For want of a hand: a note on the "Hereditary House of Jin" and Sima Qian's "Chunqiu".

• Author: Nienhauser, William H.

"The business of literature is not to answer questions, but to state them fairly." Thornton Wilder in a letter to John Towney, 6 March 1928 (Wilder claimed he was quoting Chekhov) I. INTRODUCTION

Shortly before his death Sima Tan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (d. 110 B.C.) pointed to Confucius' work on the Chunqiu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Spring and Autumn [Annals]) and enjoined his son, Sima Qian [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (145--c. 86 B.C.), to "continue the Spring and Autumn [Annals]"[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (1) Indeed, in response to Hu Sui's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] question about why Confucius composed the work--recorded in the famous "Postface" ("Taishigong zixu" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII])--Sima Qian reveals both thorough knowledge of the Chunqiu and his respect for that classic text. (2) Yet he ends his lengthy dissertation on the text by warning, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that Hu Sui would be mistaken to compare his writings to the Spring and Autumn. (3) Indeed, although none of this should be new to an audience so steeped in the Chinese tradition, what has been less explored in English is how Sima Qian used the Spring and Autumn and its commentarial tradition in writing his Shiji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].

It is accepted that Sima Qian used some ninety titled sources in addition to the imperial archives and his personal observations, many gathered during his extensive travels. The question of what he consulted in the archives--indeed, what materials were in the archives and in what form they existed--remains open to speculation. The Chunqiu and its commercial tradition--written and oral--made up only a small percentage of the total number of sources. Yet for many of the benji, nianbiao, shijia, and liezhuan this text and its commentaries were primary sources.

Thus in this paper I wish first to examine what Sima Qian meant by the term "Chunqiu," and then to study how he adapted these sources for Spring and Autumn history to his own purposes. Finally, I shall present several examples from the "Jin shijia" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and speculate on how the Chunqiu traditions were employed in the composition of the Shiji and what this may suggest about how the Shiji was compiled.

2. SIMA QIAN'S CHUNQIU

   To begin our examination of what Sima Qian meant by the Chunqiu, let us return to his "Postface." There he tells Hu Sui:

   The Spring and Autumn consists in all of some several tens of thousands of words, and its ideas number several thousand. The answers to how all things disperse and come together are found in the Spring and Autumn. In the Spring and Autumn thirty-six lords are murdered, fifty-two states perish, and the number of feudal lords who were forced to flee and could not protect their altars of the soil and grain is too great to be reckoned. (4) [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Our present received version of the Chunqiu contains a little over 16,500 words (or more precisely, zi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). (5) Was Sima Qian's text double this size (I assume shu wan here to mean at least 30,000 zi)? Let us table this question for the time being. The figures of thirty-six lords and fifty-two states tally with the "Mieguo pian" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] of Dong Zhongshu's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (c. 195-c. 115 B.C.) Chunqiu fanlu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (6) as well as the "Chu Yuan Wang zhuan" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in the Han shu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (36.1937). (7) Liang Yusheng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (1745-1819) rehearses various totals of lords murdered in early texts, but personally believes there were thirty-seven, if one counts via the zhuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (presumably he means the Zuo zhuan). (8) Similarly, Liang in a lengthy note argues there were only forty-one states that perished. (9) The Shiji commentaries ignore these figures of lords and states, but Zhang Yan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (third century) gives the total size of the Chunqiu as 18,000 zi. (10) Pei Yin [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (fl. 438) then suggests that since Dong Zhongshu's Gongyang Chunqiu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Gongyang jingzhuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] contained more than 44,000 zi, that these two works were Sima Qian's referent. What precisely Pei Yin meant by these two works is open to question, since neither title is mentioned in the bibliographic treatise ("Yiwen zhi"[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] of the Han shu. (11)

   Sima Qian may have studied with Dong Zhongshu around 120 B.C. (12) and there are passages in the Shiji and the Han shu which resonate with those in the current version of the Chunqiu fanlu. (13) In any event, the Gongyang School was certainly dominant at this time. (14) It was also the commentarial tradition on the Chunqiu which had the greatest influence on Sima Qian, as the modern scholar Chen Tongsheng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] has shown, (15) even if it was not the major source for Sima Qian's account of Chunqiu history. (16)

   However, rather than rehearse modern scholars' comments on Sima Qian's Chunqiu studies further, let us examine what the Grand Scribe himself signified by the term "Chunqiu." At least once the term "chunqiu"--writ small--seems to indicate merely early annals of states. The preface to the "Shier zhuhou nianbiao" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("Chronological Tables for the Twelve Feudal Lords") reads:

   When His Honor the Grand Scribe reads aloud the springs and autumns, the chronologies, and the genealogical tablets and reaches King Li of Zhou, he always puts aside the documents and sighs. (17) [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. Although the Zhonghua editors read Chunqiu li pudie [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] as the title of a book (18) and Chavannes translates these five graphs to mean the chronologies and genealogies of the Chunqiu itself, (19) I follow Wu Shuping and Lu Zongli (20) to understand "chunqiu" here as a term for early annalistic accounts of states. (21)

   Not surprisingly, however, the term "Chunqiu" in the Shiji more often refers to that classic, the Spring and Autumn, especially when the reference includes mention of Confucius's composition of the text, as in "Kong Zi Shijia" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("Hereditary House of Confucius"): (22) "thus he composed the Spring and Autumn according to historical records" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]; or once again in the preface to the "Shier zhuhou nianbiao," (23) where the text reads: "he [Confucius] arranged the historical records and old sayings [tales? traditions?] starting in Lu and putting in order the Spring and Autumn [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (24)

   Yet often the term refers to something larger than just the Spring and Autumn itself, as in the following:

   The Spring and Autumn ridicules the chaos in Song from the time Duke Xuan deposed the Heir and established his brother--the state by means of this being unstable for ten generations. (25) "Jijie": The Gongyang Commentary reads: "The gentleman highly esteems residing in the correct [line of succession]. As for the calamity of Song, Duke Xuan caused it." (26) "Soyin": The Spring and Autumn Gongyang [Commentary] has this explanation; the Zuo Shi does not ridicule it. [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] What Sima Qian here means by "Chunqiu" seems to be something like "the Chunqiu materials" or (a la David Hawkes and David Johnson) matiere de Chunqiu. In fact, he refers to such a miscellany of Chunqiu materials when he notes of Gongsun Hong [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (ca. 200-121 B.C.) that "only when his age was more than forty did he study the various explanations of the Spring and Autumn" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. Commentators (27) have also argued that Chunqiu sometimes stands for the proto-Zuo zhuan text that Sima Qian had available, the Zuoshi Chunqiu, as in the phrase: "I [Sima Qian] examined the Chunqiu and the Guoyu ... " [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ... (28) But it seems also possible in this passage that Chunqiu refers to the classic as well as to the various schools of interpretation.

   Ban Gu tells us there were four schools of Chunqiu exegesis: Gongyang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Guliang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Zuo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and Jia [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (29) When one includes the Zuo zhuan, there are five documented traditions that seem to have been current when Sima Qian was a young man. The bibliographic treatise of the Han shu also lists a number of works in these traditions including the Gongyang zhuan, Guliang zhuan, Zoushi zhuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Jiashi zhuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Zuoshi zhuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Zuoshi wei [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Gongyang waizhuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Guliang waizhuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and the Gongyang zaji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (30) Even if Sima Qian did not study with Dong Zhongshu, as the tradition since Song-dynasty times has held, (31) modern scholars argue that his work shows a decided influence from the Gongyang school that Dong tried to make orthodox. Thus works like the Gongyang zaiji and Gongyang Dong Zhongshu zhiyu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] may also have played a role in Sima Qian's understanding of Spring and Autumn history.

   Sima Qian himself mentions the following works as sources: (1) Zuoshi Chunqiu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Mr. Zuo's [Interpretation of] the Spring and Autumn), (32) also called the Chunqiu guwen [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (The Old Text Spring and Autumn), (33) (2) Guoyu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Speeches Arranged by States), (34) and (3) [Chunqiu] Zaiyi zhi ji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (A Record of Disasters and Abnormalities in the Spring and Autumn). (35) In addition the...