Chūnqiū zōng zhū biàn yì 春秋宗朱辨義
Differentiating the Right Sense of the Spring and Autumn Annals, Following Zhū by 張自超 (撰)
About the work
A Chūnqiū commentary in 12 juǎn by Zhāng Zìchāo 張自超 (1660–1717), Kāngxī guǐwèi (1703) jìnshì, native of Gāochún 高淳. The work follows Zhū Xī’s principle of “recording events directly” (據事直書) and refuses obscure or covert allegorical readings, instead reading each entry against the canon’s own surrounding context. Where the meaning cannot be known the entry is simply left aside (quē 闕). The opening volume contains 20 sections of “general discourses” (zǒng lùn 總論) which articulate the author’s interpretive principles on praise-and-blame, bǐshì shǔcí, the meaning of bù shū (not recording), the canon’s various rhetorical registers, etc.
Tiyao
Imperially edited Sìkù quánshū, Classics, Chūnqiū category. Chūnqiū zōng zhū biàn yì in 12 juǎn. Composed in the present dynasty by Zhāng Zìchāo, zì Yítàn, native of Gāochún. Kāngxī guǐwèi (1703) jìnshì. The book’s chief idea takes its ground from Zhū Xī’s principle of jù shì zhí shū (recording events directly), eschewing obscure or covert readings; he simply reads the canon’s wording across antecedent and consequent passages to find the sense. Where the sense is unknown, he leaves it aside.
The opening zǒng lùn in 20 sections genuinely captures the Chūnqiū art of “coordinating events and linking words”. Within the body: at “Shàn Bó welcomes the Princess Jī” he follows Wáng’s view that this Shàn Bó is a Lǔ minister; at “Qín captures the Lord of Jìn” he distinguishes the reason for not recording the personal name; at “Sòng’s host suffered defeat” he distinguishes the reason for not recording the duke; at “Sòng’s sī mǎ Huá Sūn comes to swear covenant” he refutes the Hú zhuàn doctrine that the meaning hangs on the personal name; at “the covenant at Sòng” he charges Zhào Wǔ’s polity with making Jìn weak; at “the regicide-and-accession of Chǔ’s princes Bǐ and Qìjí” the wording exhibits the Chūnqiū’s art of wéi xiǎn (subtle and overt) meaning; at “Qí kills Gāo Hòu” he holds that this is not a thing pleasing Jìn; at “the joint sacrifice for the prior dukes in Lord Dìng’s 8th year” he holds that the rite was performed alongside Zhāo’s coffin and that the great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather, and father whom Lord Dìng was ritually offering to remained the Wén / Xuān / Chéng / Xiāng line — all positions of evidently sound observation. The entry on “the men of Wèi setting up Jìn” especially captures the deep meaning of the Chūnqiū. Although his title bears “following Zhū”, his cross-reference of canon and zhuàn sweeps away the speculative associations of Sòng-and-after readings, and his arguments are largely his own original insight.
Later, Fāng Bāo 方苞 wrote his Chūnqiū jīng jiě drawing extensively on this book. Of recent Chūnqiū readings — apart from Jiāo Yuánxī’s Chūnqiū quē rú biān (KR1e0108) — this is the soundest text. Submitted on the Qiánlóng 44th year, 1st month (= 1779, February). Editors-in-chief: Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief proofreader: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Chūnqiū zōng zhū biàn yì is the central Chūnqiū work of the orthodox-Zhū Xī line within the early-Qing reaction against the Sūn Fù / Hú Ānguó moralism. Zhāng Zìchāo’s invocation of Zhū Xī is precise: he relies on the recorded sayings in which Zhū Xī (in the Yǔ lèi) refused to read the canon as a tribunal of secret praise-and-blame and instead recommended zhí shū qí shì. The 20-section zǒng lùn prefacing the work systematizes this reading: the canon contains entries that show meaning at distance from the event, entries that show meaning forward or backward, entries that show meaning by not recording, by repeated recording, by ample wording, by curtailed wording, by interspersed wording, by subtle wording — but never by inventing a praise-blame schema disconnected from the historical event itself.
The Sìkù editors’ assessment is the highest among orthodox-Zhū commentaries in the corpus: along with Jiāo Yuánxī’s Quē rú biān this is the model. The reception history is also documented: Fāng Bāo 方苞 (KR1e0110) drew his own Chūnqiū tōng lùn in part from this book, and explicitly acknowledged the debt. The composition window is bracketed by Zhāng’s jìnshì in 1703 and his death in 1717.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. See chapters on Zhāng Zìchāo and the Tóngchéng-school Chūnqiū lineage in Yáng Zhàoguì, Qīng dài Chūnqiū xué yán jiū (Wǔnán, 2010), and Shén Yùchéng / Liú Níng, Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn xué shǐ gǎo (Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1992).
Other points of interest
The book is the principal channel through which the orthodox-Zhū Chūnqiū line passed into the eighteenth-century Tóngchéng school via Fāng Bāo. The Sìkù tiyao explicitly notes the lineage — an unusually frank registration of intellectual debt for a Sìkù notice.
Links
- ctext.org: Chūnqiū zōng zhū biàn yì (Sìkù WYG facsimile)