Uses of the Annals

During the Former Han (206 B.C. —A.D. 8) heyday of New Text Con-fucianism, a consensus emerged that saw an implicit code of good and evil in the Spring and Autumn Annals, a code that Confucius had included in his chronicles of Lu. "Praise and blame" (pao-pien) histo-riography were stressed by both of the Former Han New Text Kung-yang and Ku-liang commentaries, although the former became the touchstone for New Text moral evaluation. With the eventual rise of the Old Text tradition of the Later Han (A.D. 25-220), this praise-and-blame tradition was incorporated into Old Text interpretations of the Classics as well. By the T'ang dynasty Confucians had forgotten that "praise and blame" historiography had been a New Text creation and was accepted for the most part with little questioning.

Later Confucians believed that Confucius, by assuming the historiographical prerogatives of the Chou king and speaking for him through the chronicles of Lu, had adapted each entry to express model judgments on every event and participant he recorded. The chronicles of Lu, which encompass the 254 years between 722 and 468 B.C. (when the Old Text Tso chuan halted), became the basis for the traditional histo-riography of ancient China. Tradition, classics, and historiography were indistinguishable.^[5]

Praise-and-blame doctrines carried over from the Annals to other Classics as well. From the Han until the Sung dynasties, for example,

[4] See Huang Tao-chou, "Fan-li" (statement of contents). Cf. Sato^[*] , "Shincho^[*]   Kuyogakuha^[*] ," pp- 20-25. For a discussion see my Philosophy to Philology , pp. 204-29.

[5] For Mencius's views of the Annals , see Meng-tzu yin-te , 25/3B/9. Cf. Legge in Four Books , pp. 676-77, and Lau, trans., Mencius , p. 114. Ssu-ma Ch'ien praised the Annals in his Shih-chi, 6/1943 (cbüan 47). Cf. Bodde's translation of Fung Yu-lan, History ofChinese Philosophy , vol. 1, pp. 45-46, 400-403. See also Chou Yü-t'ung, Ching chin-ku-wen hsueh , pp. 22-27, and Ku Chieh-kang, Han-tai hsueh-shu-shih lueh , pp. 62-72.

commentators read political intent into many of the poems collected in the Poetry Classic (Shih-ching ). Poetic omens were first articulated in the Former Han, and during the Later Hah Cheng Hsuan (127-200) drew explicit parallels between the rise and fall of a dynasty and the vicissitudes in its poetry. Society and literature reflected the same moral judgments. Constant relearning of these ancient patterns of behavior offered Confucians conceptions of the right order of society and appropriate rituals (li ) for proper conduct in both public and private life. Images of the Confucian past, accordingly, were stereotyped and transmitted through the moral prism used by Confucius to interpret the chronicles of Lu.^[6]

The bloody details of the Spring and Autumn Period were judged normatively as precedents. For both New Text and Old Text Confucians, tradition, as it was related to the venerable Confucius, became synonymous with correct historiography. Although tensions between the New Text and Old Text manipulations of the Spring and Autumn Annals never disappeared, the two traditions contributed in different proportions over time to political discourse in imperial China.

For instance, Tu Yü (222-284) wrote an influential work entitled Ch'un-ch'iu shih-li (Explications of precedents in the Spring and Autumn Annals ). A systematic list of historical precedents, the work was based on an Old Text reading of the Annals drawn from the Tso chuan. These precedents were devised to give the Annals the kind of political specificity that the Rituals of Chou spelled out for institutions. The classification of Confucius's moral censures of historical events in the Annals allowed Tu Yü and his Confucian successors to categorize historical events. Forty-two general categories for precedents (e.g., legitimate political succession, proper forms for meetings and alliances, appropriate military campaigns, etc.) were used to organize the multiplicity of names and events in the Annals . Executive policy (hsing-fa ) drawn on precedents in the Annals could now compete effectively, or be used in tandem, with the institutions of the Rituals of Chou . Old Text scholars by now had reinterpreted what was left of New Text Confucianism.^[7]

Prior to the T'ang dynasty (when Mencius was "rediscovered" by

[6] Shils, Tradition , pp. 54-55. See also Chia-ying Yeh Chao, "Ch'ang-chou School," p. 159, and James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories , pp. 64-65.

[7] See original preface, Tu Yü, Ch'un-ch'iu shih-li , by Liu Fen. Ch'ang-chou New Text scholars also made extensive use of the Chou-li . It was not until Sung Hsiang-feng (see chapter 6) that the Chou-li was categorically dismissed by New Text scholars.

Han Yü) Confucius and the Duke of Chou ("Chou-K'ung") were regarded as the axis of ancient Confucianism. During the T'ang, however, Confucius and Mencius ("K'ung-Meng") became the axis. The T'ang historian Liu Chih-chi even dismissed the Annals as little more than a cursory chronology. For Liu, Confucius had simply edited earlier historical records with no intention of developing a systematic framework for legal and moral precedents. He questioned the usefulness of the Kung-yang Commentary and dismissed the "praise and blame" tradition associated with the New Text Kung-yang and Ku-liang commentaries. Instead, he favored the Tso Commentary because of its detailed historical information.

In many ways, Liu's approach represented a clean break with the orthodox view of Confucius and the Annals. Enunciated with imperial support, this orthodox view was fashioned by K'ung Ying-ta (574-648) and his staff into T'ang commentaries on the Five Classics prepared as state guidelines for the civil service examinations. Later, Tan Chu (725-70) reduced the authority of all "three [Han] commentaries" to the status of mere amplifications of orally transmitted traditions that had lost touch with the original Annals Classic. More radical scholars such as Chao K'uang (fl. eighth century A.D. ) went further and, on the basis of technical and stylistic considerations, rejected Tso Ch'iu-ming as the author of the Tso chuan. Chao questioned the canonical status of the commentary.^[8]

During the Northern Sung dynasty (960-1126), when Wang An-shih sought precedents for his reform party, he appealed to the Rituals of Chou as the classical text that contained the actualized political ideals of the sagely Duke of Chou. To lend credence to this Old Text Classic, Wang belittled Confucius's Spring and Autumn Annals as a useless collection of dates and names. He eliminated them as a special field of preparation for the imperial examinations, purportedly claiming the Annals was "worthless fragments of a government bulletin." He favored the Rituals because its detailed plans for government institutions justified a more assertive government—which in turn justified the stricter control and regulation of society. As an institutional reformer, Wang An-shih placed little store by the moral principles read into the Annals.^[9]

[8] Liu Chih-chi, Shih-t'ung (shih-p'ing ) pp. 381-91 (wai-p'ien no. 5), and Inaba, "Chu -To^[*] , ni okeru shin Jugaku undo^[*]   no ichi kosatsu^[*] ," pp. 377-403. See also Pulley-blank, "Neo-Confucianism and Neo-Legalism," pp. 88-91, and P'i Hsi-jui, Ching-hsueh li-shih , p. 264.

[9] For Wang An-shih's remarks, see Chou Yü-t'ung's notes in P'i Hsi-jui's Chinghsueh li-shih , pp. 29-30, and P'i's own discussion on p. 250. Cf. James T. C. Liu, Reform in SungChina , pp. 30-33.

Conservatives led by Ssu-ma Kuang (1019-86) and Su Shih (1036-1101) rejected Wang An-shih's efforts to create new and expansive institutions as politically unfeasible and classically inaccurate. They maintained that Confucius's vision of social order and the conflict between good and evil, developed in his Annals , were the true lessons of the Classics. In addition to proposing the reform of bureaucratic procedures, they advocated a system of moral censure that would invigorate the government and complement political reform as the key element in effective government. Moreover, many Northern Sung scholars maintained that the Rituals of Chou itself was a questionable text, associated with Liu Hsin's (45 B.C. —A.D. 23) dubious efforts to legitimate Wang Mang's (r. 9-23) usurpation. Some claimed that the Chou-li had originally had little to do with the Duke of Chou and in fact may have been first composed during the Former Han dynasty.^[10]

In contrast to Wang An-shih's efforts to dismiss the Annals, the conservatives saw evidence in the Annals for classical models that lent dynastic prestige to the ruler. Following the lead of their T'ang precursors, Sung dynasty scholars of the Annals proposed that the "three commentaries" (Kung-yang, Ku-liang, and Tso ) be discarded in favor of following the text of the Classic itself (ch'i-chuan ts'ung-ching ). This approach freed T'ang and Sung scholars of the Annals from the classical authority of Han interpretations and permitted them to explicate the Annals ' "general meaning" (ta-i ). Ancient precedents were directly referred by analogy to contemporary political problems.

After the failure of the Wang An-shih's reform program, Chu Hsi and other Neo-Confucians subordinated the Rituals of Chou and Annals to the Analects and Mencius. Of the Four Books these two were said to provide a more intimate understanding of the sageliness of Confucius. Despite the Neo-Confucian stress on Confucius and Mencius, however, Chu Yuan-chang the founder of the Ming dynasty (r. 1368-98), utilized the Rituals to legitimate his triumph over the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1280-1368). In particular, he saw in the Rituals a classical basis for restoring pre-Yuan institutions, thereby affirming

[10] Uno, "Shurai^[*] Ryu^[*]   Kin gisaku setsu ni tsuite." See also Yang Hsiang-k'uei, Ching-shih-chai , pp. 267-74, and Yeh Kuo-liang, Sung-jen i-ching kai-ching k'ao , pp. 97-109. Cf. Yoshiwara, "Hoku-So^[*]   Shunju^[*] gaku no ichi sokumen," p. 633

through both ritualistic and political means the governmental structure of the Chou dynasty (1122?-221 B.C. ). Like Wang Mang and Wang An-shih before him, Chu Yuan-chang relied on Chou models to add classical legitimacy to his dynastic policies.^[11]

During the Northern and Southern (1127-1279) Sung dynasties, "honoring the ruler" (tsun-wang ) and "driving out the barbarians" (jang-i ) became particularly important concepts in contemporary explications of the Annals. Such themes were clearly a reflection of threats from northern "barbarians" that materialized with the collapse of the Northern Sung in 1126 and the formation of the Southern Sung. Until the Mongol triumph in 1280 Sung rulers and ministers remained preoccupied with the "barbarian problem."

For many Confucians, such as Ch'en Liang (1143-94), the need to drive the Jurchen from north China and to restore it to Sung dynasty rule became a political obsession during the Southern Sung. Hoyt Tillman has pointed out that traditional Confucianism played an important role in Ch'en Liang's patriotism. Ch'en invoked Confucius and his Annals as the proper guide for the "way of civilized people" (jen-tao ), in contrast to that of barbarians, who violated Chinese norms for ritual, social, and ethical behavior.^[12] Ch'en Liang's own sense of national peril led him to enunciate, in a particularistic fashion, the lessons Confucius had encoded in the Annals. According to Ch'en's reading of the Annals, one such lesson was that Chinese and barbarians had separate Ways (Tao ), which should not be mixed. Accordingly, he attributed the decline of the Chou dynasty to its failure to keep barbarians out of the Chinese heartland. In Ch'en Liang's hands, the Annals became a handbook on barbarians.^[13]

In an influential work entitled Ch'un-ch'iu tsun-wang fa-wei (Bringing to light the honoring of the ruler in the Spring and Autumn Annals ), Sun Fu (992-1057) had compared the barbarian threats posed to the Sung dynasty with the chaos in the time of the Annals. Just as the con-

[11] Ch'ien Mu, Liang-Han ching-hsueh chin-ku-wen p'ing-i , p. 265, and Yang Hsiang-k'uei, Ching-shih-chai ,pp. 149, 249-51. See Chü-chieh Huang, “Old Pursuits and New Knowledge," 211-12, and Huang’s "Mencian Morality." See also Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China , pp. 43-46, 569 n. 6, and Yun-yi Ho, Ministry of Rites , pp. 52, 63.

[12] For a discussion see Ch'en Ch'ing-hsin, "Sung Ju Ch'un-ch'iu tsun-wang yao-i te fa-wei yü ch'i cheng-chih ssu-hsiang." Cf. Tillman, Utilitarian Confucianism , pp. 31, 108, 166-67, and Tillman, "Proto-Nationalism in Twelfth-Century China?" 403, 423.

[13] Ch'en Liang, Lung-ch'uan wen-chi , 4.5b-6b. See Tillman, "Proto-Nationalism," pp. 410-11. See also Langlois, "Spring and Autumn Annals in Yuan Political Thought," pp. 124-25, and P'i Hsi-jui, Ching-hsueh li-shih , p. 250.

tentiousness of the feudal lords (chu-hou ) threatened, and eventually brought down, the Chou dynasty, so the barbarian threats of the eleventh century imperiled the Sung dynasty. What was required, Sun contended, was a strengthening of the imperial institution. "Honoring the ruler" was his proposed doctrinal remedy to end the dynasty's internal divisiveness and to unite the empire.

Sun Fu also called for "driving out the barbarians." It is interesting that Sung Confucians saw in the Annals principles for behavior that governed relations with barbarian dynasties. The stability of the Northern Sung dynasty clearly depended on successful relations with the Khi-tan and Jurchen tribes, which were slowly but surely encroaching on the north China plain. Sun Fu and his followers, however, took a hard line. Contacts and alliances with the barbarians were frowned upon. They called instead for military action to attack the intruding "barbarians" and to defend the dynasty.^[14]

"Imperial majesty" (wei ), designed to overawe foreigners, was now stressed, and protonationalism became a rallying point for antibarbarian sentiments. Chinese culturalism (based on Confucian culture rather than on particularistic appeals to the dynasty) did not automatically restrict the development of nationalism in the imperial state. The ambiguities of patriotism and nationalism during the Sung dynasties permitted interesting forms of protonationalism to develop. The Annals provided a convenient framework for the articulation of such sentiments and for the tributary principles they required.^[15]

Hu An-kuo also composed an influential commentary to the Annals that elaborated on Sun Fu's twin themes of "honoring the ruler" and "driving out the barbarians," which became slogans of the hard-liners on the "barbarian question." They tried to rally support around the Sung emperor and then to retake lands in north China already lost to the Khitan (Liao, 947-1125) and Jurchen (Chin, 1115-1234) dynasties. Like Sun Fu, Hu An-kuo thought the plight of the Sung dynasty was brought on by moral failure and the betrayal of values encoded in

[14] Sun Fu, Ch'un-ch'iu tsun-wang fa-wei , 1.1a-2a, 1.13a-13b, 1.16a-16b, 2.3b, 12.8a-8b. For a discussion see Mou Jun-sun, "Liang-Sung Ch'un-ch'iu-hsueh chih chu-liu, shang," 113-15. Cf. P'i Hsi-jui, Ching-hsueh li-shih , pp. 250-51.

[15] Tillman, "Proto-Nationalism in Twelfth-Century China?" See also Trauzettel, "Sung Patriotism." During the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1867) in Japan, the rallying cry for dissident samurai who wished to overthrow the Tokugawa house was "sonno^[*]   joi^[*] " (to revere the emperor and expel the barbarians). This explosive combination in Japan drew from Chinese historical experience and indirectly from the Sung interpretation of the Annals . See Najita, Japan , pp. 43-68, and Earl, Emperor and Nation, pp. 82-210.

the Annals. After the Spring and Autumn period, according to Hu, Chinese and barbarians had culturally mingled to the detriment of both.

The broader question of the emperor's authority and power led Hu An-kuo and others to call for revenge (fu-ch'iu ) against the barbarians when north China fell in the twelfth century to the Jurchen, ancestors of the Manchus. Hu's patriotic reading of the Annals was so powerful that it inspired the young Lu Chiu-yuan (Hsiang-shan, 1139-92)—later Chu Hsi's main intellectual antagonist—to resolve at age sixteen to become a soldier and to help drive the barbarians out of the Chinese heartland in the north. Classical scholarship and protonationalism were interwoven to form an antibarbarian political position; it proved unsuccessful in the long run.

Hu An-kuo's commentary on the Annals became so prominent after the fall of the Sung dynasty that when Chinese Han rule was restored in 1368, it was informally known as one of the "four commentaries" (ssu-chuan ), standing on a par with the orthodox "three commentaries" dating from the Han dynasties. Leading Confucians perceived the need for imperial authority to ensure domestic solidarity and to rally against external threats. Sung Confucians were trying to exalt imperial power, but they were not advocating its unlimited power. But their intentions belied the Legalist consequences when Yuan and Ming emperors appropriated Sung political discourse^[16]

Uses of the Annals carried over in the notion of legitimate succession (cheng-t'ung ), developed during the Northern Sung. The criteria of legitimate succession began to shift from theories of yin-yang and the five evolutive phases (which Former Han New Text Confucians such as Tung Chung-shu had used in their political cosmology) to issues of moral right and political unification. Ou-yang Hsiu (1007-72) and Chu Hsi formulated a theory of legitimate succession that eventually became a prominent principle of Chinese historiography.

Ou-yang Hsiu's official histories of the T'ang dynasty and Five Dynasties period (907-60) left him sensitive to the ambiguities of writing on periods when political legitimacy was contested. He was also the first important historian of the post-T'ang period to reject earlier New Text theories that drew on the portents and the evolving configurations of the "five phases" in determining legitimate succession. Instead, Ou-

[16] On Hu An-kuo's commentary see Mou Jun-sun, "Liang-Sung Ch'un-ch'iu-hsueh chih chu-liu, hsia," 170-72. See also Sung Ting-tsung, “Sung-Ju Ch’un-ch’iu jang-I shuo"; Hervouet, ed., Sung Bibliography ,pp. 39-40; and Schirokauer, “Neo-Confucians under Attack," pp. 165-66.

yang measured degrees of political unification as the key determinant of legitimacy. His single political criterion provided a fixed and universal historiographical guideline for evaluating changes in dynasties.^[17]

Ou-yang's views were fleshed out by Chu Hsi in his Tzu-chih t'ung-chien kang-mu (Outline of the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government), published in the late twelfth century. Although Chu Hsi thought the theme of kingship in the Annals was more important than that of relations with barbarians, he nevertheless admitted that the Annals favored keeping China and the barbarians in separate inner and outer zones. In contrast to Ch'en Liang, Chu Hsi distinguished between restoring north China to Sung control and long-term revenge against the barbarians. National unity was thus a more compelling reason for addressing the barbarian menace for Chu Hsi than it was for Ch'en Liang and others, who preferred to focus on the menace.

Chu Hsi's digest, which was later further amplified, classified China's imperial regimes as either legitimate or illegitimate. Ssu-ma Kuang had explicitly refused to do so in an earlier work (on which Chu based his digest), which tells us that Chu Hsi was facing very different political pressures. Chu's classification, based on criteria of moral right and political unification, also drew on Ou-yang Hsiu's earlier intepretations of the Kung-yang Commentary. Ou-yang had elaborated on the theme of "magnifying universal rule" (ta i-t'ung ), which Tung Chung-shu and Ho Hsiu had both stressed in their New Text interpretations of the Annals. We find here an intriguing undercurrent of normative theory in Sung political thought. It affirmed the Former Han praise-and-blame tradition of the Spring and Autumn Annals and employed, in circumscribed form, doctrines once associated with New Text Confucianism. Classicism was here joined with a method for using history as a policymaking guide.^[18]

Issues regarding legitimate succession continued unabated during the Mongol Yuan dynasty, when protonationalism was replaced by Sung loyalism. Confucian scholars charged by the Yuan court to compile his-

[17] Davis, "Historiography as Politics," 33-39. See also Hok-lam Chan, "Chinese Official Historiography," pp. 68-71.

[18] See Ssu-ma Kuang's "Hsu" (Preface) to the Tzu-chih t'ung-chien , vol. 1, pp. 33-34, and Hok-lam Chan, p. 96. Cf. Davis, "Historiography as Politics," pp. 40-42, and Tillman, Utilitarian Confucianism , pp. 33-34, and Tillman, "Proto-Nationalism," p. 413. See also Hartwell, "Historical-Analogism," 690-95. Chu Hsi's digest of China's imperial regimes was based on chronicles completed in 1084 and entitled Comprehensive Mirror for Aid inGovernment. In the chronicles, Ssu-ma Kuang had used Confucius's Annals as a model to cover the period from the Eastern Chou (when the Annals left off) to the Five Dynasties.

tories of the earlier Liao, Chin, and Sung dynasties became embroiled in heated discussions over their legitimacy. Confucius's Annals had ordained the historiographical prerogative of the sage-king; hence all subsequent emperors compiled records of their predecessors to justify their own legitimacy.

Historiography was thus a politically charged vocation. To interpret the past (Sung, Liao, Chin) was to affirm the present (Yuan). Efforts by Confucians under Mongol rule to formulate acceptable principles for legitimate dynastic succession were further complicated by the fact that the Liao and Chin were both alien conquerors. Further, Yuan rulers, sponsors of the history projects, were not only foreign conquerors but had also destroyed a legitimate Han Chinese dynasty, the Southern Sung.

For Han Chinese, it was imperative to defend the legitimacy of the Sung, even in the face of Mongol pressure to grant the Liao and Chin dynasties legitimacy according to Confucian historiography. For its part, the Yuan government refused to accede to Chinese scholar-official demands that the Sung be accorded priority in legitimacy simply because it was a native Chinese dynasty. Debate was so intense that the writing of official histories was paralyzed, and the Yuan History Bureau became little more than a storehouse for documents.

Composed sixty years after Sung rule had been erased, Yang Wei-chen's "Polemic on Legitmate Succession" (Cheng-t'ung pien ) reveals that the political legitimacy of pre-Yuan dynasties was very much in dispute during the Yuan. A historian with an ongoing interest in the Spring and Autumn Annals, Yang Wei-chen was an ardent spokesman for traditional Confucian values and defender of the Confucian his-toriographical tradition. His dilemma (which Richard Davis describes as the "dilemma of a Chinese proto-nationalist") centered around his efforts to demonstrate that Northern Sung legitimacy had been transmitted to the Southern Sung and then to the Yuan—a scheme that entirely bypassed the Liao and Chin as legitimate dynasties. Yang connected philosophical orthodoxy to political legitimacy through the Neo-Confucian concept of Tao-t'ung (legitimate succession of the Way), which had earlier been employed by Chu Hsi and his Northern Sung predecessors to affirm the true transmission of Confucian values from the time of Confucius and Mencius to the Sung dynasty.

According to this construct, China's spiritual center, and thus its political values, had followed the Northern Sung court south when the north fell to the Jurchen in 1126. Although Yang Wei-chen accepted the

Yuan as a Chinese dynasty, this flagrant display of Han chauvinism led the Yuan court to ban his essay because of its disparaging remarks about the Khitan and Jurchen "barbarians." Yang's ethnic bias aroused court indignation and the suspicion that he was implicitly criticizing the Mongols as well.^[19]

When the Ming dynasty restored Han Chinese rule, the stamp of political legitimacy was withdrawn from the alien Yuan dynasty. This is seen in the work of the historian Wang Chu (fl. ca. 1521), who refuted the legitimacy of the Mongol rulers in his influential Sung-shih chih (Verified history of the Sung Dynasty). He accomplished this by fabricating a chronology based on Chu Yuan-chang's ancestors (Chu founded the Ming dynasty), thereby placing Chu's line in direct succession to the Sung house. Accounts of the Liao and Chin were relegated to a section entitled the "monographs on foreign nations." Ming Confucians like Wang Chu used principles enunciated in the Spring and Autumn Annals to reassert the supremacy of Chinese rule over all alien conquerors in China's past. "Sung loyalism" was transformed into Ming "Han chauvinism."^[20]