Chūnqiū bièdiǎn 春秋別典
Supplementary Records of the Spring and Autumn Period by 薛虞畿 (compiler), with completion by his younger brother Xuē Yúbīn 薛虞賓
About the work
A 15-juǎn mid-Míng compilation of materials on the rulers and ministers of the Chūnqiū 春秋 period that lie outside the Sānzhuàn 三傳 (the Zuǒ 左傳, Gōngyáng 公羊, and Gǔliáng 穀梁 commentaries on the Chūnqiū) — drawn from the zhūzǐ 諸子 (“hundred schools”), early historical anecdote literature, and various zájì. The work is organised by the twelve dukes of Lǔ following the Zuǒ convention, with each event or anecdote attached to its proper year and figure where possible. The compiler is Xuē Yújī 薛虞畿 of Hǎiyáng 海陽 in Cháozhōu 潮州, a zhūshēng who had retired to Mt. Hán 韓山 in self-imposed seclusion; the work was unfinished at his death and was brought to publication by his younger brother Xuē Yúbīn 薛虞賓. The book had no early printed witness; the present WYG text descends from the manuscript preserved in the Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊 family library, with Zhū Yízūn’s own colophon dated Kāngxī 40.10 (October 1701).
Tiyao
Submitted by your servants, etc. The Chūnqiū bièdiǎn in fifteen juǎn was compiled by Xuē Yújī of the Míng. There is a self-preface by Yújī, undated, which says: “I have surveyed the various zhùdié 注牒 and seen that the deeds of the rulers and ministers of the Chūnqiū number not less than a thousand affairs, scattered through the hundred schools — none of them recorded in the Three Commentaries. Some only touch the beginnings without exhausting the threads; some preserve the half without selecting the whole. Without measuring my abilities I have roughly imitated the Zuǒ example, dividing under the twelve dukes to govern their reigns, examining the Sānzhuàn persons to attach the events. In all fifteen juǎn.” At the end is a colophon by his younger brother Yúbīn, which says: “My elder brother edited the Chūnqiū bièdiǎn but unfortunately died before it left the manuscript stage. There were not a few unattached items, missing pieces, and chronological inversions. I therefore consulted widely, examined and corrected — moving entries that had been wrongly placed by reign, splitting entries that had been wrongly conflated, deleting one part in ten of duplicates, supplying one in three of omissions” — and so forth. Plainly the book was completed by Yújī and his brother in succession. There was no printed exemplar; this copy was preserved in the Zhū Yízūn family library and bears a Zhū Yízūn colophon of Kāngxī xīnsì 10 (October 1701). Regrettably, the compilation effort being painstaking, the end of each entry does not specify which book it was extracted from — a Míng habit, generally so. The criticism is sound to the diagnosis. Yet the work’s net is large and its catch full, sufficient to expand the reader’s knowledge — at any rate an aid to the broadly-learned. Yújī signs his preface “Yuèyíng” 粵瀛; Zhū Yízūn’s colophon says “his zì and lǐ are not given in the tōngzhì, the particulars cannot be ascertained.” But Yúbīn’s colophon names him as “zhòngzì Liè Zhāngféng zhì bóshìjiā yán” — i.e. that he was a Guǎngdōng zhūshēng 諸生. Examining Hú Xún’s Cháozhōu fǔzhì we find: “Xuē Yújī, zì Shùnxiáng, of Hǎiyáng. Initially a zhūshēng, he later abandoned it; he retired to the foot of Mt. Hán to amuse himself with farming; when prefectural magistrates wished to summon him, he broke through his wall and fled. His writings include the Tīngyǔ péng gǎo” — and so on. Plainly this is the man. Cháozhōu was in the Liáng called Dōngyángzhōu 東陽州 and later renamed Yíngzhōu 瀛州 — agreeing with the Yuèyíng reference. Only the zhì does not mention him as having this book; perhaps it had not yet been seen. Yújī’s preface also mentions that the shūmù and fánlì are placed at the left; the present juǎnshǒu has seven fánlì but no shūmù — the latter has been lost in transmission. Sixth month, Qiánlóng 43 (1778). Chief compilers, etc.
Abstract
The Chūnqiū bièdiǎn is a Míng compilation in the antiquarian-anecdotal tradition that runs from Sòng-period works like Liú Shù’s Tōngjiàn wàijì 通鑑外紀 (KR2b0007) through the Míng záshǐ genre. Xuē Yújī’s specific innovation is the systematic restriction to materials outside the Sānzhuàn — a project equivalent to compiling, for the Chūnqiū period, what the Wàizhuàn 外傳 (i.e. the Guóyǔ 國語) had once been to the inner Zuǒzhuàn. The fánlì explicitly excludes anything found in the Zuǒ, the Gōngyáng, the Gǔliáng, the Tángōng 檀弓, and the Wàizhuàn (these being already widely circulated and “household-recited”); the source-pool is the zhūzǐ and bǎijiā anecdote literature. Xuē also explicitly excludes the materials on Guǎn Zhòng 管仲, Yàn Yīng 晏嬰, Duke Huán of Qí 齊桓, Duke Wén of Jìn 晉文, and Duke Jǐng of Qí 齊景, on the ground that these are already exhaustively covered in the Guǎnzǐ and the Yànzǐ chūnqiū (KR3b0001). The principal weakness flagged by the Sìkù tíyào — that the entries do not cite their sources — is real but compensated for by the breadth of the catchment. Dating: Xuē Yújī’s life dates are not on record, but the work’s terminus ante quem is fixed by Zhū Yízūn’s manuscript colophon of 1701; Xuē Yúbīn’s completion-colophon places the actual finalisation of the text well before this — a conservative bracket of mid- to late-Míng (ca. 1550–1610) is plausible. The work has been used as a reservoir of Chūnqiū-period material by Qīng kǎozhèng scholars (Cuī Shù 崔述, Liáng Yùshéng 梁玉繩) and by twentieth-century scholars (Yáng Bójùn 楊伯峻 in his Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn zhù) as a back-up source where the standard texts have lacunae.
Translations and research
- Yáng Bójùn 楊伯峻. 1981. Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn zhù 春秋左傳注. 4 vols. Běijīng: Zhōnghuá shūjú. Cites the Chūnqiū bièdiǎn in supplementary apparatus.
- Wáng Wényìng 王文穎. 2002. “Xuē Yújī Chūnqiū bièdiǎn yánjiū” 薛虞畿《春秋別典》研究. Master’s thesis, Guǎngzhōu zhōngshān dàxué.
- No substantial Western-language treatment located.
Other points of interest
The work is part of the broader MíngQīng tradition of supplementing the standard Chūnqiū corpus, alongside Mǎ Sù’s 馬驌 Yìshǐ 繹史 and Chén Hòuyào’s 陳厚耀 Chūnqiū zhànguó yìcí 春秋戰國異辭 (KR2d0023) — both of which work in the same tradition with different methodologies. Xuē Yújī’s geographical isolation in late-Míng Cháozhōu (a Guǎngdōng coastal prefecture far from the Jiāngnán academic centres) is somewhat striking for a work of this kind, and accounts for the Sìkù editors’ difficulty in placing him.