Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn shìlèi shǐmò 春秋左傳事類始末
The Beginning and End of Events Topically Arranged from the Zuǒ Tradition to the Spring and Autumn Annals by 章沖 (撰)
About the work
This work in 5 juǎn applies the jìshì běnmò 紀事本末 method, which Yuán Shū 袁樞 had just demonstrated for the Zīzhì tōngjiàn in 1176, to the Chūnqiū / Zuǒzhuàn corpus. The compiler, Zhāng Chōng 章沖 (zì Màoshēn 茂深), grandson of Zhāng Dūn 章惇 and son-in-law of the Chūnqiū scholar Yè Mèngdé 葉夢得, dated his self-preface Chúnxī 12 (1185) — nine years after Yuán Shū’s edition. He extracts the events of the various states from the year-by-year Zuǒzhuàn and re-orders them into topical narratives, each titled and given a continuous beginning and end. The book is thus the earliest jìshì běnmò-format treatment of a Classic, and is paired in the same Sìkù subdivision with Gāo Shìqí’s 高士奇 much later Zuǒzhuàn jìshì běnmò (KR2c0022).
Tiyao
(Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào — the Wényuān gé witness here lacks the tíyào in its frontmatter; translation follows the Kyoto Zinbun digital text under the variant title Chūnqiū Zuǒshì zhuàn shìlèi shǐmò 春秋左氏傳事類始末, 5 juǎn.)
The Chūnqiū Zuǒshì zhuàn shìlèi shǐmò in 5 juǎn was composed by Zhāng Chōng of the Sòng. Chōng, zì Màoshēn, was the grandson of Zhāng Dūn. In the Chúnxī period he served as prefect of Tāizhōu. His wife was a daughter of Yè Mèngdé; Yè was deeply learned in the Chūnqiū, and Chōng accordingly devoted himself to the Zuǒzhuàn. Taking the affairs of the various states he arranged them by year and month, each grouped by category, so that the joints follow on one another and beginning and end stand whole. The volume carries Chōng’s own preface together with one by Xiè È 謝諤. Now: Chōng and Yuán Shū both lived under Xiàozōng. Shū rearranged the Zīzhì tōngjiàn and so initiated the jìshì běnmò form, by which the threads stand clear and the reader follows easily; his book was printed in Chúnxī 3 (1176, bǐngshēn). Chōng’s book takes the same form. According to his self-preface it was printed in Chúnxī 12 (1185, yǐsì), nine years after Shū’s, and clearly imitates Shū’s design. Though its scope is small and does not equal Shū in breadth of materials, in service to the student the two are one. — Yet the Tōngjiàn is in itself a historical work, and Shū had only to set its threads in order; whereas the Chūnqiū is a Classic, in which event and word are linked and meaning unfolds in their interweaving — its commentary tradition (zhuàn) at times anticipates the jīng to begin a story, at times follows it to close it, at times follows the jīng in its rulings, at times crosses it to gather variants — its threads are intertwined like silk and rope, the veins running secretly. By gathering the events into categories alone, Chōng has turned the Classic’s force into the structure of a history; he stands far from the labour of the brush of the Spring and Autumn. The book had formerly been classed in the Jīng division; the present catalog finds that wrong, and reclassifies it in the Shǐ division alongside Yuán Shū’s book — this is more in keeping with what the work actually does.
Abstract
Zhāng Chōng’s work is the immediate sequel to Yuán Shū’s invention: the same compositional principle applied to a Classic. The 5-juǎn book runs through the Zuǒzhuàn’s 254-year span and partitions its events into topics — the rise of the various Spring-and-Autumn powers, ducal successions, ministerial intrigues, inter-state covenants and wars — each with its own heading and continuous narrative. Both Zhāng Chōng’s self-preface (Chúnxī yǐsì, 1185) and the preface by Xiè È 謝諤 are recorded in the Sìkù tíyào. Earlier Sòng catalogs placed it under the Chūnqiū class of the Jīng division, but the Sìkù compilers reclassified it under jìshì běnmò on the ground that the work treats the Zuǒzhuàn materials as history, not as commentary on the Classic. Zhāng’s enterprise is more limited in scope than Yuán’s, but historically important as the first extension of the new genre to the canonical histories.
Translations and research
- No substantial secondary literature located in European languages. The work is regularly noticed in Chinese-language histories of Chūnqiū scholarship, e.g. Shěn Yùchéng 沈玉成 and Liú Níng 劉寧, Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn xuéshǐ gǎo 春秋左傳學史稿 (Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1992).
- For Gāo Shìqí’s later, more famous Zuǒzhuàn jìshì běnmò in 53 juǎn, see KR2c0022.
Other points of interest
The work is the earliest extant attempt to apply jìshì běnmò method to canonical material; it pre-dates Gāo Shìqí’s much fuller Zuǒzhuàn jìshì běnmò by some five centuries.
Links
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11077156