Chūnqiū dàshì biǎo 春秋大事表
Tabulations of Great Affairs in the Spring and Autumn Annals by 顧棟高 (撰)
About the work
The largest and most ambitious Chūnqiū reference work of the Qing, in 50 juǎn with three fùlù sections, by Gù Dònggāo 顧棟高 (1679–1759). The book is a comprehensive tabulation of every major dimension of the Spring-and-Autumn world: calendar (shílìng, shuòrùn, chánglì shíyí); territorial geography (jiāngyù, juéxìng cún miè, quǎn yá xiāng cuò, dūyì, shānchuān, xiǎn yào, dìxíng); political institutions (guānzhì, xìngshì, qīng dàfū shìxì, xíng shǎng, tiánfù jūnlǚ); the wǔlǐ (auspicious, inauspicious, guest, military, and felicitous rituals); state-by-state rosters of central political offices (Lǔ, Jìn, Chǔ, Sòng, Zhèng); inter-state war and covenant tables (Qí–Chǔ, Sòng–Chǔ, Jìn–Chǔ, Wú–Jìn, Qí–Jìn, Qín–Jìn, Wú–Chǔ, Wú–Yuè, Qí–Lǔ, LǔZhūJǔ, Sòng–Zhèng); military operations (chéngzhù, bīngmóu); the sì yì (peripheral peoples); astronomy and five-phases (tiānwén, wǔxíng); cross-tradition divergences (sān zhuàn yìtóng); textual lacunae; the great absorptions (Qí absorbing Jì, Cáo and Zhèng absorbing Xǔ, Sòng absorbing X); rebels and assassins; the Zuǒ zhuàn’s citations of Shī, Shū, and Yì; corrections to Dù Yù’s commentary; persons; and women. The whole closes with appendices, marginalia, and maps. Total of 131 essays.
Tiyao
Imperially edited Sìkù quánshū, Classics, Chūnqiū category. Chūnqiū dàshì biǎo in 50 juǎn, fù lù in 1 juǎn, Ǒu bǐ in 1 juǎn, Yú tú in 1 juǎn. Composed in the present dynasty by Gù Dònggāo. Gù Dònggāo is the author of the Shàngshū zhì yí 尚書質疑*, already entered.
The book takes the events of the Chūnqiū feudal world and arranges them into tables: Shílìng, Shuòrùn, Chánglì shíyí, Jiāngyù, Juéxìng cún miè, Lièguó dìlǐ quǎnyá xiāng cuò, Dūyì, Shānchuān, Xiǎn yào, Guānzhì, Xìngshì, Shìxì, Xíng shǎng, Tiánfù, Jí lǐ, Xiōng lǐ, Bīn lǐ, Jūn lǐ, Jiā lǐ, Wáng jì shíyí, Lǔ zhèng xià dài, Jìn zhōngjūn, Chǔ lìngyǐn, Sòng zhízhèng, Zhèng zhízhèng, Zhēng méng, Jiāo bīng, Chéngzhù, Sì yì, Tiānwén, Wǔxíng, Sān zhuàn yìtóng, Quē wén, Tūn miè, Luàn zéi, Bīngmóu, Yǐn jù, Dù zhù zhèng wěi, Rénwù, Liè nǚ. After the Xiǎn yào table is appended a Dìxíng kǒu hào; after the five-rite tables, a Wǔlǐ yuán liú kǒu hào. The appendix contains the prefaces to the various tables and material that the tables themselves do not cover, with critical discussions correcting old readings — 131 essays in all.
The Sòng work Chūnqiū fēn jì 春秋分紀 by Chéng Gōngshuō 程公說 had organized the zhuàn by topical clustering with great precision; its woodblocks were long ago lost and manuscript copies are rare. Gù evidently had not seen Chéng’s book — his arrangement and Chéng’s at points overlap and at points diverge. The table-format itself derives from the Zhōu pǔ 周譜 bānghángxiéshàng arrangement, where horizontal–vertical interplay turns the chaotic into the structured. Where a single event flows in unbroken line, no table is needed; Gù’s making a table for everything is sometimes excessive. His mixing in seven-character mnemonic verses (kǒu hào) is a violation of authorial decorum.
But the structure is detailed and clear, the evidential research solid, and as a whole he surpasses Chéng Gōngshuō. His critical essays are erudite and accurate, often bringing up things prior writers had not raised — a level Chéng could not reach. His Shuòrùn biǎo uses Dù Yù’s reckoning that the new moon of Lord Yǐn 1, 1st month, is xīnsì — at variance with Chén Hòuyào’s 陳厚耀 Cháng lì (KR1e0112), which retracts one intercalation. Chén’s book Gù evidently had not seen, and so they differ slightly. Submitted on the Qiánlóng 46th year, 4th month (= 1781, May). Editors-in-chief: Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief proofreader: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Chūnqiū dàshì biǎo is the largest single-author Chūnqiū reference work in the entire Chinese tradition and remains, alongside Yáng Bójùn’s Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn zhù, the indispensable apparatus for Chūnqiū studies. The book was printed in 1748 (Wilkinson, p. 706); composition therefore occupied roughly the decade preceding. The format inheritance is twofold: from the medieval zú pǔ genealogical-table tradition (and from Sīmǎ Qiān’s biǎo in the Shǐ jì) Gù takes the bānghángxiéshàng layout; from Chéng Gōngshuō’s Chūnqiū fēn jì (a Sòng work he had not actually seen) he reinvents in parallel the topical-classification scheme.
Two specific Sìkù-noted limitations are worth keeping: (1) the Shuòrùn biǎo follows Dù Yù’s calendar rather than Chén Hòuyào’s corrected Cháng lì, because Gù was working independently of Chén — meaning that a strictly modern user of the Dàshì biǎo should cross-check the calendar against Chén (KR1e0112); (2) the Shìxì biǎo enters only persons whose lineage can be securely reconstructed and omits the long tail of fragmentarily attested individuals — meaning that for full Chūnqiū prosopography Gù’s table must be supplemented by Chén Hòuyào’s Chūnqiū shìzú pǔ (KR1e0111). Wilkinson (Chinese History: A New Manual, p. 706) calls Dàshì biǎo “the indispensable handbook” for the Spring-and-Autumn period and identifies it as printed in 1748.
Translations and research
The standard modern Chinese edition is Gù Dòng-gāo, Chūnqiū dàshì biǎo, ed. Wú Shùpíng 吳樹平 et al., 3 vols. (Zhōnghuá shū jú, 1993; reprinted 2014) — a critical reset, paragraphed, with collation notes. No substantial Western-language translation or monographic study located; for orientation see Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (Harvard, 2018), pp. 706 and passim; and Mark Edward Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (SUNY, 1990), which routinely cites Gù.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù tiyao’s blunt criticism of Gù’s seven-character mnemonic verses (kǒu hào) preserves a small but interesting eighteenth-century debate over what counts as proper authorial decorum in classical scholarship; the verses themselves are a vivid reminder of the eighteenth-century pedagogical context in which a 50-juǎn reference work was nevertheless meant to be partly memorizable.
Links
- Wikidata: Gù Dònggāo — Q11142862
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (2018), § 51, p. 706
- ctext.org: Chūnqiū dàshì biǎo (Sìkù WYG facsimile)