春秋讞義

Chūnqiū yàn yì 春秋讞義

Verdicts on the Meaning of the Spring and Autumn Annals

by 王元杰 (撰)

About the work

The Chūnqiū yàn yì 春秋讞義 in nine extant juan (originally twelve, the last three lost in transmission) is the Chūnqiū commentary of Wáng Yuánjié 王元杰 of Wújiāng 吳江 — a Yuán-period examiner-scholar who declined office during the late-Yuán wars and taught privately. The work compiles the Chūnqiū-relevant remarks of Chéng Yí 程頤 and Zhū Xī 朱熹 from across their corpora, distributes them under the classic-text, places Hú Ānguó’s 胡安國 Chūnqiūzhuàn (KR1e0036) below them, and adds Wáng’s own dialectic verdict (yàn 讞) at each entry. The bias is unmistakably Zhū-Xī-fundamentalist: as the editors note, “on the whole work, of Master Zhū not a single dissenting word.”

Tiyao

[Imperial Verse-Preface (Yùzhì tí Wáng Yuánjié Chūnqiū yàn yì 御製題王元杰春秋讞義), Qiánlóng’s own:] “On hearing court-cases I am no different from anyone else; the goal is no court-cases. The Chūnqiū is a book of governing the world: it sets dàodé qí lǐ 道德齊禮 (“the way and virtue, ordered by ritual”), it is strict in honoring the king and despising the hegemons. Through it, the human heart and the principles of Heaven find their canon, and remain unextinguished. Yàn 讞 has the sense of judging cases; in our courts it is a punishment-citation. To take yàn and apply it to the Chūnqiū — surely this is wide of the mark. (Note: Yè Mèngdé already wrote a Chūnqiū yàn, missing the governing-the-world sense and reading the classic as if it were a court verdict — already one error. Now in the Yuán Wáng Yuánjié writes another Yàn yì. He apparently had not seen Yè’s original work, and his title coincides with Yè’s by accident. The book compiles the leftover sayings of Chéng and Zhū, then trims and arranges Hú Ānguó’s zhuàn below the classic-text, marking his own conclusions at the end of the three commentators as yàn. He is utterly compliant with Master Zhū — not a single character does he dare to delete. He is fairly to be charged with being the slave of slaves (zhòngtái 重儓).) — Yuánjié, slave of slaves, a junior-worthy debating his elders — what babble and verbiage! Each man flying his own banner, the books pile up to the rafters, who could ever exhaust them?”

[Sìkù tíyào proper:] The Chūnqiū yàn yì in nine juan is by Wáng Yuánjié of Yuán. Yuánjié, zì Zǐyīng, was a man of Wújiāng. In the Zhìzhèng era (1341–1370) he received a recommendation, but with military disturbances breaking out he did not take office; he taught in his home district. Long before, Master Chéng’s Chūnqiūzhuàn was unfinished; Master Zhū’s discussions of the Chūnqiū are scattered without a dedicated work. Yuánjié accordingly compiled the leftover sayings of these two and distributed them below the classic-text; then he trimmed and arranged Hú Ānguó’s zhuàn to round out the meaning. Hú’s book is older than Master Zhū’s, but Yuánjié sets it after Zhū’s — to mark out the priority of his veneration, not to follow the chronological sequence. So: under the entry on Yǐn 4 / Zhōu Xū 隱公四年州吁, he reproduces in full Master Zhū’s commentary on the Bèifēng “Jīgǔ” 邶風擊鼓 piece — which has nothing to do with Chūnqiū method — but, deferring to Zhū, he is unwilling to cut a single character. At the end of the three commentators’ material, Wáng appends his own dialectic conclusion as yàn: at Huán 4 / Jìhóu dàqù 桓公四年紀侯大去, Master Chéng reads “dà” 大 as Jìhóu’s personal name, and so faults Jì rather than Qí; Wáng’s yàn takes a softer view, excusing Jì and not following Master Chéng. Across the entire work, on Master Zhū not one dissenting word — his thesis is plain.

Long ago Yè Mèngdé wrote a Chūnqiū yàn that captured much of the classic’s intent; Yuánjié had apparently not seen it, hence the duplication of titles. Wáng’s argumentation does not approach the precision of Yè’s. But where Yè preserves Master Zhū strictly within an inch — though his insight is shallow, his learning is deep and steady. He is decidedly better than the Míng Confucians who, having no master, indulge in capricious speculation.

The original work was twelve juan; for many years there was no print. The traceable manuscripts all lack the last three juan, and we have no way to supplement them; we therefore copy out the surviving nine in their old form.

Respectfully presented, Qiánlóng 42 / 2 (February 1777).

— 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 Chūnqiū yàn yì is best understood as a ChéngZhū chan-shū 程朱箋疏 (ChéngZhū gloss) of the Chūnqiū. Wáng’s project responds to a real lacuna: the dominant Sòng Chūnqiū commentary (Hú Ānguó’s Chūnqiūzhuàn) is not by Zhū Xī, and Zhū Xī wrote no specialized Chūnqiū monograph. By the mid-fourteenth century, with ZhūXué entrenched in the examination curriculum, the absence of a ZhūXī Chūnqiū commentary was felt. Wáng’s Yàn yì fills the gap by fabricating one out of dispersed remarks. The work survives only in the first nine of twelve juan; the loss is made up only partially by other Yuán Chūnqiū commentaries that quote it.

The Sìkù notice is calibrated. The Qiánlóng emperor’s own dismissive verse-preface — judging that yàn is the wrong word for Chūnqiū and that Wáng is a zhòngtái 重儓 (“slave of slaves”) of Zhū Xī — is unusually severe, and would normally have killed reception of the work. The tíyào editors soften the verdict: shallow but steady, far better than the Míng untutored Confucians. The work is therefore preserved in the SKQS not as an authoritative Chūnqiū commentary but as a methodological cautionary specimen: how a ChéngZhū fundamentalist works.

The composition window is set by Gān Wénchuán’s preface (Zhìzhèng 10, mid-1350) and Wáng’s own remark that he had labored on the work for nearly twenty years. The bracket 1330–1350 is therefore defensible. Wáng died after the founding of the Míng (he taught privately into the Zhìzhèng era), but the work was complete by 1350.

The work belongs to the same Yuán Chūnqiū commentary boom as Chéng Duānxué’s 程端學 trilogy (KR1e0060–KR1e0062) and Zhào Fǎng’s 趙汸 cluster (KR1e0066–KR1e0070) but represents a third position: where Chéng abandons the zhuàn and Zhào recovers them, Wáng defers to the ChéngZhū tradition almost to the point of self-effacement. The three positions delimit the methodological field of mid-Yuán Chūnqiū studies.

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 Chéng-Zhū Chūnqiū reception.
• Hóu Měizhēn 侯美珍, articles on the Sòng-Yuán Chūnqiū commentary tradition (Tāiwān-area journals).
• No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.

Other points of interest

The Qiánlóng emperor’s own verse-preface attached to the SKQS edition is a remarkable document of high-Qīng literary judgment: the imperial pen flatly accuses Wáng of misunderstanding what kind of book the Chūnqiū is, then doubles down by reading him as a slavish epigone of Zhū Xī. It is unusual for an SKQS tíyào to follow such an authoritative dismissal with even a partial recovery of the work’s value, and the editors’ phrase “better than the Míng Confucians” should be read as a sidelong defence of the high-Qīng ChéngZhū fundamentalism that the editors themselves represented. The work’s preservation, despite the imperial criticism, is itself a small piece of evidence for the editors’ independence within the SKQS project.

Links

• Sìkù tíyào and Imperial verse-preface: from KR1e0063_000.txt in source.
• Original preface by Gān Wénchuán 干文傳, Zhìzhèng 10 / 5 (1350): from KR1e0063_000.txt in source.