The DJ began around 0380 as an explication of the ritual aspects of the Chun/Chyou chronicle of Lu. Over ensuing decades, it evolved into an interpretive history of the Spring and Autumn centuries, designed (in its final phase, c0312) to support the imperial aspirations of Chi. Its picture of Spring and Autumn is fatally compromised by its retrojection of 04c realities, and by its intentional theorizing; both ritually and politically, it is ultimately a prescriptive text. Acceptance of the DJ picture as historical is the greatest single impediment to the understanding of Spring and Autumn history. The DJ does have an indisputably important place in the history of Chinese fiction and historiography.
DESCRIPTION DETAILS OTHER OPINIONS IMPLICATIONS SUGGESTIONS The Present Text
Title. On the model of other texts listed with it in HS 30, the title means "The Commentary of Dzwo[chyou Ming]." This title is not attested early, and the attribution to Dzwochyou Ming (more commonly construed as Dzwo Chyou-ming) also need not be early. See under Authors. In Warring States texts, as also in Shr Ji usage, references to the "Chun/Chyou" will often mean the CC as embodied in and interpreted by the DJ, not the CC as such.
Text. The DJ was not included in the Han stone classics (175-183); the favorite at that time, among the three CC commentaries, was rather the Gungyang Jwan (GYJ). The earliest complete surviving DJ text is that of the Tang stone classics (833/837). The most carefully edited modern text is that of the HY concordance.
Size. Eric Henry's wordcount gives a total size of 178,617 characters (John Page's on-line Index yields a slightly higher count). The Fraser Index to the DJ lists a total vocabulary of 3,547 characters (ratio, 50:1; a highly formulaic result). DJ is the largest extant text of assured WS date.
Form. The DJ has the form of a commentary on the CC (which in turn is chronologically arranged, and divides naturally into the reigns of 12 Lu princes). DJ passages are normally attached to specific CC entries, but some later DJ anecdotes bridge narrative gaps, or are free additions to the DJ's own historical picture, and these do not correspond to CC entries, but are placed in between them. These are the "free" entries, marked by a special symbol in Legge. The DJ in its present form thus follows, but it also supplements, the CC.
Content. DJ entries vary both in type and in size. They include explanations of CC facts or terms, which are usually brief, and narratives of events, which are sometimes very extended. The narratives are the heart of the DJ for modern readers, many of whom totally disregard the other constituents of the DJ. The great length of some of them is a problem for literary history, since no precedent exists, but on analysis they turn out to be modular: composed of short episodes (which are a more plausible advance on previous narrative) and of longer speeches (for the extended speech or quasi-speech there are parallels in the Mwodz, and later in the forged Shu documents). DJ narratives sometimes end with an evaluative comment by "Confucius" (or by a more generalized ideal moral observer, the jywndz or "gentleman"), which pronounce approval or disapproval, and guide the reader to a (supposedly) correct interpretation of the CC. The content of the DJ is thus in large part didactic rather than merely reportive.
Whereas the CC is Lu-centered, the DJ in its interpretive aspect seems to be centrally concerned with Jin, which it regards as a case study of failed leadership in the multi-state situation. Beyond 0479, the death of Confucius (the last formal entry in the CC as associated with the DJ), the DJ text continues alone through the reign of Ai-gung (died 0468), and adds a single entry from the 4th year of the next ruler, Dau-gung (0464). This extension was probably made to bring the end of the story of Jin within the scope of the DJ historical picture. See further under Scope.
The Original Text
Type: Layered. (1) The original core was probably the set of brief entries giving procedural explanations of the working of the CC text itself (largely signaled by the phrase shu ywe "the text says" and its negative). It was extended by also brief comments on ritual propriety as such, typically attached to CC passages (or lacunae) which seemed problematic to the commentators. (2) There followed several later layers, mostly consisting of anecdotes, of increasing length and literary sophistication, which were added to give precedents and justifications for several 04c Lu political theories, and to set forth statecraft recommendations for the present, and, latest of all, (3) passages meant to support, with a tougher, postmoral statecraft theory, and also with magical predictions and other mumbo-jumbo, the imperial aspirations of Chi. The ideological content of these successive layers of the DJ (which are not structured as modules, but rather are scattered over the entire text) follow the larger trajectory of major 04th century political theories. They are thus one of many contemporary examples of the same intellectual growth process. For more detail, see Scenario below.
Author[s]. (1) The first layer was very likely produced in Lu, by people close to the Kung family; that is, close to the proprietors of the CC copy, which could only have been obtained from the Lu archive by a person of rank. (2) One of the several middle layers reflects proto-Mencian political populism; this would also have been composed in Lu, and the writers might well have been close to Mencius himself, or to those from whom Mencius derived his own political philosophy. (3) The final layer can only have been done by Confucians in Chi, who finished their work in the years immediately following Mencius's departure in disgrace from Chi after the Yen fiasco of 0314, most likely in response to the Chi King's known wish for new input on the theory of the rise and fall of states.
Proprietors. Initially, the several authors. The final DJ was probably presented to the Chi ruler of the time (Sywæn-wang), but it seems also to have been retained by its authors, who made a few changes in the text response to critical reactions, one of them from the Analects proprietors. The DJ soon became known in Ngwei as well, and thus became one of the "public" Warring States texts. No firm suggestions about DJ authors or proprietors can presently be proposed, though it is quite possible that Mencius, whose ideas are very close to one stage reached by the DJ, was involved in one or more stages in the formation of the work.
Date[s]. The span over which the DJ was compiled (c0380-c0312) included that of the Sundz, as well as the first and perhaps second phases of the Gwandz material, and the great bulk of the Mician statecraft chapters. It also coincides with the "ritual" period and the statecraft "populist" period of the Analects (LY 10-13); for the parallels with these major text formation streams, see Brooks Heaven. The impetus for beginning or (in the Analects case) extending these texts may ultimately have been the same: the onset of the new type state and its new social and military forms, whose technique needed to be worked out in essentially new terms, and whose very existence raised urgent cultural and philosophical problems. See further Historiographical Agenda.
Related Texts. DJ belongs to a group of three preserved CC commentaries, all now canonical, the other two being Gungyang Jwan (GYJ) and Gulyang Jwan (GLJ). Other seeming interpretive traditions listed in that section of HS 30 (#59f) were associated with the names Dzou, Jya, Dwo, Jang, and Yw. None of these other works has "jwan" in its title, and all have been lost. The DJ can be shown to interact with the late 04c portion of the Analects (TOA 257), and it was clearly known to the posthumous Mencian schools (after c0303). Once the DJ became known in Ngwei, which was somewhat before 0296, it engendered the Shr Chun (now lost), and in all probability inspired the compilation of the Bamboo Annals. The Gwo Yw, compiled shortly after the DJ was completed, is a separate but closely associated work, more concentrated in form, building further on the most successful features of DJ (it abandons the ritual commentary portion of DJ and consists wholly of narrative material), and further developing some of its most characteristic theories in a more compact and literarily consistent form.
Later History
Transmission. It is known that the DJ was early carried to Ngwei, and it was thus not entirely a proprietary text after its presentation to the Chi court in c0312. Karlgren has further shown that the text was known to the scholarly world of late WS and early Han times, including the authors of the Shr Ji, but also that it had fallen out of favor in later Han (it had been superseded by the Gungyang Jwan, especially as championed by Dung Jung-shu, who frequently refers to GYJ, but seemingly never to DJ, in the genuine portions of the voluminous writings attributed to him). GYJ was in turn replaced in official esteem (in the early 01c) by the Gu-lyang Jwan (GLJ), whose political content was more agreeable to the leading opinion of that time. DJ appears unproblematically in the Han Palace Library catalogue, at the end of the 01c, and it does not seem to have been lost or totally disregarded at any time thereafter. The DJ does not seem to rely on transmission within a teaching lineage; it was known rather within a narrow portion of the Han literate elite, but was more or less familiar within that circle. DJ was brought back into prominence by Lyou Syin, who was impressed by it when he came across it in the Han Palace library (in the course of assisting his father with what became the HS 30 catalogue), and found its theoretical basis suitable to the Wang Mang agenda.
Importance. In scholarly practice which is already visible in the early 03c, and is still dominant at the present time, the DJ has entirely replaced the CC as the preferred source for the history of Spring and Autumn. Given the advocational nature of the DJ, this substitution has greatly distorted our understanding of Spring and Autumn history as it actually happened. The DJ is important for orthodox theories of Chinese polity; as one of its most important and successful inventions, the DJ fills the Jou sovereignty gap by inventing the institution of the ba or hegemon; see Brooks Hegemon. For such reasons, and also because it first clearly defined the ideal of the independent and critical Chinese historian (a role it invented for itself to fill), the DJ in its traditional interpretation is at present one of the most vigorously defended of Warring States texts.
Commentaries. There exist tiny fragments of Han commentaries. Du Yw (222-284), the earliest completely preserved commentary, remains classic. Yang Bwo-jywn, who separately discusses the CC and DJ entries for each year, and who includes excerpts from Du Yu and other previous commentators, is the preferred modern commentary.
Translation. Legge (1872), a monumental achievement, is still standard. Some of Legge's errors of interpretation and infelicities of arrangement are corrected in Couvreur (1951). Watson (1989) gives some sample selections. There was talk, at one point, of completing for publication a translation left in draft by Dobson. Other translation enterprises are currently underway.
Citation Convention. By ruler, reign year, and event number (as Yin 3:4), or with the ruler replaced by his sequence number (as 1/3:4). Both ruler and year can instead be replaced by a Western corresponding year (as 0720:4). The sequence and numbering of DJ entries varies between editions; we follow the Yang Bwo-jywn numbering which is used also in the HK concordance.
A better system will eventually be necessary. Yang's DJ numbers do not systematically correspond with his CC numbers, and an integrated numbering, with the CC entry number as the base, and DJ intercalated entries numbered as such (Legge's treatment is in this direction, and Couvreur further improves on Legge) would better reveal the structure and logic of DJ.
Interpolations. Brooks Original 257 notes a "Jung-ni ywe" comment that may have been added in response to an early criticism of DJ in the Analects, and thus after the basic DJ had been completed. This would be a very early self-interpolation. The labeling of admitted problem passages as "interpolated" is a favorite device of those defending the theory of an integral and consistent DJ. For the general device, see Goldin Emmentaler and further comment below. One whole set of claimed later interpolations is simply the final Chi layer of this continuously modified text. Various Han interpolations have been proposed, but these await final evaluation.
Jywndz Ywe Passages. The set of "Jywndz ywe" and "Kungdz [or Jung-ni] ywe" comments in the DJ text probably constitute one or more layers of their own. Of them, the ideal jywndz or "gentleman" would seem to be Confucius in spirit, commenting on events occurring before Confucius's own lifetime, whereas the literal "Confucius" comments mostly occur in passages that would have fallen within his lifetime (0549-0279).
Scope. The CC begins with the first year of Yin-gung's reign (0722), but DJ comments go back to 0770, the year of the loss of Jou power and the relocation of Jou to the Lwo-yang area. The text thus opens up for itself the whole canvas of the post-Jou period, and it addresses that whole period theoretically. In its final form, it is meant to solve the theoretical problem of the loss of Jou sovereignty, and the long gap until the emergence of a new sovereignty, and 0770 was the year in which that problem insistently arose. See further the following entries.
The Confucius Persona. The CC text associated with Gungyang and Gulyang ends with an entry of 0481, recording an event ("the capture of the lin;" see the separate lin page) which is supposed by some to have induced Confucius to withdraw from the Lu court, thus ending his public career. The CC text associated with DJ, by contrast, has a similar but not identical biographical impulse; it ends with an entry of 0479 which records the death of Confucius. The intent in all cases is doubtless to have the end of Confucius's career (Gungyang, Gulyang) or life (Dzwo) mark the end of an era. But for DJ, Confucius is primarily a teacher, hence for its authors, the end of his activity is marked by his death. As the work of Dung Jung-shu shows, the interest of Han courtiers in Confucius was rather administrative; they regarded him as the ideal official adjudicator, and that function would have ended not with his death, but rather with his (supposed) retirement from office. The different ending points thus meet the perceptions of the respective audiences.
Analytical Purpose. The final, isolated DJ entry for 0464 concerns Jin, and shows that the breakup of Jin (formally consummated in 0403) has become a foregone conclusion. A Jin focus is visible in the DJ at large, and it is likely that the triumph and decline of Jin was meant at one point to be the main thread in the DJ narrative. This would have been a matter of high theoretical interest while the unification wars were still going on, but after unification (0221), this "Jin extension" would have been irrelevant. There is thus no mystery in the fact that GYJ and GLJ (which closely address concerns that are documented for Han) have both suppressed it. For DJ, the great drama of the times was the impending unification struggle; for the courtiers of Han and the CC commentaries written to suit them, the struggle was old news, and the question was not how to conquer, but how to govern.
Historiographical Agenda. The DJ entries which have no CC counterpart, and instead float free of the CC framework and serve to link other narrative DJ entries, were clearly written at a time when the explication of the CC as such was no longer the primary aim of the work. These free entries suggest instead, by their content, an intention to write history as such, and to explore the causes of the success or failure of persons and states in history; these explanations then go through several phases. Other texts of the mid and late 04c similarly reveal the birth of what we can call a historical consciousness. For other aspects of DJ agenda, see the following entries.
Jou and the Non-Sinitic World. As a history, the DJ is concerned to reinterpret the actual fragmentation of the Spring and Autumn centuries in terms of a continuous Jou sovereignty, and to define Sinitic culture in opposition to the non-Sinitic cultures surrounding it (the center-periphery or Endangered Center model, see Brooks Jung-gwo). The latter paradigm has shaped Chinese political thinking ever since, but it is only relevant to the actual ethnic geography of the region from the 04th century; earlier centuries were characterized by interpenetrating habitation zones of Sinitic and non-Sinitic peoples). The identification of "Jou" with "Sinitic" is one of the achievements of the DJ as a shaper of later thought. It imparted a "restoration" character to what might otherwise have been perceived (and in the more successful quarters, was perceived) as a new venture
Virtue. The DJ is also concerned, at one point, to establish a pedigree for the particular sort of virtue populism which Mencius and perhaps other contemporaries were recommending as the right structure for the expanding bureaucratic state. Some of the incidents it invents definitely imply a populist state; one which has already integrated the lower population into its way of doing business. Those incidents are easily refuted as history. For instance, though the mass army is repeatedly alluded to in DJ narratives, it is never portrayed in action in any of the DJ battle scenes, which instead depict only the old elite chariot warfare of an earlier period. Like those mentioned above, they have however been cogent as political theory for their intended audience, and also for later regimes, or at any rate the public rhetoric of later regimes.
Law. Another important retrojection from the complex of developments which actually occurred only in the 04c is the DJ's anecdotal claim of written and public law codes in the 06th century. This detail alone has greatly confused efforts to write the history of law in early China. See the separate Law page.
Cosmology. The final phase of DJ theorizing, in great (but largely ignored) contrast with its moralist or populist phases, accepts or acknowledges cosmic theories of history, which were popular in Chi at the time when the last stage of the DJ was being composed, and which imply a world in which neither individual virtue nor state propriety can guarantee political success.
As a record of the Spring and Autumn centuries, in the categories noted above and in several others, the DJ is hopelessly flawed. As a history of those times, it is psychologically revealing but factually treacherous. As a political agenda with a claimed grounding in past practice, it is of the highest importance for understanding the mind of the 04c, and the ideology of the subsequent conquest and unification process.
Literary Character. Karlgren Authenticity has shown that DJ is stylistically self-consistent, but with some exceptions. The exceptions are mostly local, and do not imply linguistic development over the Spring and Autumn centuries. They do imply stylistic strata, which correspond to the text's ideological strata. It has been claimed that DJ is a conflation of original documents from various states and different periods. The generally homogeneous style of the DJ tends to argue against this, as do the many demonstrable anachronisms and impossibilities in the DJ narratives. A strong argument can separately be made (see the Other Chronicles paragraph below, with references) that there ever were any archives or chronicles in other states to serve as a source for the DJ compilers. The DJ's narrative techniques, especially its use of extended and dramatic speeches, have no literary precedent in Spring and Autumn, but fit what is known of 04c literary techniques (one relevant literary parallel is the original interviews of Mencius, covering the period 0320-c0310, which are actual transcripts, and which are at the same time longer records of speech than anything in earlier texts, always excepting the Mwodz). The extended historical romance Mu Tyendz Jwan, which was buried in 0296 with Ngwei Syang-wang and probably composed during his reign, represents a step beyond the DJ in the technique of longer narrative, and a step in fantasy beyond the one which the DJ had itself reached.
Scenario. The process of formation was probably something like the following. (1) It is likely that the Kung family, at least one of whose members (Dz-sz) had reached high rank at the Lu court in the time of Lu Mu-gung, was involved with the original CC copy made from the Lu court original, and with the false eclipse interpolations which were clearly made to honor Confucius's Lu ancestors (Brooks Analects, Appendix 4). Their known interest in ritual makes it likely that Kung family members or their associates also composed the ritual-commentary layer. (2) It is reasonable to suppose that Mencius, during his years with the Lu Confucian school, influenced the populist layer of the commentary (which is ideologically consistent with the Mencian position as recorded in MC 1), and not improbable that after his departure from Lu for his own career, he may have been involved with the relocation of the DJ enterprise from Lu to Chi, where Mencius himself had become a minister. More generally, the migration of the DJ enterprise from Lu to Chi is strongly parallel to Mencius's leaving Lu for Ngwei in 0320; both represent moves out of the constricting ritualism of the dominant Analects faction, and into the big time. (3) In Chi, the DJ was probably further developed by Chi theorists, perhaps in touch with Mencius, but also responsive to currents in Chi thought, among them some cosmological theories associated with the chief Chi thinker, Dzou Yen. For a detailed treatment, see Brooks Heaven.
Dzwochyou Ming. At some point, there arose the claim that Dzwochyou Ming wrote the DJ, based on his knowledge of Confucius's explanations of the Chun/Chyou. This association is not mirrored in the Analects or the associated Kung family tradition. Dzwochyou Ming is mentioned, but not portrayed as a disciple, in LY 5:25 (c0470), and he is not included in the Disciple Register of c0360 (which was probably of Kung revisionist origin; see Brooks Analects 281). There is no reference to his authorship in any WS text (and he does not appear in the DJ itself, though other Confucian disciples do), and the "Dzwo" attribution may not have arisen until early Han (compare the early Han attribution of the Sundz to an invented Sun Wu). Han in general seems to have been a period when traditions were constructed for the known disciples of Confucius, and even, as perhaps in this case, for persons merely mentioned in the Analects but not credible as actual disciples. The attribution thus has no standing in the visible tradition of the text, and need not be a focus of explanation.
Anachronisms. At most points where they can be checked against archaeology or other firm evidence, including the evidence of the CC itself, the DJ narratives turn out to be anachronistic. One such point is the supposed casting of a law code on iron vessels in Jin in 0513 (Jau 29). In the opinion of metallurgy expert Donald Wagner (provided to WSW in 2000), iron was known in that place at that time, but cast iron (as distinct from wrought iron) was not. The vessels as described would thus have been beyond the technical capacity of the late 06c Jin metal industry, and this DJ passage is thus a knowledgeable, but in the end imperfectly knowledgeable, invention, not a contemporary document. A defense of the integrity of CC as against DJ, pointing out that the two portray different worlds and that scholars must choose between them, was presented by Taeko at AAS/Chicago (2001); see also the CC entry in the present work.
War. One whole set of DJ anachronisms concerns the theory and practice of war. DJ battle descriptions (which, as Yimin Lu has noted, occupy a large fraction of the text) mix the maxims of infantry warfare with an envisioned, albeit not very clearly envisioned, picture of chariot warfare. The DJ maneuver battles are consonant with the Sundz (as has been demonstrated by Sawyer Sun), and these in turn can be dated by their interaction with the Mician art of defensive warfare, which must have arisen relatively late in the Mician enterprise, and by the connection of the Sundz text with Sun Bin (see the Sundz entry in the present work). These and other indications in both texts ultimately point to a late 04c composition date for DJ.
The presence of even one demonstrable invention, let alone a whole series of factually dubious descriptions, can only raise doubts about the genuineness of those DJ passages of generally similar character but which are less directly testable.
Historiography. The DJ's sense of the larger movements of history relates it to the blossoming of historical consciousness which began in the middle of the 04c (LY 3:9, c0342; Brooks Analects 81) and led to the confidence in historical extrapolation by the late 04c (LY 2:23, c0317; Brooks Analects 114). Its final layer features predictions of future Chi greatness, and adds Chi Hwan-gung to the previous list of hegemons (which had all been rulers of Jin). The notion of a hegemon system in the Spring and Autumn is refuted by the fact that there is no Spring and Autumn evidence for it, that the Bamboo Annals (whenever it was composed), which purports to represent Jin tradition, ignores the Chi phase of it and gives a wildly different version of the Jin phase, and that the DJ concept itself can be shown to undergo evolution within that text (see Brooks Hegemon).
Predictions. The Predictions of the DJ, as a set, have often been used to establish the text's termini post quem and post quem non. We find that the implied window for the final compilation of the text (between its last fulfilled prediction and its first refuted prediction) is approximately 0327/0307. The arguments from Anachronisms and from the Gwo Yw are largely consistent with this indication.
Chi Thought. In addition to the Chi propaganda mentioned above, parts of the DJ show unmistakable traces of Chi thought. Yin/yang and wu-sying theories figure in a few passages. Other passages are aware of the astral correspondence theories usually associated with the Chi thinker Dzou Yen. Yin/yang and wu-sying, in the cosmic theory sense, do not figure in preserved texts from earlier than the last half of the 04c. Dzou Yen is described in the seemingly most reliable of the relevant SJ passages (SJ 74) as directly following Mencius in Chi, and as being the leading figure in the Ji-sya enterprise that was created at that time; he must have been already well known before doing so. Mencius is known to have arrived in Chi in 0318 and departed in 0313, hence Dzou Yen's theories would have been generally known at least in the Chi capital by c0315 at latest. These details of content affinity also tend to point to the period in the vicinity of c0315 for the composition of the Chi layer of the Dzwo Jwan.
Development. It is sometimes urged, in defense of the DJ (see for example Bilsky), that the text as a whole gives a developmental picture of the Spring and Autumn centuries which no 04c compiler would have known how to construct, so that DJ as a whole must be based on correct information, even if there are some small problems with particular passages. We observe that, besides these developmental areas, there are also areas (such as the Lu ritual calendar) in which the DJ gives a perfectly static picture, but might have been expected to show evolution (the ritualists of the middle Analects were very clear that ritual practices changed over time). This mixed picture, partly developmental and partly static, is dubious simply because it is mixed. Further, the areas in which the DJ does show development, such as governmental practice and text history, are precisely the ones in which Lu and Chi scholar-bureaucrats of the late 04c might have been expected to be both interested and professionally knowledgeable. They would thus, in these areas, have been able to construct a developmental picture which can pass with a modern reader as plausible and convincing. On examination, several of the DJ developmental sequences turn out to be explainable in other terms. See our separate pages on the DJ treatment of the Shr, Yi, and Shu texts.
Early Attestation. The now lost Shr Chun, a work containing the Yi oracles extracted from the DJ, was included among the texts buried with Ngwei Syang-wang in 0296. This shows conclusively that the DJ was esteemed in Ngwei (the only rival of Chi as an intellectual center of the period; note that Mencius spent the high-profile portion of his public career in both places), and had been subjected to analysis in Ngwei, not later than a year or so before 0296, and probably somewhat earlier. The DJ is quoted or mentioned by several WS and Han authors, but usually in summary form, and usually under the title Chun/Chyou. They are nonetheless quotations, and count as evidence of existence and importance.
Intertextual Relations. Among others, the lost source Jou Rvn is quoted by the DJ (Yin 6:4, Jau 5:1) and by the Analects (LY 16:1, circumstantially dated to c0285), as well as by the Kungdz Jya-yw. The overlap bespeaks a certain commonality of milieu between the DJ and this portion of the Analects (and of Kung family tradition stemming from this same period), but this does not lead to a date for DJ. More precisely, for dating purposes, there is a brief dialogue between the conservative peace Confucians of the Analects and the big-power Confucians of the DJ (LY 14:14; see Brooks Analects 257). This appears to show the Analects reacting against the completed DJ, and the proprietors of the DJ responding in turn. The date of the Analects passage is constrained by other considerations to c0310. This suggest a DJ terminus ante quem of c0310.
The Gwo Yw Connection. The Gwo Yw (GY), whose form might be roughly described as that of a DJ reduced to its narrative highlights (or of a DJ stripped of the hampering CC and its boring ritual commentary; we have in another place called it the paperback edition of DJ), is obviously related to DJ, though the nature of the relation has never been satisfactorily stated. Several DJ anecdotes have GY counterparts, and in many of these cases, the GY versions are demonstrably later, both literarily and politically. It can be argued that GY sometimes merely supplements some sets of DJ narratives (the Jau Dun saga would be one example), and thus that the GY author presumed a readership familiar with the DJ. For all these reasons, GY as a whole is thus later than DJ. This is also the traditional opinion; GY has been variously said to have been composed out of the "leftovers" of the DJ, or to have been written by the same author after he went blind. It is disputed whether the reference to a brief "Gwo Yw" among the texts found in Ngwei Syang-wang's 0296 tomb represents some version or variant of our Gwo Yw. In any case, the date of our GY is partly fixed by an astronomical reference which, because it is incorrect, cannot have been observed and transmitted, but must have been calculated by a slightly defective method at a later date. Pankenier Astrology concludes that the base year of those calculations was c0296. This requires that the earlier DJ was completed somewhat before c0300. This is consistent with all other indications.
Linguistic Evidence. Karlgren's study found some inconsistencies of usage in DJ. These and other indicator words, as well as some devices of narrative and rhetorical technique, turn out to coincide with the DJ layers identified above on ideological grounds. The post-Karlgren linguistic anomalies of the DJ thus turn out to be intelligible in terms of the present scenario.
Sources. It has often been conceded that the DJ was actually put together as a text in the mid or late 04c, but it has almost as often been claimed that it was based on earlier material, and thus, after all, possesses the historical value, if not the linguistic character, of an earlier text. This is the standard defense against evidences of late date for all the Warring States texts. We here deal briefly with its DJ version.
In the DJ, there is much to be argued against the general claim of early sources, some of it already noted above, such as the absence of other state chronicles, which in recent years have often been claimed to be the source of DJ information. It is also worth noting that the DJ tradition itself makes no such claim of documentary sources; that claim is a modern one, without standing in the tradition of the text. That tradition does not claim that the DJ was based on peripatetic research visits to state libraries, including the libraries of states no longer extant in its time, but rather that its probity is guaranteed by the personal knowledge and judgement of Confucius. The DJ must be refuted in its traditional acceptation, before the "sources" claim can be even made.
Some carefully considered proposals have been made for the sources of particular narratives or facts, several of them by Barry Blakeley (see again below). These still await appropriately careful evaluation. We may say in the interim that the difference between a retrojection based on information from contemporary (04c) Chu diplomatic colleagues, and a transcript based on Chu archives of the 07c, may be very hard for modern readers to detect. The information of 04c Chu diplomatic colleagues about lineage traditions, administrative structure, and anecdotes of famous Chu persons may well be correct, in which case the substantive difference between those DJ passages and the real thing will be zero. But the "real thing" in question may also, in some cases, still be later than the DJ claims. One example is government structure. If we confine ourselves to the CC, which occasionally mentions administrative titles, and collate that entire situation, we find a relatively early stage, perhaps better an incipient stage, of beaucratization; the state has not yet begun to equip itself to do the many things that came to be expected of it when, in the time of the mass infantry army, it was responsible for managing more resources, more closely. The picture gained by a similar collation of the DJ material, when compared to the CC finding, has the look of a later stage, at some points a much later stage, in that bureaucratization process. That bureaucratization took place,there can be no doubt. The question is, When. For that, the first and best recourse will properly be the CC, which amounts to contemporary information. When DJ shows a later evolutionary state in a process which is extensively documented in CC, we are probably justified as taking the DJ as attesting, or as influenced by, a later historical moment.
From another angle, we note that many DJ anecdotes are disabled as history by their manifest anachronisms and retrojections, and by the obvious usefulness that some of those anachronisms would have had for 04c political theorists anxious to establish a pedigree for what were in fact new proposals or recent practices. We have, for this large class of DJ material, both the evidence of forgery and a valid motive for forgery. From the DJ material we must also subtract the literary embellishments and the 04c narrative topoi in which they clearly abound. Eric Henry has pointed to the presence of narrative doublets in DJ; this is another sign of formalistic rather than factual sources for the DJ stories as they stand. These and like considerations eliminate whole swaths of the DJ as even presumptively accurate for earlier periods. From that elimination process, it may well be that something survives. We would not be surprised if that more plausible residue amounts to little more than can be readily accounted for on the assumption of pooled lore traditions of members of the 04c diplomatic and governmental elite from different states: the class from which the writers of the DJ themselves most probably came.
Implications General. Much is at stake in the question of the value of the DJ for earlier history. If the above negative estimate of that value can be maintained, the DJ becomes not only a late, but a treacherous, source for Spring and Autumn, since the DJ not only invents and retrojects, sometimes perhaps inadvertently, it also intentionally imposes its own historiographical agenda on the earlier period. The CC then becomes the primary source for Spring and Autumn. Substituting that more credible text for the often demonstrablyh spurious and constructed DJ produces a very different picture of the early post-Jou centuries (see the CC entry).
The DJ at the same time acquires a new value as the earliest consciously historiographical work in the Chinese tradition, and as a reflection of one position, or more exactly a whole series of related but distinct positions, in the 04c statecraft controversies. Since the 04c statecraft controversies are the core of all classical Chinese thought, this sense of the DJ assigns to it a position of great importance as a document of intellectual history. The present theory thus does not reject the DJ in toto, but it does imply that its real historical value has been severely misconstrued by previous generations.
Other Opinions Traditional Ascription. The DJ is traditionally ascribed to Confucius's disciple Dzwochyou Ming (or Dzwo Chyou-ming), who is thought to have handed down Confucius's own secret teachings as encoded by himself in the CC (and then decoded in his private conversations, now constituting the DJ). As noted above, LY 5:25 (c0470) portrays Dzwochyou Ming not as a disciple but as a respected older contemporary of Confucius, and the earliest form of the Disciple List (Didz Ji, c0360) still does not include his name. A generalized version of this claim, that the DJ in some less specified way reflects Confucius's personal views of Spring and Autumn events, also cannot survive scrutiny. On the external side, the Analects, conceded to be the most reliable source for Confucius, makes no such claim or assumption. On the internal side: Confucius lived through the end of the Spring and Autumn period, and must have had detailed knowledge of such drastic Lu events as the 0317-0310 exile of Jau-gung. Readers of the CC entries for the end of Jau-gung's reign badly want more, and more intimate, information about the background of Jau-gung's abortive suppression of the kin clans. We look to the DJ to supply these, but the DJ does not do so. Instead, it embroiders the CC entries as any reasonably imaginative reader might do; as we ourselves might do. The DJ thus does not imply the depth of contemporary knowledge which the historical Confucius must in fact have possessed. We conclude that neither Dzwochyou Ming nor any other contemporary of Confucius has embodied Confucius's own knowledge of events in the DJ, since the DJ does not in fact display such knowledge.
Ritual Propriety Theories
Franke and Kennedy. The purpose of the CC, in the traditional view, is to contain Confucius's coded judgements of praise and blame for persons and actions, and the purpose of DJ (and other commentaries) is to expound Confucius's values by decoding the CC. This view was restated for Western Sinology by Otto Franke, both in his general history and in his separate study of the CC and Dung Jung-shu. Kennedy Interpretation, a thesis done under Franke, and following but greatly improving on Legge's observations, has shown (1) that the decoding efforts of DJ, GYJ, and GLJ are mutually inconsistent and individually incoherent, and (2) that naturalistic explanations are available for, eg, such variations as the presence or absence of detail in the group of entries for the deaths of rulers. This marks the modern revolution in the understanding of the CC. If it stands, as seems likely, then the modern understanding of the DJ must be affected by it.
Robert Gassmann reopened the Franke/Kennedy debate in 1988 (Cheng Ming, p10-11) and attempted to prove the correctness of Franke's ritualistic understanding of the CC, thus restoring the traditional rationale of the DJ, and the specific decoding theory of the GYJ. But Gassmann's study of the CC death records does not require, or even support, a coding theory, and his factor of the "prestige" of other states, invoked in explaining the presence or absence of detail in the Lu CC, easily reduces to the relative "power" of those states, that is, to contemporary power relations and not to an overriding ritual agenda. Gassmann, in response to an inquiry by Carine Defoort, has acknowledged the importance of power relations in the period (communication to WSW). This naturalistic "power" explanation, so far from refuting Kennedy "naturalistic" theory, then in reality amends and extends, and thus in the last analysis strengthens, that theory. Our own view (see the CC entry) is that the world of Spring and Autumn, as portrayed in the CC, is a world of laterally established relations between the various states, and of power struggles among those states. Gassmann's data prove to be consistent with that view. For the explanation of seeming judgemental grimaces in CC as actually grimaces of the time, rather than as imposed by some later moralist, see Brooks Distancing Ji, which follows, and confirms the implications of, a similar demonstration for a different group of words by Carine Defoort.
Developmental Theories
Lester Bilsky's abstract, of a paper developing the developmental theory of several aspects of Spring and Autumn history in DJ may be seen at the WSWG 9 page. If the DJ material shows plausible historical evolution over time, its claim to veracity is strengthened. Our response to this claim has been generally indicated above.
Carine Defoort presented some statistics on the use of the term li/ritual in DJ to the WSW discussion. The subsequent discussion is for the time being limited to members of that list.
Yuri Pines claims, and places major reliance on the claim, that the ratio of two forms of the coverb yw2 "in relation to" constitutes evidence for linguistic progression over the period of the DJ, and thus validates the DJ texts as genuine linguistic artifacts of the time portrayed. This is refuted by the CC, which shows no such evolution, but keeps scribally to one form of the coverb throughout (the CC does shows slight evolution in such areas of deep grammar as preferred adverb position; see the CC page). It is also refuted by the general linguistic homogeneity of DJ prose, which bespeak either virtually complete normalization or contemporary composition (given the DJ's frequent anachronisms, the latter hypothesis is by far the more likely one). The statistical treatment of the yw2 data is also statistically unsound; see the review elsewhere at this site. It suffices to say that the DJ uses the older form of yw2 when under the local influence of the CC wording (the CC invariably uses that older form), or when quoting Shr or Shu, or when in an archaizing mode, but otherwise writes the later form, like any other 04c text.
Transformation Theories
Han Syi-chou in 1966 proposed to rearrange the DJ along the lines of the GY, by dropping the verbal and ritual commentaries, and by grouping the stories under the state with which they deal; he claims that this was the original form of the DJ. Western scholars made similar suggestions, both before and after 1966.
All such suggestions ignore the residual commentary function possessed, not only by the manifest DJ explicative notes, but also by most of the longer DJ stories. The rearrangement also does not yield an ideologically consistent picture, but leaves the statecraft theory of the writer (or, that of the respective states) confused and internally contradictory. Nor does the rearrangement proposal deal with the openly anachronistic nature of much of the DJ material. Rearrangement will not cure the DJ's demonstrated anachronisms and inconsistencies, and thus will not achieve the end that its proposers seek.
Instead, the internally inconsistent nature of DJ theorizing, and the implied 04c source of the DJ language and of its retrojections, turn out to speak in favor of a scenario very like the one proposed here. The "separate text" theory, if systematically pushed, eventually converges with a "separate agenda" theory.
Written Source Theories
Barry Blakeley presumes the accuracy of DJ information about the official structures of several Spring and Autumn states, (Disparities; compare Thatcher Comparison) and derives a generally convincing picture from collating that information. It is not, however, excluded that such information, in a form sufficiently accurate to pass any test that we can now apply to it, might have been learned by Lu and Chi diplomats their own contacts with other 04c states, and thus have reached the DJ compilers in the form of an official lore or general knowledge tradition. It is acknowledged by most adherents of the source-document theory of DJ that, if documents of different states and of different periods were incorporated into DJ, they have been flawlessly assimilated by the editors to the general DJ style. This seems a difficult assumption.
Yuri Pines abandons the traditional view of the Dzwo Jwan (in several earlier articles and in Foundations 2002), but seeks to retain the value of the text as a primary source for Spring and Autumn history by positing that its narratives, including the speeches contained in them, are based on written records preserved in the various state archives. The scenario for this transmission is not stated, but it would obviously require a large number of scribes (equipped with bamboo and other writing materials), stationed not only at court (a plausible supposition, as Thatcher has pointed out) but in chariots during battle, among squads of five soldiers following defeat, beside highways, near to bathtubs, and up certain mulberry trees during otherwise secret conversations. There are certain problems with this assumption. For one thing, the storage of the resulting gigantic mass of transcripts, and their later conveyance to a point or points at which the DJ compilers could have had access to them, also offer serious logistical problems. The proposal, despite its current popularity, would thus seem to be self-refuting, and it has not won notable numbers of converts during years of discussion on WSW and at various WSWG Conferences. Sinology as a whole seems to be largely disposed to take a Thucydidean view of the matter; that is, to regard the speeches of the DJ, as distinct from its other material, as probably invented by the DJ authors. See further our review of Pines, elsewhere at this site.
Other Chronicles. All theories of documentary sources for DJ rest on the prior assumption that extensive written records (far more elaborate than anything in the CC) were indeed kept by all the Spring and Autumn states, not just by Lu. See our entry on Other Chronicles for a refutation. But briefly: (1) No such claim is made in any WS text that can plausibly be shown to antedate the public release of the influential DJ itself. (2) The claims of state archives in Mwodz 31, in particular, can be shown to be interpolated within that text, whose date in any case seems likely to be post-DJ. (3) The only "other chronicle" which is claimed to have survived from this period is the [Spring and Autumn portion of the] Bamboo Annals (BA), representing the state of Jin. This, then, provides the only realistic text of the "other chronicles" claim. Examination of the BA shows that, whatever its value for events near to its own compilation, the portion of BA corresponding to Spring and Autumn was based inter alia on CC, and indeed on DJ. Further, the character of BA entries very closely agrees with that of CC entries. It then follows that (a) there was no Jin chronicle at all, at least none that survived to the 04c and was made use of by the BA compilers, and in any case (b) that whether or not there had existed a chronicle of Jin, the Spring and Autumn segments of the BA show what the 04c compilers of that text thought such a chronicle would look like. But the resemblance of the BA is to the CC (few and brief entries), not to the DJ (long and admonitory stories). Then if there was a Jin chronicle, and for this the work of the Ngwei writers of the 04c is the most authoritative opinion available to us, it resembled the CC. It follows that there is no basis for assuming an early chronicle or archive containing elaborate, novelistic, interior-monologue narrative, such as the DJ possesses. There is then no ancient precedent for that style, and the DJ prose, like the DJ language, can only be a phenomenon of 04c times.
Oral Source Theories
Henri Maspero advanced a theory that the narratives of Chung-ar (the future Jin Wvn-gung) were included in DJ from a pre-existing and probably oral Chung-ar saga. This theory should be considered together with his Su Chin proposal for the Jan-Gwo Tsv. The Chung-ar Saga theory has not been given precise form, and though often mentioned in the literature, does not appear to command general scholarly acceptance. It may later be put in convincing form. Meanwhile, the question of such outside sources for certain DJ segments remains open.
David Schaberg makes different statements at different places (Patterned, 2001), but seems to propose, in agreement with Pines, that the whole of the DJ is authentic early material, but, in opposition to Pines, that its mode of transmission from Spring and Autumn times to the DJ compilers in the late 04c was fixed oral texts, not written documents. It should be noted that the DJ itself makes no claim of oral transmission (such a claim can be said to be made in one or two Gwo Yw passages, one of many ways in which GY "improves" on DJ), and there is no plausible scenario for the repetition, over centuries, of just such material as we find in the DJ. See further the review of Schaberg, elsewhere at this site.
Oral. In general, the prestige of "oral" theories on the model of Parry/Lord was always precariously deserved, and now (2004) seems to be at a low point in the Parry/Lord home discipline (ancient Greece); thus, the recent and standard edition of West treats the Iliad as, from the beginning, a written text. This judgement, at a stroke, does away with decades of fevered but not always carefully thought out proposals for the Iliad and other early texts. The reliance on vaguely formulated versions of those theories in Sinology presumably reflects little more than the general backwardness and methodological softness of Sinology as a discipline. See Brooks Lore for a consideration of a little noticed but important device for handing down information over time, namely, contact within a class or functional group, such as officeholders of Lu, which does not assume fixed oral texts (the problematic feature of many "oral" theories), but rather is based on emblematic personas whose attributes are generally known rather than specifically recited. It is also shown in that paper that the content of lore traditions, and specifically the deeds by which four representative figures are known at three different periods (the CC of the 07c and 06c, the Lu tradition implied by the early Analects as of the 05c, and the DJ from the late 04c), are subject to change over time, and the change in question is not random; rather, it keeps the inherited personas current with, and responsive to, the ideals and concerns of each successive period in which they exist in the first place.
Suggestions Research. Several open proposals mentioned or implied above deserve further exploration. In general, the question of just how much the DJ writers knew of the Spring and Autumn, and how they knew it, will remain important, and may fruitfully be pursued in parallel with the same question for the Bamboo Annals compilers in the same period. The DJ is a vital source for the historical thinking of the late 04c, though it is still largely untapped for that purpose. The tension between its theories and the actual ethos of the CC is important in defining the boundary of culture that in some way separates Spring and Autumn period from the Warring States. The DJ also represents a high point of populist thought, and in its final layer it prefigures the eclipse of populist thought. Just as the CC is the basic source for the Spring and Autumn period, so the DJ is vital for the understanding of the intellectual dynamics of the Warring States, on which see now Brooks Heaven. It is useful to see the DJ as the model for later "winner" histories, among them the notorious Shr Ji, whose often dubious aims and methods are not unlike those of the DJ, and which can be seen as influential on the second of the six Shr Ji authors. The ultimate importance of the DJ will probably be, not as a source for history, but as the first fully realized example of early Chinese historiographical thinking
See Also: Bamboo Annals, Chun/Chyou, Other Chronicles, Gwo Yw, Gungyang Jwan, Gulyang Jwan.
Classical Chinese Texts is Copyright © 1993- by E Bruce and A Taeko Brooks
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