Chūnqiū Húshì zhuàn biànyí 春秋胡氏傳辨疑
Resolving Doubts in Mr Hú’s Tradition of the Spring and Autumn Annals
by 陸粲 (撰)
About the work
The Chūnqiū Húshì zhuàn biànyí 春秋胡氏傳辨疑 in two juan is Lù Càn’s 陸粲 (1494–1551) critical engagement with the orthodox Míng examination commentary, Hú Ānguó’s KR1e0036 Chūnqiū zhuàn 春秋傳. The work is the companion piece to KR1e0077 Zuǒzhuàn fùzhù 左傳附注 — both monographs were composed during Lù Càn’s later years following his demotion in Jiājìng yǐyǒu (1525) for impeaching Zhāng Cōng and Guì È over the Great Rites Controversy. Lù Càn’s self-preface dates the work explicitly to his demotion period: “Now in my exile I have leisure; reading [Hú’s] tradition again, where I encountered places that puzzled me I noted them, and over time the volume took shape.”
The work consists of more than sixty entries (the tíyào says “六十餘條”), each setting out a passage of Hú Ānguó’s tradition that Lù Càn finds problematic, then refuting it through a combination of textual collation, internal Chūnqiū evidence, and rational analysis. The general orientation is sharply anti-yì-lì: Lù Càn invokes the saying Chūnqiū wú dálì 春秋無達例 (“the Chūnqiū has no comprehensive yìlì”) and argues that Hú Ānguó’s mechanical use of formulary categories has buried the sage’s zhèngdà 正大 (just-and-great) intent.
Tiyao
The Sìkù tíyào: The Chūnqiū Húshì zhuàn biànyí in two juan was composed by Lù Càn of the Míng. Before [the text] is the self-preface saying that “Mr Hú’s exegesis sometimes errs in over-seeking; the words are unwearied of multiplicity, but the sage’s intent grows the more obscure” — therefore he composed this to discuss and refute. The principal purport is to take the canonical text as authoritative and to disregard yìlì. He says: “Not contemplating the Chūnqiū with a just-and-great heart but contortedly generating meaning — what extreme is unreached?” Again: “An earlier gentleman has said: ‘The Chūnqiū has no comprehensive yìlì.’ If one speaks by yìlì, sometimes one runs out; precisely because one runs out, one seeks an explanation that one cannot find, and accordingly forces words on it.” Again: “The Chūnqiū’s rule is that praise-and-blame is unalterable; if today one uses this saying to censure someone, then suddenly uses this same saying to reward another, making later generations seek and not understand the meaning — this is straightforwardly the work of a tortuous-justice clerk; and shall we call the sage to do so?”
His seizing-and-picking out of the abuses in the three traditions and downwards in canonical exegesis all hits the heart of the disease; thus the corrections to Mr Hú’s mistakes — over sixty items — are without exception precise and close to the truth. Among them: arguing that Chǔzǐ Méi was actually murdered, but recorded as zú (卒), so that [Chǔzǐ] Wéi luckily evaded [the charge] and the regicide-criminal could not preside over [the league], the meaning never being clarified before all-under-Heaven — therefore [Hú had to] say “Chǔ Wéi murdered Jiááo,” what is called “tiānxià zhī è guī zhī” (天下之惡歸之, “the world’s evil is laid at his door”). And on Qí returning the lands of Yùn, Huān, Guīyīn, taken as the territorial restoration to Lǔ following peace and amity — not entirely owing to fear of Confucius, nor was it the Master self-recording his own merit. All such cases set out arguments clearly and definitely, sufficient to break the habit of speculative chiselling; what later Confucians could not match.
From its appearance, those who attack Hú have been many; but excessively contentious refutation tends to generate its own obstacles. Càn’s harmonious-and-fluent, well-balanced work may indeed serve as a guide for exegetes. Submitted at Qiánlóng 44 (1779), 3rd month.
Abstract
This work is closely paired with Lù Càn’s KR1e0077 Zuǒzhuàn fùzhù 左傳附注 — the two volumes constitute Lù Càn’s full Chūnqiū critical programme. The Fùzhù targets the canonical commentary apparatus (Dù Yù, Kǒng Yǐngdá, Lù Démíng); the present Húshì biànyí targets the orthodox Míng examination commentary (Hú Ānguó’s Zhuàn). Both books are products of Lù Càn’s exile period after his impeachment of Zhāng Cōng and Guì È in the Great Rites Controversy.
The work’s particular intellectual interest lies in its programmatic anti-yìlì position. Lù Càn explicitly takes up — and develops far more rigorously than earlier critics — the position that the Chūnqiū “has no comprehensive yìlì”; that the Hú Ānguó tradition’s habit of generating ad hoc rules from cosmetic textual differences is a form of wǔwén 舞文 (manipulation of the letter) characteristic of fǎlìng clerks; that the sage’s intent is grounded in zhèngdà zhī qíng 正大之情 (a just-and-great disposition) rather than verbal-formulary categorisation. The position is itself in the lineage that runs from Huáng Zhòngyán KR1e0050 in the Sòng through Zhàn Ruòshuǐ KR1e0076 in Lù Càn’s own generation; but Lù Càn’s specific philological precision in working through more than sixty passages makes the work a more rigorous demonstration than its predecessors.
The Sìkù editors’ praise — “may indeed serve as a guide for exegetes” (誠可為說經家指南) — is markedly warmer than what they typically grant to Míng commentary, and reflects the fundamental Qīng-school position that anti-Hú criticism is the proper direction of Chūnqiū scholarship. Two of Lù Càn’s specific re-readings cited in the tíyào (the Chǔzǐ Méi regicide question and the YùnHuānGuīyīn restoration question) became standard reference points for Qīng Chūnqiū commentators.
Translations and research
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.5 for general orientation on Chūnqiū studies.
- Pǔ Wěizhōng 浦衛忠 et al., Míng dài jīng-xué yánjiū lùnjí 明代經學研究論集.
- Yǐng-yìn Wén-yuān-gé Sì-kù quán-shū vol. 167 (Tāiběi: Tāiwān shāng-wù 1986).
Other points of interest
The methodological maxim Lù Càn cites — Chūnqiū wú dálì 春秋無達例 (“the Chūnqiū has no comprehensive yìlì”) — is one of the principal slogans of the anti-bāobiǎn tradition in the late-Míng to early-Qīng period. Its lineage runs from Huáng Zhòngyán’s KR1e0050 Chūnqiū tōng shuō of the Sòng through Lù Càn here, and onward into the early Qīng critique of Hú Ānguó that culminates in the imperial Chūnqiū zhíjiě of Qiánlóng 23 (1758). The slogan is canonical for the early-Qīng evidential school’s reading of the Chūnqiū.
Links
- Míng shǐ j. 206 for Lù Càn’s biography.
- KR1e0077 Zuǒzhuàn fùzhù (paired companion).