春秋左氏傳補註

Chūnqiū Zuǒshìzhuàn bǔzhù 春秋左氏傳補註

Supplementary Notes to the Zuǒ Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals

by 趙汸 (撰)

About the work

The Chūnqiū Zuǒshìzhuàn bǔzhù 春秋左氏傳補註 in ten juan is Zhào Fǎng’s 趙汸 supplement to Dù Yù’s 杜預 Chūnqiū jīngzhuàn jíjiě (KR1e0004 for the standard zhèngyì edition; see also KR1e0012 Dù Yù Chūnqiū shìlì) — drawing on Chén Fùliáng’s 陳傅良 Chūnqiū hòuzhuàn (KR1e0038) and the latter’s Zuǒzhuàn zhāngzhǐ 左氏章指 to fill in what Dù missed and what Chén did not see. Methodologically: where the Zuǒ is silent, Zhào uses Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng; where Dù is silent or wrong, Zhào uses Chén Fùliáng. The principle is qǔ liǎngcháng, qù liǎngduǎn 取兩長去兩短 (“take from each its strength, leave its shortcoming”). The third cluster-work in Zhào’s five-work Chūnqiū corpus (KR1e0066–KR1e0070).

Tiyao

The Sìkù editors respectfully note: The Chūnqiū Zuǒshìzhuàn bǔzhù in ten juan is by Zhào Fǎng of Yuán. Fǎng followed Huáng Zé’s 黃澤 doctrine: in Chūnqiū studies, the Zuǒshìzhuàn is principal; for commentary, take Dù Yù 杜預; what the Zuǒ does not extend to, complete with the two zhuàn of Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng; what Dù does not extend to, complete with Chén Fùliáng’s zhuàn and Chén’s Zuǒzhuàn zhāngzhǐ 左氏章指. This work accordingly draws on Fùliáng’s words to supplement what the Zuǒzhuàn jíjiě of Dù did not reach. Its main thesis: Dù leans toward the Zuǒ; Fùliáng leans toward the Gǔliáng; if one uses Chén’s strengths to make up Dù’s shortcomings, and uses Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng’s right to rescue Zuǒzhuàn’s wrong — then one has both. The categories of editorial method are touched and connected, the gains and losses of the commentaries explicated and rectified — not only is Dù’s commentary supplemented and the Zuǒzhuàn served, but even the un-spoken meaning of the sage may be glimpsed. This is, in the Chūnqiū household, the temperate discussion (chípíng zhī lùn 持平之論).

Dù Yù’s Shìlì 釋例 had been broken up by Kǒng Yǐngdá 孔穎達 into the sub-commentary, with no separate book in circulation; we have now retrieved it from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 and recompiled it back into a complete book. Chén Fùliáng’s zhāngzhǐ is also rare in the world; what Zhào collects gives a general outline. This is what the antiquarian-philological enterprise must take up.

Respectfully presented, Qiánlóng 46 / 9 (September 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 Bǔzhù is the third panel of Zhào Fǎng’s five-work Chūnqiū program, and the most strictly philological of the five. Where the Jízhuàn (KR1e0066) is the running commentary applying Zhào’s methodology, where the Shīshuō (KR1e0067) preserves Huáng Zé’s foundation, where the Jīn-suǒ-shi (KR1e0069) is the bǐshì shǔcí condensed, and where the Shǔcí (KR1e0070) is the methodological treatise — the Bǔzhù is the Zuǒzhuàn sub-commentary proper. It is the work in which Zhào does textual-philological bǔzhù (supplementary commentary) on the Zuǒ, drawing in Gōngyáng / Gǔliáng materials and Chén Fùliáng’s zhāngzhǐ in the recognized layered-commentary form.

Zhào’s preface (extensive, reproduced in the source) places the work in his methodological line: Mencius — recognizing the jīngshǐ 經史 distinction — is the foundational figure; the three zhuàn each fail in their own way (the Zuǒ in not knowing the bǐxuē meaning, Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng in not knowing the wording is history); subsequent Sòng commentaries either reiterate the Zuǒ one-sidedly or lose themselves in bāobiǎn speculation. Only Dù Yù and Chén Fùliáng — both, Zhào notes, self-aware of their limits — are the proper authorities. The Bǔzhù completes them where they did not reach.

The composition date is not precisely fixed in the source, but the work depends on Zhào’s mature methodological framework (post-Shǔcí, 1357 onward) and is referenced in Zhào’s biography along with the other works of the cluster. The bracket 1340–1369 is given as a defensible window — narrower bracketing is not securely supported. The Sìkù note that Dù Yù’s Shìlì was retrieved from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn refers to the SKQS editorial recovery, not to Zhào’s original sources; Zhào’s Bǔzhù presupposes the Shìlì as available in his time, which it was, principally through Kǒng Yǐngdá’s zhèngyì.

In the cluster of late-Yuán Chūnqiū commentaries, the Bǔzhù is methodologically distinctive in that it directly engages the early-Qīng Zuǒ-philological program of Gù Yánwǔ 顧炎武 Zuǒzhuàn Dùjiě bǔzhèng (KR1e0096) and Huì Dòng Zuǒzhuàn bǔzhù (KR1e0116) — works that explicitly continue Zhào’s project. Zhào’s Bǔzhù is therefore the principal Yuán-period bridge between medieval zhuàn exegesis and the Qīng kǎojù 考據 reconstruction of Zuǒ studies.

Translations and research

• Wú Wánjū 吳萬居, Zhào Fǎng Chūnqiū-xué yánjiū (Tāiběi 1992) — substantial chapter on the Bǔ-zhù.
• Sūn Wěimíng 孫衛明, Sòng dài Chūnqiū xué yánjiū (Bēijīng 2009).
• No dedicated Western-language study located.

Other points of interest

The methodological self-awareness of Zhào’s Bǔzhù — articulated in the preface — should be noted: he distinguishes Dù Yù and Chén Fùliáng from the run of subsequent commentators precisely because both acknowledged the limits of their own approach. Dù’s preface to the Jíjiě explicitly says he could not “錯綜經文以盡其變” (“interweave the classic-text and exhaust its transformations”); Chén Fùliáng’s Hòuzhuàn preface explicitly says he uses “the recorded to verify the unrecorded”. Zhào builds his Bǔzhù on the strength of these self-acknowledgements; it is not a polemic against earlier commentators but a layered supplement to those who knew themselves.

Links

• Sìkù tíyào and Zhào Fǎng’s preface: from KR1e0068_000.txt in source.