程氏春秋或問

Chéngshì Chūnqiū huò wèn 程氏春秋或問

Master Chéng’s Doubts and Inquiries on the Spring and Autumn Annals

by 程端學 (撰)

About the work

The Chéngshì Chūnqiū huò wèn 程氏春秋或問 in ten juan is the dialectical companion to Chéng Duānxué’s 程端學 Chūnqiū běnyì 春秋本義 (KR1e0060, thirty juan). After compiling the Běnyì, Chéng wrote this Huò wèn to enumerate the gains and losses of the various commentators — to make explicit the principles by which his choices in the Běnyì had been made. The work follows the Twelve Dukes of Lǔ across ten juan (Yǐn, Huán, ZhuāngMǐn, Xī, Wén, Xuān, Chéng, Xiāng, Zhāo, DìngĀi). It is one of the boldest products of the late-Sòng / Yuán fèizhuàn 廢傳 (“set the commentaries aside”) school.

Tiyao

The Sìkù editors respectfully note: The Chūnqiū huò wèn in ten juan is by Chéng Duānxué of Yuán. Having compiled the Chūnqiū běnyì, he proceeded to enumerate at length the merits and defects of the various theories, in order to clarify the rationale of his selections — and so came to write this work, which runs in tandem with the Běnyì. Of his attacks on the various theories, those that approve are few and those that reject are many; on Zhāng Qià’s 張洽 commentary (KR1e0048) his attack is especially heavy.

That said: when he argues that the Chūnqiū should not be read in the manner of one-character praise-and-blame; when he holds that much of the Chūnqiū’s “omissions after the editorial pen-and-knife” (bǐxuē yǐhòu zhī quēwén 筆削以後之闕文) is to be respected; when he holds that the Chūnqiū does not record auspicious omens, and that disasters and anomalies should not be forced into correlative interpretation — all these positions show genuine discernment. His other arguments are also for the most part upright and large.

Only when he holds that the events recorded in the Zuǒzhuàn are largely fabricated, and when he insists with such force on the Xià-calendar reading — going so far as to read Chūnqiū “no ice” (Chūn wú bīng 春無冰) at the head of Chūnqiū as referring to the jiànyín 建寅 month [the first month of the Xià calendar, i.e. the third month of the Zhōu calendar] — and twists the Zhōulǐ 周禮 and the Bīnfēng 豳風 to bear out the reading: he overlooks that Zuǒ Qiūmíng was a Zhōu man, that his exposition of the classic may not be entirely accurate but his factual record is not wholly mistaken; and that on his own dynasty’s standard calendar, he is even less likely to have been mistaken. Are not Duānxué’s words here a case of correcting bend with over-bend (jiǎowǎng guòzhèng 矯枉過正)?

For Dù Yù 杜預 and the others held to their one-school commentary so tightly that they could not avoid bending the classic to fit the zhuàn; but Chéng Duānxué and others, in pressing their own theses, could not avoid setting the zhuàn aside in order to read the classic. The proper way of reading the SòngYuán Chūnqiū literature is to take the strengths and recognize the limits.

Respectfully presented for collation, Qiánlóng 39 / 10 (October 1774).

— Editors-in-chief: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; Editor-of-Collation: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Sìkù tíyào gives the central judgment in calibrated form: Chéng Duānxué’s anti-bāobiǎn, anti-yīzìyù 一字寓 (“a single character carries hidden meaning”) position, and his refusal to read auspicious omens and disaster-correlatives as load-bearing in the classic, are both correct. His treatment of the Zuǒzhuàn as fabrication, and his obstinate insistence on a Xià-calendar reading of the Chūnqiū dating, are excesses of the same anti-zhuàn tendency.

The work is one of the principal monuments of the Yuán Chūnqiū commentary boom that runs from Yú Gāo’s 兪皋 Chūnqiū jízhuàn shìyì dàchéng (KR1e0056) through Wú Chéng’s 吳澄 Chūnqiū zuǎnyán (KR1e0057) and Qí Lǚqiān’s 齊履謙 Chūnqiū zhūguó tǒngjì (KR1e0059) up to Zhào Fǎng’s 趙汸 five-work cluster (KR1e0066–KR1e0070). Chéng’s Chūnqiū corpus stands in the militant fèizhuàn line; Zhào Fǎng’s, written a generation later, is the deliberate counter-statement, recovering the zhuàn (especially the Zuǒ) as the indispensable historical foundation for the editorial method (bǐxuē 筆削) that the classic encodes.

The composition window is set by Chéng’s biography: the Běnyì is the parent work and was composed over years; this companion Huò wèn must follow it. Chéng died in 1334, and the Huò wèn is presupposed by the Sānzhuàn biàn yí in any case, so the work falls in the late 1320s or early 1330s — in any case before 1334. The bracket 1320–1334 is given as the defensible window.

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) — context for the fèi-zhuàn line into which Chéng Duānxué’s reading falls.
• Newell Ann Van Auken, The Commentarial Transformation of the Spring and Autumn (Albany: SUNY 2016) — for the bāo-biǎn / non-bāo-biǎn methodological dispute that Chéng’s work joins.
• Wáng Jìmíng 王基銘 (and others) on the Yuán Chūnqiū commentary tradition; comprehensive monograph treatment in modern Chinese is still uneven.
• No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.

Other points of interest

The Huò wèn deserves to be read alongside the parallel anti-bāobiǎn polemic of Lǚ Dàguī’s 呂大圭 Chūnqiū huò wèn (KR1e0053) and the earlier Huáng Zhòngyán Chūnqiū tōng shuō (KR1e0050). The three together form the spine of the SòngYuán anti-bāobiǎn line. Chéng’s distinctive contribution is the calendar argument and the categorical rejection of the Zuǒzhuàn’s historical reliability — both of which the Sìkù editors flag as overreach.

Links

• Sìkù tíyào: from KR1e0061_000.txt in source.