1953).
Links
- Catalog meta:
data/catalogs/meta/KR1e.yaml - CBDB person 39292 (Lǚ Dàguī)