Dú Chūnqiū lüè jì 讀春秋略記
A Brief Record from Reading the Spring and Autumn Annals
by 朱朝瑛 (撰)
About the work
The Dú Chūnqiū lüè jì 讀春秋略記 in twelve juǎn is the Chūnqiū component of Zhū Cháoyīng’s 朱朝瑛 (1605–1670) systematic Lüè jì 略記 series — five companion classical commentaries, one each for the Yì, Shī, Shū, Lǐ, and Chūnqiū — written in the late Míng / early Qīng. Zhū was a jìnshì of Chóngzhēn 13 (1640) and refused service under the Qīng. The work organises material under the twelve dukes (one juǎn each) plus a juǎn shǒu 卷首 of general theses (zǒng lùn 總論). The dominant methodological principle: “to use the jīng to investigate the zhuàn, and not to credit the zhuàn at the cost of the jīng” (yīn jīng yǐ kǎo zhuàn ér bù kěn xìn zhuàn yǐ hài jīng 因經以考傳而不肯信傳以害經).
Tiyao
The Sìkù tíyào (translated):
By Zhū Cháoyīng of the Míng. Cháoyīng has Lüè jì on every classic, separately catalogued. His various works are uneven in finish, not all of equal quality; only this work, together with the Dú Shī lüè jì, is comparatively detailed and apt. He gathers from Dàn [Zhù], Zhào [Kuāng] above, down through Jì Běn 季本 KR1e0078 and Hǎo Jìng 郝敬 KR1e0091, leaving no school’s reading unrecorded; where the older readings are insufficient, he adds his own judgments to settle the question. The principal thesis is to use the classic to investigate the commentary and to refuse to credit the commentary at the cost of the classic; hence on the three commentaries’ readings that are intelligible, he sometimes follows their account, but elsewhere he largely refutes them.
Among his readings, some are bad: e.g. he writes that Kǒng Fǔ’s [Kǒng Fù 孔父’s] zì (style-name) being Jiā 嘉 (“Excellent”) is like the Táng poet Dù Fǔ’s zì being Měi 美 (“Beautiful”) — to verify ancient practice with present-day examples is unsuitable across history. Or again: he forcefully refutes the Hàn shū wǔxíng zhì’s 漢書五行志 forced and far-fetched correlations, but on the entry “the fixed stars were not seen” he cites Hé Xiū’s 何休 reading and treats it as an omen of “the failure of standards and the loss of authority and trust” — falling into self-contradiction.
But many other readings are valuable: e.g. on “Yǐngōng 3 spring, the wáng 2nd month, jǐsì day, eclipse of the sun” — he holds it should be the third month, not the second; on “fūrén Zǐshì” 夫人子氏, that this is Yǐngōng’s wife; on “Chǔrén Qínrén Bārén miè Yōng” 楚人秦人巴人滅庸, that this is preparation for spying on the Zhōu dǐng-cauldrons; on the Āigōng 1 reading of “the change of divination on the [sacrificial] ox followed by no further misfortune” as Heaven’s having grown tired of Lǔ’s virtue. Cases of this kind are full of original insight and place him among the Chūnqiū commentators with something genuinely his own. Respectfully presented for collation in the third month of Qiánlóng 42 (1777). 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 is the Chūnqiū component of Zhū’s systematic Lüè jì series. It must postdate Zhū’s jìnshì (1640) and predate his death (1670); the bracket 1640–1670 is firm. Note on the catalog meta: the Kanripo data/catalogs/meta/KR1e.yaml entry gives Zhū’s lifedates as 1605–1570 — an obvious typographical inversion (death cannot precede birth). The standard CBDB record (id 74290) gives 1605–1670, which is followed in the 朱朝瑛 person note and here.
The work’s juǎn shǒu (preserved as the Zǒng lùn 總論 in the source file) is a substantial, programmatic essay of about ten leaves, articulating Zhū’s central theses: (1) the Chūnqiū’s great meaning is zūn wáng 尊王 (honouring the [Zhōu] king) — all of its judgments work outward from this; (2) the jīng does have bāobiǎn 褒貶, but no fixed li 例 (rule for praise-and-blame): praise-and-blame vary with time, person, and event; (3) the Zuǒzhuàn was demonstrably composed in the Warring States period, hence its details cannot be relied upon against the jīng; (4) the jīng itself is in places lacunose, expanded, or corrupt — Zhū lists specific jiǎzǐ and date-inconsistencies as evidence; (5) “I venture to release readings of the jīng whose meaning is intelligible, and to set aside those that cannot be made intelligible — neither crediting the zhuàn at the cost of the jīng nor seizing on a single phrase at the cost of the whole intent”. This is one of the most lucid late-Míng / early-Qīng programmatic statements of yí jīng 疑經 method as applied to the Chūnqiū.
The SKQS editors’ verdict is comparatively warm: among the five Lüè jì, this and the Dú Shī lüè jì are explicitly singled out as the most accomplished. Zhū’s broader intellectual position — Wáng-school fǎshēn lineage with explicit kǎozhèng commitment, refusal of Qīng service — places him with the better Míng-loyalist scholars who used canonical exegesis as a continuing cultural practice after the dynastic transition.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located in Western languages.
Other points of interest
The Zōnglùn opening line — Chūnqiū dà yì yī yán yǐ bì zhī yuē zūn wáng 春秋大義一言以蔽之曰尊王 (“the great meaning of the Chūnqiū, summed up in a single phrase, is ‘honouring the king’”) — is one of the more memorable Qīng-period formulations of the classical anti-particularist reading; it explicitly inverts the late-Wàn-lì zūn bà 尊霸 reading-trends that emphasized the regional hegemons.
Links
- Sìkù tíyào, the table of contents, and Zhū’s own Zǒng lùn 總論 in the source file
KR1e0090_000.txt.