Guóyǔ 國語
Discourses of the States by 韋昭 (annotator)
About the work
A pre-Hàn collection of state-by-state speeches and dialogues organized into eight yǔ 語 — Zhōu 周, Lǔ 魯, Qí 齊, Jìn 晉 (the longest), Zhèng 鄭, Chǔ 楚, Wú 吳, and Yuè 越 — covering the period from King Mù of Zhōu 周穆王 down to the destruction of the Zhì 智 lineage (453 BCE), the same horizon as the Zuǒzhuàn 左傳. Hàn-era convention attributed it to Zuǒ Qiūmíng 左丘明 as the “outer commentary” (wàizhuàn 外傳) on the Chūnqiū 春秋, complementing his “inner commentary” (the Zuǒzhuàn); modern scholarship treats it as an independent, multi-stratum compilation drawing on regional historiographical traditions, redacted no earlier than the late Warring States. The Sìkù edition prints the standard 21-juǎn recension of the late Wú scholar Wéi Zhāo 韋昭 (197–278 CE), whose annotation is the only continuous classical commentary to have survived.
Tiyao
Annotated by Wéi Zhāo 韋昭 of Wú. Zhāo’s zì was Hóngsì 弘嗣; he was a man of Yúnyáng 雲陽 and rose to Vice Director of the Secretariat (zhōngshū púyè 中書僕射). The Sānguó zhì 三國志 writes his name as Wéi Yào 韋曜; Péi Sōngzhī 裴松之’s commentary explains that the change was made to taboo the name of Sīmǎ Zhāo 司馬昭. Who first composed the Guóyǔ opinions differ; the Hàn-period view, taking the work back to remote antiquity, remains the closest to the original. The events recorded run, like those of the Zuǒzhuàn, down to the destruction of the Zhì lineage, and the chronological span matches. Some passages do not square with the Zuǒzhuàn, just as the Xīnxù 新序 and Shuōyuàn 說苑, both compiled by Liú Xiàng 劉向, occasionally contradict each other: the ancients drew on different transmitted exemplars and let doubts stand as doubts, not, as later editors do, blithely emending. The Hàn Yìwén zhì gives 21 piān. Among the various commentaries listed in the Suíshū Jīngjí zhì, those of Yú Fān 虞翻 and Táng Gù 唐固 were both 21 juǎn, Wáng Sù 王肅’s 22 juǎn, Jiǎ Kuí 賈逵’s 20 juǎn — the differences merely reflect occasional combining or splitting and not real variation. Only Wéi Zhāo’s annotation is given as 22 juǎn in the Suí monograph and as 20 juǎn in the Táng monograph; yet the present text, head and tail complete, runs to exactly 21 juǎn, and every Sòng print, southern and northern alike, agrees in this. Plainly the Suí monograph adds one character in error and the Táng monograph drops one. The volume opens with Wéi Zhāo’s own preface, which says he drew on the annotations of Zhèng Zhòng 鄭眾, Jiǎ Kuí, Yú Fān, and Táng Gù. On inspection the citations of Zhèng and Yú are only a handful; it is from Jiǎ and Táng that he draws and against whose readings he most often argues. The preface further claims that “in all there were 307 emendations.” On counting the cases in the present annotation in which Wéi Zhāo establishes a reading against his predecessors — covering the Zhōu 周, Lǔ 魯, Qí 齊, Jìn 晉, Zhèng 鄭, Chǔ 楚, Wú 吳, and Yuè 越 sections — the total comes to no more than 67 items, and even when the corrections of corrupt graphs, inserted phrases, and dislocated bamboo strips are added in, the figure does not reach 307. Either the manuscript transmission has erred — perhaps “60” became “300” — or the Chóngwén zǒngmù 崇文總目 figure of “310 items” reflects a graphic confusion of “7” for “0.” Qián Céng 錢曾 in his Dúshū mǐnqiú jì 讀書敏求記 reports that the Tiānshèng-period exemplar had the word wáng 王 after xiān 先 in the Zhōuyǔ phrase 「昔我先世后稷」, and that 拜 was preserved after the second 下 in the Zhōuyǔ phrase 「左右免冑而下」, which the present recension drops; yet the citations he gives differ entirely from this text, and the source remains obscure. The present recension was printed by Kǒng Chuánduó 孔傳鐸, the duke of perpetuated sagely descent. There are minor errors — for instance, in the Lǔyǔ chapter on Gōngfù Wénbó 公父文伯 drinking wine, the four characters 「此堵父詞」 in the annotation belong below the phrase 「將使鼈長」 but stand in error below the two characters 「遂出」. Such small lapses are not avoided. But by comparison with the workshop prints, this is a much purer text. Of all annotations from Zhèng Zhòng’s Jiěgǔ 解詁 onward, only Wéi Zhāo’s survives entire, and it is the oldest extant Guóyǔ commentary. Huáng Zhèn 黃震’s Rìchāo 日鈔 already praised it for its brevity; the older Hàn glosses are very often preserved scattered through it. When Zhū Xī’s Lúnyǔ jízhù 論語集注 dismisses 無所取材 and Máo Qílíng 毛奇齡 attacks the gloss of cái 材 as “to cut” 裁 as without classical warrant, preferring instead Zhèng Kāngchéng’s identification of cái with 桴材 (“raft timber”), what Máo failed to see is that the Zhèngyǔ 鄭語 phrase 計億事材兆物 is annotated by Wéi as: “Jì 計 means to reckon; cái 材 means to cut” — the gloss is already there. So Máo missed it under his own nose; this too shows how rich the work is for evidential investigation.
(Editorial note appended:) The Hàn Yìwén zhì lists the Guóyǔ in 21 piān under the post-Chūnqiū heading, but it does not yet style it the “outer commentary” of the Chūnqiū. The “Treatise on the Pitch-Pipes and Calendar” 律歷志 of the Hànshū first calls it the Chūnqiū wàizhuàn. Wáng Chōng 王充 in the Lùnhéng 論衡 says the Guóyǔ is the outer commentary of Zuǒ — Zuǒ’s commentary on the classic was at points too terse, and so the Guóyǔ sayings were excerpted to fill it out. Liú Xī 劉熙’s Shìmíng 釋名 also says it is called outer commentary because the Chūnqiū takes Lǔ as the inner state and the others as outer, and this work is what the outer states transmit. But the Guóyǔ runs from King Mù of Zhōu down to Duke Dào of Lǔ — its time-span agrees with the Chūnqiū at neither head nor tail; its events too have little to do with the Chūnqiū. To attach it to the Chūnqiū is most ill-suited. And there is in fact a Lǔyǔ in the book; for Liú Xī to claim that all is “what outer states transmit” is plainly contradictory. To set it among the Classics will not do. In Liú Zhījī’s 劉知幾 “Six Schools of Historiography” in the Shǐtōng 史通, the Guóyǔ is one of them — it is in fact a relic of the ancient Left-Court historiographers. We here reclassify it under the Miscellaneous Histories (záshǐ 雜史). [Edition: copy from the household of Vice Director of the Board of Revenue Zhāng Quán 章銓.]
Abstract
The Guóyǔ is the oldest extant collection of Spring-and-Autumn–period oratory organized geographically rather than annalistically, and its text is bibliographically inseparable from the Zuǒzhuàn: the Hàn Yìwén zhì (1st c. BCE) already lists a 21-piān Guóyǔ, and Sīmǎ Qiān’s “Self-Postface” (《史記·太史公自序》) names it among the works of Zuǒ Qiūmíng 左丘明 — the foundation of the long-standing convention that the Zuǒzhuàn and Guóyǔ together form Zuǒ’s “inner” and “outer” commentaries on the Chūnqiū (a name first attested in the Hànshū “Treatise on Pitch-Pipes and Calendar”). Modern scholarship has dismantled the single-authorship picture: the eight yǔ exhibit such marked stylistic, linguistic, and ideological diversity (the Jìnyǔ alone fills nine of twenty-one juǎn) that the work is now generally understood as a Warring-States compilation drawing on regional court-historiographical traditions, redacted no later than the 4th century BCE. The Sìkù editors took the further step of removing the work from the Classics section (where it had been classified for centuries as a Chūnqiū-affiliate) and reclassifying it under Miscellaneous Histories (záshǐ 雜史), arguing that its chronological and topical scope does not in fact match the Chūnqiū. The annotation of Wéi Zhāo 韋昭 (197–278) of Wú, drawing on the earlier glosses of Zhèng Zhòng 鄭眾, Jiǎ Kuí 賈逵, Yú Fān 虞翻, and Táng Gù 唐固 — none of which now survive in continuous form — is the only complete classical commentary preserved, and it has been the basis of every subsequent edition. The Wényuàngé Sìkù copy reproduces a Kǒng Chuánduó 孔傳鐸 (Qufu Yansheng-line ducal household) print collated against good Sòng exemplars. The dating bracket reflects the latest stratum of Warring-States redaction (c. 400 BCE) at the early end and Wéi Zhāo’s commentarial fixation in the late 3rd century CE at the late end, since it is in that recension that the work has been transmitted.
Translations and research
- William G. Boltz. 1990. “Notes on the Authenticity of the So Called ‘Preface’ to the Guoyu.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 110.3: 491–493.
- Yáng Bójùn 楊伯峻. 1981. Guóyǔ jí 國語譯注. Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi gǔjí. (Standard modern punctuated edition with notes.)
- Xú Yuángào 徐元誥. 1930/2002. Guóyǔ jíjiě 國語集解. Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú. (Major modern critical edition collecting glosses.)
- Yves Hervouet, ed. 1978. A Sung Bibliography. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. (Discusses Sòng Guóyǔ commentaries.)
- Wai-yee Li. 2007. The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. (Substantial chapters on the Guóyǔ read alongside the Zuǒzhuàn.)
- Erik Henry. 1987. “The Motif of Recognition in Early China.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47: 5–30. (Reads several Guóyǔ speeches.)
- Liú Qǐyú 劉起釪. 1989. Guóyǔ yánjiū 國語研究. Bibliographic and textual study.
- Endymion Wilkinson. 2018. Chinese History: A New Manual. 5th ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, §28.1. (Brief but standard placement.)
- A complete English translation of the Guóyǔ by Olivia Milburn (Brill) is in preparation; partial translations are scattered through the secondary literature.
Other points of interest
The 17th-century re-translation of the Guóyǔ into Manchu, ordered by the Qīng court, is one of the few full Manchu renderings of a pre-imperial text and is preserved in the Wényuāngé Sìkù alongside the Chinese original; it has been used in the lexicographic reconstruction of literary Manchu. The Yuèyǔ 越語 portion of the Guóyǔ, especially the speeches of Fàn Lǐ 范蠿 and Wén Zhǒng 文種, supplied the narrative backbone for the much later Yuè jué shū 越絕書 and Wú Yuè chūnqiū 吳越春秋.