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左傳紀事本末

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Text ID
KR2c0022
Date
1690–1690
Dynasty
清

Zuǒzhuàn jìshì běnmò 左傳紀事本末

The Zuǒ Tradition Topically Arranged by 高士奇 (撰)

About the work

The Zuǒzhuàn jìshì běnmò in 53 juǎn is the great Kāngxī-period jìshì běnmò of the Zuǒzhuàn 左傳, completed in 1690 by Gāo Shìqí 高士奇 (1645–1703), the most powerful of the Hàn close ministers of the Kāngxī court. The work supersedes the much earlier and slighter Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn shìlèi shǐmò of Zhāng Chōng (KR2c0003, 5 juǎn, 1185) by extending the jìshì běnmò method across the entire Zuǒzhuàn span and by organising the result by state rather than by year. The 53 sections cover, in turn: the Royal House of Zhōu (Zhōu, juǎn 1–4) — the King’s traffic with Lǔ, the campaign of King Huán against Zhèng, the affairs of the royal lineage, the troubles of the royal collateral lines; Lǔ (juǎn 5–15) with the dukes Yǐn through Āi, the yīnán 三桓 weakening of the ducal house, the Yáng Hǔ 陽虎 affair, Confucius’s career; Qí (juǎn 16–22) the destruction of Jì 紀, the assassination of Duke Xiāng, the hegemony of Duke Huán, the CuīQìng affair, the take-over by the Chén lineage; Jìn (juǎn 23–33) the Qūyāo absorption of the dukal Jìn line, the destruction of Yú and Guó, the LìJī affair, the hegemonies of Wéngōng, Xiānggōng, Dàogōng; Sòng, Wèi, Zhèng, Chén, Cài, Cáo, Xǔ (the lesser central states); Chǔ (the great southern power); Wú and Yuè (the southeastern late-period rivalries); and a closing section on the cosmological-ritual material — Jiāosì yúqí 郊祀雩祭, Chéngzhú sōushòu 城築蒐狩, and Confucius’s office at Lǔ. The work draws together not only the Zuǒ material but also the Guóyǔ 國語, the Gōngyáng zhuàn 公羊傳, the Gǔliáng zhuàn 穀梁傳, and the Shǐjì in supplementary notes, and is closed with Gāo’s own running commentary.

Tiyao

(Sìkù tíyào not preserved in the _000.txt, which carries only the mùlù. Present summary draws on the work’s own table of contents and the standard catalog descriptions.)

The structure of the work is best read in its mùlù: 53 sections organised by polity, with the royal house first, the major hegemons in turn (Lǔ, Qí, Jìn, Chǔ, WúYuè), the smaller central states between, and a closing rubric of cosmic-ritual entries. Each section is given a topical heading drawn from the Zuǒ itself; under it the Zuǒ, Gōngyáng, Gǔliáng, Guóyǔ, and Shǐjì materials are laid out in chronological order; Gāo’s own running comments — on textual variants, on the doctrinal differences among the three commentary lines, on the connection of the events to later imperial precedents — are appended.

Abstract

The Zuǒzhuàn jìshì běnmò is the most extensive jìshì běnmò treatment of any Classic in the corpus, and was for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the standard scholarly entry-point into the Zuǒzhuàn’s narrative — particularly for those readers (the great majority) who could not work directly through the jīngzhuàn in chronological order. Gāo’s design is more ambitious than Zhāng Chōng’s earlier attempt: by organising sections by polity he could let each state’s narrative run its full Spring-and-Autumn course, and by drawing in the Guóyǔ and the rival Chūnqiū commentaries he could give each topical section the fullest possible documentary base. The result is the principal early-Qing scholarly product of the jìshì běnmò tradition applied to a Classic, and the standard companion volume to Mǎ Sù’s much larger Yì shǐ (KR2c0021).

Gāo Shìqí’s other Chūnqiū works — the Chūnqiū dìmíng kǎo lüè 春秋地名考略 (KR1e0105) of 1685, commissioned for the imperial jīngyán lectures — provide the geographical companion to this Zuǒ jìshì běnmò. Together with the diary-literature on the Kāngxī court (the Hú lú jì and Péngshān mì jì) they make Gāo one of the most important Hàn-Chinese scholar-officials of the early Kāngxī era.

The Sìkù compilers regard the work as the standard reference Zuǒ arrangement of its time; Wilkinson (ch. 50) treats it as one of the principal jìshì běnmò of a Classic, alongside Zhāng Chōng’s earlier and slighter effort.

Translations and research

  • Zuǒzhuàn jìshì běnmò. Punctuated edition, 3 vols., Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1979 (often reprinted; the standard reference text).
  • Schaberg, David. 2001. A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Asia Center. (Treats the historiographical reception.)
  • Pines, Yuri. 2002. Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722–453 BCE. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. (Often cites the jìshì běnmò arrangement.)
  • Wilkinson, Chinese History, ch. 50.

Other points of interest

The work’s organisation by polity — rather than by reign-year, as in the Zuǒ itself — was widely imitated by later Zuǒ-arrangement projects, and is the dominant organising principle of modern textbook accounts of the Spring-and-Autumn period.

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