三傳辨疑

Sānzhuàn biàn yí 三傳辨疑

Discriminations of the Doubtful in the Three Commentaries

by 程端學 (撰)

About the work

The Sānzhuàn biàn yí 三傳辨疑 (full title in some catalogs: Chūnqiū Sānzhuàn biàn yí 春秋三傳辨疑) in twenty juan is the third and most polemical work in Chéng Duānxué’s 程端學 Chūnqiū trilogy, after the Chūnqiū běnyì (KR1e0060) and the Chéngshì Chūnqiū huò wèn (KR1e0061). Its target is the three zhuàn themselves — Zuǒ, Gōngyáng, Gǔliáng — every passage Chéng holds to be doubtful is excerpted (classic above, zhuàn below) with his refutation appended. The work represents the high-water mark of the Yuán fèizhuàn 廢傳 (“set the commentaries aside”) tendency, of which Chéng is the most thorough and combative practitioner.

Tiyao

The Sìkù editors respectfully note: The Chūnqiū Sānzhuàn biàn yí in twenty juan is by Chéng Duānxué of Yuán. The work is principally devoted to attacking the three zhuàn. For every passage Chéng deems doubtful, he excerpts the classic-text and the zhuàn-text and appends his refutation. In general the work begins by harboring the determination to discard the zhuàn whatever the cost, then ransacks the texts for any and every defect; where no defect is to be found, it dismisses with the single sentence “not to be trusted.”

The disbelief in the three zhuàn originates with Dàn Zhù 啖助 and Zhào Kuāng 趙匡 (note: Hán Yù’s poem to Lú Tóng 盧仝 has the line “The three Spring-and-Autumn commentaries are bound up high on the shelf; he alone embraces the bequeathed classic and pursues it from beginning to end”; Lú Tóng was contemporary with Dàn and Zhào, and was likewise a partisan of their two schools. Lú’s own Chūnqiū zhāiwēi 春秋摘微 having been lost, we cite only Dàn and Zhào from the surviving books). Subsequently the line split into three branches: Sūn Fù’s 孫復 Zūn wáng fā wēi (KR1e0018) and what follows, abandoning the zhuàn but not refuting them; Liú Chǎng’s 劉敞 Chūnqiū quánhéng (KR1e0021) and what follows, refuting the zhuàn on the level of doctrinal categories (yìlì 義例); Yè Mèngdé’s 葉夢得 Chūnqiū yàn (KR1e0034) and what follows, refuting the zhuàn on the level of factual cases (diǎngù 典故). When we come to Chéng Duānxué, however, he combines all three branches and goes further, treating the Zuǒzhuàn itself as a forgery — intensifying the line root-and-branch (biànběn jiālì 變本加厲), without regard for plausibility. By this point the floodwaters of the line have reached their extremity.

In sober judgment: Zuǒ Qiūmíng was himself a state historian and his record is the most reliable; Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng were not far removed from the sage and their hearing is comparatively close to source. To denounce all three as wholly untrustworthy — what reliable book is then left to the world? This is truly empty calumny made up out of nothing, deeply slandering the ancient sages.

As to the doctrinal categories of bāobiǎn 褒貶: Zuǒshì’s perception of these is admittedly thin; the Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng schools, transmitted by oral instruction and supplemented by the masters, carry private accretions and indeed do not match the precision of later commentary. Yet Chéng’s work, in its examination of editorial method (shūfǎ 書法) and its sorting of right and wrong, contains one gain among a thousand reflections — and it would not do to detest his obstinacy and dismiss his arguments wholesale.

The Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě 通志堂經解 prints have included the Běnyì and the Huò wèn but not this book; per Nàlǎ Xìngdé’s 納蘭性德 preface, this is because the work was felt to be too damaged to print. The present base copy is from the household holdings of Wú Yùchí 吳玉墀 of Zhèjiāng. The first juan is the most worm-eaten — in some lines only a few characters remain; from juan two onwards, however, the text is complete. We have collated and supplemented from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典, and the work is now restored to a complete copy.

In Wú’s manuscript, beneath each item carrying Zuǒzhuàn events, the note “Not in the Běnyì, not recorded” (Fēi běnyì bù lù 非本義不録) appears — apparently a marginal cue Chéng inserted at draft stage to flag what should be excised, but which the copyist preserved by mistake. Since the original is so, we leave it as it stands.

Respectfully presented, Qiánlóng 46 / 5 (May 1781).

— 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 sets out a sharp three-branch genealogy of the post-Dàn-Zhào anti-zhuàn tradition: Sūn Fù abandons the zhuàn; Liú Chǎng refutes the zhuàn at the doctrinal-category level; Yè Mèngdé refutes them at the factual-case level. Chéng Duānxué combines all three branches and goes further: he treats the Zuǒzhuàn as a forgery, the Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng as worthless. This, the editors hold, exceeds all bounds. They concede that Chéng’s editorial-method and bāobiǎn analyses contain occasional insights (“one gain among a thousand reflections”) but that the work’s central thesis — the wholesale rejection of the Zuǒzhuàn — is indefensible.

The transmission history given in the tíyào is informative: the Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě edition of Nàlǎ Xìngdé excluded this work as too damaged; the SKQS editors recovered the missing first juan from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, restoring the work to twenty juan. The “Fēi běnyì bù lù” marginalia preserved by mistake from Chéng’s draft stage are an unusually intimate indication of the author’s editorial process.

The composition window is bounded by the death of Chéng Duānxué in 1334 and by the prior composition of the Běnyì and the Huò wèn: the bracket 1320–1334 is given as defensible. The Biàn yí is the youngest of the three works (it presupposes the others), so the actual date is likely toward the end of the bracket.

In the cluster of Yuán Chūnqiū works in this division, Chéng Duānxué’s three together — Běnyì, Huò wèn, Sānzhuàn biàn yí — represent the fèizhuàn extreme. Zhào Fǎng’s 趙汸 five-work cluster (KR1e0066–KR1e0070), written a generation later under the influence of Huáng Zé 黃澤, is the deliberate methodological counter-statement: the Zuǒzhuàn must be recovered as the historical record on which the editorial method (bǐxuē 筆削) of the classic operates. The two clusters together delimit the field of mid- and late-Yuán Chūnqiū scholarship.

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) — for the late-Sòng / Yuán fèi-zhuàn line.
• Newell Ann Van Auken, The Commentarial Transformation of the Spring and Autumn (Albany: SUNY 2016) — methodological context.
• Liú Yúnjùn 劉雲軍, work on Yuán Chūnqiū commentary; survey-level monograph still pending.
• No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.

Other points of interest

The “Fēi běnyì bù lù” 非本義不録 marginal flags preserved in juan two onwards are an unusually intimate trace of Chéng’s editorial process — they were drafting cues to himself, marking Zuǒzhuàn event-narratives that he intended to delete from the Běnyì but that the Biàn yí needed to retain (since the Biàn yí’s purpose is precisely to refute them). The fact that the cues were preserved by the copyist’s error and printed by the SKQS allows the modern reader to reconstruct part of the working relationship between the Běnyì and the Biàn yí in Chéng’s workshop.

Links

• Sìkù tíyào: from KR1e0062_000.txt in source.