Chūnqiū dìmíng kǎo lüè 春秋地名考略
A Brief Investigation of the Toponymy of the Spring and Autumn Annals by 高士奇 (撰)
About the work
A geographical reference to the Chūnqiū and Zuǒ zhuàn in 14 juǎn, compiled by Gāo Shìqí 高士奇 (1645–1703) under imperial commission in Kāngxī yǐchǒu 康熙乙丑 (1685) while Gāo was Junior Vice-President of the Court of the Imperial Household (Zhānshì fǔ shào zhānshì 詹事府少詹事). Gāo had been ordered to compose lectures on the Chūnqiū (Chūnqiū jiǎngyì 春秋講義); in the course of that work he extracted the geographical materials and shaped them into the present treatise. Toponyms are arranged by state — capitals first, then the dependent cities — and under each name the canon-text and the zhuàn-text are quoted, followed by Dù Yù’s 杜預 commentary, and a wide range of other sources are then mustered to fix or correct the location.
Tiyao
Imperially edited Sìkù quánshū, Classics, Chūnqiū category. Chūnqiū dìmíng kǎo lüè in 14 juǎn. Composed in the present dynasty by Gāo Shìqí. In Kāngxī yǐchǒu (1685), as Junior Vice-President of the Court of the Imperial Household, Gāo received an imperial commission to compose the Chūnqiū jiǎngyì and, in the process of fixing the geography, brought this book together and presented it. According to Yán Ruòqú’s 閻若璩 Qián qiū zhā jì 潛邱劄記, when Xú Shèng 徐勝 (zì Jìngkě 敬可) of Xiùshuǐ 秀水 was producing his own Zuǒ zhuàn toponomy he asked Yán about the battle of Ān 鞌 in Chénggōng 2 — and so it appears that Xú actually drafted the work in Gāo’s name. The book groups Chūnqiū canon-and-tradition place-names by state, capitals first and dependent towns following. Under each name it first lists the canonical text, then the zhuàn text, then Dù Yù’s gloss, and then quotes broadly to test the variants and correct the slips — much of it precise. Only at points there is the fault of vainly multiplying citations and slipping into trivia, e.g. the entry “Lǔ Zhuānggōng built a tower overlooking Mr. Dǎng’s house, which then became the Dǎng tower,” which has nothing to do with geography; or the entry “the prefecture of Xiānmáo was awarded to Xū Chén” — there is no specific location to point to except the formula “as with Sū Fènshēng’s lands”; what is the use of investigating it? Such over-pursuit of completeness is the work’s principal flaw. Submitted on the Qiánlóng 43rd year, 3rd month (= 1778, April). Editors-in-chief: Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief proofreader: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Chūnqiū dìmíng kǎo lüè belongs to the late seventeenth-century imperial program of historical-geographical lexicography that produced the Dà Qīng yī tǒng zhì 大清一統志 — to whose preparatory committee Gāo Shìqí was also seconded. The book inherits the long tradition of Chūnqiū toponymy founded by Dù Yù’s Tǔdì míng 土地名 and pursued by Jīng Xiāngpán 京相璠, Sòng Zhōng 宋忠, Sīmǎ Biāo 司馬彪, and Yáng Shí 楊湜 / Zhèng Qiáo 鄭樵 in the medieval and Sòng periods. Two prefaces are appended in the Sìkù edition: one by Xú Qiánxué 徐乾學 of Kūnshān, dated Kāngxī 26th year, winter 10th month (1687), placing the completion firmly in 1687; the other by Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊, who reports having received the work in manuscript and locates it within an established Qing program of toponymic kǎozhèng. The composition window is therefore tight: 1685 (commission) to 1687 (Xú preface).
The two famous controversies adhering to the book are: (1) Yán Ruòqú’s claim in Qián qiū zhā jì that the actual drafting was the work of Xú Shèng 徐勝 (a member of the YánXú evidential circle in Jiāngnán) acting as ghostwriter for Gāo — though the Sìkù editors record this as gossip and do not endorse it; (2) the more serious Sìkù charge that, in pursuing exhaustiveness, Gāo allowed several entries that are not really place-names at all (the Dǎng tower, the prefecture of Xiānmáo). Despite these flaws, the Sìkù editors admit the book to the Chūnqiū category and credit it as the most usable single-volume Chūnqiū gazetteer of the period.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. Cited routinely in modern Chinese Chūnqiū and historical-geography scholarship; for Gāo Shìqí’s place at court see Lawrence D. Kessler, K’ang-hsi and the Consolidation of Ch’ing Rule, 1661–1684 (Chicago, 1976), and Silas H. L. Wu, Communication and Imperial Control in China: Evolution of the Palace Memorial System, 1693–1735 (Harvard, 1970), pp. 35–37 (on Gāo as Nán shū fáng attendant).
Other points of interest
The 1687 Xú Qiánxué preface is itself an important document of Qīng historical-geography programmatics: it explicitly subordinates later dynastic gazetteers to Chūnqiū geography as a foundational corpus and identifies Chūnqiū dìmíng kǎo lüè as the proper successor to Dù Yù’s geographical work. The work was the standard handbook of Chūnqiū place-names through the eighteenth century until the much fuller specialist studies of Jiāng Yǒng 江永 (KR1e0118) and Gù Dònggāo 顧棟高 (KR1e0114) recast the field.
Links
- Wikidata: Gāo Shìqí — Q11062471
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (2018), § 4.5
- ctext.org: Chūnqiū dìmíng kǎo lüè (Sìkù WYG facsimile)