春秋闕欵

Chūnqiū quēyí 春秋闕疑 (catalog form: 春秋闕欵)

Doubts Left Open in the Spring and Autumn Annals

by 鄭玉 (撰)

About the work

The Chūnqiū quēyí 春秋闕疑 in forty-five juan is the Chūnqiū commentary of Zhèng Yù 鄭玉 of Shèxiàn 歙縣, completed in Zhìzhèng 15 / 9 / 1 (autumn 1355) and published before its author’s suicide-martyrdom in 1358. The work sets the classic in large characters at the head and the zhuàn-materials in small characters below, emulating the format of Zhū Xī’s 朱熹 Tōngjiàn gāngmù 通鑑綱目 (KR2g0002) — though, as the Sìkù editors note, with the classic-and-zhuàn relationship inverted from Zhū Xī’s. Zuǒzhuàn materials are placed first as the factual record; Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng follow with their principles. Zhèng appends his own conclusion. Where the classic is textually corrupt or the evidence cannot be settled, he refuses to force a reading and leaves the matter quē (vacant) — hence the title.

Note on the title: The catalog form data/catalogs/meta/KR1e.yaml gives the title as Chūnqiū quēkuǎn 春秋闕欵, with 欵 (variant of 款 kuǎn, “item, article, head”). However, the work’s own internal title-page (see the source KR1e0065_000.txt) gives 春秋闕疑 — quēyí, “leave doubt open” — and Zhèng’s preface explicitly thematizes the quēyí methodology (“where the classic has corruptions and there is no way to verify, then prefer to leave it vacant in waiting for one who knows”). The catalog form is almost certainly a copyist’s slip — 欵 (or 款) for 疑 — possibly a graphic confusion in cursive, possibly a deliberate variant. The internal title is the philologically defensible form. The body of this note follows the internal quēyí; the frontmatter title: field preserves the catalog form 闕欵 per project convention.

Tiyao

The Sìkù editors respectfully note: The Chūnqiū quēyí in forty-five juan is by Zhèng Yù of Yuán. The work places the Zuǒzhuàn first; from the Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng schools onward, where the reasoning is sound, he takes them. Where the classic is in some places corrupted or in error and has no way to be authenticated, he leaves the matter quē (vacant). Occasionally he attaches his own discussion: thus on the opening question of the Xià-calendar versus the Zhōu-calendar — which is plain enough on its face — he preserves it without arguing. This is an extreme prudence.

His preface says: “The Chūnqiū contains the original text of the Lǔ historian-record (Lǔshǐ zhī jiùwén 魯史之舊文) and the special editorial pen of the sage (shèngrén zhī tèbǐ 聖人之特筆). It cannot be that every character is to be looked for as carrying meaning; nor that none of it carries meaning at all.” This judgment is fully balanced.

As to Master Zhū’s Tōngjiàn gāngmù, in form and method it is in fact modeled on the Chūnqiū classic-and-zhuàn. But Zhèng’s preface says: “I have used Master Zhū’s example, taking the classic as the gāng and the zhuàn as the mù” — modeling himself on Zhū. So he speaks the matter inverted! Yù, zì Zǐměi, was a man of Shèxiàn. At the end of the Yuán he was named Hànlín dàizhì 翰林待制 but declined on grounds of illness. When the Míng armies entered Huīzhōu, their commanding general sought to summon him; Yù refused to bend, and died. His students called him Master Shīshān 師山先生. He has a Shīshān jí 師山集, separately registered.

Respectfully presented, Qiánlóng 42 / 9 (September 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 quēyí is the most methodologically chastened of the late-Yuán Chūnqiū commentaries: where the contemporary works of Chéng Duānxué 程端學 (KR1e0060–KR1e0062) reach toward radical refutation of the zhuàn, where Wáng Yuánjié 王元杰 (KR1e0063) defers to the ChéngZhū tradition almost to self-effacement, where Lǐ Lián 李廉 (KR1e0064) attempts the synthesis, and where Zhào Fǎng 趙汸 (KR1e0066–KR1e0070) recovers the Zuǒzhuàn as the historical foundation for the editorial-method analysis — Zhèng Yù instead foregrounds the limit of knowledge. The classic contains both Lǔ-history jiùwén and Confucian tèbǐ; not every word is to be read as freighted with meaning, and not none of it is. Where the evidence does not extend, leave doubt open. The doctrine derives explicitly from the Lúnyǔ dictum (Wèizhèng 18) “duō wén quèyí” 多聞闕疑 (“hear much, leave doubt open”).

The Sìkù editors approve this stance — they call Zhèng’s central judgment “fully balanced” (chí lùn zhì wéi píng yǔn 持論至為平允) — but flag what they regard as a methodological inversion in his preface: Zhèng cites Zhū Xī’s Tōngjiàn gāngmù as his model, not realizing (the editors say) that Zhū Xī’s own gāngmù form was originally a model of the Chūnqiū’s classic-and-zhuàn relationship, not its source.

The composition date is precise from the original preface: Zhìzhèng 15 / 9 / 1 (autumn 1355). The work was completed three years before Zhèng’s suicide in 1358 when he refused to serve under the Míng (then still the Wúguó); the work’s quēyí methodology may be read in light of Zhèng’s later choice to die — both reflect a fundamental Confucian stance of not forcing what is not authentically known.

The work is the major Chūnqiū commentary of the late-Yuán Xīn’ān 新安 / Huīzhōu 徽州 milieu — the same milieu that produced Zhào Fǎng’s 趙汸 cluster a few years later. The two are stylistically and methodologically very different — Zhèng’s chastened reserve versus Zhào’s rigorous historical reconstruction — but the geographic and temporal proximity is not coincidental.

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).
• Hóu Měizhēn 侯美珍, articles on the late-Yuán Chūnqiū commentary tradition.
• John W. Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty (Berkeley: UC Press 1983) — for the late-Yuán Huīzhōu Confucian milieu in which Zhèng Yù worked and died.
• No substantial dedicated Western-language study of the work located.

Other points of interest

Zhèng Yù’s biography ranks him alongside Zhào Fǎng as one of the two principal Chūnqiū scholars of the late-Yuán Xīn’ān / Huīzhōu prefecture. His refusal to surrender to the Míng armies and subsequent suicide places him in the same line of late-Yuán Confucian dynastic loyalists as Yú Quē 余闕 (1303–1358, of Lúzhōu, who likewise died defending his city) and is the principal evidence cited by later commentators (notably Sòng Lián 宋濂, Zhèng’s near-contemporary on the other side) for the seriousness with which late-Yuán Confucians took the Mandate-of-Heaven question.

The work’s quēyí methodology has a lineage of its own: it picks up the Lúnyǔ dictum duō wén quèyí (Wèizhèng 18), is cited approvingly by the Sìkù editors, and resurfaces in a different form in Jiāo Yuánxī’s 焦袁熹 Chūnqiū quērú biān 春秋闕如編 (KR1e0108) of the high Qīng. The quēyí / quērú line is the philologically chastened counter-current to the SòngYuán bāobiǎn tradition.

Links

• Sìkù tíyào: from KR1e0065_000.txt in source (internal title page reads 春秋闕疑).
• Original preface by Zhèng Yù dated Zhìzhèng 15 / 9 / 1: from KR1e0065_000.txt.