1. Unless otherwise stated, all dates in this article refer to b.c.e. The versions associated with the Guˇliáng zhuàn and Gōngyáng zhuàn cover 242 years and end in 481; the one transmitted with the Zuoˇ zhuàn continues to 479, covering 244 years. The text of the Zuoˇ zhuàn itself continues to 468. In this study I use the version of the Spring and Autumn associated with the Zuoˇ zhuàn.

2. Although I have been unable to locate a modern edition of the Spring and Autumn by itself, at least two pre-modern editions of the Spring and Autumn that do not include one of the three zhuàn are still readily available. Duàn Yùcái (1735-1815), Chūnqiū Zuoˇshì guˇjīng (12 juàn) contains the text of the Spring and Autumn as transmitted with the Zuoˇ zhuàn but without the Zuoˇ zhuàn itself, and includes very brief notations acknowledging textual variants in the Gōngyáng or Guˇliáng versions; see Duàn Yùcái yíshū (Taipei: Dàhuà, 1977), 2.745-818 Google Scholar. The Chūnqiū Máoshì zhuàn (36 juàn) of Máo Qílíng (1623-1716) is a more heavily annotated version of the Spring and Autumn; it may be found in Huángqīng jīngjiě , ed. Yuán, Ruaˇn (1764-1849) (Taipei: Fùxīng, 1972) 2.1327-1596 Google Scholar. It is worth noting that neither of these apparently independent versions resulted from continuous transmission; each was compiled by extracting the text of the Spring and Autumn from a version that contained both the Spring and Autumn and the Zuoˇ zhuàn.

It is not entirely certain when the Spring and Autumn was initially intercalated with one of the sān zhuàn , although Dù Yù (222-284) was the first to state explicitly that he had combined jīng and zhuàn; see the Preface (xù ) to his Chūnqiū jīngzhuàn jíjiě (Sìbu cóngkān chūbiān ed., 1929; rpt. Shànghaˇi: Shànghaˇi, 1989), 4a. Also uncertain is when the standard of transmission shifted from “independent jīng” to “jīng intercalated with zhuàn,” and when the transmission of the Spring and Autumn as an independent text ceased entirely. For a discussion of these issues, see Van Auken, “A Formal Analysis of the Chuenchiou,” 11-23.

3. I am aware of only two studies devoted to the Spring and Autumn in Western languages. The first, discussed in greater detail below, is Kennedy's, George “Interpretation of the Ch'un-Ch'iu,” in Selected Works of George A. Kennedy, ed. Li, Tien-yi (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 70-103 Google Scholar; first published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society 62.1 (1942), 40-48 Google Scholar. The second, in Russian, is Karapet'iants, Artemij M., “ Chun'Tsiu i Drevnekitajskij Istoriograficheskij Ritual” [Spring and Autumn and Ancient Chinese Historiographical Ritual], in Etika i Ritual v Traditsionnom Kitae [Ethics and ritual in traditional China], ed. Vasil'ev, L.S. et al. (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), 85-154.1 Google Scholar am very grateful to Yuri Pines for bringing this work to my attention and describing it to me, as I cannot read Russian. For a comprehensive history of Chinese scholarship on the Spring and Autumn, see Bóxióng, Zhào , Chūnqiū xuéshiˇ (Jìnán: Shāndōng jiàoyù, 2004)Google Scholar.

4. The most salient example of the Spring and Autumn being treated as a subsidiary text may be found in Anne Cheng's entry, “ Ch'un ch'iu , Kung yang , Ku liang and Tso chuan ,” in Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (Early China special monograph series no. 2), ed. Loewe, Michael (Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and The Institute of East Asian Studies, 1993), 67-76 Google Scholar. Of the three commentaries, the Zuoˇ zhuàn has attracted the most attention by far; recent works include Schaberg, David, A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography (Harvard East Asian Monographs, 205) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005)Google Scholar, and Pines, Yuri, Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period (722-453 b.c.e.) (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006)Google Scholar. Substantially less research has been published on the Gōngyáng and Guˇliáng commentaries; see Malmqvist's, Göran three “Studies on the Gongyang and Guuliang commentaries,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 43 (1971), 67-222 Google Scholar; 47 (1975), 19-69; and 49 (1977), 33-215, and, on the Gōngyáng alone, Gentz, Joachim, “The Ritual Meaning of Textual Form: Evidence from Early Commentaries of the Historiographie and Ritual Traditions,” in Text and Ritual in Early China, ed. Kern, Martin (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 124-48Google Scholar.

5. Nivison, David S., “The Classical Philosophical Writings,” ch. 12 in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., ed. Loewe, Michael and Shaughnessy, Edward L. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 754 Google Scholar.

6. A recent example of this sort of conventional discussion and analysis may be found in the work of Zhào Shēngqún , Chūn qiū jīng zhuàn yánjiū , Nánjīng Shīfàn dàxué Zhōngguó guˇdài wénxué zhuānyè xìliè yánjiū cóngshū (Shānghāi: Shànghaˇi guˇjí, 2000)Google Scholar; see, in particular, his discussion on pp. 26-37.

7. James Legge (1815-1897), The Ch'un Ts'ew, with the Tso Chuen, in The Chinese Classics: With a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena and Copious Indexes, (1893-95; rpt. Taipei: SMC Publishing, 1994), 3 Google Scholar. It is only fair to point out that, regardless of James Legge's assessment of the value of the Spring and Autumn as a history, his translations of the Spring and Autumn and Zuoˇ zhuàn are carefully annotated and as accurate as any others to date, and well over a century later remain the only complete English-language translation of either work. Legge's prefatory material and the detailed annotations to his translation demonstrate that he was firmly grounded in the Chinese exegetical tradition, in some respects making his remarks on the Spring and Autumn all the more surprising. The only other published English translations of the Zuoˇ zhuàn are partial, the most significant being the selections translated by Watson, Burton, The Tso chuan: Selections from China's Oldest Narrative History, Translations from the Oriental Classics, ed. Bary, Wm. T. de (New York and Oxford: Columbia University Press, 1989)Google Scholar. The works of Legge and Watson are soon to be superseded by a translation of the Spring and Autumn and Zuoˇ zhuàn by Stephen Durrant, Wai-yee Li, and David Schaberg, to be published by the University of Washington Press, Seattle, as part of the Classics of Chinese Thought series edited by Andrew Plaks and Michael Nylan.

8. Compare George Kennedy's arguments that the Spring and Autumn comprised a set of records that was both comprehensive and objective, rather than a selection of events conveying moral judgments: “… the author of the Ch'un-ch'iu was not making a miscellaneous collection of examples for moral teaching, but was engaged in a serious attempt to record briefly all that he knew about the period 720-480;” see Kennedy, “Interpretation of the Ch'un-Ch'iu,” 96.

9. There is no standard system for referring to individual entries in the Spring and Autumn. In this study, each entry is assigned a six-digit number. The first two digits correspond to the reigning Luˇ ruler; thus Lord Yiˇn is 01, Lord Huán is 02, Lord Zhuāng is 03, and so on, up to 12 for Lord Ái . The second pair of digits refers to the year of the ruler's reign, and last pair refers the entry for that particular year. Entries are numbered sequentially, beginning with 01. As defined for this study, an “entry” may contain no more than one date notation nor may it contain more than one event notation, and apparently unrelated clauses have been divided into separate entries, even if they are traditionally considered to have occurred on the same date. Records containing multiple clauses that belong to more than one event type have also been divided. For the purpose of conducting quantitative analysis it is necessary to be able to count, sort, and refer to particular lines in the text, and for this reason, the criteria employed for defining an “entry” depend more heavily on form than do those used by most Chinese editors. Thus, records such as 052609, which contains two closely- related military actions, have been analyzed as a single entry, but in cases such as the sequence from 101502-101505, in which a ritual ceremony was interrupted by a death, the constituent parts of what is arguably a single “event” have been divided into several “entries” for analytic purposes. This division of the text into individual entries is not to be construed as an attempt to represent the original scribal records; that is, these divisions do not necessarily correspond to the amount of text that a record-keeper might have recorded or regarded as a single record.

10. Here and elsewhere throughout the text rén is translated in the singular, “someone” or “a person” rather than “people.” See discussion in n.57 below.

11. See Shaughnessy, Edward L., Sources of Western Zhou History: Inscribed Bronze Vessels (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 73-85 Google Scholar, for a discussion of “The formal structure of a Western Zhou bronze inscription.”

12. The Zhúshū jìnián , or Bamboo Annals, in circulation today has a similar chronological arrangement. The bamboo slips from which the text was initially reconstructed were discovered in the third century c.e., and the text was subsequently lost and then again reconstructed from portions quoted in other texts. While it is generally assumed that its original order was, like the Spring and Autumn, purely chronological, the Bamboo Annals was reconstructed not once but twice, and is not a continuously transmitted pre-Hàn text. For an excellent and detailed discussion of the discovery and textual history of the Bamboo Annals, see Shaughnessy, Edward L., Rewriting Early Chinese Texts (Albany: State University of New York Press), 2006 Google Scholar, especially ch. 3, “The Discovery and Editing of the Ji Zhong Texts,” and ch. 4, “The Editing and Editions of the Bamboo Annals.”

13. Because the organization of the Spring and Autumn is fundamentally chronological, not topical, if among a series of related events occurs an unrelated one, it appears in the text in chronological order, rather than being placed before or after the series of related events, as in this series of entries found in Xī 3 (657), in which the record “Someone from Xú took Shū” appears in chronological order, although topically it is unrelated to preceding and subsequent entries:

050301

Spring. The royal first month. It did not rain.

050302

Summer. The fourth month. It did not rain.

050303

Someone from Xú took Shū.

050304

The sixth month. It rained.

Although the Zuoˇ zhuàn follows the order of the Spring and Autumn very closely, unlike the Spring and Autumn its organization is not purely chronological. See, for example, the Zuoˇ zhuàn passage associated with Spring and Autumn entry 081606; after giving a complete account of a battle, including events of that evening, there begins a new narrative that starts out by describing other events that occurred “on the day of the battle,” that is, prior to the events of the evening already narrated. See Chéng 16, Yá Bójùn, , Chūnqiū Zuoˇ zhuàn zhù (1981; rpt. Taipei: Fùwén, 1991), 890 Google Scholar. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of the Zuoˇ zhuàn in this study refer to Yáng Bójùn's Chūnqiū Zuoˇ zhuàn zhù.

14. Luˇ rulers held the rank hóu , conventionally translated “Marquis,” not gōng , “Duke;” see below for further discussion of the use of gōng.

15. Gassman proposes that, as used in the Spring and Autumn, “Spring,” “Summer,” “Autumn,” and “Winter” do not refer to seasons, but to “calendrical ‘quarters;’” see Gassman, Robert H., Antikchinesisches Kalendarwesen: Die Rekonstruktion Der Chunqiu-Zeitlichen kalendar Des Fürstentums Lu Und Der Zhou-Könige (Bern: Peter Lang, 2002), 431 Google Scholar. It is certainly true that these terms do not correspond to the four seasons as we traditionally think of them, for as noted in Stephenson, F. Richard and Yau, Kevin K. C., “Astronomical Records in the Ch'un-Chiu Chronicle,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 23 (1992), 31-51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “the year (and hence Spring) began around—or possibly rather earlier than—the time of the winter solstice” (p. 33).

16. When records are cited in the text of this study, years are not included as part of the date notation for individual entries, as they precede and apply to all entries for the complete year. Structurally, both year and season notations apply to all records that occurred within a particular year or season. The main difference between the two is that it is possible for a season to be the most precise component of a date notation, but a date notation may never consist of a year alone, and so it is not possible for a year notation to be followed directly by an event notation.

17. See Shaughnessy, Sources, 78, for a discussion of the use of lunar phases in bronze dating.

18. The word yuán literally means “head,” and the meanings “principal,” “primary,” and “first” are derived from this. The word zhēng < *tjeng is traditionally read first tone, not fourth tone zhèng, and may be etymologically related to words such as diˇng <*teng “top of the head.” It is also possible, as suggested by Ken-ichi Takashima (private correspondence), that should be read zhèng and that zhèngyuè referred to the month that “rectified the mismatch of the solar and lunar month.” Because the zhēng (or zhèng) yuè was both the head, or first, month of the year and at the same time also the month that would have regulated or rectified the solar and lunar months, it does not seem possible to resolve this without further evidence.

19. See for example Huán 9 (703); Huán 4 (708) also contains only two records of events, but the record for this year is also irregular in that it is missing two seasons, Autumn and Winter.

20. Records of “eventless” seasons, described above, for which the first month of a season was recorded in place of an event and without a subsequent event notation, are the sole exception to the rule that months were recorded only when accompanying an event notation.

21. Similar sequences include Xī 18 (051802-03), Wén 6 (060603-04), Wén 9 (060901–02), Xuān 9 (070905-070906), Xiāng 9 (092308-09), and Zhāo 10 (100302-03).

22. See Kennedy, “Interpretation of the Ch'un-Ch'iu,” 96.

23. The month in which an event took place can often be ascertained from context. The issue here is not whether or not we can determine the month in which an event occurred, but whether the record keepers intended to note the month as part of the record. Let us take, for example, a sequence of three records, the first dated “fourth month,” the second without a date notation, and the third dated “fifth month.” We may safely assume that the event in the second record took place in the fourth month; there is no ambiguity with respect to when the event occurred. Because date notations in the Spring and Autumn cannot be repeated, the second record is not given a date notation. What we cannot determine is whether, if the first record were not present, the second record would have had the same form—specifically, whether or not it would have been dated. This may be described as “formal ambiguity.” Formal ambiguity is not an issue with gānzhī dates, since unlike months, gânzhï dates are typically understood to apply only to the single event that they mark, and cases in which an undated record appears between two records with consecutive gānzhī dates, parallel to the sequence described here with months, are extremely rare.

24. The term fūrén is left untranslated, as it could refer either to the reigning lord's primary wife, or to the Luˇ ruler's mother, who in some cases may not have been a primary wife. For a more detailed study of Spring and Autumn period marriages, see Thatcher, Melvin P., “Marriages in the Ruling Elite in the Spring and Autumn Period,” in Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society, ed. Ebrey, Patricia Buckley and Watson, Rubie S. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 25-57 Google Scholar.

25. The Chūnqiū shìlì is the earliest extant work in which the entries of the Spring and Autumn are arranged topically, in groups of entries with similar content and form, but it is possible that Dù Yù based his work on other, earlier works of the same sort. See Dù Yù, Chūnqiū shìlì, Zhōnghuá guóxué cóngshū (Taipei: Zhōnghuá, 1970; rpt. of 1802 [Jiāqìng 7] ed.). In his Jīngyì kaˇo , Zhū Yízūn (1629-1709) mentions a number of no-longer extant works with very similar titles, including several with the title Chūnqiū tiáofí and at least one other work entitled Chūnqiū shìlì, all written prior to the time of Dù Yù; see Diaˇnjiào buˇzhèng jīngyìkaˇo , Guˇjí zhěngliˇ cóngkān no. 3, ed. Qiūhuá, Jiaˇng , Qìngzhāng, Lin , Jìnlóng, Yáng , and Guaˇngqìng, Zhāng (Taipei: Academia Sínica, Institute of Literature and Philosophy, 1997), 5.549-98Google Scholar (juàn 171-72); see, in particular, p. 594. Dù Yù stated that he drew on earlier scholarship in writing his work, so it is possible that his work was not the first of its type, though it certainly became the best known.

The Chūnqiū shìlì that we have today is a reconstructed text. The original edition in 15 juàn, listed in the “Zhì” of the Suí shū (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá, 1962), 32.928 Google Scholar, had been lost by the Ming dynasty, but was reconstructed from thirty chapters (piān ) appearing in the Yoˇnglè dàdiaˇn and fragmentary portions quoted by Koˇng Yiˇngdá and others. While the reconstructed version is also 15 juàn, these do not correspond to the original 15 juàn. On the textual history of the Chūnqiū shìlì, see Zhèngxīn, Yè , Dù Yù jí qí Chūnqiū Zuoˇshì xué , Wénshiˇzhé dàxì 15 (Taipei: Wénjīn, 1989), 42-43 Google Scholar, and Elman, Benjamin A., Classicism, Politics, and Kinship: The Chang-Chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 157 Google Scholar.

26. Many such studies are collected in Tōngzhì táng jīngjiě , including Cuī Ziˇfāng (fl. 11th-12th c.), Chūnqiū běnlì ; Chén Zétōng (fl. Sòng dynasty), Chūnqiū tígāng ; LiˇQí , Chūnqiū wá;ngbà lièguó shìjìbiān ; and Zhāng Chōng (fl. mid-12thc.), Chūnqiū Zuoˇshì zhuàn shìlèi shiˇmò . See Suoˇyiˇnběn Tōngzhì táng jīngjiě , comp. Xú Qiánxué (1631-1694) and ed. Nàlán Chéngdé (1655-1685) (Yuèdōng 1873 [Tóngzhi 12] ed., rpt. Taipei: Hànjīng wénhuà, 1971), vols. 20 and 22.

27. In his commentary to Dù Yù's preface to the Spring and Autumn, Koˇng Yiˇngdá writes:

In writing the records of events in the Spring and Autumn, the things done by people of earlier times and those done by people of later times fell into similar categories. When the things they did were written down, it was unavoidable that there would be similar examples, yet they are scattered throughout different years. Were one not to compare [like events] with one another, then goodness and wickedness would not be displayed, and praise and blame would not be made obvious. Therefore, Dù Yù gathered together all the examples separately, and subsequently explained them. This was in order to allow scholars to look at what he had collected together, and examine their similarities and differences, and thus, with regard to the study [of these collected examples], it was easy to elucidate the precedents.

See Chūnqiū Zuoˇ zhuàn zhèngyì (Shísānjīng zhùshū ed., 1815; rpt. Taipei: Yìwén, 1985), 16 Google Scholar (1.21b-22a).

28. Both “Visits to Pay Court Respects” and “Friendly Diplomatic Visits” are subsumed by the larger category “Diplomatic missions from other states,” that also includes several missions whose purpose is unstated, visits associated with mourning, and others for a miscellany of purposes.

29. Records with complete dates have been taken as standard by many Western scholars. As early as 1901, Herbert Giles wrote that “The Spring and Autumn owes its name to the old custom of prefixing to each entry the year, month, day and season when the event recorded took place,” and the records he cites in his History of Chinese Literature have complete date notations; Giles, Herbert G., A History of Chinese Literature (1901; rpt. Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc.b, 1973), 25 Google Scholar. Giles' remarks are cited in a recent anthology of traditional Chinese literature, Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations, ed. Minford, John and Lau, Joseph S.M. (Hong Kong and New York: The Chinese University Press and Columbia University Press, 2000), 161 Google Scholar. Maspero described the records as exhibiting a “valuable precision and exactness in names and dates,” in his China in Antiquity, trans. Kierman, Frank A. Jr. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978), 281 Google Scholar. George Kennedy (“Interpretation of the Ch'un-Ch'iu,” 82) referring to Spring and Autumn records, states that “In most cases the month is also given, or can be inferred” from context, and “very often the exact day is specified,” and in his conclusion he suggests that the standard was to record precise dates, and that entries with dates omitted were departures from the norm. Both Gernet and Pines cite the significance of “precision” in dating, using this as support for the argument that the Spring and Autumn was in origin a ritual text; see Gernet, Jacques, A History of Chinese Civilization, trans. Foster, J.R. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 84-85 Google Scholar, and Pines, Yuri, “Intellectual Change in the Chunqiu Period: The Reliability of the Speeches in the Zuo Zhuan as Sources of Chunqiu Intellectual History,” Early China 22 (1997), 79-132 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially p. 81.

30. The records in Sets 1-6 are generally representative of the standard form for records of these event types, and do not include examples of exceptional or very unusual records. Thus, none of the records in Set 1 (“Attacks”) has a gānzhī date, while one of the 215 records of “Attacks” in the Spring and Autumn does in fact contain a gānzhī date; similarly, only one record in Set 2 (“Battles”) lacks a gānzhī date, and two of the 23 records of “Battles” in the Spring and Autumn lack a gānzhī date.

31. As noted above, the structure of date notations in the Spring and Autumn, which includes a formal requirement that the same date not be repeated, results in substantial ambiguity with regard to month notation, and it is not possible to determine what sort of relationship, if any, existed between event category or other variables and the presence or absence of a month notation. We can only note that whether or not a month notation was present had to do with the individual entry and not the overall structure of the text.

32. Records in the category “Ritual Events” can be subdivided into those that record the carrying out of rituals (36 records), and those entries that are concerned with ritual but that do not record actual ritual events (23 records). The latter group includes entries recording that an anticipated sacrifice was not carried out, or entries concerning the health or early demise of the intended sacrificial animal. The most commonly-recorded ritual event was the yú ‘rain-seeking’ ceremony (22 records), which was normally not assigned a gānzhī date. Most of the remaining records of ritual events include a gānzhī date.

33. The category “Remarkable Events” contains a wide variety of entries, including records of mountains collapsing, irregular behavior of birds, and astronomical phenomena. One instance of a mountain collapsing is dated, but the other is not; records of strange behavior of birds are also not dated. Of the six records of astronomical phenomena, two are assigned gānzhī dates. One (030702) records a meteor shower, and the other (051601) appear to be a record of shooting stars or meteorites. The four remaining records of astronomical phenomena with no specific gānzhī date record comets, which normally are visible over a period of time, and it was perhaps for practical reasons that these entries were not associated with only a single day.

34. The commonest use of rù refers to the entry of military forces of one state into another. The Zuoˇ zhuàn gives two different definitions of rù. According to Xiāng , 13, the word rù was used when forces entered another state but did not annex it as their own territory , while Wén 15 states that rù refers to “taking the large city [of a state]” . See Zuoˇ zhuàn, Xiāng 13,998, and Wén 15, 608 and 613-14, as well as Yáng Bójùn's accompanying notes to these passages; see also his notes to Yiˇn 2, 22.

Another frequently seen use of rù refers to a ruler or a nobleman returning to power in his home state after being away in exile; this use is formally distinct from the preceding type, as the phrase rù yú is always used. Yáng Bójùn further subdivides the various cases of rù into eleven narrowly defined categories, beyond these three basic meanings. Most of his categories apply clearly to the Zuoˇ zhuàn, but not so obviously to the Spring and Autumn. See Bójùn's, Yáng entry for rù, in Chūnqiū Zuoˇ zhuàn cídiaˇn (Tāiběi: Hànjīng wénhuà, 1987), 9 Google Scholar.

35. In his “Prolegomena,” Legge writes that “the rule was that every feudal lord, duke, marquis, earl, or baron, should after death be denominated as kung or duke, and to this was added the honorary or sacrificial epithet by which he was afterwards to be known” (Legge, The Ch'un Ts'ew, 41). Yet when the term gōng was used posthumously, it was simply an honorific title best rendered “Lord,” rather than a reference to a specific rank, as Legge seems to understand it. We find a similar usage in reference to living rulers of Luˇ, who held the rank hóu , but throughout the text of the Spring and Autumn are referred to as gōng. The title gōng, then, had two distinct uses: it could refer to a particular rank, as in the case of rulers of the state of Song, who held the rank gōng, or it could be an honorific term used in reference to any deceased lord, or to the living ruler of Luˇ, or perhaps the living ruler of one's own home state. See also the discussion in Tay, C. N., “On the Interpretation of Kung (Duke?) in the Tso-Chuan,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 93.4 (1973), 550-55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. The phrases “pass into dormition” and “succumb,” which is used to translate bēng , are admittedly not the most stylistically felicitous terms, but have been employed here in order to maintain the formal distinction made in the Spring and Autumn records, which uses three verbs for “die,” including two marked forms.

37. Traditionally, Bó refers to the firstborn, Shú to the third-born, and Jì, the fourth- born. Thus their names could be translated, “The Eldest Jī daughter,” “the Third Jī daughter,” and “the Fourth Jī daughter.” The term for second-born, Zhòng , does not appear in the names of Luˇ daughters.

38. The two rulers' deaths for which location was not recorded are Lords Yiˇn and Miˇn . The traditional commentarial literature contains numerous and conflicting explanations for the absence of location in these records, or its presence in others, none of which can be supported by evidence from the form of the Spring and Autumn itself.

39. Omission of the deceased ruler's name occurs in the first three of seven entries associated with Téng, the first entry each for Qiˇ and Xuē, the only entry for Sù, and the last four of six entries for Qín.

40. Funerals for all three assassinated rulers of Cài were recorded, as were funerals for each one of the assassinated rulers of Chén and of Xuˇ by contrast assassinations were never followed by funeral records for Jìn, Sòng, Xuē, and Zhèng, nor, of course, for Chuˇ, Juˇ, Wú, since no funeral records at all were recorded for these three states. Funerals of some but not all assassinated rulers were recorded for Qí and Wèi.

41. Kennedy, “Interpretation of the Ch'un-Ch'iu,” 97. Kennedy assumed that the Spring and Autumn was composed by a single author, presumably Confucius, near the end of the Spring and Autumn period.

42. Creel, Herrlee Glessner, Confucius and the Chinese Way (1949; rpt. New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 308n5 Google Scholar.

43. Creel cites Legge's translation of the Zuoˇ zhuàn (p. 364, corresponding to Chéng 7, 835 in Yáng Bójùn's edition) as evidence that Wú began to have diplomatic interchange with the northern states, including Luˇ, from 584 on.

44. According to the Zuoˇ zhuàn, deaths of rulers were ceremonially reported to other states, apparently as part of the mourning ritual; this was referred to as fù “to make a death report,” and the form of the record depended in some respects on whether or not the state whose ruler died had joined in covenant with Luˇ.

“The seventh year. Spring. The Hóu of Téng died.” They did not write his name, because he had not joined in covenant [with Luˇ]. Any time a regional lord joined [with Luˇ] in covenant, from this point he would be referred to by name. Therefore, if he passed into dormition, then report of his death would be made using his name. They would report his demise and declare his successor, in order to continue the friendship and set the people at ease. This is referred to as the ritual standard. (Yiˇn 7, 53-54)

“The eleventh month. The Ziˇ of Qiˇ died.” That they wrote saying “Ziˇ” was because the Qiˇ were Yiˇ people. That they did not write his name was because he had not joined in covenant [with Luˇ]. In any case where a regional lord had joined in covenant, when he died, then they reported his death using his name; this was in accord with ritual propriety. If they reported his death using his name, then they recorded it. Otherwise, then they did not [write it down]. This was to avoid carelessness. (Xī 23, 403)

The meaning of the phrase bì bù miˇn yě is ambiguous. Another possible reading is “punish lack of diligence.” This phrase also occurs in Wén 7,562 in reference to recording the names of those who attended meetings.

45. No covenant with Wú is recorded in the Spring and Autumn, yet names are included in all death records of Wú rulers. Jìn is not recorded as having entered into covenant with Luˇ until 632, but deaths of two Jìn rulers, both including names and one with a gānzhī date, are recorded prior to this; in the case of Cáo, starting from 702, three death records, all including names and the first including a gānzhī date, are recorded prior to the first recorded covenant with Luˇ in 652. The one death record of a Xuē ruler, in 663, that appears before Xuē's first recorded covenant with Luˇ in 589, does indeed omit that ruler's name. The first three death records for rulers of Téng, in 716,600, and 575, exclude the ruler's name, but Téng is recorded as first joining in covenant with Luˇ in 678, prior to the latter two records. Qín participated in a covenant with Luˇ in 631 and no death records of Qín rulers appear prior to this, but only the first two death records of rulers of Qín include names, and subsequent records do not. Death records complete with names for rulers of Cài (7x5), Chén (707), and Wèi (700) occur prior to records of covenants but as these are quite early in the text—the Spring and Autumn records begin in 722— it is quite possible that Luˇ already had established covenant relationships with these states.

46. For example, while funerals are not recorded for rulers of Chuˇ, Juˇ, and Wú, all death records of Chuˇ rulers include gānzhī dates, but none of the death records from Juˇ or Wú have gānzhī dates.

47. In those records of events that involve both rulers and noblemen, rulers are recorded first, and then named noblemen. In some cases this results in a deviation from the regular order of states, as in the following; note in particular the position of Qí:

Our Lord met with the Hóu of Jìn, the Gōng of Sòng, the Hóu of Chén, the Hóu of Wèi, the Bó of Zhèng, the Bó of Cáo, the Ziˇ of Juˇ, the Ziˇ of Zhū, the Ziˇ of Téng, the Bó of Xuē, the Heir Apparent of Qí, Guāng, someone from Wú, and someone from Céng at Qī. (568)

Those referred to as rén are generally recorded after named participants (a single record, 092605 being the lone exception), but this does not normally affect the order of the states.

48. In some cases, determining the relative order is problematic, for some states do not ever appear together in the same record. For example, the state of Jì was destroyed in Zhuāng 3 (691), and Xíng does not appear until Zhuāng 32 (662), nearly three decades later. For historical reasons, these two states never co-occur. Their ranking in Table 4 is based on the fact that Pi normally appears before Zhèng and Xíng is ranked after Zhèng.

49. According to Zhuāng 23, 226, it was proper for states to “pay court respects in order to set straight the propriety of order and rank” , and Chéng 18, 913, indicates that it was considered commendable to “serve great states without making mistake with regard to order and rank” . Huán 10,128, refers to a dispute over the “Zhōu order” (Zhōu bān ); see also Huán 6, 113. Mencius also mentions the Zhōu hierarchy, suggesting that the order of states went according to rank; see Mèngziˇ zhùshū ( Shisānjīng zhùshū ed., 1815; rpt. Taìpei: Yìwén, 1985 Google Scholar), 177 (“Wàn Zhāng xià” 10a.4ab).

50. This is demonstrated clearly in Zuoˇ zhuàn, Dìng 4, 1541-42, which contains a record of a covenant in which the states are listed in a different order from that found in the Spring and Autumn. Not surprisingly, Luˇ is not first. The record of the covenant itself is quoted in the context of a dispute about the order of precedence in making covenant. From this we may conclude that the order was regarded as highly significant, but unlike the formally-prescribed order of the Spring and Autumn records, it was not, in reality, set and unchanging.

51. The Spring and Autumn records make no distinction between pìn visits made for the purpose of interstate diplomacy and those that were related to betrothal ceremonies.

52. Six states are recorded as having made multiple pìn visits to Luˇ. Jìn sent the most such missions (11 records), followed by the “Celestial King” (7 records) and then Qí (5 records). The states of Sòng, Chuˇ (referred to as Jīng in the first entry), and Wèi sent 4 missions each, and five more states are recorded as having sent single missions. A total of fifteen different states or principalities are recorded as having made visits to pay court respects; six made two or more such visits (Cáo, Qiˇ, Téng, Zhū, Lesser Zhū , Tán ) and nine others made one visit each.

53. While there are two entries recording that the Luˇ ruler “paid court respects” (cháo) to the Zhōu king, both in Xī 28 (632), these entries are highly irregular for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that they both occur in the same year.

54. In fact, corresponding passages in the Zuoˇ zhuàn describe many of these as pìn or cháo visits; the Gōngyáng and Guˇliáng, by contrast, do not identify any visits originating in Luˇ as pìn or cháo.

55. A very limited number of exceptional entries appear in which noblemen are referred to by official position rather than by the regular form. Examples appear in Chéng 8 (060809 and 060810) and Chéng 15 (061502), all in reference to noblemen from Söng. This form is not regularly employed and hence does not constitute a separate style of reference; these are simply unusual, formally irregular records.

56. The word bēng is also used in reference to the collapse of a mountain; see Karlgren, Bernhard, Grammata Serica Recensa [GSR] (1957; rpt. Taipei: SMC, 1996)Google Scholar, entry 886m. Traditionally it has been assumed that because the words for “die” and “collapse” were phonologically and graphically identical, they were in origin the same word, specifically, that the word for the collapse of a mountain was also used in reference to the king's passing, because of his high status and the profundity of his death. Likewise, the word hōng is phonologically and graphically similar to a word for “dream” mèng, and there, too, a semantic relationship (dreaming and death both being associated with sleep) has been inferred on the basis of graphic and phonological similarity. Yet bēng and hōng were phonologically close in Old Chinese; Baxter gives *ping for bēng and *hming for hōng; see Baxter, William Hubbard, A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology, Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 64 (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is possible, then, that bēng and hōng were etymologically related, for they are close in meaning and sound. Cf. Grammata Sérica Recensa 886k-l, bēng which means “to place a coffin in the ground.”

57. Although the title Luˇ hóu does not appear in the Spring and Autumn, it occurs at least half a dozen times in the Zuoˇ zhuàn.

58. The term rén was most often used in reference to non-ruling nobility, but was also sometimes used for rulers. In records of military actions, the phrase “state + rén” has often been incorrectly translated as a plural form (for example, Legge translates Sòng rén in 091702 as “a body of men from Sung” Ch'un Ts'ew, 474), but evidence shows that it normally refers to a single person. If we look at the Zuoˇ commentary for this line, the “person from Sòng” is identified as one Zhuāng Cháo of Sòng , and the Zuoˇ is replete with similar cases in which individuals referred to in the Spring and Autumn only as “state + rén” are identified by name in corresponding Zuoˇ passages. Additionally, in nearly all records of military events, the agent of the action is identified not as the army or the state, but as the individual—ruler or nobleman—who led the troops. The form state + rén frequently appears in sequences listing one agent from each of multiple states, together with references to individuals who are identified by name, and in such records we may reasonably assume that reference was made to a single person from each state. Records of meetings and covenants, in particular, typically included only a single person from each state, and in these cases too it seems particularly unlikely that rén referred to “people” from a certain state. The form “state + rén” is also used in records of killings, as in entries 020604 and 060905 discussed below. In neither of these two instances does the Zuoˇ identify the killers. As in the case of leaders of military actions and covenants, when a killer was named, normally a single person was indicated. On two occasions (Yiˇn 4, 38 and Wén 7, 558) the Zuoˇ explicitly states that rén refers to several people; this also suggests the default reading of rén in the Spring and Autumn is singular, and that the plural should be treated as an exceptional or marked reading.

For another discussion of rén, see Gassman, Robert H., “Understanding Ancient Chinese Society: Approaches to Rén and Mín,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 120.3 (2000), 348-59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. Luˇ appears in the place name Luˇjì , which is understood to refer to the portion of the Jì river that passed through Luˇ; see entry 033007.

60. In fact, there may have been a complex vocabulary of words used for assassinations and killings. In addition to the unmarked verb shā , employed for killings (state-sanctioned or otherwise) of a nobleman by someone from his own home state, and the verb shì , used for the assassination of a ruler by a nobleman of the same state, according to the Zuoˇ zhuàn, the verb “to slay” qiáng was used when a ruler was murdered by someone from outside his home state (Xuān 18, 777). Dù Yù states that the verb cì was reserved for the killing of noblemen within Luˇ, as opposed to shā, which was used for killings outside of Luˇ; see Chūnqiū jīngzhuàn jíjiě, 7.2b. Unfortunately examples are not varied enough to allow us to determine how extensively and consistently marked verbs for killing were used, and we are unable to conclude whether usage of these verbs was determined by formal rules or if these were merely later explanations for anomalous terms employed in unusual entries.

61. It is possible that no state was indicated because technically Shào Bó and Máo Bó held the rank bá, and their home states, or principalities, were understood by the record-keepers as “Shào” and “Máo” respectively. Yet the Spring and Autumn exhibits certain formal features indicating clearly that certain persons, including Shào Bó and Máo Bó, were royal representatives and not independent rulers. In records of meetings, covenants and military actions, they are named immediately after the Luˇ representative, in the position associated with the royal Zhōu, rather than at the end of the list together with rulers of other small states. Additionally, they are recorded as acting in the capacity of emissary on the king's behalf, as in 060503 and 060105. ‘ⁿ contrast to other regional rulers who receive multiple mentions in the Spring and Autumn, no death records are given for Shào Bó or Máo Bó, and in this respect they are treated like nobility from other states. The formal distinction between royal representative and regional ruler is indicated in my translation; thus Shào bó is simply rendered “Shào Bó” while Zhèng bó is rendered “the Bó of Zhèng.” Traditional commentaries and historical works also indicate that Shào Bó and Máo Bó were titles held by Zhōu nobility.

62. The status of Wú is ambiguous; sometimes references to Wú were similar to those to states whose ruler held one of the five ranks, and but more frequently, Wú was treated like the Róng, Dí and Yúyué. That is, in the agent position, reference is normally made to Wú, rather than “someone from Wú” (Wú rén) or to a ruler or nobleman. Entry 090507 contains the only occurrence of the phrase “someone from Wú,” which appears in a covenant record with a long list of participants, the others being states whose rulers held one of the five ranks. Several references to the Ziˇ of Wú appear; these records include three death records, an assassination record, a record of his sending an emissary to pay a pìn visit, two military events, and an interstate meeting. Most records of military actions refer simply to Wú rather than to an individual ruler or a rén “person.”

63. On two occasions, reference was made to “someone of the Di” (Di rén); see 051807 and 052005. In both of these entries, the Dí were acting in consort with a higher-ranking state, and it is likely that the form of reference was influenced by the style of reference to other agents (e.g., Qí rén in 052005); a similar case is the use of “someone from Wú” in entry 090507 mentioned in the preceding note.

64. In the Zuoˇ zhuàn, the name Chuˇ appears much earlier, in Huán 2 (710).

65. George Kennedy “Interpretation of the Ch'un-Ch'iu,” 95-96, argued that the Spring and Autumn was compiled by a single author, who relied on historical records in compiling it. Kennedy proposed that diachronic changes, such as an increase over time in detail of death records, could be attributed to the fact that these events were closer in time to the compilation of the Spring and Autumn and hence more detailed material was available to the compiler. He was apparently unaware of, and thus did not attempt to explain, formal changes such as those described in this section.

66. While the fact that the Spring and Autumn was recorded according to prescriptive rules seems obvious enough, the purpose of these rules—or indeed, of the Spring and Autumn itself—is unclear. Jacques Gernet, History of Chinese Civilization, 84, speculated that the Spring and Autumn in origin had ritual significance and twenty-five years later, Yuri Pines proposed that it was a written record of ritual reports to the ancestors made in the ancestral temple. In support of this claim, Pines cites a passage from the Zuoˇ zhuàn, which states that when the Luˇ ruler returned from abroad, a ceremony was held in the ancestral temple, in which his return was announced and his achievements were recorded:

“Winter. Our lord arrived from Táng.” It was announced in the ancestral temple. Anytime the lord traveled, it was announced in the ancestral temple. When he came back, they would drink to his arrival, put down the wine-cups and record his achievements therein. This was in accord with ritual. (Húan 2, 91)

Pines argues that the Spring and Autumn is composed of the very records referred to in Huán 2. Noting that the Spring and Autumn records are similar to bronze inscriptions in their use of formulaic language, he proposes that “omissions, concealment, or distortion of the ‘unpleasant’ events” found in its records also indicate that the Spring and Autumn records, like bronze inscriptions, were intended for the ancestors, who were “not to be irritated by unpleasant news.” See Pines, “Intellectual Change in the Chunqiu Period,” 80–85. Yet there is one very significant difference between bronze inscriptions and the Spring and Autumn: bronze inscriptions are exclusively celebratory in nature, whereas Spring and Autumn records are not. Likewise, the Zuoˇ zhuàn does not refer to writing down the announcement of the lords' return, which is what appears in the Spring and Autumn, but to making a record of his achievements (cè xūn yān ) — that is, like the bronze inscriptions, what was written down in the ancestral temple was not an apparently neutral statement of fact, as we find in the Spring and Autumn, but a record that is, like the bronze inscriptions, a celebration of accomplishment. By contrast, the Spring and Autumn contains many events that cannot be classified as celebratory, some of which would certainly be described as “unpleasant news,” including deaths and funerals, military aggression against the state of Luˇ, fires, lack of rain, pestilence, and poor harvests, and also many events that seem to have no direct bearing on Luˇ, such as deaths, assassinations, and flights into exile of rulers of foreign states, and meetings, covenants, and military engagements in which Luˇ was not involved. It may well be that events across this wide range—good, bad, and neutral—were all reported to the Luˇ ancestors, and that the Spring and Autumn is a record of these messages, but to argue thus would require a substantial revision of Pines' hypothesis, which would then have to account not only for records of celebratory events involving Luˇ, which were indeed similar to the bronze inscriptions and the record described in Huán 2, but also news of neutral and unpleasant events, together with events that did not directly concern Luˇ at all.

It seems clear enough that the Spring and Autumn reflected the ceremonial hierarchy and values of the state of Luˇ, and as Gernet proposed, it was quite likely connected in some fashion with religious ritual, but more specific questions such as why this record was kept, who its intended audience may have been, and what its purpose was must await further research. See Van Auken, “A Formal Analysis of the Chuenchiou,” 38-41 and 386-94, for discussion of other views on the purpose and intended audience of the Spring and Autumn.

67. In addition to Kennedy's remarks cited above n.8, see also Nivison, “The Classical Philosophical Writings,” 754; Creel, Confucius and the Chinese Way, 103; Legge, “Prolegomena,” 3; and Giles, History of Chinese Literature, 26.

68. Legge, “Prolegomena,” 5-6.

69. The three entries recording the return to Luˇ of a nobleman who had been held captive are 061507,101401, and 102402; in each of the three cases, the Spring and Autumn also includes a record in the preceding year of the nobleman's having been taken captive. The return of Gōngsūn Guīfuˇ to Luˇ is recorded in 071808; according to the Zuoˇ zhuàn, while Gōngsūn Guīfuˇ was on a diplomatic visit to Jìn, the Luˇ ruler, Lord Xuān, died, and his clan was driven from Luˇ, but despite this, he returned to Luˇ, and having crossed the border, discharged his duties completely before fleeing to Qí. See Xuān 18, 779-80.

70. This point of view is not, of course, limited to the West. See e.g., Qián Xuántóng , “Lùn Chūn qiū xìngzhí shu” , in Guˇshiˇ biàn , ed. Gù Jiégāng , 1: 275-76 (1926-; rpt. Taipei: Lándēng wénhuà, 1987), in which Qián suggests that there are only two possible ways to read the Spring and Autumn: either one must read it through the lens of the Gōngyáng zhuàn, understanding as a work that uses obscure language to convey hidden, esoteric ideas, or else one must take it as a factual, objective history. Qián, of course, assumes that it is no more than a straightforward work of history.

71. It is possible to identify a small number of irregularities resulting from error in the original record or in transmission. The Spring and Autumn contains two records the text of which appears to have been corrupted: entry 021403, which has only the word wuˇ “fifth” in the place where we would expect the text to read “fifth month,” and 032411, for which the event notation simply has “Guó Gōng” with no record of an event. We may assume that these were transmission errors rather than omissions from the original text, simply because it is far more likely that characters were lost from the text than that the record-keepers made incomplete records that did not make sense. The Spring and Autumn contains at least two records (092106 and 092407) of eclipses that cannot be verified as having actually taken place, both of which appear to be cases of duplicate entries, in which eclipses are recorded as having taken place in consecutive months. These two pairs of entries appear within a four-year period, and are likely the result of textual corruption. Finally, there are eight cases of years without all four season notations, and in at least three instances there is evidence that records of the seasons were not absent from the original text, but that the irregularities are the result of later errors in transmission; see Van Auken, “A Formal Analysis of the Chuenchiou,” 57-58 for discussion.

72. See, for example, the narrative in Wén 15 of the Zuoˇ zhuàn, in which Huà Sūn of Sòng protested that joining the Luˇ ruler in a banquet would bring shame on him, for Huà Sūn's ancestor was recorded as having assassinated a previous ruler of Sòng. And indeed, the crime of his ancestor, which took place in Sòng in 710, nearly a century prior, was recorded in the Spring and Autumn of Luˇ. See Zuoˇ, Wén 15,608, and also Spring and Autumn entry 020201.