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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Confucius' 'Spring and Autumn Annals' is a classic historical text that chronicles the events of the state of Lu during the Spring and Autumn period in ancient China. Written in a concise and straightforward style, the book offers valuable insights into the political turmoil and social changes of the time. Confucius, known for his philosophical teachings and moral values, imparts his wisdom through the various events described in the Annals, making it a unique blend of history and philosophy. The text is highly regarded for its moral lessons and ethical principles, making it a key work in Confucian thought. Confucius, a revered Chinese philosopher and scholar, was driven by a desire to restore moral order and social harmony in a time of political upheaval. His deep understanding of human nature and society is reflected in his writings, including the 'Spring and Autumn Annals'. Through this historical work, Confucius aimed to inspire virtuous leadership and guide individuals towards self-improvement and righteousness. I highly recommend 'Spring and Autumn Annals' to readers interested in Chinese history, philosophy, and ethics. This influential work by Confucius offers a timeless perspective on governance, morality, and the human experience, making it a must-read for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of classical Chinese thought.
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Spring and Autumn Annals
Table of Contents
Chapter I. The Nature and Value of the Ch‘un Ts‘ew.
Section I. Disappointment of the Expectations Raised by the Earliest Accounts of the Ch‘un Ts•ëw.
1. In the prolegomena to vol., on page 1, I have said that of the five King or classical works, the authorship, or compilation rather, of which is loosely attributed to Confucius, 'the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw is the only one which can rightly be described as of his own making.' If I had been as familiar with the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw in 1861 as I am now, instead of appearing, as in that judgment, to allow that it is an original Work of the sage, I should have contented myself with saying that of it alone has the making been claimed for him. The question as to what he really did in the matter of this Classic is one of great perplexity.
2. The earliest authority who speaks on the subject is Mencius. No better could be desired; and the glowing account which he gives of the Work excites our liveliest expectations. His language puts it beyond doubt that in his time, not far removed from that of Confucius, there was a book current in China, called the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, and accepted without question by him and others as having been made by the sage. "The world," he says, 'was fallen into decay, and right principles had dwindled away. Perverse discourses and oppressive deeds were again waxen rife. Cases were occurring of ministers who murdered their rulers, and of sons who murdered their fathers. Confucius was afraid, and made the Ch‘un Ts‘ew.'1 He describes the work as of equal value with Yu’s regulation of the waters of the deluge, and the duke of Chow's establishing his dynasty amid the desolations and disorder which had been wrought by the later sovereigns of the dynasty of Shang. 'Confucius completed the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, and rebellious ministers and villainous sons were struck with terror.’2 Going more particularly into the nature of the Work, and fortifying himself with the words of the Master, Mencius says, ‘The subjects of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw are Hwan of Ts‘e and Wăn of Tsin, and its style is the historical. Confucius said, "Its righteous decisions I ventured to make."'3 And again, 'What the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw contains are matters proper to the son of Heaven. On this account Confucius said, "Yes! It is the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw which will make men know me; and it is the Ch‘un Ts‘ew which will make men condemn me."4 The words of Mencius, that 'Confucius made the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw,’ became thereafter part of the stock phraseology of Chinese scholars. If the Work itself had not been recovered under the Han dynasty, after the efforts of the tyrant of Ts‘in to destroy the ancient monuments of literature, we should have regretted its loss, thinking of it as a history from the stylus of the sage of China in which had been condensed the grandest utterances of his wisdom and the severest lessons of his virtue.
3. The making of a history, indeed, is different from the making of a poem, the development of a philosophy, and other literary achievements in which we expect large results of original thought. In those we look for new combinations of the phaenomena of human character, and new speculations on the divine order of the universe,—'things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.' But from the historian all that we are entitled to require is a faithful record of facts. If he would win our special approval, he must weave his facts into an interesting narrative, trace their connexion with one another, and by unfolding the motives of the actors teach lessons that may have their fruit in guiding and directing the course of events in future generations. The making of history should be signalized by the vigour and elegance of the composition, and by the correct discrimination, impartiality, and comprehensiveness of the author’s judgments.
When, with these ideas of what a history should be, we look into the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, we experience immediately an intense feeling of disappointment. Instead of a history of events woven artistically together, we find a congeries of the briefest possible intimations of matters in which the court and State of Loo were more or less concerned, extending over 242 years, without the slightest tincture of literary ability in the composition, or the slighest indication of judicial opinion on the part of the writer. The paragraphs are always brief. Each one is designed to commemorate a fact; but whether that fact be a display of virtue calculated to command our admiration, or a deed of atrocity fitted to awaken our disgust, it can hardly be said that there is anything in the language to convey to us the shadow of an idea of the author's feeling about it. The notices, for we cannot call them narratives, are absolutely unimpassioned. A base murder and a shining act of heroism are chronicled just as the eclipses of the sun are chronicled. So and so took place;—that is all. No details are given; no judgment is expressed. The reader may be conscious of an emotion of delight or of indignation according to the opinion which he forms of the event mentioned, especially when he has obtained a fuller account of it from some other quarter; but there is nothing in the text to excite the one feeling or the other. Whether the statements found in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw be all reliable, and given according to the truth of the facts, is a point of the utmost importance, which will be duly considered by and by. I am at present only concerned to affirm that the Work is not at all of the nature which we should suppose from our previous conception of it as a history by a great man, and from the accounts given of it by Confucius himself and by Mencius.5
4. If I have given in these remarks a correct, though brief, idea of what the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw is, we know not what to make of the statement of Confucius quoted by Mencius, that he had himself ventured to make the righteous decisions contained in it. Whether the book which we now have be that which Confucius is said to have made, or another, we examine it in vain for any ‘righteous decisions,’ for any decisions indeed of any kind, on the events which are indicated in it. This difficulty is a Gordian knot which I do not see any way of untying, and I have often wished that I could cut it by denying the genuineness of the present Ch‘un Ts‘ëw altogether.6 But, as will by and by appear, the evidence which connects and identifies the existing Work with that made, whatever be the sense in which we are to take that term, by the sage, cannot be rebutted. The simplest way of disposing of the matter is to set the testimony of Mencius on one side, though that method of proceeding can hardly be vindicated on critical grounds.
There can be no doubt, however, that the expression in Mencius about ‘the righteous decisions’ has had a most powerful and pernicious influence over the interpretation of the Classic. Chaou K‘e, the earliest commentator on Mencius, explains the passage as intimating that the sage in making the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw exercised his prerogative as ‘the unsceptred king.’ A subject merely, and without any order from his ruler, he yet made the Work on his own private authority; and his saying that he ventured to give his own judgments on things in it was simply an expression of his humility.7Chaou gives the same explanation of those words of Mencius, that ‘what the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw contains are matters proper to the son of Heaven.' 'Confucius,’ says the commentator, ‘made the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw by means of the Historical Records of Loo, setting forth his laws as an unsceptred king, which are what Mencius calls "the matters of the Son of Heaven."'8
Hundreds of critics, from Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang downwards, have tried to interpret the Classic on the principle of finding in almost every paragraph some 'righteous decision;’ and in my notes I have in a hundred places pointed out the absurdities in which such a method lands us. The same peculiarity of the style, such as the omission of a clan-name, becomes in one passage the sign of censure and in another the sign of praise.9 The whole Book is a collection of riddles, to which there are as many answers as there are guessers. It is hardly possible for a Chinese to cast off from his mind the influence of this 'praise-and-censure' theory in studying the Classic. He has learned it when a child by committing to memory at school the lines of the 'Primer of Three Characters,'10 and it has been obtruded upon him in most of his subsequent reading. Even a foreigner finds himself occasionally casting about for some such way of accounting for the ever varying forms of expression, unwilling to believe that the changes have been made at random. I proceed in another section to give a fuller idea of the nature of the Work; and to consider what were its sources, and whether we have reason to think that Confucius, in availing himself of them, made additions of his own or retrenchments.
1.Mencius, III. Pt. i. IX. 7, 8:—世衰道微,邪說暴行有作,臣弑其君者有之,子弑其父者有之,孔子懼而作春秋.
2.Ib., 11:—昔者禹抑洪水,而天下平,周公兼夷狄,驅猛獸,而百姓寜,孔子成春秋,而亂臣賊子懼.
3.Mencius, IV. Pt. ii. XXI. 3.:—其事則齊桓晉文,其文則史,孔子日,其義則丘竊取之. We must suppose that Hwan of Ts‘e and Wăn of Tsin are here adduced as two of the most remarkable personages in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, and that the first clause is not intended to convey the idea that the Work was all about them. I have mused often and long over the other parts of the paragraph. 其文則史 might be translated:—'The text is from the historiographers.’ But where then would there be any room for 'the righteous decisions' of Confucius himself? I must hold to the version I have given of the observation quoted from the sage, and it seems to require the translation of the previous clause as I have published it. Julien has:—Ejus stylus, tunc historicus. Confucius aiebat: Haec equitas, tunc ego Khieou privatim sumpsi illam.'
4.III. Pt. i. IX. 8.:—春秋,天子之事也,是故孔子曰,知我者其惟春秋乎,罪我者其惟春秋乎.
5.It is amusing to read the following account of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw given by the writer of the treatise 'On the Antiquity of the Chinese,' on pp. 47, 48 of the 1st vol. of the 'Memoires Concernant les Chinois:'— 'Le Tchun-tsieou est un livre ecrit de génie. Notre Socrate y manie l’Histoire en homme d’Etat, en Citoyen, en Philosophe, en Savant, et en Moraliste. Son laconisme naïf et sublime le force à serrer sa narration, pour présenter les faits tout nouds et détachés, pour ainsi dire, de la chaine des evénemens; mais ils sont dessinés, colorés, ombrés et peints avec tant de force et de feu, qu'on sent d’abord pourquoi et jusqu’où ils sont dignes de louanges ou de blâme. Nous ne connaissons point de livre en Europe, où l’on voit si bien le commencement, le progrès, le dénouement, et le remede des révolutions dans I'Etat et dans les mœurs; les vrais signes de roideur ou de mollesse, de tyrannie ou de discrédit, de modération simulée ou d'inconséquence dans le Gouvernement; les différences du talent, du génie, de l'expérience, de la profondeur des vues, de la bonté de coup-d'œil, et des ressources d'un esprit fécond dans les Princes et dans leur ministres, l’imposant d’une administration bruyante et le faux d’une politique pateline, les souterrains de la trahison et les maneges de la negociation, les premieres etincelles d'une révolte qui commence et les derniers eclats d’une ligue epuisée; la maniere enfin dont le Chang-ti (Dieu) dirige le cours des evénemens, pour elever ou renverser les Trônes, et punir ou recompenser tour-à-tour les Sujets par leurs Princes et les Princes par leurs Sujets. Le Tchun-tsieou, envisagé sous ce point de vue, est le modele de toutes les Histoires. Confucius a un style qui ne va qu’à lui. Il semble que chaque caractere ait eté fait pour l’endroit où il le place. Plus il est avare de mots, plus ceux qu’il emploie sout clairs et expressifs.’ The above is certainly of a piece with the estimate of the ancient odes of China which I quoted from the same article in the prolegomena to vol., pp. 114, 115. Dr. Williams (Middle Kingdom, vol. I., p. 512) gives a more fair account of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, but even he thinks that it contains much good matter of which we find no trace:—‘It is but little better than a dry detail of facts, enlivened by few incidents, but containing many of those practical observations which distinguish the writings of the sage.’ Anyone who looks into the body of this volume will see that the text consists of nothing but a dry detail of facts or incidents, without a single practical observation, Confucian or non-Confucian.
6.There have been Chinese scholars who have taken up this position. Wang Taou, in a monograph on the subject, places Ma Twan-lin among them; but this is more than Ma's words, quoted in the third section, will sustain. With more reason he gives the name of Hoh King (郝敬) of the Ming dynasty, who contends that the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Confucius was not transmitted, and that we have only fragments of it in Tso-she. Wang also says that according to Tung Chung-shoo and Sze-ma Ts‘ëen the text consisted of several myriads of characters, in several thousand paragraphs, whereas Chang Gan of the T‘ang dynasty found in it only 18000 characters. But there can be no doubt the present text is substantially the same as that known in the Han dynasty. See Appendix II.
7.孔子自謂竊取之,以爲素王也,孔子人臣,不受君命,私作之,故言竊,亦聖人之謙辭爾.
8.孔子懼王道滅,故作春秋,因魯史記,設素王之法,謂天子之事也.
9.It may be well here to give the discussion of one notable case, the occasional omission of the term king:—taken from Chaou Yih’s 陔餘業考,卷二:— ‘Every year should commence with "In the spring, in the king’s first month," or if there was nothing to be recorded under the first month, "In the spring, in the king's second month,” or “In the spring, in the king’s third month;" the object being thereby to do honour to the king. In the 9th and 11th years, however, of duke Yin, we have only "In the spring," and in all the years of duke Hwan but four the expression 'the king's' is omitted. Too Yu holds that in those years the king had not issued the calendar; but seeing the prime intent of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw was to honour the king, is it likely that for such an emission the classic would have denied the year to be the king’s? Moreover, such omission was most likely to occur when the court was in confusion, as in the troubles occasioned by the princes T‘uy, Tae, and Chaou; and yet we find the years of those times all with the regular formula. How unlikely that the calendar should have been given out in seasons of disorder, and neglected when all was tranquil in the times of Yin and Hwan! Too's explanation is inadmissible. 'Ch‘ing E-ch‘uen says, “Duke Hwan succeeded to Loo by the murder of his predecessor, and in his first year the author wrote ‘the king’s,’ thereby by a royal law indicating his crime. The same expression in the second year in the same way indicates the crime of Tuh of Sung in murdering his ruler. Its omission in the third year shows that Hwan had no [fear of the] king before his eyes." But this is very inconsistent. If we say that the omission “the king’s" shows that Hwan had no fear of the king, surely it ought to have been omitted in his first year, when he was guilty of such a crime. If we say that its occurrence in the first year is to indicate his crime, are we to infer that wherever it occurs it indicates the crime of the ruler? What had Loo to do with Tuh of Sung’s murdering his ruler? Is it reasonable that Loo's historiographers should have constructed their annals to punish him? ‘Ho Hëw says,—“In [Hwan's] 10th year we find ‘the king's,’ because ten is the completion of numbers, and we find it in his 18th year because that was the last of his rule." According to this we ought to find "the king‘s" only in the year of a ruler's accession, in his tenth year, and the year of his death; but the practice in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw is quite different from this. Ho Hëw's remark is unintelligible. ‘It may be said that since the Chow commencement of the year was not universally followed during the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw period, some States reckoning by the 1st month of Yin and others by that of Hëa, although Loo generally held to the ritual of Chow, yet its irregularities in the matter of intercalation show that it did not keep to the first month of Chow. Perhaps the historiographers did so sometimes, and then Confucius wrote "the king's first month," by way of distinction, while he left the cases in which they made the year begin differently unmarked by such a note,—thereby condemning them.‘ This last is poor Chaou Yih's own explanation of the phenomenon, not a whit better than the devices of others which he condemns! It shows the correctness of my remark that it is next to impossible for a Chinese scholar to shake of the trammels of the creed in which he has been educated.
10.詩既亡,春秋作,寓褒貶,别善惡;—see the 三字經, II. 79, 80.
Section II. The Sources of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, and Its Nature. Did Confucius Allow Himself Any Liberty of Addition or Retrenchment in the Use of His Authorities?
1. What were Confucius’ authorities for the events which he has chronicled in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw? In proceeding to an inquiry into the Sources of the Work, it will be well to give at the commencement an explanation of its name.
The two characters, translated literally, simply mean Spring and Autumn. ‘Anciently,’ says Maou K‘e-ling, ‘the historiographers, in recording events, did so with the specification of the day, the month, the season, and the year, to which each event belonged; and to the whole they gave the name of annals. ‘It was proper that under every year there should be written the names of the four seasons, and the entire record of a year went by the name of Spring and Autumn, two of the seasons, being a compendious expression for all the four.’1 ‘Spring and Autumn’ is thus equivalent to—Annals, digested under the seasons of every year. An inspection of the Work will prove that this is the proper meaning of its title. Even if there were nothing to be recorded under any season, it was still necessary to make a record of the season and of the first month in it. Entries like that in the 6th year of duke Yin,—‘It was autumn, the 7th month,’ where the next paragraph begins with ‘ln winter,’ are frequent. If now and then a year occurs in which we do not find every season specified, we may be sure the omission is owing to the loss of a character or of a paragraph in the course of time. Chaou K‘e explains the title in the same way,2 and so does Too Yu in the preface to his edition of the Tso Chuen.3 Other accounts of the name are only creations of fancy, and have arisen from a misconception of the nature of the Work. Thus Dr. Williams says, 'The spring and autumn annals are so called, because “their commendations are life-giving like spring, and their censures are life-withering like autumn.'4 The Han scholars gave forth this, and other accounts of a similar kind, led away by their notions as to the nature of the Work on which I have touched in the preceding section. Not even, as l have said, in the Work itself do we find such censures and commendations; and much less are they trumpeted in the title of it.
2. That we are not to seek for any deep or mystical meaning in the title is still more evident from the fact that the name was in in use, use before it was given to the compilation of Confucius. The first narrative of the Tso Chuen under the second year of duke Ch‘aou, when Confucius was only eleven years old, shows that this was the case in Loo. Then the principal minister of Tsin, being on a visit to the court of Loo, examined the documents in the charge of the grand-historiographer, and ‘saw,’ we are told, ‘the Yih with its diagrams and the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Loo.’5
But the records, or a class of the records, of every State in the kingdom of Chow appear to have been called by this name of Spring and Autumn. In the ‘Narratives of the States,’ the appointment of Shuh-hëang to be tutor to the heir-apparent of the State of Tsin is grounded on ‘his acquaintance with the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw.’6 I take the name there as equivalent to history in general,—the historical summaries made in the various States of the kingdom. Shuh-hëang’s appointment was made in B.C. 568, about twenty years before Confucius was born. In the same Narratives, at a still earlier date, it is laid down as a rule for the heir-apparent of the State of Ts‘oo, that he should be taught the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw.7 According to Mencius, the annals of Loo went by the name of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, while those of Tsin were called the Shing, and those of Ts‘oo the T‘aou-wuh.8 All these, however, he says, were books of the same character; and though the annals of different States might have other and particular names given to them, it seems clear that they might all be designated Ch‘un Ts‘ëw. Thus we have a statement in Mih Teih that he ‘had seen the Ch‘un-ts‘ëw histories of a hundred States’;9 and elsewhere we find him speaking of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Chow, the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Yen, the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Sung, and the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Ts‘e.10
4. The Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Loo supplied, it seems to me, the materials for the sage’s Work;—if, indeed, he did any thing more than copy out what was ready to his hand. Ho Hëw, the famous Han editor of Kung-yang's commentary on it, in his introductory notes to the first year of duke Yin, quotes from a Min Yin to the effect that Confucius, having received the command of Heaven to make his Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, sent Tsze-hëa and others of his disciples, fourteen men in all, to seek for the historical records of Chow, and that they got the precious books of 120 States, from which he proceeded to make his chronicle.11 This, however, is one of the wild statements which we find in many writers of the Han and Tsin dynasties. There is nothing in the Work to make it necessary to suppose that any other records were consulted but those of Loo. This is the view almost universally entertained by the scholars and critics of China itself, as in the statement given from Chaou K‘e on p. 5. The omission, moreover, of many events which are narrated in the Chuen of Tso-she makes it certain to my mind that Confucius confined himself to the tablets of his native State. Whether any of his disciples were associated with him in the labour of compilation we cannot tell. Pan Koo, in the chapter on the Literary History of the early Han dynasty, says that Tso K‘ëw-ming was so.12 How this was will be considered when I come to speak of Tso’s commentary. Sze-ma Ts‘ëen’s account would rather incline us to think that the whole was done by Confucius alone, for he says that when the Work was completed and shown to the disciples of Tsze-hëa, they could not improve it in a single character.13
5. The Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Loo then was the source of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Confucius. The chronicles or annals which went by this name were the work of the historiographers or recorders, who, we know, were attached to the royal court and to the courts of the various feudal princes. I have spoken of those officers in the prolegomena to vol. p. 11, and in those to vol., pp. 24–26. Pan Koo in the same chapter from which I have made a quotation from him in the preceding paragraph, says that the historiographers of the Left recorded words, that is, Speeches, Charges, &c., and those of the Right recorded affairs; that the words formed the Shoo, and the affairs the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw.14
But if we are to judge of what the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of the States were from what the one Ch‘un Ts‘ëw preserved to us is, the statement that they contained the records of events cannot be admitted without considerable modification. There can have been no details in them, but only the briefest possible compends of the events, or references to them.
That there were the records of events, kept in the ofiices of historiography, must be freely admitted, and it will appear, when I come to speak of the commentary of Tso K‘ëw-ming, that to them we are mainly indebted for the narratives which impart so much interest to his Work. But the entries in the various Ch‘un Ts‘ëw were not made from them,—not made from them fairly and honestly as when one tries to give in a very few words the substance of a narrative which is before him. Those entries related to events in the State itself, at the royal court, and in other States with which it maintained friendly relations. Communications about remarkable and ominous occurrences in one State, and about important transactions, were sent from it to others, and the receiving State entered them in its Ch‘un Ts‘ëw in the terms in which they were made out, without regard to whether they conveyed a correct account of the facts or not. Then the great events in a State itself,—those connected with the ruling House and the principal families or clans in it, its relations with other States, and natural phænomena supposed to affect the general wellbeing, also found a place. Sometimes these things were recorded under the special direction of the ruler; at other times we must suppose that the historiographers committed them to their tablets as a part of their official duty. How far truth, an exact conformity of the record with the circumstances, was observed in these entries about the internal affairs of a State, is a point on which it is not competent for me at this point of the inquiry to pronounce an opinion.
6. In the prolegomena to vol. p. 25, referring to the brief account which we have in the official Book of Chow of the duties of the historiographers of the Exterior at the royal court, I have made it appear that they had charge of the Histories of all the States,15 rendering the character che by ‘Histories.’ M. Biot, in his translation of the Official Book, has done the same; but Maou K‘e-ling contends that those che were the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of the different States, or the brief notices of which they were made up.16 I have failed, however, to find elsewhere any evidence to support his view;17 and when he goes on to argue that three copies of those notices were always made—one to be kept in the State itself, one for the royal court, and one to be sent to the historiographers of the various feudal courts with which the State was in the habit of exchanging such notifications,—the single passage to which he refers by no means bears out the conclusion which he draws from it;18 and indeed, as many copies must have been made as there were States to which the notice was to be sent. In other respects the account which he gives of those notices is so instructive that I subjoin a summary of it.
They were merely, he says, ‘slips of subjects,’ and not ‘summaries’ or synopses,—containing barer the mention of the subject to which each of them referred.19 It was necessary there should be nothing in them inconsistent with, or contradictory to, the fuller narratives, but they themselves gave no indication of the beginning or end of the events to which they referred, or of the various circumstances which marked their course. For instance, suppose the subject was going from Loo to the court of Tsin—In VIII. xviii. 4, we are told that ‘the duke went to Tsin,’ the occasion of his doing so being to congratulate the new marquis of Tsin on his accession; whereas, in IX. iii. 2, we have a notice in the same characters about the child-marquis Sëang, his going to Tsin being to present himself to that court on his own accession to Loo. Suppose, again, the subject to be a meeting between the rulers of Loo and Ts‘e.—In III. xiii. 4, we are told that it is said that ‘duke Chwang had a meeting with the marquis of Ts‘e, when they made a covenant in Ko,’ the object being to make peace between the two States after the battle of Shing-k‘ëw; whereas, in xxiii. 10, we have the notice of a meeting and covenant between the same princes in Hoo, having reference to an alliance by marriage which they had agreed upon.
After further illustrating the nature of the notices, Maou observes correctly, that to look in them for slight turns of expression, such as the mention of an individual’s rank, or of his clan-name, or the specification of the day when an event occurred without the month, and to find in the presence or absence of these particulars the expression of praise or blame, is no better than the gropings of a man in a dream. In this I fully agree with him, but as he has said that the ‘slip-notices of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw’ should not be inconsistent with the facts in a detailed narrative of the events to which they refer, he seems to push the point as to the colourlessness of the notices to an extreme, when he adds the following illustration of it on the authority of a brother of his own:—‘The deaths of princes and great officers recorded in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw took place in various ways; but they all appear under the same form—“died.” Thus in V. xxiv. 5 it is said that “E-woo, marquis of Tsin, died,” the fact being that he was slain; in X. viii. 2 it is said that “Neih, marquis of Ch‘in, died,” the fact being that he strangled himself; in II. v. 1 it is said that “Paou, marquis of Ch‘in, died,” the fact being that he went mad and died; in XI. xiv. 6 it is said that “Kwang, Viscount of Woo, died,” the fact being that he did so of wounds received in battle; in XI. iii. 2 it is said that “Ch‘uen, Viscount of Woo, died,” the fact being that he burned himself to death; in III. xxxii. 3 it is said that “the Kung-tsze Ya died,” the fact being that he was compelled to take poison; in X. iv. 8 it is said that “Shuh-sun Paou died,” the fact being that he was starved to death; in X. xxv. 7 it is said that “Shuh-sun Shay died,” the fact being that he did so in answer to his own prayers; and in X. xxix. 3, it is said that “Shuh E died,” the fact being that he did so without any illness. The one word “died,” is used in such a variety of cases, and it is only one who knows profoundly the style of the text who can explain the comprehensive meaning of the term.’⁵ But there is no meaning in the term beyond that of dying, and the conclusion of the mind is that the death indicated by it was a natural one. It is not history in any proper sense of the term which is given in such an undiscriminating style.
7. The reader has now a sufliciently accurate idea of what all the annals that went under the name of Ch‘un Ts‘ëw were, of what especially the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw still existing and with which we have to do is. It only remains for me in this section to inquire whether we have reason to believe that Confucius made any changes in the style of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Loo.
On this point, as on so many others connected with the Work, we have not sufficient evidence to pronounce a very decided opinion. We are without a single word about it from Confucius himself, or from any of his immediate disciples; and from later scholars and critics we have the most conflicting utterances regarding it. I have quoted a few words on p. 9, ‘from Sze-ma Ts‘ëen’s account of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, but I now give the whole of it:—‘The master said, “No! No! The superior man is distressed lest his name should not be honourably mentioned after death. My principles do not make way in the world;—how shall I make myself known to future ages?" On this, from the records of the historians he made the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, commencing with duke Yin, coming down to the 14th year of duke Gae, and thus embracing the times of twelve marquises. He kept close in it to [the annals of] Loo, showed his affection for Chow, and purposely made the three dynasties move before the reader.20 His style was condensed, but his scope was extensive. Thus the rulers of Woo and Ts‘oo assumed to themselves the title of king; but in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw they are censured by being only styled viscounts. Thus also the son of Heaven was really summoned [by the marquis of Tsin] to attend the meeting at Ts‘ëen-t‘oo (V. xxviii. 8), but the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw conceals the fact, and says (par. 16) that “the king by Heaven’s grace held a court of inspection in Ho-yang.” Such instances serve to illustrate the idea of the master in the censures and elisions which be employed to rectify the ways of those times, his aim being that, when future kings should study the work, its meaning should be appreciated, and all rebellions ministers and villainous sons under the sky become afraid.21 When Confucius was in office, his language in listening to litigations was what others would have employed, and not peculiar to him; but in making the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, he wrote what he wrote, and he retrenched what he retrenched, so that the disciples of Tsze-hëa could not improve it in a single character. When his disciples received from him the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, he said, “It is by the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw that after ages will know me, and also by it that they will condemn me." ’22
A thousand expressions of opinion, modelled upon that of Sze-ma Ts‘ëen, might easily be adduced, all, it seems to me, as I have said already, prompted by an endeavour to reconcile the existing Work with the accounts of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw given in Mencius. As we come down the course of time, we find the scholars of China less positive in the view that Confucius made any change in the text of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Loo. Choo He says, ‘The entries in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, that, for instance, “Such a man did such a thing” are according to the old text of the historiographers of Loo, come down to us from the stylus of the sage, transcribing or retrenching. Now-a-days, people, when they see the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, are sure to say, “Such and such a character has its stigma for such and such a man,” so that Confucius thus took it on him, according to his private views, to dispense without authority his praise or blame. But Confucius simply wrote the thing correctly as it was, and the good or evil of it was manifest of itself. If people feel that they must express themselves as I have said, we must get into our hands the old text of the historiographers of Loo, so that, comparing it with what we now have, the difference and agreement between them would be apparent. But this is now impossible.’23
Chaou Yih adduces two paragraphs from the ‘Annals of the Bamboo Books,’ which, he thinks, may be the original form of two in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw. The one is—‘Duke Yin of Loo and duke Chwang of Choo made a covenant at Koo-meeh,’24 corresponding to I. i. 2, ‘In the third month, the duke and E-foo of Choo made a covenant in Mëeh.’ The other is—‘Duke Hëen of Tsin united with the army of Yu, and, attacking Kwoh, extinguished Hëa-yang,’25 corresponding to V. ii. 3, ‘An army of Yu and an army of Tsin extinguished Hëa-yang.’ ‘These two cases,’ observes Chaou, ‘show that the style of the historiographers of the States was, we may say, similar to that of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, and that Confucius on deliberation only altered a few characters to lodge in others of his own his praise or censure’.26 But to make these two instances exactly to the point, it would be necessary that they should occur in the annals of the State of Loo, somehow preserved to us. Besides, the expressions ‘duke Chwang’ and ‘duke Hëen’ are retrospective, and not after the manner of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw.
With regard to the entry in III. vii. 2, that ‘at midnight there was a fall of stars like rain,’ referring, we must believe, to a grand appearance of meteors, Kung-yang tells us that the old text of the historiographers was—‘It rained stars to within a foot of the earth, when they re-ascended’? Certainly the text was not altered here by Confucius to express either praise or censure. And if Kung-yang was able thus to quote the old text, it is strange he should only have done it in this solitary instance. If it had been so different from the present, with his propensities he would not have been slow to adduce it frequently. I must doubt his correctness in this case.
After the first entry under the 14th year of duke Gae, with which according to all Chinese critics the labours of Confucius terminated, Tso-she gives no fewer than 27 paragraphs, bringing the history down to the death of the sage in Gae’s 16th year. Those paragraphs were added, it is said, from the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Loo by Confucius’ disciples; and I can see no difference between the style in them, and in the more than a thousand which passed under the revision of the master.
Is it a sign of my having imbibed something of the prejudice of native scholars, of which I spoke in the end of last section, that I do not like to express my opinion that Confucius did not alter a character in his authorities? Certainly he made no alterations to convey his sentiments of praise or blame;—the variations of style where there could be no change of sentiment or feeling underlying them forbid our supposing this.
1.古凡史官記事,必先立年,月,日,時,而後書事于其下,調之記年,故每歲所書,四時必備,然而祗名春秋者,春可以該夏,秋可以該冬也;—春秋毛氏傳, the introductory chapter.
2.春秋,以始舉四時,記萬事之名;—on Men. III. Pt. ii. XXI. 3.
3.記事者,以事繫日,以日繫月,以月繫時,以時幾年,⋯⋯故史之所記,必表年以首事,年有四時,故錯舉以爲所記之命也. On this passage K‘ung Ying-tah quotes the following Words from Ch‘ing K'ang-shing:—春秋猶言四時也; and then he adds himself, 是舉春秋足包四時之義也.
4.The Middle Kingdom, vol. I.,p. 512. See to the same effect Du Halde's 'Description de l'Empire de la Chine, et de la Tartarie Chinoise,' vol. II.p. 318.
5.觀書於太史氏,見易象與魯春秋. In my translation of this passage on p. 583, I have omitted inadvertently to render the 見易象, and the whole might be taken as if ‘the Ch‘un Ts'ëw of Loo' were not one of the documents in the keeping of the historiographer.
6.羊舌肸習於春秋,乃使傅太子彪;—see the 國語,晉語,七, at the end.
7.教之春秋;—See the 國語,楚語,上, art I. The prince to be taught was the son of king Chwang, who died B.C. 590.
8.Men IV. Pt. ii. XXI. 2. 晉之乘,楚之檮杌,魯春秋,一也.
9.吾見百國春秋史. See the 墨子佚文, appended to the 15th Book of his Works.
10.In his 明鬼,下.
11.閔因敘云,昔孔子受端門之命,制春秋之義,使子夏等十四人,求周史記得百二十國寶書.
12.以魯周公之國,禮文備物,史官有法,故輿左丘明觀其史記:—see note to Lëw Hin's catalogue of the tablets of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw and Works on it, 漢書三十,藝文,志第十. Yen P‘ăng-tsoo, another scholar of the early Han dynasty, gives rather a different form to Tso's association with Confucius in the Work,—that they went together to Chow to examine the Books in the keeping of the historiographers at the royal court:—嚴彭祖曰,孔子將修春秋,與左丘明乘如周,觀書於周氏. Quoted by K‘ung Ying-tah on Too Yu's Preface to the .
13.至於為春秋,筆則筆,削則削,子夏之徒不能赞一辭;—see the 史記世家,卷十七,孔子世家
14.左史記言,右史記事,事為春秋,言為尙書.
15.外史掌四方之志.
16.志解作誌,又解作,謂標其名,而列作題目以告於四方⋯⋯⋯⋯所為志,即春秋經也.
17.Compare the use of 志, in Mencius, III. Pt. i. II. 3, and Pt. ii. I. 1., and in the Tso Chuen on VI. ii. 1; vi. 3: VII. xii. 2: VIII. iv. 7; et al.
18.From the 國語,魯語,上, Art. 7,—at the end.
19.Acc. to Maou, the contents of the ancient Ch‘un Ts‘ëw might all be arranged under twenty-two heads:—1st, the changing of the first year of a ruler (改元); 2d, the new ruler’s solemn accession (即位); 3d, the birth of a son to the ruler (生子); as in II. vi. 5); 4th, the appointment of a ruler in another State (立君; as in I. iv. 7); 5th, court and complimentary visits (朝聘, in the various forms of 朝;來朝;聘;來聘;歸脤;錫命); 6th, covenants and meetings (盟會, in the various forms—會;盟;來盟;涖盟;不盟;逃盟;遇;胥命;平;成); 7th, incursions and invasions, (侵伐, in the various forms—侵;伐;克;入;圍;襲;取;戍;救;帥師;乞師;取師;戰;次;追;降;敗;敗績;潰;獲;師還;歸俘;獻捷); 8th, the removal and extinction of States (遷滅, in the various forms—遷;滅;殲;墮;亡); 9th, marriages (昏覿, in the various forms—納幣;逆女;逆婦;求婦;歸;送;致女;來勝;婦致;覿); 10th, entertainments and condolences (享唁); 11th, deaths and burials (喪葬, in the various forms of 崩;薨;卒;葬;會葬;歸喪;奔喪;賵;賻;含;襚;求金;錫命); 12th, sacrifices (祭祀, in the various forms of 烝;嘗;禘;郊;社;望;雩;作主;有事;大事;朝廟;告朔;視朔;繹;從祀;獻;萬); 13th, huntings (蒐狩, in the various forms of 蒐;狩;觀;焚;觀社;大閱); 14th, building (興作, in the various forms of 立宮;築台;作門觀;丹楹;刻桷;屋壞;毀臺;新廐;築城;城郛;浚渠;築囿); 15th, military arrangements (甲兵, in the various forms of 治甲兵;作丘甲;作三軍;舍中軍); 16th, military taxation (田賦, in the various forms of 稅畝;用田賦;求車;假田;取田;歸田); 17th, good years and bad (豐凶, in the various forms of 有年;饑;告糴;無麥苗;無麥禾); 18th, ominous occurrences (災祥, in the various forms of 日食;螟;螽蝝;雨雪;雷電;震;雹;星隕;大水;無水;災;火;蜮;蜚;多麋;眚;不雨;沙鹿崩;山崩;旱;地震;星孛;六鷁退飛;隕霜殺菽;隕霜不殺草;鸜鵒來巢;獲麟); 19th, leaving one’s city or State (出國, in the various forms of 如;孫;出奔;出;大去); 20th, entering a city or State (入國, in the various forms of 至;入;納;歸;來歸;復歸;來;來奔;逃歸); 21st, ruffians and murders (盜弑, in the various forms of 盜殺;盜;弑;殺); 22d, punishments (刑戮, in the various forms of 殺;刺;戕;放;執;歸;用;釋;畀;肆眚). This analysis of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw is ingenious; but it is all based on the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Confucius. Some of the subjects may be called in question, as, e.g., the 3d. In the 12 books of the Spring and Autumn only one such birth is chronicled.
20.據魯,親周,故殷運之三代. I shall be glad if any Sinologue can make out the meaning of this passage more clearly than I have done. Chang Show-tsëeh (張守節), the glossarist of Sze-ma Ts‘ëen under the T‘ang dynasty (His preface is dated in the 8th month of A.D. 736), says on the last clause—殷,中也,又中運夏殷周之事也.
21.Here again Sze-ma's style is involved, and far from clear: 推此類以繩當世貶損之義,後有王者舉而開之,春秋之義行,則天下亂臣賊子懼焉.
22.Lëw He (Proleg. to vol. III, p. 205) has a strange note on this utterance of Confucius:—知者,行堯舜之道者,罪者,在王公之位見貶絕者, 'The knowers would be those who practiced the principles of Yaou and Shun; the condemners would be kings and dukes in office who were censured and condemned [by the sage's righteous decisions].' This is ingenious, but far-fetched.
23.See the K‘ang-he Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, 綱領, p. 18:—春秋所書,如某人為某事,云云.
24.See the proleg. to vol. III, p. 160.
25.Ib., p. 168.
26.據此可見當時國史,其文法大概本與春秋相似,孔子特酌易數字以寓褒貶耳;—see the 陔餘業考,卷二, the chapter 春秋底本.
Section III. Recovery of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw During the Han Dynasty. Was This Indeed the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Confucius?
1. Lëw Hin’s catalogue of the Works in the imperial library of the early Han dynasty, prepared, as I have shown in the proleg. to vol. I., p. 4, about the commencement of our Christian era, begins, on the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, with two collections of the text of the Classic:— ‘The old text of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw in twelve p‘ëen; and ‘The text of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw in eleven keuen or Books.’1 This is followed by a list of the Chuen, or Commentaries, of Tso, Kung-yang, Kuh-lëang, Tsow, and Këah;2 so that at this early time the text of the Classic was known, and there were writings of five different masters in illustration of it, the greater portion of which, the Chuen namely of Tso, Kung-yang, and Kuh-lëang, remain to the present day. A dozen other Works follow, mostly by Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang or their followers, showing how the Classic and the commentators on it had already engaged the attention of scholars.
2. Were the texts mentioned in the Han catalogue derived from the commentaries of Tso, Kung-yang, and Kuh-lëang, or from some other independent source? In a note to the entry about them, Yen Sze-koo of the T‘ang dynasty says that they were taken from Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang. Many scholars confine his remark to the second collection, and it gives some countenance to this view that the commentaries of those two masters were then in eleven Books; but it is to be observed on the other hand that with the differences which exist in their texts they could hardly have been formed into one collection.
With regard to the first entry—‘the old text in twelve p‘ëen’—it is the general opinion that this was the text as taken from the Work of Tso. And there can be no doubt that during the Han dynasty the text and the commentary were kept separate in that Work, for Too Yu tells us that in his edition of it, early in the Tsin dynasty, he ‘took the years of the text and arranged them along with the corresponding years of the commentary.'3 Moreover, in the Han dynasty, Tso’s school and that of Kung-yang were distinguished as the old or ancient and the new or modern.4 To myself, however, the more natural interpretation of ‘the old text’ in the entry appears to be—the text in the ancient character; and if there were evidence to show that there was an edition of the text in Lëw Hin’s time, independent of that derived from the three commentaries, the result would be satisfactory. Yuen5Yuen was the first, so far as I know, to do this, in the present century. In the preface to his ‘Examination of the text of ,’6 he calls attention to the fact that among the discoveries of old tablets in the wall of Confucius’ house7 there were those of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw. Pan Koo indeed omits to mention them in his appendix to Lëw Hin’s catalogue of the Shoo and Works on it, where he speaks of the Shoo, the Le Ke, the Lun Yu, and the Hëaou King as having been thus found; but Heu Shin, in the preface to his dictionary, the Shwoh Wan, published A.D. 100, adds to the tablets of these Works those of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw.8 I am willing therefore to believe that it was this copy of the text of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw in the ancient character which headed the catalogue of Lëw Hin; and if it were so, all question as to the genuineness of our present Classic may be considered as at an end.
3. There are many of the scholars of China, who would hesitate to concur with me in this view, and prefer to abide by the opinion of which very full expression has been given by Ma Twan-lin. He says, ‘Although there appears in the catalogue of the Han dynasty “The old Text of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw,” yet the original text, as corrected by the master, was never discovered; and the old texts compiled in the Han dynasty and subsequently have all been taken from the three commentaries, and called by the name of “The correct text.” But there are many differences in the texts which appear in those commentaries, and it is impossible for the student to decide between them. For instance:—in l. i. 2 Tso gives the meeting between the marquis of Loo and E-foo of Choo as having taken place in Mëeh (蔑), while Kung and Kuh give the name as 眜, so that we cannot tell which of these characters the master wrote. So Mei (郿), in III. xxviii. 4, appears in Kung and Kuh as 微, and Keueh-yin (厥憖), in X. xi. 7, appears in Kung and Kuh as 屈銀. Instances of this kind are innumerable, but they are generally in the names of places and unimportant. In I. iii. 3, however, we have in Tso-she the entry 君氏卒, which would be the notice of the death of Shing Tsze, the mother of duke Yin, whereas in Kung and Kuh we read 尹氏卒, referring to the death of a high minister of Chow; so that we cannot tell whose death it was that the master chronicled as having taken place on the day Sin-maou of the 4th month of the third year of duke Yin.9
‘And not only so. In the 21st year of duke Sëang, both Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang have an entry to the effect that Confucius was then born. But in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw only the births of the heir-sons of the rulers of States were entered, as in II. vi. 5. In other cases, the births even of hereditary nobles, who exercised an all-powerful sway in the government of their States, like the members of the Ke family [in Loo], did not find a place in the tablets; and though the master be the teacher of emperors and kings for myriads of ages, yet at his birth he was only the son of the commandant of the city of Tsow. The historiographers of Loo would not make a record of that event, and to say that he himself afterward entered it in the classic which he prepared, is in the highest degree absurd.
‘Moreover Tso, after the capture of the lin in the 14th year of duke Gae, has further protracted the text to the 4th month of the 16th year, when the death of Chung-ne is recorded;—which even Tso Ching-nan considered to be not far from an act of forgery.
‘Thus there are not only additions in the three commentaries to the proper text of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of things which are strange and partly incredible, but the authors of them added [to the text] and suppressed [portions of it] according to their pleasure. In what they write under the 21st year of Sëang, Kung and Kuh added to the text, to do honour to the master from whom they had received it, and Tso made his addition in the 16th year of Gae, to show his grief for the death of the master;—neither addition was in the original text of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw. The three writers made their commentaries according to what was current in men's mouths, and what they heard with their ears, in their time, and each of them thrust in whatever addition he desired to make. Subsequent scholars again have adopted what they found in the three commentaries, one favouring this and another that, and trying to make it clear; but that they have attained to the mind of the sage in the use of his stylus, now writing down and now retrenching, a thousand years before them, is what I am not able to believe.’10
4. I have given the whole of Ma’s remarks, because of the weight of his authority and the freedom with which he has expressed his views. The points, however, on which he insists do not make so unfavourable an impression on my mind against the integrity of our present text as they did upon his. That there was not in the Han dynasty a text of the Classic besides the texts found in the three commentaries is not so certain as he makes out. Very possibly, as I have shown in the second paragraph, a distinct text was found, as related by Heu Shin, in the year B.C. 153. But if we base the text simply on what is given in the commentaries, we must feel that we approximate very nearly to what it was when they made their appearance, to what it had been before the tyrant of Ts‘in fancied that he had made an end of it. There is no evidence that anyone of them suppressed portions of the text as Ma affirms; and the additions of which he makes so much are only two, one by Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang (with a variation, however, to which he does not advert), and one by Tso, for we may consider all the paragraphs that follow the account of the capture of the lin as one addition. They were both very natural, and I should suppose were intended originally as notes rather than additions to the text. The various readings again in the three are really not of great importance. Occurring mostly in the names of men and places,11 they need not trouble us more than different ways of spelling unusual words in different editions of an English book would do. The most important variation of another character between them is that on which Ma insists so strongly—君氏 and 尹氏
