春秋大全

Chūnqiū dàquán 春秋大全

The Comprehensive [Compendium] on the Spring and Autumn Annals

by 胡廣 (奉敕撰)

About the work

The Chūnqiū dàquán 春秋大全 in 37 juan is one of the four imperially-commissioned compendia (Dàquán 大全) produced under the Yǒnglè emperor in Yǒnglè 12–13 (1414–1415), alongside the Wǔjīng dàquán 五經大全 (which formally subsumed it together with the Dàquán compendia for the Yì, Shū, Shī, and Lǐjì), the Sìshū dàquán 四書大全, and the Xìnglǐ dàquán KR3a0078 性理大全. Together with these, it constituted the official Míng curriculum for the imperial examinations until the end of the dynasty. The compilation team of 42 scholars was nominally headed by Hú Guǎng 胡廣 (1369–1418), the Wényuāngé dàxuéshì and Hànlín head of the imperial editorial system. The presented edition was promulgated to provincial xuéguān (Confucian schools) in 1415.

The work is, however, notorious — and was so already in the early Qīng — for being substantively a wholesale reproduction of Wāng Kèkuān’s 汪克寬 KR1e0071 Chūnqiū Húzhuàn fùlù zuǎnshū of zhìzhèng 6 (1346), without acknowledgement. The Sìkù tíyào makes this charge explicit (citing Wú Rènchén’s 吳任臣 polemic), and the present Dàquán’s own fánlì — admitting that “year-numbering follows Mr Wāng’s Zuǎnshū; place-names follow Mr Lǐ’s Huìtōng; the canonical text follows Mr Hú; the formulae follow Mr Lín” — corroborates the indictment.

Tiyao

The Sìkù tíyào: The Chūnqiū dàquán in thirty-seven juan was composed in Yǒnglè of the Míng by Hú Guǎng and others by imperial command. We examine: Hú Ānguó’s Chūnqiū zhuàn of the Sòng was, although memorialised under Gāozōng, not in fact used for the examination questions of his time, which still used the Three Traditions only — as may be verified by the regulation-list appended to the Lǐbù yùnlüè. The Yuán shǐ Xuǎnjǔ zhì records that under the Yányòu new examination system (1315), Chūnqiū used Hú Ānguó’s Zhuàn, made the regulation. Wāng Kèkuān composed the Chūnqiū zuǎnshū, taking Hú Ānguó as the master throughout — following the regulations of the day. Hú Guǎng and others’ compilation was thus made on the basis of Kèkuān’s book, with minor revisions.

Zhū Yízūn’s 朱彝尊 Jīngyì kǎo cites Wú Rènchén’s 吳任臣 saying: “In Yǒnglè the imperial command compiled the Chūnqiū dàquán; the compilation officials were 42 men. The fánlì says: ‘Year-numbering follows Mr Wāng’s Zuǎnshū; place-names follow Mr Lǐ’s Huìtōng; the canonical text follows Mr Hú; the formulae follow Mr Lín’ — but in fact it wholly plundered the Zuǎnshū to compose the book. Although by imperial commission, in fact there was no compiling. The court may be deceived month after month, the salaries may be misapplied, the imperial gifts may be solicited — but how can the empire and posterity be deceived?” — at Hú Guǎng and his collaborators’ deficiencies, this may be called exposing the cover.

The book’s selections rely on Mr Hú alone for the choice between alternatives, and do not further investigate right and wrong. For more than two hundred years of the Míng, although the canonical text was used to set the examination questions, in fact the canon was bent to follow the tradition; even cutting a single character or phrase out of the tradition and forcibly piecing them together — what they called hétí 合題 (composite questions). All this was tortuous and tangled. The great meaning of the Chūnqiū daily fell into thicket and weed; Hú Guǎng and the rest led this stream.

Now Our Imperial Sage decreed the Chūnqiū zhíjiě — and on the contortion-laden, irrelevant, rare-to-the-point arguments of the Hú tradition, item by item refuted them straight; promulgated to the academies; and abolished in the chángwū (examination halls) the hétí practice, to bar contortion. The fine principles of bǐxuē (the sage’s editing) thus shine forth again. Hú Guǎng and his colleagues’ old book may be put aside as kitchenware; yet, since once-and-for-all the institutional record of the system of selection cannot fail to be preserved for reference; and since one must look at overgrown thickets before one sees the work of clearing weeds, and one must lose one’s way in branched paths before one knows the worth of road-markers — preserving this single edition will help students mutually compare and verify, and the more clearly see the meanness of the previous era’s learning, while making bright the brightness of Our Sage Court’s classical training. Submitted Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 12th month.

Abstract

The Chūnqiū dàquán is the second of the Wǔjīng dàquán compilations (after the Yì; before the Shū, Shī, and Lǐjì) commissioned by the Yǒnglè emperor. Its compilation was the institutional culmination of the post-1315 examination orthodoxy that Hú Ānguó’s Chūnqiū zhuàn should be the primary commentary, supplemented by the Three Traditions. The Yǒnglè compendium project was tasked to unify in a single fixed corpus the principal commentary on each canonical text — the orthodoxy thereby being made institutional and permanent.

The historical importance of the Chūnqiū dàquán is therefore not its scholarly content (which, as the Sìkù editors charge, is borrowed from Wāng Kèkuān without substantial revision) but its position as the official Míng Chūnqiū textbook. From 1415 to the fall of the dynasty in 1644, examination candidates read the Chūnqiū through this compendium; its readings, glosses, and structuring decisions determined the Chūnqiū learning of two centuries of officials.

The Sìkù critique is unusually sharp because it serves a contemporary polemical purpose: the Qiánlóng emperor’s own Chūnqiū zhíjiě 御纂春秋直解 (1758) was meant to replace the Dàquán tradition by direct exegesis, abandoning the practice of fitting the canonical text to Hú Ānguó’s tradition. The tíyào therefore frames the Dàquán as an exemplar of “thicket and weed” against which the new imperial commentary is the “clearing and signposting.” The hostile tone — “Hú Guǎng and the rest led this stream” — should be read in this context.

The work’s own preface and fánlì preserve a useful conspectus of the orthodox SòngYuán Chūnqiū tradition: the Húshì zhuàn xù and the Gānglǐng sections (preserved in juan 1) collect citations from Mèngzǐ, Zhuāngzǐ, Dǒng Zhòngshū, Wáng Tōng, Shào Yōng, Zhāng Zǎi, Chéng Yí, Hú Ānguó, Yáng Shí, Hú Hóng, Lǐ Tóng, Zhū Xī, Lǚ Zǔqiān, Hú Níng (Máotáng Húshì), Ráo Lǔ, Yè Cǎi, Hóng Xīngzǔ, Wú Zhòngyū (Kětáng Wúshì), and Wāng Kèkuān — a representative late-Yuán-Confucian canon of authoritative Chūnqiū statements. The Èrshí guó niánbiǎo 二十國年表 (Year-table of the Twenty States) at the head, with the Zhūguó xīngfèi shuō 諸國興廢說 (Account of the Rise-and-Fall of the Various States), is a useful introductory chronological apparatus.

Translations and research

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.5 (Spring and Autumn) and §44.4 (Examination compendia) provide orientation. The Wǔ-jīng dà-quán compilation system is a standard topic in Míng intellectual history.
• Yú Yīng-shíh 余英時, Zhū Xī de lìshǐ shìjiè 朱熹的歷史世界 (Tāiběi: Yǔn-chén 2003), discusses the role of the Yǒng-lè Dà-quán in routinising late-Sòng-Yuán Lǐxué as Míng orthodoxy.
• Wú Hé-tāng 武漢堂 (=吳任臣?) — Wú Rènchén’s polemic against the Dà-quán, preserved through Zhū Yí-zūn’s Jīng-yì kǎo, is the locus classicus of the “plagiarism” charge.
• Zhāng Bó-xíng 張伯行, Zhèng-yì-táng quán-shū 正誼堂全書, on the relationship between the Chūnqiū dà-quán and Wāng Kèkuān’s Zuǎn-shū.
• Yǐng-yìn Wén-yuān-gé Sì-kù quán-shū vol. 166 (Tāiběi: Tāiwān shāng-wù 1986).

Other points of interest

The fánlì is a transparent admission of the work’s reliance on Wāng Kèkuān: “Year-numbering follows Wāng Kèkuān’s Zuǎnshū examples, with sexagenary cyclical signs noted on the year line, the Zhōu cycle’s beginning and end above the year, and the various states of Qí, Jìn, etc. below the year.” The Sìkù editors take this — together with verbal collation of the body text — as definitive proof of the Dàquán’s fundamental dependence on Wāng’s earlier work.

The Zhūguó xīngfèi shuō 諸國興廢說 (Account of the Rise-and-Fall of the Various States) at the head of the work is a useful conspectus of the political geography of the Chūnqiū period, organised state by state (周魯齊晉衛鄭宋杞陳吳楚許秦蔡曹北燕莒紀邾小邾虞虢滕薛 in that order). It is one of the most widely consulted introductory geographical references for Chūnqiū study under the late Míng and early Qīng.

The hétí 合題 (composite question) examination practice — pillaging fragments of the Hú tradition and stitching them together into a single examination prompt — was abolished only in the Qiánlóng era, in conjunction with the promulgation of the imperial Chūnqiū zhíjiě.

Links

• Yǒnglè compilation: see Míng shǐ j. 7 (Chéngzǔ běnjì) for the Yǒnglè 13 (1415) promulgation.
• Míng shǐ j. 147 for Hú Guǎng’s biography.