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晏子春秋

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Text ID
KR2g0003
Date
-350–-200
Dynasty
周

Yànzǐ chūnqiū 晏子春秋

Spring and Autumn of Master Yàn attributed to 晏嬰

About the work

A topical compilation in eight piān (transmitted in WYG as eight juàn), traditionally attributed to the Qí statesman Yàn Yīng 晏嬰 (Yàn Píngzhòng 晏平仲, d. 500 BCE), but in fact a Warring-States gathering of stories about him by later hands. The text is divided into six nèipiān 內篇 — Jiàn shàng 諫上, Jiàn xià 諫下 (remonstrances, 25 chapters each), Wèn shàng 問上 (30 chapters), Wèn xià 問下 (20 chapters), Zá shàng 雜上 and Zá xià 雜下 (30 chapters each) — and two wàipiān 外篇, the first (chóng ér yì zhě 重而異者, 27 chapters) collecting variant versions of stories duplicated in the inner chapters, the second (bù hé jīngshù zhě 不合經術者, 18 chapters) collecting material that the Hàn editor Liú Xiàng 劉向 deemed inconsistent with classical doctrine — 215 chapters in all, as Liú Xiàng’s xùlù 序錄 to the work explicitly records. The Sìkù editors note that despite Liú Xiàng’s and Bān Gù’s classification of the work under Rújiā 儒家 (Confucian school), Liǔ Zōngyuán 柳宗元 already argued in the Táng that the book was the work of a Qí Mohist, since its tenor frequently advocates universal love and opposes lavish funerals and prolonged mourning, and it is repeatedly invoked in Mòzǐ’s polemics; the Sìkù editors accept this Mohist provenance.

Tiyao

Yànzǐ chūnqiū, in eight juàn. The old text is attributed to Yàn Yīng of Qí. Cháo Gōngwǔ’s 晁公武 Dúshūzhì 讀書志 says: “Yīng was minister to Duke Jǐng of Qí; this book records his deeds and remonstrances.” The Chóngwén zǒngmù 崇文總目 says: “Later men gathered together Yīng’s deeds to make this book; it is not Yīng’s own composition.” That being so, this book is of the same family as the Wèi Zhènggōng jiànlù 魏鄭公諫錄 of the Táng (Wèi Zhēng’s KR2g0004) and the Lǐ Guóxiàng lùnshì jí 李國相論事集 (KR2g0005) — only that the names of the editors have been lost, and the title is left under the name of Yīng by way of attribution. Among its contents are episodes such as the affair of Duke Jǐng of Qí’s groom (singled out by Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禛 in the Chíběi ǒután 池北偶談), which are vulgar and absurd, scarcely better than skits on a stage — surely the work of irresponsible interpolators, and not the original. Liú Xiàng 劉向 and Bān Gù 班固 both classed it under the Rújiā; only Liǔ Zōngyuán 柳宗元 held it to be the work of a Qí Mohist. Its main thrust does indeed favour universal love (jiānài 兼愛) and oppose lavish funerals and protracted mourning, and it frequently has Mòzǐ “hearing of his Way and praising it.” Xuē Jìxuān’s 薛季宣 Làngyǔ jí 浪語集 further remarks that the various passages of Kǒngcóngzǐ’s 孔叢子 JiéMò 詰墨 chapters are all to be found in Yànzǐ. Thus Yīng’s learning was in fact derived from Mò. Although Yīng lived a little before Mò Dí 墨翟, the figure Shǐjué 史角 had already settled in Lǔ in the time of Duke Huì of Zhōu (see Lǚshì chūnqiū, Zhòngchūn jì, Dāngrǎn 當染 chapter), so Yīng could already follow that doctrine. The book has been called Yànzǐ chūnqiū since the GuǎnYàn lièzhuàn 管晏列傳 of the Shǐjì, and Liú Zhījī’s 劉知幾 Shǐtōng 史通 lists “Yànzǐ, Yú Qīng 虞卿, Lǚshì, Lù Jiǎ 陸賈” together — although the chapters of these books carry no year-and-month notation, they are nonetheless called chūnqiū. Yet the Hànzhì simply gives the title as Yànzǐ, while the Suízhì names it Chūnqiū — both titles thus current side by side. The Hàn and Suí bibliographic treatises both give it as eight piān; from Chén’s and Cháo’s catalogues onward it is given as twelve juàn — so the book has undergone considerable editorial reshuffling. The present copy is the Míng-dynasty Lǐshì Miánmiǎogé 綿眇閣 imprint, with the nèipiān divided into six (Jiàn shàng, Jiàn xià, Wèn shàng, Wèn xià, Zá shàng, Zá xià) and the wàipiān into two — matching the eight-piān count of the Hànzhì. The Wūchéng Mǐnshì 烏程閔氏 imprint that circulates in the world has, where one and the same anecdote appears in both nèi and wài piān with minor differences, simply moved the variant down as an interlinear note within the nèipiān; this has rendered the work disordered, and we therefore prefer the present edition as closer to antiquity.

[Additional note appended by the editors]: Even though the Yànzǐ book was made by later men gathering up his fragments, having no formal zhuànjì designation, it is in substance the ancestor of the zhuànjì genre. It was formerly listed in the zǐbù; we now move it to here.

(Tiyao text from the Kyoto Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào — the SBCK base-edition source file in this repository carries Liú Xiàng’s xùlù but not the Sìkù tiyao itself, since the WYG copy was not the basis of the SBCK reproduction.)

Abstract

The catalog meta gives the dynasty as Zhōu and the author’s death-date as 500 BCE; for the received text of the Yànzǐ chūnqiū, however, the standard scholarly consensus is that the work is a Warring-States compilation, perhaps assembled in the fourth or third century BCE, with significant later interpolations. The Sìkù editors explicitly endorse this, citing the Chóngwén zǒngmù and Liǔ Zōngyuán in support, and noting Wáng Shìzhēn’s complaint that some episodes have the texture of stage routines and are surely later additions. The text was first reduced to its eight-piān canonical form by Liú Xiàng (77–6 BCE) on the basis of thirty Han-imperial library copies, of which his preserved xùlù (which prefaces the SBCK edition reproduced as the source file in this repository) gives a careful conspectus: 30 piān yielding 838 chapters, of which 22 duplicate piān yielding 638 chapters were excluded, leaving 215 chapters in 8 piān. The work’s intellectual orientation — favouring frugality, opposing lavish ritual, and showing the Qí minister as a moral exemplar — has invited classification as Confucian (Liú Xiàng, Bān Gù) or as Mohist (Liǔ Zōngyuán, the Sìkù editors). Modern scholarship (e.g. Stephen W. Durrant, Li Ling) generally takes the work as a heterogeneous Warring-States anthology with no single authorial voice. The date bracket used here (notBefore −350, notAfter −200) is the conventional Warring-States compilation window; the lower bound stops short of the Hàn fixation by Liú Xiàng. Yàn Yīng himself died in approximately 500 BCE during the reign of Duke Jǐng of Qí; the catalog meta’s “d. -500” reflects his lifedates and is not the composition date of the received text.

Translations and research

  • Olivia Milburn, The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan, Sinica Leidensia 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2016) — complete annotated English translation with substantial introduction.
  • Stephen W. Durrant, “Yen tzu ch’un ch’iu,” in Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, ed. Michael Loewe (Berkeley: SSEC, 1993), 483–489 — standard English-language survey of authorship and textual history.
  • Wú Zé-yú 吳則虞, Yànzǐ chūnqiū jí-shì 晏子春秋集釋 (Beijing: Zhōnghuá shū-jú, 1962), the standard modern critical edition.
  • Important Hàn-tomb evidence comes from the silk-and-bamboo Yànzǐ fragments excavated at Yín-què-shān 銀雀山 (Línyí, 1972), which broadly confirm the received text’s antiquity in its essentials.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù editors’ move of the work from zǐbù (where the Hàn and Suí bibliographies and most subsequent catalogues had placed it under Rújiā or, in the Suízhì, Chūnqiūjiā) into the head of the zhuànjì division of shǐbù is a substantive editorial judgment, advanced explicitly in the àn note of the tiyao: even though the Yànzǐ lacks the formal name of a zhuànjì, it is in substance “the ancestor of the genre.” This is a textbook case of Qīng catalographic reclassification.

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