Chūnqiū Máoshì zhuàn 春秋毛氏傳
Mr. Máo’s Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals by 毛奇齡 (撰)
About the work
A full Chūnqiū commentary in 36 juǎn by the early-Qīng polymath Máo Qílíng 毛奇齡 (1623–1716), composed during his Hànlín years and built around a topical-classification scheme. Máo divides the events of the Chūnqiū into twenty-two thematic gates (門) — improper accession, declaration of an heir, levying of troops, yúshòu hunts, ritual feasts, taxation, calamities, regicide, and so on — and overlays four hermeneutic registers (lǐ lì 禮例, shì lì 事例, wén lì 文例, yì lì 義例). Internally, however, the juǎn sequence still follows the ducal-reign order of the classic, so the topical classification works as an interpretive overlay rather than a destruction of the chronicle.
Tiyao
Imperially edited Sìkù quánshū, Classics, Chūnqiū category. Chūnqiū Máoshì zhuàn in 36 juǎn. Composed in the present dynasty by Máo Qílíng 毛奇齡. Older Chūnqiū commentary divided only by yì lì (categorical principles); only with Zhāng Dàhēng 張大亨 of Sòng was a five-fold division by ritual category introduced, followed in coarse outline by Wú Chéng 吳澄 of Yuán. The present work breaks events into 22 gates: change of reign year, accession, birth-of-heir, establishment of ruler, court-visits and embassies, covenanted assemblies, invasion-and-attack, removal-and-extinction, marriage and visitation, banquet-feasts, condolence visits, mourning periods, sacrifice, sōushòu hunting, undertaking of construction, military levies, agricultural-tax matters, harvest and calamity, exile-from-the-state, return-to-the-state, brigandage and regicide, and judicial executions — and overlays four examples: lǐ lì, shì lì, wén lì, yì lì. Even though gates and examples are differentiated, the order of the juǎn still follows the canon sequentially, with no charge of fragmenting and dispersing the text. In this respect his arrangement is sounder than other writers’.
His exegesis takes the Zuǒ zhuàn as primary, occasionally drawing on the other commentators, and his most intense polemic is against the Hú Ānguó zhuàn 胡安國傳 (KR1e0034). His refutation of Hú’s gloss on the opening “Chūn wáng zhèng yuè” 春王正月 is wholly cogent and may justly be called definitive. Yet on the same passage the Zuǒ zhuàn text “元年春王周正月” combines Zhōu’s regular calendar with Xià’s regular calendar — Xià’s regulation also being royal regulation — and so the wording is altered to “wáng Zhōu zhèng yuè” precisely to distinguish the Zhōu month from the Xià month. Máo, however, breaks the line so as to read “chūn wáng” as one phrase and “Zhèng yuè” as another, claiming that 王 here is the wáng of “wood waxes-rampant in spring” (木王於春之王) rather than the wáng meaning “Son of Heaven”. This is more aberrant than Hú’s reading. — Likewise, Zhèng Kāngchéng’s 鄭康成 Zhōngyōng commentary glosses 簡 (slip) and 策 (binding); Cài Yōng’s 蔡邕 Dú duàn says “cè are slips, two-foot-long with shorter ones half that length”; the Chūnqiū zhèngyì says that “dà shì shū yú cè” (great affairs recorded on cè) refers to what the canon records, while “xiǎo shì shū yú jiǎn” (small affairs on slips) refers to what the zhuàn carries — but adds that great affairs are originally recorded on slips also, before being transcribed onto cè. Hence neither jiǎn nor cè has a fixed meaning: in the Cuī Zhù 崔杼 incident the Nán shǐ shì takes up his jiǎn; in the Huà Dū 華督 incident the lord-record is on the cè. The two terms are interchangeable. Máo nevertheless claims that jiǎnshū and cèshū mark the canon-and-tradition divide — likewise an over-confident inference.
Yet his book reverses the harsh forensic style of the Hú commentary, weighs every event against ordinary reasoning, and most often does not lose hold of fairness. His categorical principles are documented, and his command of canonical ritual is especially comprehensive. From Wú Chéng’s Cuàn yán 纂言 onward, Chūnqiū commentaries to match it are rare. He is not in the same class as his speculative Shī and Shū commentary work; that boisterousness is a habit of his that one need not engage. Submitted on the Qiánlóng 45th year, 12th month (= 1781, January). Editors-in-chief: Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief proofreader: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Chūnqiū Máoshì zhuàn is the central Chūnqiū work of Máo Qílíng’s mature jīngxué career and the locus of his polemical campaign against the Sòng-orthodox Hú zhuàn. Composed during his post-1679 Hànlín period (the printing-block colophon identifies him as Hànlín Examination Editor, 翰林院檢討) and certainly finished before his death in 1716, the work argues that ritual norms, not ad-hoc moral judgement, are the proper hermeneutic ground of the Chūnqiū. The 22-gate scheme is an articulation of that ritualist program: each gate isolates a recurrent state action and asks how its canonical wording reflects ritual prescription, exposing what Máo regards as the Sòng commentators’ habit of imputing to Confucius praise-and-blame intentions that the wording itself does not support.
The Sìkù editors valued the work highly — superior, in their judgement, to anything between Wú Chéng’s Cuàn yán and Máo himself — while frankly noting two of Máo’s signature overreaches: his idiosyncratic punctuation of Chūn wáng zhèng yuè (treating wáng as a cosmological metaphor for spring’s flourishing wood-phase rather than as the Zhōu king), and his rigid distinction of jiǎnshū from cèshū as marking canon vs. zhuàn. Wilkinson (Chinese History: A New Manual, p. 685) lists Máo among the early-Qīng Chūnqiū specialists whose work was canonized through Sìkù inclusion, and notes his place in the broader anti-Hú turn that climaxed with the eighteenth-century evidential scholars.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. For Máo’s Chūnqiū studies in modern scholarship, see Liáng Tàijǐ 梁太濟 et al., Máo Qílíng nián pǔ 毛奇齡年譜 (Zhèjiāng dàxué, 2014); and chapters on Máo in Shén Yùchéng 沈玉成 and Liú Níng 劉寧, Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn xué shǐ gǎo 春秋左傳學史稿 (Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1992).
Other points of interest
Máo’s twenty-two-gate scheme has clear methodological kinship with the jìshì běnmò 紀事本末 historiographical tradition; combined with the parallel topical reorganization of the Zuǒ zhuàn by Mǎ Sù (KR1e0101) of the same generation, it marks the early-Qīng moment when Chūnqiū studies were refashioned along event-based and ritualist axes against late-Míng yì lì moralism.
Links
- Wikidata: Máo Qílíng — Q900998
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (2018), § 28, p. 685
- ctext.org: Chūnqiū Máoshì zhuàn (Sìkù WYG facsimile)