Chūnqiū píng yì 春秋平議
Balanced Discussions on the Spring and Autumn Annals
by 兪汝言 (撰)
About the work
The Chūnqiū píng yì 春秋平議 in 12 juǎn is the principal Chūnqiū exposition of Yú Rǔyán 兪汝言 (1614–1679, zì Yòují 右吉, hào Jiànchuān 漸川, of Xiùshuǐ 秀水 in Jiāxīng 嘉興). Completed in Kāngxī 15 / bǐngchén 丙辰 (1676), it is the partner-volume to the briefer methodological summary Chūnqiū sì zhuàn jiū zhèng 春秋四傳糾正 (KR1e0098), composed in the same year. The title píng yì 平議 (“balanced discussions”) signals a methodological program of moderation: Yú positions himself between the over-philological excesses of the late-Míng Chūnqiū-text-critics on one side and the over-doctrinal Hú Ānguó 胡安國 tradition (which had dominated the examination Chūnqiū since Yuán Yányòu) on the other. The work’s principal critical move is captured in its preface formula chuán jīng zhī shī, bù zài qiǎn ér zài yú shēn, Chūnqiū wéi shèn 傳經之失，不在淺而在於深，春秋為甚 — “the failures of commentaries on the Classics lie not in superficiality but in over-deepness; the Chūnqiū is the worst case.”
Tiyao
The Sìkù tíyào may be rendered as follows:
We have respectfully examined the Chūnqiū píng yì in 12 juǎn. By Yú Rǔyán of the present dynasty. Rǔyán, zì Yòují, was a man of Xiùshuǐ. The book was completed in Kāngxī bǐngchén (1676). The work largely cites prior text; its independent positions are not numerous. However: from Sòng Sūn Fù 孫復 onwards, Chūnqiū commentators have competed in attacking the three zhuàn in order to over-top earlier scholars, and the malady of strain-and-fragmentation grew daily worse; from Yuán Yányòu onwards, Chūnqiū commentators competed in revering HúĀnguó’s zhuàn in order to seek advantage in the examination route, and the malady of accommodation-and-distortion likewise grew daily more thorough.
In the Míng, Zhāng Qíran 張岐然 once composed a píng wén 平文 to correct these errors, but his selection-and-rejection was not entirely satisfactory; Rǔyán’s book here shares the same intent as Zhāng Qíran’s, but is more concise, more carefully sieved, and more fully captures the intent of the Classic — properly not flaunting itself with multiplicity-of-novel-interpretations as its merit. The preceding self-preface — saying “the failures of commentaries on the Classic lie not in superficiality but in over-deepness; the Chūnqiū is the worst case” — may be called a single phrase that hits the essential (piàn yán jū yào 片言居要).
This base is Rǔyán’s original draft, with corrections-and-emendations and supplements in his own hand, vermilion-and-black inked in every direction. His diligent industry can still be sensed today.
Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo preserves Miào Yǒng’s 繆泳 notice — saying that Rǔyán was deeply skilled in the Classics and the histories, particularly knowledgeable on Míng-dynasty institutions, that he once compiled a Zǎixiàng lièqīng nián biǎo 宰相列卿年表, and that his poetry-and-prose collection Jiànchuān jí 漸川集 was named after him; today none of these are extant. Truly a man given to deep thought and learning, of a different kind from those who blow great talk on an empty stomach. Respectfully checked and submitted, Qiánlóng 43 (1778), third month. Editors-in-chief Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; chief proof-reader Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Chūnqiū píng yì is the substantive realisation of the methodological program announced in the Sì zhuàn jiū zhèng (KR1e0098): a comprehensive entry-by-entry reading of the Chūnqiū that draws eclectically on prior commentators (the citations being the bulk of the work — “his independent positions are not numerous,” as the Sìkù tíyào candidly notes) but selects against both the Hú Ānguó / Sūn Fù “blame-only” tradition and the late-Míng over-interpretive tendency. The preferred predecessor is Zhāng Qíran’s late-Míng Chūnqiū píng wén (now lost or rare), whose program Yú continues but with greater methodological discipline.
The dating is firm: the preface is dated bǐngchén zhòng dōng èrshíbā rì 丙辰仲冬二十八日 — the 28th day of the eleventh lunar month of Kāngxī 15 = early January 1677 (Gregorian); the work is reckoned a 1676 composition. The two works (KR1e0098, KR1e0099) form a diptych: the longer exegetical work backed by the shorter methodological appendix.
The Sìkù compilers’ description of the working manuscript — zhū mò zòng héng 朱墨縱橫 (vermilion and black inked back and forth) — gives a rare physical glimpse of an early-Qīng scholarly draft. Yú’s piàn yán jū yào — “the Chūnqiū is the worst case [of over-deep commentary]” — is, as noted at KR1e0098, cited as authority in Qiánlóng’s preface to the imperial Yù zuǎn Chūnqiū zhí jiě (KR1e0095), establishing Yú’s diagnostic line as the late-eighteenth-century imperial position.
Within the early-Qīng Chūnqiū corpus, Yú stands somewhat apart from the more aggressively philological Wáng Fūzhī (KR1e0097) and Gù Yánwǔ (KR1e0096): his contribution is more synthetic-and-selective than philological-evidentiary. But the three together — Yú’s píng yì, Wáng’s bài shū, Gù’s bǔ zhèng — constitute the major mid-seventeenth-century private Chūnqiū scholarship that the late-eighteenth-century imperial canon would absorb into its own re-reading of the Classic.
Translations and research
- Yáng Xiànghuá 楊向華, Qīng-dài Chūnqiū xué shǐ 清代春秋學史 (Bēijīng: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué chūbǎnshè 2014).
- Pi Xirui 皮錫瑞, Jīng xué tōng lùn 經學通論 (rpt. Bēijīng: Zhōnghuá 1954).
- Liáng Qǐ-chāo 梁啓超, Zhōngguó jìn-sān-bǎi-nián xuéshù shǐ 中國近三百年學術史 (Shànghǎi 1923; rpt. Bēijīng: Dōng-fāng chūbǎnshè 2010) — context on the early-Qīng evidential transition.
- Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊, Jīngyì kǎo 經義考 (entries on Yú Rǔyán) — the principal pre-modern bibliographic notice.
Other points of interest
The fact that the WYG copy of the Píng yì is described by the Sìkù compilers as Yú’s own manuscript draft with vermilion-and-black corrections — and that this draft survived through the period between his 1679 death and the Sìkù compilation — testifies both to the manuscript’s preservation among Yú’s heirs or students in Xiùshuǐ and to the degree of textual care the Sìkù compilers brought to early-Qīng evidential works. Yú’s other writings (the Zǎixiàng lièqīng nián biǎo, the Jiànchuān jí) had already vanished by 1778 — the Píng yì is in effect what survives of his oeuvre.
Links
- Sìkù yǐng yìn Wényuāngé: V174.5, p409.
- CBDB record for 俞汝言: id 338399.