Sān zhuàn zhé zhū 三傳折諸
Adjudicating the Three Traditions by 張尚瑗 (撰)
About the work
A massive Chūnqiū commentary in 44 juǎn: 30 on the Zuǒ zhuàn, 7 on Gōngyáng, 7 on Gǔliáng, by Zhāng Shàngyuàn 張尚瑗 (1656–1731), pupil of Zhū Hèlíng 朱鶴齡. The title is drawn from Yáng Xióng’s Fǎ yán 法言 — “when many words are confused, adjudicate them by the Sage” (羣言淆亂，折諸聖) — and signals the book’s method: it sets out the canon and the three traditions side by side and adjudicates among them, with massive evidential supplementation from Hàn-and-after histories. The opening juǎn contain reference apparatus: investigations of jiāo 郊 and dì 禘 sacrifices, the Five Sacred Peaks, homonymous toponyms, persons sharing the same name or posthumous title, and a generation table.
Tiyao
Imperially edited Sìkù quánshū, Classics, Chūnqiū category. Sān zhuàn zhé zhū in 44 juǎn. Composed in the present dynasty by Zhāng Shàngyuàn, zì Hóngqú, also Sǔnshí, native of Wújiāng. Kāngxī wùchén (1688) jìnshì; he was changed to shùjíshì, and after the sǎnguǎn posting was rotated out as magistrate of Xìngguó. Zhāng first studied Chūnqiū with Zhū Hèlíng. While Zhū composed Dú zuǒ rì chāo 讀左日鈔, Zhāng simultaneously made a Dú sān zhuàn suí bǐ 讀三傳隨筆; the accumulation eventually grew so vast that he arranged and edited it into the present book. The title “Adjudicating” (折諸) derives from Yáng Xióng’s saying. Zuǒ 30 juǎn, Gōng and Gǔ 7 juǎn each, with greatest effort on Zuǒ. The opening apparatus — Jiāo dì 郊禘, the Five Sacred Peaks, homonymous toponyms, homonymous personal names and posthumous titles, the generation table — is densely documented and useful for cross-reference.
The work’s flaw is exhaustiveness: in his eagerness to gather everything Zhāng often pulls in Hàn-Wèi-and-after historical episodes against the zhuàn text, scattering and digressing — for example, occasioning a discussion of Emperor Xuánzōng’s dancing horses out of the entry on Wèi Lord Yì’s love of cranes — and many such passages stand at no measurable distance from the canonical sense, becoming chaff. Yet the breadth of materials is itself richness: the lost glossing of older Confucians, the inner sense of master-pupil transmission, the subtle words and great meanings — all of these surface here and there in his discussions; this is “sifting sand for gold” — pearls do show up — and one need not throw out the husks together with the kernels.
For Chūnqiū commentary is a vast field: from Sūn Fù 孫復 and Liú Chǎng 劉敞 onward there has been a strain that openly discards the zhuàn tradition; their successors have followed and so have left off researching events in favour of armchair verdict. The Hú Ānguó tradition, after the Yánjiāo (1314–1320) imperial degree-curriculum, was set as official model — yet his Xīgōng 17 entry (the extinction of Xiàng) erroneously fastens the blame on Jì Sūn — a typical case of “more argument than research”. Zhāng’s book, though it does not strip out its excess language and is in places unbalanced, is nevertheless a true zhāishí (gathering of facts) and stands at a great remove from those who substitute speculative praise-and-blame for evidence; one preserves it gladly, faults and all. Submitted on the Qiánlóng 42nd year, 5th month (= 1777, June). Editors-in-chief: Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief proofreader: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Sān zhuàn zhé zhū is the magnum opus of the WúJiāng Chūnqiū school as it transitioned from the late-Míng evidential program of Zhū Hèlíng (Zhāng’s teacher) into the high-Qing Zuǒshì philology of the early eighteenth century. Zhāng’s preface (dated Yōngzhèng 1, 1723, ninth-day-of-the-ninth-month) explicitly makes the lineage claim: he had begun reading the Three Traditions and the Guó yǔ / Zhàn guó cè under his father at the age of nine, encountered Zhū Hèlíng’s Dú zuǒ rì chāo in adulthood, and labored on the project for over ten years. The methodological program — yǐ jīng zhèng zhuàn, yǐ zhuàn zhèng jīng (canon adjudicates zhuàn, zhuàn adjudicates canon, with jīng and shǐ converging) — is articulated in Zhū Hèlíng’s preface to Dú zuǒ rì chāo and is taken up by Zhāng as his own.
The book’s greatest service is that it preserves a wide net of citations from the medieval and earlier Chūnqiū commentary tradition (Fú Qián 服虔, Jiǎ Kuí 賈逵, Fán Níng 范甯, Xú Yàn 徐彥, etc.) that would otherwise be hard of access; the Sìkù editors valued it as evidential ballast against the speculative tendency they associated with the post-Sūn Fù lineage. Zhāng’s preface refers explicitly to this lineage of “discarding the zhuàn” and positions himself as adjudicator. The 44-juǎn text is the most sprawling of the Sìkù-included Qing Chūnqiū commentaries, and Zhāng’s openly disorganized “pī shā jiǎn jīn” (sifting sand for gold) method is the editors’ main reservation, though they accept the book as a research repository.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. See the chapters on Zhū Hèlíng and Zhāng Shàngyuàn in Shén Yùchéng / Liú Níng, Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn xué shǐ gǎo (Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1992).
Other points of interest
The work’s aspirational title (modeled on Yáng Xióng) and the openly quoted ten-plus-year compilation timetable in the preface make Sān zhuàn zhé zhū an unusually vivid document of how high-Qing evidential Chūnqiū learning was actually built — pupil receiving teacher’s project, systematic accumulation of marginalia, eventual large-scale rearrangement.
Links
- Wikidata: Zhāng Shàngyuàn — Q47125064
- ctext.org: Sān zhuàn zhé zhū (Sìkù WYG facsimile)