Chūnqiū chūnwáng zhèngyuè kǎo 春秋春王正月考
Investigation of “Spring, Royal First Month” in the Spring and Autumn Annals
by 張以寧 (撰)
About the work
The Chūnqiū chūnwáng zhèngyuè kǎo 春秋春王正月考 in two juan (the WYG indicates 2 juan; the catalog meta gives 1 juan in some accounts) is an early-Míng monograph by Zhāng Yǐníng 張以寧 (1301–1370) devoted to a single technical question: the meaning of the formula chūn wáng zhèng yuè 春王正月 (“Spring, royal first month”) that opens each year of the Chūnqiū. The work was begun before Zhāng Yǐníng’s Hóngwǔ 2 (1369) embassy to Annam; substantively completed during his more than half-year stay there waiting for orders to return; finished only just before his death on the return journey in 1370. The book argues that the Chūnqiū’s “spring” is the Zhōu spring (i.e., the calendar that begins the year at jiànzǐ 建子, the eleventh civil month by Xià count), and that zhèng yuè 正月 there refers to the Zhōu zhèng and not to the Xià zhèng. The work thus rejects the Hú Ānguó line — adopted from a particular reading of Chéng Yí — that “Confucius used the Xià calendar’s seasons to crown the Zhōu months” (yǐ Xiàshí guàn Zhōuyuè 以夏時冠周月).
Tiyao
The Sìkù tíyào: The Chūnwáng zhèngyuè kǎo in two juan was composed by Zhāng Yǐníng of the Míng. Yǐníng, zì Zhìdào, was a man of Gǔtián. He passed the Yuán Tàidìng dīngmǎo (1327) jìnshì, served to Hànlín shìjiǎngxuéshì, and entered the Míng with his original office. In Hóngwǔ 2 he was sent as imperial envoy to invest the king of Annam. He died on the road back. His biography is in the Míng shǐ Wényuànzhuàn. The History says that, having gained high place in the examinations through Chūnqiū, his learning was particularly devoted to Chūnqiū; he had many original conclusions; he composed a Húzhuàn biànyí most disputatious and learned, but the Chūnwáng zhèngyuè kǎo was not yet finished, [and only after he] resided in Annam more than half a year did he complete it. Today the Húzhuàn biànyí is lost; only this book survives.
[Yǐníng] examines the three royal-houses’ alternation in changing the season-month, while the canonical text “first month” attached to wáng designates the Zhōu calendar; nor need this be argued. Zhèngyuè 正月 and zhèngsuì 正歲 — both names appear in the Zhōulǐ; the use of two zhèng in parallel is the institution of the king. The Zuǒ shì in the explanatory tradition specifically says “wáng — Zhōu zhèngyuè,” and that the zhèngyuè falls at jiànzǐ is also without dispute. From the Hàn onwards there has been no different opinion. Only at the Táng did Liú Zhījǐ’s Shǐtōng begin to claim that the Chūnqiū uses the Xià calendar; nobody believed him. From Master Chéng’s [Chéng Yí’s] over-emphasis on the single saying “xíng Xià zhī shí” 行夏之時, those who took up his line multiplied; Hú Ānguó then made it concrete as “use Xià time to crown Zhōu month”; Chéng Duānxué, in Chūnqiū huò wèn, hardened it into a school-position, citing the spurious Méi Zé version of the Shàngshū as a basis and dragging in citations to support it. The more they argued, the more it grew confused.
That the Zuǒ shì sometimes errs is so; but on the question of the dynasty’s calendar, every woman and child of the time knew it; Zuǒ could not have got it wrong. Even taking Master Chéng’s [Chéng Yí’s] view that Zuǒ was a man of the Qín, [a man writing] only some decades after the end of the Zhōu could not have been ignorant of the previous dynasty’s calendar. Yet differing accounts proliferated unintelligibly. Yǐníng alone draws on the Five Classics, supplements them with Shǐ jì and Hàn shū, and sets the matter out in a single book — settling the doubt of several centuries. This may be called striking insight.
As to the fact that the descendants of past royal-houses were permitted to use their predecessors’ calendar — hence the Sòng [polity] used the Shāng calendar, attested by the Chánggé tradition; that the fiefs sometimes used the Xià calendar — hence the zhuàn records Jìn events with the canonical text showing a two-month difference; that ancient records sometimes contain such alternations and that later scholars built debating cases upon them — Yǐníng has not yet penetrated to the source. The Yī xùn and Qín shì chapters [of the Shàng shū] are all from the spurious gǔwén and ought not to be relied upon — Yǐníng has not yet exposed the forgery. As to the Zhōulǐ’s simultaneous use of zhèngsuì and zhèngyuè, [Yǐníng] cites only a few sentences of Zhèng’s [Zhèng Xuán’s] note, without analytic exposition to dispel the resemblances — on critical investigation he is not yet thorough. But the great outline being established, a few inadequacies in detail are not enough to vitiate it. Submitted at the Imperial Editorial Review Qiánlóng 42 (1777), 3rd month.
Abstract
Zhāng Yǐníng’s monograph belongs to the late-Yuán to early-Míng moment when classical scholarship was beginning to question, on philological grounds, the inherited Sòng Lǐxué readings of the canon. Zhāng’s specific target — the yǐ Xiàshí guàn Zhōuyuè doctrine of Hú Ānguó — was, at the time he wrote, the orthodox position of the examination Chūnqiū (Hú Ānguó’s Zhuàn having been the official examination commentary since the Yuán Yányòu 2 = 1315 reform). His refutation rests on a careful collation of the Zhōulǐ’s parallel use of zhèngyuè and zhèngsuì, the Zuǒzhuàn’s explicit gloss “wáng — Zhōu zhèngyuè,” and substantial citation of the Yǔlù (晚年三說) of Zhū Xī, who in his late period took the Zhōu zhèng reading rather than the Hú Ānguó one. The work’s significance is twofold: first, it is the principal early-Míng monograph that broke with the Hú Ānguó orthodoxy on a major technical point; second, it provides the textual base on which the Qīng kǎozhèng school later built its more comprehensive critique of the SòngYuán Chūnqiū tradition.
The catalog dates the work to the Hóngwǔ period; Zhāng Yǐníng’s own preface is dated Hóngwǔ 3 (1370), 3rd month, 3rd day. The work was substantively completed during his Annam embassy waiting for return orders. The tíyào’s acknowledgment that Zhāng “did not yet” press through to the question of Yǐxùn and Qínshì being from the spurious gǔwén is anachronistic — those forgery claims rest on Yán Ruòqú’s 閻若璩 work, more than three centuries later. That Zhāng nonetheless arrived at the correct conclusion on the basis of real gǔwén evidence (especially the Zhōulǐ and the Zuǒzhuàn) is what the Sìkù editors mean when they call him “卓識” (of striking insight).
The work is also notable for its unusual yùzhì (imperial preface) by the Qiánlóng emperor (preserved at the head of the WYG copy), which approves Zhāng Yǐníng’s reading and uses the work as the platform from which to issue his own reflections on the meaning of the yuánnián chūn wáng zhèngyuè opening of the Chūnqiū.
Translations and research
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §6 (Calendrical and chronological technicalities) provides background on the multiple-calendar problem that Zhāng Yǐníng addresses.
- Liú Yi-zhēng 柳詒徵, Zhōngguó wénhuà shǐ 中國文化史, on Zhāng Yǐníng’s place in early-Míng Chūnqiū learning.
- Pǔ Wěizhōng 浦衛忠 et al., Míng dài jīng-xué yánjiū lùnjí 明代經學研究論集, includes discussion of the work as the principal Míng-period monograph on the Chūnqiū calendrical question.
- Modern critical edition: in Yǐng-yìn Wén-yuān-gé Sì-kù quán-shū vol. 165 (Tāiběi: Tāiwān shāng-wù 1986).
Other points of interest
The book carries the unusual distinction of an yùzhì (imperial preface) by the Qiánlóng emperor (1735–1796) endorsing Zhāng’s reading — preserved at the head of the WYG copy as Yùzhì shū “Chūnqiū yuánnián chūn wáng zhèngyuè kǎo” 御製書春秋元年春王正月考. The emperor frames the work in terms of the zūnwáng 尊王 thesis: that Confucius’ attaching wáng to zhèngyuè serves to mark the year as that of the king of Zhōu, against the multiplicity of feudal calendars in use throughout the warring states.
Zhāng Yǐníng’s other Chūnqiū work, the Chūnqiū húzhuàn biànyí 春秋胡傳辨疑, was already lost by the late Míng; only fragments survive through citation in 石光霽’s KR1e0073 Chūnqiū shūfǎ gōuyuán 春秋書法鉤元.
Links
- Míng shǐ j. 285 (Wényuànzhuàn) for Zhāng Yǐníng’s biography.