吳越春秋

Wú Yuè Chūnqiū 吳越春秋

Annals of Wu and Yue by 趙燁 (撰), with annotations by 徐天祐 (注)

About the work

The Wú Yuè Chūnqiū is a Later-Hàn historical romance in six juàn (tradition reports an original twelve, with ten extant in the Suízhì and Tángzhì recensions) recounting the rise and fall of the contending southern states of Wú 吳 and Yuè 越 from their legendary founders down to the destruction of Wú by Yuè under King Gōujiàn 句踐. It is conventionally attributed to 趙燁 (Zhào Yè, 趙曄 in standard form; fl. mid-1st cent. CE), a Shānyīn 山陰 native whose biography appears in the HòuHàn shū 後漢書 Rúlínzhuàn. The Yuán-period scholar 徐天祐 (Xú Tiānyòu) supplied the standing yīnzhù 音註 (phonetic and exegetic notes), printed in Dàdé 大德 10 (1306). The text mixes drawn-from-life detail (Goūjiàn’s privation in Wú, Wǔ Zǐxū’s 伍員 suicide, the femme-fatale role of Xī Shī 西施) with miracle and divination episodes, and is one of the founding works of the bàshǐ 霸史 / zǎijì 載記 category in the Sìkù taxonomy.

Tiyao

[Translated from the Sìkù tíyào hosted at Kyoto Zinbun, since the Wényuān 文淵 source file in this corpus is in the SBCK base edition and does not carry the SKQS preface.]

By Zhào Yù 趙煜 (sic — read 趙曄; the Zinbun text consistently writes 煜, an unusual variant for the common 曄 / 燁) of the Hàn. Yù was a man of Shānyīn 山陰; see his biography in the HòuHàn shū Rúlínzhuàn. The book carries an old preface stating that the Suí and Táng bibliographic catalogues both list it in twelve juàn, while only ten survive — almost certainly not the complete book. The same preface notes that Yáng Fāng 楊方 produced a Wú Yuè Chūnqiū xiāofán 削繁 in five juàn and Huángfǔ Zūn 皇甫遵 a Wú Yuè Chūnqiū zhuàn in ten juàn, both lost. Sīmǎ Zhēn’s 司馬貞 Suǒyǐn 索隱 reports a quotation absent from the present text; Wénxuǎn commentary cites the Jìzǐjiànyíjīn 季札見遺金 episode, the Wúdìjì 吳地記 cites a Hélǘshíyítíng 闔閭時夷亭 episode, and Shuǐjīng zhù draws Yuè-related material — all absent here — suggesting Yáng Fāng’s redaction had already truncated, and Huángfǔ Zūn never restored, the lost passages. The present recension is the Yuán Dàdé 大德 10 (1306) Shàoxīnglù Confucian School edition, with Xú Tiānyòu’s yīnzhù; the colophon names Liú Jiān 留堅, Chén Bǐngbó 陳昺伯, Liáng Xiāng 梁相 and the Zhèngyìdàfū Liú Kèchāng 劉克昌 of Shàoxīnglù as overseers, but the preface itself is anonymous. The narrative is at moments inflated; yet it is rich in detail. Episodes such as Wǔ Shàng’s 伍尚 jiǎzǐ divination (with the cyclic time given as sì 巳), Fàn Lǐ’s 范蠡 wùyín divination at sunrise (with mantic creatures téngshé 螣蛇 and qīnglóng 青龍), and Wén Zhǒng’s 文種 yīnyáng line-counting (six broken, three solid, with mantic terms xuánwǔ 玄武, tiānkōng 天空, tiānguān 天關, tiānliáng 天梁, tiānyī shénguāng 天一神光) are not the divination methods of the Three Dynasties, and are clearly later attributions. The Maiden of Yuè who tested the sword, the old man who turned into an ape, Gōngsūn Shèng’s 公孫聖 thrice-shouted, thrice-answered cry — all are very close to xiǎoshuō 小說. But this is the manner of the bàiguān 稗官 miscellany of the HànJìn period, and Xú Tiānyòu’s complaint that it is “not Hàn writing” is to apply the standards of Sīmǎ Qiān and Bān Gù outside their proper sphere. Xú’s notes on textual variants are often pointed; in passages such as JìsūnshǐYuè 季孫使越 — Zǐqí sīyǔ Wú wéi shì 子期私與吳為市 — they have not exhausted the matter, but where they catch the original in error they catch it well. They side with no source against the work, and have something of the manner of Liú Xiàobiāo’s 劉孝標 commentary on the Shìshuō xīnyǔ 世說新語.

Abstract

Composition belongs to the Later Hàn, c. 25–100 CE; Zhào Yè’s floruit in the catalog meta is given as fl. 40–80, consistent with the HòuHàn shū placement of his teaching career under Emperors Guāngwǔ and Míng. The Suízhì records the work in twelve juàn, while the Tángzhì preserves twelve, then ten; only ten now survive, and the Sìkù editors transmit the customary view that it is no longer complete. There is, in addition, evidence that Yáng Fāng abridged the work in the Western Jìn (his xiāofán 削繁 in five juàn is recorded in the Suízhì but lost), and that Huángfǔ Zūn produced a derivative zhuàn. Bibliographic catalogues from the Suízhì on consistently classify it as záshǐ 雜史 or, from the Sìkù on, zǎijì 載記; the Suíshū explicitly groups it with the Zhànguócè 戰國策 as a work that lacks the authority of the Chūnqiū, Shǐjì, or Hànshū but is valuable as an independent source. Sīmǎ Qiān may already have drawn on a closely related source for his Sūnzǐ biography (the Yínquèshān 銀雀山 manuscript of Sūnzǐ contains a parallel scene of the palace-women drilling). Standing parts of the received recension include the lives of Wútàibó 吳太伯, Shòumèng 壽夢, Wáng Liáo 王僚 and Gōngzǐ Guāng 公子光, the inner traditions of Hélǘ 闔閭 and Fūchāi 夫差, and the outer traditions of Wúyú 無余, Gōujiàn’s surrender, return, secret stratagems, and conquest of Wú. Of particular note are the Yuènǚ lùnjiàn 越女論劍, the swordsmanship dialogue in juàn 9, and Chén Yīn’s 陳音 disputation on the crossbow — early loci classici for traditions of Chinese martial culture.

The Xú Tiānyòu (Xú Tiānyòu, of Yuán Dàdé / fl. early 14th c.) commentary, signed in Dàdé 10 / 1306, is the standard yīnzhù. The Wényuān 文淵 base edition for the present corpus is the SBCK facsimile of the Hóngzhì 弘治 14 (1501) Shàoxīng reprint with the prefaces by Qián Fú 錢福 and Xú Tiānyòu, not the Sìkù quán shū itself; consequently the source file KR2i0001_000.txt carries Qián’s and Xú’s prefaces in lieu of the SKQS tíyào, and the tíyào translated above is taken from the Kyoto Zinbun online edition of the Sìkù tíyào.

Translations and research

• He, Jianjun, tr. 2021. Spring and autumn annals of Wu and Yue. Cornell University Press / Cornell East Asia Series. — Complete annotated English translation.
• Lagerwey, John. 1993. “Wu Yüeh ch’un ch’iu 吳越春秋”. In Michael Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide. Berkeley: SSEC and IEAS. Pp. 473–476.
• Schuessler, Axel and Michael Loewe. 1993. “Yüeh chüeh shu 越絕書” (also discusses the Wú Yuè Chūnqiū). In ECT, pp. 490–493.
• Henry, Eric. 2007. “The submerged history of Yuè.” Sino-Platonic Papers 176.1.
• Concordance: ICS Han Concordance 16 (Chinese University of Hong Kong).
• Standard modern Chinese edition: Zhōu Shēng-chūn 周生春 (ed.). 1997. Wú Yuè chūnqiū jí-jiào huì-kǎo 吳越春秋輯校彙考. Shanghai: Shànghǎi gǔjí.

Other points of interest

The chapter divisions of the received text alternate between nèizhuàn 內傳 (for Wú rulers) and wàizhuàn 外傳 (for Yuè rulers) — a pattern Xú Tiānyòu objects to in the Mùlù notes, since Zhào Yè was a Yuè man and would naturally have written from the Yuè side. The mannered character of the WúYuè Chūnqiū’s prose, often closer to xiǎoshuō than to dynastic-history style, makes it a touchstone for arguments about the rise of historical fiction in early imperial China.

Links

• Wikipedia (Chinese)
• Wikidata: Q706727 (Wuyue chunqiu)
• Sìkù tíyào (Kyoto Zinbun)
• ctext.org