Chūnqiū biàn yì 春秋辯義
Discriminating the Meanings of the Spring and Autumn Annals
by 卓爾康 (撰)
About the work
The Chūnqiū biàn yì 春秋辯義 — given as 30 juǎn in the Kanripo catalog meta but as 38 juǎn in the SKQS tíyào — is the most ambitious Chūnqiū commentary of the late-Míng / Míng-Qīng-transition Hángzhōu scholar Zhuó Ěrkāng 卓爾康 (1570–1644). The work is organised under six rubrics: jīng yì 經義 (the meaning of the classic itself), zhuàn yì 傳義 (the meaning according to the commentaries), shū yì 書義 (what is written), bù shū yì 不書義 (what is not written — i.e. principled silence), shí yì 時義 (the temporal context), and dì yì 地義 (the geographical context). Under each duke, an additional liè guó běn mò 列國本末 (“rise-and-fall of the various states”) essay is appended. The work is thus encyclopedic: a synthetic guide that organises the prior commentary tradition under a clear hexagonal rubric and offers Zhuó’s own judgments on the difficult cases.
Tiyao
The Sìkù tíyào (translated):
By Zhuó Ěrkāng of the Míng. Ěrkāng, zì Qùbìng, of Rénhé. Jǔrén of Wànlì rénzǐ (1612); held office as Jùnyí xiàn jiāoyù 浚儀縣教諭. Throughout his life he took the rectification of the world as his charge; his writings are very many. The principal thesis of this book divides into six rubrics: jīng yì, zhuàn yì, shū yì, bù shū yì, shí yì, and dì yì. His judgments are all even-handed and straight. Under each entry of the jīng he largely gathers prior received readings, arranges and weighs them, and intermittently inserts his own judgments to settle the matter. At the end of each duke he further appends a liè guó běn mò essay, taking what bears on the rise and fall of states as material for an organised survey — useful for ready review.
Among his interpretive moves, some are not well-grounded: e.g. on “jiǎxū jǐchǒu Chén hóu Bào zú” 甲戌己丑陳侯鮑卒 (“On the jiǎxū day [and again] jǐchǒu day, Bào, the Marquis of Chén, died”), he reads it as “the jiǎxū year, the first month, jǐchǒu day — the historian by accident inverted the text” — failing to recognise that ancient suì 歲 (years) had their own series of names (èféng 閼逢, shètígé 攝提格, etc., the so-called “twenty-two names”), and that the jiǎ through guǐ ten-day cycle and the yín through chǒu twelve-day cycle were used by ancients only for days, not for years. Or again: “wǔ shí liù yì” 五石六鷁 (“five [meteoric] stones and six birds”) is, he says, an external disaster — written because the three kè 恪 [Sòng, Qǐ, and Chén, i.e. the descendant-states of the previous dynasties] were located within the central zone — failing to ask whether Jìn’s Liángshān 梁山 collapse, or the disasters at Sòng, Wèi, Chén, and Zhèng, could all be three-kè affairs. Or again: “tiānwáng shòu yú Héyáng” 天王狩於河陽 (“The Heavenly King hunted at Héyáng”) is, he says, [Jìn] wishing to lead the various lords to court the king but fearing some would defect, hence sending word that “the king is hunting” to summon them, with no fault in their hearts — and he calls Jìn’s intent “abundant, beyond reproach”. This is most especially a wish to reach a novel reading at the cost of distorting principle; this kind of move is unfit for instruction.
But other readings are useful: e.g. on “Zhèngrén lái yú píng” 鄭人來渝平 he holds that the Zuǒshì gloss gēng chéng 更成 (renewed peace) is to be followed, against the reading “duò chéng bù guǒ chéng” 墮成不果成 (“the existing peace failing to take effect”), the latter being a misreading of the wording. Again, on “yǐ chéng Sòng luàn” 以成宋亂 he holds that the entry “achieves” (i.e. exposes) the noble lords’ guilt, as a special editorial flourish of the Chūnqiū; the reading of chéng 成 here as píng 平 (peace) is severely against the teaching. Or again: on “Róng fá Fánbó yú Chǔqiū” 戎伐凡伯于楚丘 — when one guó attacks, one says fá; when one yì (town) is attacked, one also says fá; when one jiā (great-officer’s domain) is attacked, also fá; when one person is attacked, also fá — and the Gōngyáng gloss “fá means to make great” is itself ignorant of the meaning of qīnfá 侵伐 and is a forced reading. These remarks are clear and forceful, sufficient to break the various schools’ literalist hair-splitting; the work has indeed brought out something of the jīng’s intent. Respectfully presented for collation in the sixth month of Qiánlóng 43 (1778). Editors-in-chief Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; supervising collator Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The work cannot be precisely dated. Zhuó’s jǔrén year is 1612 and he lived until 1644 (the fall of the Míng); the bracket 1620–1644 is conservative. The work is the largest single Míng Chūnqiū commentary of its kind: it is encyclopedic in scope, methodologically distinctive in its hexagonal organisation, and substantively a useful synthesis of the late-Míng commentary tradition with Zhuó’s own evidential judgments. The catalog meta gives 30 juǎn; the SKQS tíyào says 38 juǎn; the WYG copy distributes the additional eight juǎn to the six juǎn shǒu 卷首 (“preliminary chapters”, containing the doxographic material) and to the liè guó běn mò essays appended to each duke.
The SKQS editors’ verdict is mixed: they reject specific readings as forced and innovation-driven (the jiǎxū jǐchǒu cycle reading; the three-kè reading of the meteor-and-bird entry; the favourable reading of Jìn’s Héyáng hunt of the Heavenly King) but endorse others (on yú píng, yǐ chéng Sòng luàn, fá) as substantively correct. The work belongs to the broad late-Míng Chūnqiū tradition that the SKQS editors wish to legitimise as a precursor to Qīng evidential studies, but it is more synthetic than analytic in character.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The opening juǎn shǒu of the work (preserved in the source file’s first 200 lines) is itself a valuable doxographic anthology, gathering long quotations from Mèngzǐ, Sīmǎ Qiān, Liú Zhījī 劉知幾, Wáng Tōng (Wáng Wénzhōng 王文中), Dàn Zhù 啖助, Zhào Kuāng 趙匡, Chéng Yí, Shào Yōng, and Sūn Fù 孫復. The arrangement closely parallels that of Wáng Qiáo’s Chūnqiū jí zhuàn KR1e0081 Zōng zhǐ — suggesting that this anthological frontmatter was a standard Míng-period mode of introducing Chūnqiū studies to the reader.
Links
- Sìkù tíyào and the opening of the juǎn shǒu in the source file
KR1e0089_000.txt.