Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan: Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals

8/19/2019 Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan: Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals

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Andrew H. Plaks and Michael Nylan, Series Editors

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Exemplary Figures / Fayan

Yang Xiong, translated by Michael Nylan

Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan (Commentary on Spring and Autumn Annals)Translated by Stephen Durrant, Wai-yee Li, and David Schaberg

Garden of Eloquence / ShuoyuanLiu Xiang, translated by Eric Henry



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Z T

Zuozhuan左傳

(Commentary on the Springand Autumn Annals)

Stephen Durrant

Wai-yee Li

David Schaberg

Seattle and London



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© by the University of Washington Press

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by generous gifts from Joseph and Lauren Allen,

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To the memory of Livia Plaks and Anthony C. Yu



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VII

Contents

Acknowledgments IXAbbreviations XIChronology of Dynasties XIIMaps XIIIIntroduction XVII

Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan

Volume OneLord Yin

Lord Huan

Lord Zhuang

Lord Min

Lord Xi

Lord Wen

Lord Xuan

Volume TwoLord Cheng

Lord Xiang

Volume reeLord Zhao

Lord Ding

Lord Ai

Bibliography Place-Name Index

Personal Name Index



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Acknowledgments

Our work on this project has extended across more springs and autumnsthan we originally envisaged. Perhaps at the outset we underestimatedthe difficulty of this great text, or perhaps we overestimated our ownabilities as translators—or, possibly, both. Still, if our time spent withZuozhuan has brought frustrations, it has also brought joys. e mostobvious joy has come from slowly working our way together through thisrich literary masterpiece in a desperate but sincere effort to beat trans-lation’s odds, to find les mots justes, to capture in English the austere,unmistakable style that we all admired in Zuozhuan prose. For what istranslation but exceedingly slow, careful, interpretative reading, under-

taken with and for other readers, born from the urge to share withothers the pleasure one takes in a difficult, remote work of art? Chiefamong our frustrations was the realization that our English translation,no matter how much effort we have put into it, does not and could neverreproduce the genius of the original. We can perhaps draw comfort fromthe realization that the higher the quality of a text, the more it defies per-fect translation.

Another joy of our work together and individually over the yearshas been the support and encouragement of so many colleagues, stu-dents, friends, and family. e three of us extend our heartfelt apprecia-

tion to those who have read our translation and have offered valuablesuggestions. Michael Nylan, Andrew Plaks, and Yuri Pines all workedthrough the entire manuscript with great meticulousness and helped usimprove our translation in numerous ways. Many others have helpedus with particular problems in Zuozhuan or have read and respondedto portions of our work. Among these scholars are Lothar von Falken-hausen, David Keightley, Göran Malmqvist, Christoph Harbsmeier,Reinhard Emmerich, Enno Giele, Li Long-shien, David Pankenier, andChang Su-ching. Lorri Hagman , Jacqueline Volin, Pamela Bruton, andother members of the staff at the University of Washington Press encour-

aged us at every stage of this project and have been more patient with us



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than we have sometimes deserved. We are grateful for their help. Ourproject has benefited from the financial support of the National Endow-ment for the Humanities, the Fairbank Center and the Asia Center atHarvard University, and the Oregon Humanities Center and the Depart-

ment of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Ore-gon. Sabbatical leaves funded by Harvard University, the AmericanCouncil of Learned Societies, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study,the University of California at Los Angeles, and the American Academyat Berlin allowed us to devote time to the translation of Zuozhuan, evenas other projects claimed our attention.

During the last decade, each of the three of us has taught graduateseminars dealing with Zuozhuan. Our interaction with students in theseseminars has convinced us once again of how much research and publi-cation can benefit from engagement with good students in the class-

room. We are deeply grateful to our students for their willingness bothto encourage and to challenge us. We also express our gratitude to BillNilson at “Bill’s Imac” for his help with maps and to several studentswho provided valuable assistance with technical details: Sara Higginsand Xingwei Fu at the University of Oregon, and Ted Ming-tak Hui atHarvard University.

Numerous friends and members of our families have helped us in oneway or another with this lengthy project. We cannot name them all butwould like to thank Omer Bartov, Françoise Calin Durrant, and DaphnePi-Wei Lei for their support and encouragement over the years.

Finally, we take full responsibility for the mistakes and infelicitiesthat remain in this book and can only hope that, despite such possibleproblems, our work will help Zuozhuan achieve its deserved place amongthe masterpieces that have come to us from the ancient world.



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Abbreviations

BMFEA Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern AntiquitiesEC Early ChinaGongyang Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan zhushu春秋公羊傳注疏Guliang Chunqiu Guliang zhuan zhushu春秋穀梁傳注疏HJAS Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies

JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society Karlgren Bernhard Karlgren, “Glosses on the Tso Chuan,”

BMFEA (): –Legge James Legge, trans., e Ch’un Ts’ew with the Tso

Chuen, vol. of e Chinese Classics (; repr.,

Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, )SBBY Sibu beiyao 四部備要SKQS Yingyin Wenyuan ge Siku quanshu

影印文淵閣四庫全書SSJZS Chongkan Song ben Shisan jing zhushu fu jiaokan ji

重刊宋本十三經注疏附校勘記Takezoe Takezoe Kōkō竹添光鴻, ed. and annotator, Saden

Kaisen左傳會箋 (; repr., Taipei: Fenghuang, ) XBZZJC Xinbian zhuzi jicheng 新編諸子集成Yang Yang Bojun楊伯峻, ed. and annotator, Chunqiu

Zuozhuan zhu 春秋左傳注, rev. ed., vols. (Beijing:Zhonghua, )

ZZ Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhengyi 春秋左傳正義



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Chronology of Dynasties

Xia ca. st–th Shang ca. – Zhou –Western Zhou –Eastern Zhou –Spring and Autumn –Warring States –Qin –Han – Former Han (also called Western Han) –

Xin (Wang Mang reign) – Later Han (also called Eastern Han) –Six Dynasties –ree Kingdoms –Jin –Northern and Southern Dynasties –Sui –Tang –e Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms –Song –

Northern Song –Southern Song –Yuan –Ming –Qing –

Adapted from Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A Manual (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Asia Center, ), –.



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YAN

JIN

QIN

CHU

CAI

CHENSONG

CAO

ZHENG

WU

YUE

QI

LUWEI

ZHOU

SHANRONG

SHU

LI RONG

BA

Wuzhong

Wuzhong

Xianyu

Huangchi

YAN

WHITE DI

RED DI

JIN

QUANRONG

QIN

CHU

CAI

CHENSONG

CAO

ZHENG

WU

YUE

QI

LUWEI

ZHOU

SHANRONG

SHU

LI RONG

BA

Wuzhong

Wuzhong

XianyuN

0 100 200 300 km

Map 1: Major Domains and Peoples during the Spring and AutumnPeriod



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M a p 2 : I m p o r t a n t P l a c e s o

n t h e N o r t h C h i n a P l a i n

Y u n

C a o

L i n z i

Q u f u

S h a n g q i u

J i

Q i

Z h u

J u

X u e

X i a o

A n

C h e n g p u

J i a g u

B i

G u

P e n g c h e n g

Y E L L O W

S E A

v

C a p i t a l

M a j o r d o m a i n

D o m a i n

S m a l l d o m a i n

S i t e o f f a m o u s b a t t l e

S i t e o f f a m o u s m e e t i n g

I m p o r t a n t p l a c e

Q I

Y e

l l o w

R i v e

r

N

0

5 0

1

0 0 k m

Q I

L U

S O N G

W E I

S o u m a n

L e s s e r Z h u

T e n g

X i n g

M a p A r e a



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M a p 3 : I m p o r t a n t P l a c e s

i n t h e U p p e r Y e l l o w R i v e r / W

e i R i v e r B a s i n

C a p

i t a l

M a j o r

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S m a l

l d o m a i n

S i t e o f

f a m o u s

b a t t

l e


S i t e o f

C o v e n a n t


S i t e o f c o v e n a n t

S i t e o f

f a m o u s m e e t i n g

J I N

J I N

Q I N

W E I

Z H E N G

M a o

R o n g

R o n g o

f Y i a n d

L u o

R i v e r s

R o n g o

f L u h u n

Q i

C h e n g z h o u

X i n z h e n g

C h a o g e

J i a n g Q

u w o

Y o n g

Y a n

l i n g

Y a o

B i

H a n

G a n

h o u

W e n

H a n

d a n

W a n g c

h e n g

J i a n t u

X i n c h e n g

H e q

u

X i n t i a n

[ J i a n g

]

H u l a o

Q i

C h e n g z h o u

X i n z h e n g

C h a o g e

J i a n g Q

u w o

Y o n g

Y a n

l i n g

Y a o

B i

H a n

G a n

h o u

W e n

H a n

d a n

W a n g c

h e n g

J i a n t u

X i n c h e n g

H e q

u

X i n t i a n

[ J i a n g

]

H u l a o

L i n g

h u

N

0

5 0

1 0 0 k m

H u a n g c h i

M a p A r e a



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Map 4: Important Places in the South

WU

YUE

CHU

Capital

Major domain

Small domain

Site of famous battle

Important place

Site of covenantSite of famous meeting

WU

YunBoju

Ying

Chao

Kuaiji

Wu

Xu

Xu

Cai 1Cai 2 Cai 3

Bugeng

Ruo Shen

Deng

Shaoling

Huang

Sui

Ruo

Zuili

Zhoulai

YunBoju

Ying

Chao

Kuaiji

Wu

Xu

Xu

Cai 1Cai 2 Cai 3

Bugeng

Ruo Shen

Deng

Shaoling

Huang

Sui

Ruo

Zuili

Zhoulai

0 100 200 km

N

Hong

Huangchi

Map Area



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Introduction

is is an introduction in three parts, arranged as a gradual entrée toZuozhuan 左傳 (Zuo Tradition). e first section, designed for new-comers to Zuozhuan, is a general introduction to the work itself, to Chi-nese history from the late eighth to the early fih century , and tothe principles of our translation. Nonspecialist readers may wish to pro-ceed directly from this general introduction to the pleasures of thehistory itself. e remaining sections of the introduction are more tech-nical and are addressed to scholars in Chinese studies, historians of theancient world, and specialists in related fields. e second part examinesthe historical and intellectual context in which Zuozhuan originated and

revisits the long scholarly debate over the text’s provenance. e third partdetails the critical place that Zuozhuan has occupied in the Chinese tra-dition during the past two millennia. With these observations on textualand cultural history as a foundation, the reader will be well prepared tounderstand the singular importance that Zuozhuan continues to have asa monument of early Chinese historical writing. We offer our introduc-tion, and our translation itself, as a dedicatory gate and stairway to thisedifice, with the fond hope that readers will visit oen and stay long.

PART I: ON ZUOZHUAN , SPRING AND AUTUMNHISTORY, AND TRANSLATION CONVENTIONS

THE NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF ZUOZHUAN

Zuozhuan is the largest text to come to us from pre-imperial China (i.e.,from before ). One might also argue that it is the most importanttext from that era. As such, Zuozhuan deserves a place alongside othergreat histories from the ancient world, like those of Herodotus, ucy-dides, and the Deuteronomic historians, with which it is roughly con-

temporaneous. ere are several reasons why Zuozhuan has not found



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such a place. One of the chief of these is that it has been transmitted tous as a commentary to another text, the Annals (Chunqiu 春秋), andfollows the year-by-year chronology of that text. Consequently, singlestory lines are oen broken up and distributed in a strictly chronological

fashion, with other story lines and unrelated events intervening, so thatit requires an excellent memory, or at least patient cross-checking, tokeep the various interweaving accounts straight. In addition, the voiceof the Zuozhuan historian is largely masked, so that the personality ofthe narrator rarely shines through. Put somewhat differently, there is no“I” in the text, no identifiable historian at our side guiding us in thefashion of Herodotus or ucydides, who name themselves in the veryfirst sentence of their respective texts and repeatedly appear as guides orcommentators throughout their narratives. When compared with theworks of such early Greek historians, Zuozhuan can sound impersonal,

but the absence of a self-conscious narrative voice also gives it a dra-matic, authoritative tone. is stylistic feature, like the annalistic frag-mentation of the narratives, poses unique challenges for the reader, butit also has its own appeal, as we hope this translation will demonstrate.

We have already noted the fact that Zuozhuan narratives are distrib-uted according to the year-by-year organization of the Annals, creatinga pattern of interweaving story lines that can sometimes be difficult tofollow. In addition, the language of the narrative sections of Zuozhuanis exceedingly terse and elliptical. One scholar has aptly described Zuo-zhuan narratives as “lapidary.” at is, episodes are carefully craed

and, in a manner of speaking, “hard.” Nouns and verbs predominate,characters act and are acted upon, with adjectival description rare andconsequently taking on particular significance wherever it does occur.Very oen sentences or events are simply juxtaposed without explicitconnective tissue. In one brief narrative, for example, a ruler takes forhimself a woman intended for his son because he “finds her beautiful”(mei zhi 美之). Unhappy consequences cascade from his decision, oneof the first being that his wife “hangs herself” (Huan .). e reader caneasily understand why she has been driven to this extremity, but here, asso oen elsewhere in Zuozhuan, no explanation and certainly no psy-

chological penetration into her unhappy mental state are provided, just as we are not told in the biblical narrative of Abraham and Isaac, torefer to another early narrative tradition, what Abraham thinks as heraises his knife to sacrifice his son. In general, the Zuozhuan narrator isabsent, allowing the action to speak for itself and deflecting his own

judgments into the speeches and pronouncements of his characters, oneof the most important of them being the moralizing “noble man” ( junzi 君子). When, for example, the ever-present Herodotus, Greek author ofe Histories, says that the Athenian Solon “claimed to be traveling tosee the world, but it was really to avoid the possibility of having to repeal

any of the laws he had made” (.), he is giving more explanation of a

—Break is aer“b” per

Webster’s



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character’s motives than one finds anywhere in Zuozhuan, at least in thenarrative voice.

But the narrative terseness of Zuozhuan stands in stark contrast to thespeeches the text presents. An exceedingly brief narrative can quickly

lead to a speech of considerable length and great rhetorical complexity.Extensive parallelism, citation of earlier sources such as the Odes (Shijing詩經), numbered sets, and a whole host of technical rhetorical featuresare employed as speakers admonish and sometimes overwhelm theiraudience. One of the functions of Zuozhuan, as we explain below, was tomodel for aspiring officials the importance and power of speechmaking.

One must remain attentive while reading Zuozhuan, not only becauseso much is le unexpressed and must be surmised but also because oneof the messages of this text is that the world is full of signs that can beread: a general “lis his feet too high,” and because of this a wise adviser

knows that “his intentions are not firm” (Huan .); a prince receives aceremonial jade “indolently,” and a minister concludes that the prince“will have no progeny” (Xi .); a ruler’s index finger moves involun-tarily, and he knows that that day he will “taste something extraordi-nary” (Xuan .). Just as meaning can be found in the smallest gesturesand briefest comments, so hidden significance can be mined from theseemingly straightforward text of Zuozhuan and the Annals. But suchreading of the world is not always easy. In one peculiar case, a lorddresses his heir apparent in a peculiar “half-body robe,” touching off adispute among the officials as to what this means, although it quickly

becomes clear that the costume is ominous (Min .). Acts of oracle-boneor milfoil divination and dream interpretation reported in Zuozhuan arealso oen highly complicated and susceptible to a variety of readings,some of them far-fetched on the surface.

Many of these signs, and so much else about Zuozhuan narrative andspeechmaking, foreshadow the future. One does not continue readingthis text to find out who will rise and who will fall, who will win and whowill lose, for the careful reader knows in advance what outcomes willensue. e battle narratives are the clearest example of this. Much spaceis given to the preparation for battle and the signs that foretell the out-

come, with the actual action on the battlefield typically narrated brieflyor ignored altogether. For example, Jiang Bingzhang 姜炳璋 (–)noted that, in one case where the “ruler’s virtue” has been described, “Itis precisely by reason of this quality that victory is determined evenbefore the battle begins.”

e world of Zuozhuan can be read because it is a world filled withthe prescriptions of ritual propriety. One scholar of Zuozhuan narrativehas said that the message of this text is that the good are usually rewardedand the bad punished. While this generalization applies in some cases,the moral world of Zuozhuan is by no means a simple and straightfor-

ward one. In fact, much of the text seems to be struggling in a fascinating



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way with the vast complexity of human situations and the need to seeritual propriety not as a clearly delineated list of rights and wrongs butas a guiding principle that must be adapted to particular situations withflexibility and intelligence. Mercy, for example, might oen be a good

thing, but the ritual obligations and the practical exigencies of war some-times make acts of mercy not just foolhardy but morally wrong (Xi .,Xuan .).

e text we today call Zuozhuan might have been derived from a textoriginally known as Zuo’s Annals (Zuoshi chunqiu 左氏春秋). e earli-est reference to this title is found in Sima Qian’s司馬遷 (?–? )Records of the Historian (Shiji 史記). According to that account, aerConfucius (– ) died, his disciples began to disagree about theoral interpretation of the Annals, which the Master had supposedlytransmitted to them. Consequently, “the Lu gentleman,” a certain Zuo

Qiuming 左丘明, was afraid that the true teachings would be lost.“erefore, taking Confucius’ scribal records as his basis, he put in orderall their words and completed Zuo’s Annals.” While few scholars todaystill believe that Zuo Qiuming was responsible for Zuozhuan, its title, atleast as usually understood, commemorates his surname.

In Ban Gu’s 班固 (– ) History of the Han (Hanshu 漢書),which was written approximately years aer the Records of the His-torian, Zuo’s Annals is regularly called Zuo’s Commentary (Zuoshi zhuan 左氏傳). is new title may well have resulted from editorial workundertaken by Liu Xin劉歆 ( – ), who, along with his father,

Liu Xiang 劉向 (– ), had been employed by the Han EmperorCheng (r. – ) to examine texts collected from across the empireand to collate them against material held in the imperial archives. LiuXin seems to have spent considerable time on Zuo’s Annals, and hebecame an ardent supporter of this text, even pleading in a letter to courtofficials of Emperor Ai (r. – ) that the text be given official recogni-tion, which means that it would have been taught in the Imperial Acad-emy under the direction of officially appointed Academicians (boshi 博士). e title change from Zuo’s Annals to Zuo’s Commentary may signalchanges Liu made in the nature and structure of the text in order to

emphasize its exegetical relationship to the Annals, although it is unclearhow extensive his editorial work might actually have been. e currentname of the text, Zuozhuan, and the current structure of the text appearto derive from the hand of Du Yu杜預 (– ), who is credited withweaving the Annals and Zuozhuan into a single text, giving Zuozhuan an even more obvious commentarial structure and thereby enhancingits prestige. Du Yu also reedited and standardized the text, while pro-

viding it with his own commentary, which drew upon and ultimatelyreplaced much of the commentarial tradition preceding him. (For moreon these issues, see part II below.)

For well over two millennia, the Annals has been listed among the



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Confucian “Five Classics,” a group of texts that became the foundationof virtually all official imperial Chinese education. One eminent scholar,Pi Xirui 皮錫瑞 (–), even suggested that among these classicsthe Annals and the Classic of Changes (Yijing 易經) were preeminent,

constituting a kind of advanced study that could be fully understoodonly by the best students. is elevated status derives in part from atradition ascribing the Annals in its present form to Confucius himself.Such a tradition is already found in Mencius (Mengzi 孟子), a text writ-ten perhaps two hundred years aer Confucius’ death, where we readthat when Confucius completed the Annals, it had such powerful influ-ence that “treasonous ministers and maleficent sons were terrified.”

Mencius goes on to claim that Confucius once said, “ose who under-stand me will do so only through the Annals.” At a slightly later time,perhaps inspired by this Mencius passage, many believed not only that

the Annals came from the hand of Confucius but that the Master hadused this text to convey “loy principles in subtle words.”

Anyone who turns to the Annals aer encountering such views asthose found in Mencius and in later Confucian writings will almostcertainly be surprised, even disappointed. e Annals is a slender textcomposed of slightly fewer than seventeen thousand written Chinesecharacters. It appears, at least at first reading, to do little more than listin highly economical and straightforward language short notices ofevents that took place in the central domains between and as seen from the small domain of Lu魯, where it was compiled. It prob-

ably derives from official court records—and terse records at that. ename Chunqiu literally means “spring and autumn,” which is an abbre-

viation of the sequence of four seasons and refers to a type of recordkeeping in which events are registered not just under a year and a monthbut under a season as well. With relatively few exceptions, at least oneevent is registered for each season of each year for the years includedin the Annals. Other early Chinese domains might have maintainedrecords similar to the Lu Annals. Passages in at least two early Chinesetexts refer to other such court records, and an annalistic text for thedomain of Weì 魏, known as Bamboo Annals (Zhushu jinian 竹書記年),

was discovered around .e extraordinary stylistic precision and consistency of the Annals

support the sense that Lu scribes adhered to a system in recordingevents. For example, a Lu ruler is usually referred to as “the lord” ( gong 公) but, on the occasion of his funeral, is called “our ruler” (wojun 我君),with his posthumous honorific. Rulers of Chu and Wu, who styledthemselves “kings” (wang 王), are called in the text “leaders” (ren人) or“masters” (zi 子), one of the lower noble ranks. e assassination of aruler is described with the word shi 弒, which indicates the violation ofhierarchy—except for Lu rulers, whose murder is cloaked behind the

word “expire” (hong 薨). Murdered rulers of other states are sometimes



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simply reported to have “died” (zu 卒). Words associated with militaryconflicts, such as “battle” (zhan 戰), “defeat” (bai 敗), “overcome” (ke 克), “completely defeated” (baiji 敗績), “invade” (qin 侵), “surpriseattack” (xi襲), “attack” ( fa伐), “punish” (tao 討), “enter” (ru 入), “seize”

(huo 獲), “lay siege to” (wei圍), or “extinguish” (mie 滅), seem to haveprecise meanings and imply evaluation of the justice or appropriatenessof military operations. When Lu is defeated in battle, the words “roundlydefeated” are not used (with one exception). As these examples andexceptions show, many “rules” can be deduced, although few are abso-lutely consistent.

Spurred on by the purported link to Confucius and the notion thatthere was much more to the Annals than a first reading might disclose,early Chinese scholars produced a rich body of commentarial literatureon this text. In fact, the Annals has come down to us not as an indepen-

dent text but only attached in slightly variant form to each of three com-mentaries, or “traditions” (zhuan 傳): Zuozhuan 左傳, Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳, and Guliang zhuan 穀梁傳. All three of these Annals commen-taries have at times exercised a significant influence upon the Chinesetradition, but the longest and most complex of them, Zuozhuan, haseventually enjoyed the greatest prestige, although Gongyang reignedpreeminent as official learning during the Han dynasty. Whereas theGongyang and Guliang commentaries primarily dissect the “subtlewords” of the Annals so as to lay bare the “great principles” it supposedlycontains, Zuozhuan provides historical context for events that occurred

during the Spring and Autumn period (– ), some noted in the Annals and some not.

Zuozhuan also includes exegetical passages, although a good portionof the Annals has no Zuozhuan exegesis, and sometimes there seem tobe pointed contradictions between the two texts. e sense of system inthe Annals is challenged by shis in meanings in Zuozhuan. Zuozhuan also covers events until (Ai ), thirteen years aer the captureof the lin (Ai .), sometimes referred to as a “unicorn,” and elevenyears aer the death of Confucius (Ai .), events that respectively markthe end of the Annals in Gongyang (the lin) and in Guliang and Zuo-

zhuan (Confucius’ death). All these issues have raised doubts about theexact relationship between the Annals and Zuozhuan.

All three exegetical traditions interpret stylistic conventions and eventextual corruption of the Annals as markers of the sage’s intention,although Gongyang and Guliang do so much more insistently and con-sistently than Zuozhuan. In one case, a missing word is construed as adeliberate expression of doubt. Designating Chu and Wu rulers (whocalled themselves kings) as “masters” is thought to convey criticism ofthe overreaching ambitions of “barbarians” and to set normative stan-dards for “rectifying names” (zhengming 正名), so that names corre-

spond to roles and functions. e omission in the Annals of references



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to burials of Chu and Wu rulers supposedly functions to avoid the useof the title of “king.” Concealing a Lu ruler’s murder, which might havesimply “reflected the wording of official notifications to other states”(cong fu 從訃, cong gao 從告), especially if we consider the new ruler’s

frequent role as perpetrator, is said in Gongyang and Guliang to reflectConfucius’ choice of “concealment in internal matters” (neihui 內諱).“To conceal the truth” (hui 諱) to honor or protect one’s domain orruler in turn implies that “bare facts” should yield pride of place tonormative human relations in historical records.

Reverence for the Annals as the sage’s moral judgments was pervasive,but there have always been dissenters. e Tang scholar and thinker LiuZhiji劉知幾 (–), famous for his Comprehensive Study of HistoricalWritings (Shitong史通), cast doubt on the sacrosanct text by examiningits inconsistencies. e Song chief minister and scholar-poet Wang

Anshi王安石 (–), with typical boldness, dismissed the Annals as“fragmentary and corrupt court reports” (duanlan chaobao 斷爛朝報). But criticism of this type reflects a distinctly minority view.

It is perhaps no accident that Liu Zhiji, skeptical about the Annals,should also have been an ardent champion of Zuozhuan; the latter spoketo his interests in the methods of historical writing much more than theformer. More generally, most recognize that the historical events markedby the Annals would be incomprehensible without Zuozhuan. To readthe Annals in China was most oen to read it alongside Zuozhuan, withthe latter providing the narrative detail and rhetorical flesh the former

lacked.Zuozhuan is more than ten times longer than the Annals, containing

just fewer than , written Chinese characters. A rich combinationof narratives and speeches, it has been read as a reliable history of theSpring and Autumn era, as a great model of prose style, and as a reposi-tory of Confucian values. If we must now question Zuozhuan’s reliabilityas a historical source, at least for the period of time it claims to describe,and exercise care in reducing the text to a simple set of values, Confucianor otherwise, we can hardly question the raw power of its prose and therhetorical brilliance of its speeches. One major voice in Chinese literary

thought, Liu Xie劉勰 (ca. –ca. ), regarded Zuozhuan prose as “thewinged glory of the sages’ writings, the crowning achievement of recordsand texts.” And Liu Zhiji found the speeches in the text “flowing andbeautiful yet never in excess.”

Despite the importance of both the Annals and Zuozhuan within theChinese tradition, these texts, as noted above, have never gained a sig-nificant readership outside East Asia beyond a small number of early-China specialists. Our hope is that the following translation will helpchange this situation. Translating these texts was a daunting task in partbecause of the many difficulties they present, some of which we will

discuss below, and in part because there is already an excellent English-



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language translation of both the Annals and Zuozhuan, James Legge’s(–) e Ch’un Ts’ew with the Tso Chuen.

More than years have now passed since James Legge published hiscomplete translation of the Annals with an attached translation of almost

the whole Zuozhuan.

His work was the only largely complete English-language version until a reworking of Legge’s translation of Zuozhuan,without the accompanying Annals, was published in China several yearsago. Legge’s work was a great sinological achievement and has becomea standard source for students of early China, a measuring rod againstwhich subsequent translations of these texts must be evaluated, includ-ing the present one. In view of Legge’s achievement, why, one might ask,is a new translation needed at all? In what follows we hope it will becomeclear how our own reading, understanding, and presentation of the

Annals and Zuozhuan differ from Legge’s. But for now we would note

three important reasons for this new translation. First, the last centuryor so has brought genuine advances in our understanding of the Annals and Zuozhuan, and some of these advances impinge directly uponquestions of translation. Second, Legge’s Victorian prose, despite itsstateliness, is not “the most stylistically expressive and elegant” andis, moreover, becoming more and more remote from the twenty-first-century reader. And third, the format and presentation of Legge’s text,despite several reprints, remain unattractive, awkward, and difficult touse, although recent online versions have to some extent remedied thissituation. Still, we do not presume that our work replaces that of our

predecessor. As we have said, his translation is the measuring rod, andreaders can surely profit from consulting his version as well as our own.

We should add a brief word here concerning the complete Frenchtranslation of the Annals and Zuozhuan by the tireless Jesuit scholarSéraphin Couvreur (–), Tch’ouen ts’iou et Tso tchouan. e for-mat of this three-volume work makes it much easier to use than Legge’stext. It is also more conservative than Legge’s, consistently following DuYu’s commentary. Paul Demiéville (–) judges Couvreur withreference to Legge as follows: “He makes no attempt at original interpre-tation or personal evaluation, such as James Legge rather prematurely

attempted in his English version.” While this is an accurate character-ization of Couvreur, whether it is fair to Legge depends on how oneevaluates the latter’s “original interpretations.”

THE ANNALS , ZUOZHUAN, AND THE HISTORY

OF THE SPRING AND AUTUMN PERIOD

e very term “Spring and Autumn period” (given above) points to thecritical role the Annals and its commentaries have played in the con-struction of Chinese history. e period, which encompasses the years

covered by the text, – , is named for the text. e date



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marks the ascension of Lord Yin to the position of ruler in the relativelysmall eastern domain of Lu. e start of Lord Yin’s reign is noteworthyonly because the Annals begins in that year. Nothing else of great importoccurs. In the Gongyang and Guliang commentaries, the Annals ends

with the capture of the lin in , the fourteenth year of the reign ofLord Ai of Lu. In Zuozhuan, the Annals ends two years later, in ,the year of Confucius’ death: “In summer, in the fourth month, on the

jichou day, Kong Qiu [Confucius] died” (Ai .).Some historians have objected to demarcating a historical period with

reference to the beginning and ending of a text, however much influencethat text might have exerted, and suggest that periods should be definedby unquestionably important moments. One such moment is ,when the Zhou court moved from its capital near modern-day Xi’an 西安 to the new capital Chengzhou 成周 in the region of modern-day

Luoyang洛陽. Since Luoyang is well to the east of Xi’an, sepa-rates the eras of what came to be known as the Western Zhou and theEastern Zhou. is date also marks a significant milestone in the gradualdecline of Zhou power, a decline that had begun almost a century earlierand was to continue until the Zhou kings became little more than fig-ureheads by the middle of the Spring and Autumn period. issometimes chosen as the closing date of the Spring and Autumn periodbecause it marks the end of the reign of King Jìng of Zhou周敬王 (r. – ), when the capital moved further east, forming a new Cheng-zhou (the old Chengzhou was renamed Wangcheng王城), due to Wangzi

Zhao’s王子朝 rebellion (Zhao –Zhao ). Another significant event thatsome historians identify as the close of this period is the virtual breakupin of the once-powerful domain of Jin 晉 into three smallerdomains: Han 韓, Weì 魏, and Zhao 趙, domains that were “officiallyrecognized by the Zhou king in .” Besides marking the demiseof a domain that had played a major role throughout much of the Springand Autumn period, this event marks the ascendancy of powerful min-isterial lineages, which had seriously undermined even the illusion of anold Zhou ritual order and had also marked a trend toward the bureau-cratization and professionalization of the domains. us, although the

dates and or might be preferred as commemoratingmajor historical events, and remain significant dates in thetraditional periodization of Chinese history by reason of the prestige ofa single text, the Annals.

We have referred above to Zuozhuan as a “history,” the quotation markshere reflecting our belief that it is a particularly problematic instance ofthis category. Still, no single text has had a greater influence upon theway Spring and Autumn history has been presented both in China andin the West. When the early historians Sima Tan司馬談 (d. ) andhis son Sima Qian wrote the first comprehensive history of China, in a

certain sense creating “China” in the process, they used some of the



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materials now found in our Zuozhuan as their single most importantsource for the Spring and Autumn period. is circumstance has notchanged greatly over time. For example, in the article on Spring andAutumn history in the prestigious Cambridge History of Ancient China,

we read: “Despite a lack of corroborating evidence from other sources,there is no reason to doubt the details of political and military activitiesgiven in Zuozhuan, or the roles played by prominent figures in it, suchas Guan Zhong管仲.” Such faith in the essential historical reliability ofZuozhuan has been labeled “the worst error in classical Sinology.”

If we commit this “worst error,” writing history as it is reported inZuozhuan, what is the result? On the most basic level, we then producean account replete with conflict. In fact, instances of warfare arerecorded in Zuozhuan. For this reason, one Qing scholar argued thatZuozhuan is “the ancestor of books on military strategy” (bingfa zhi zu

兵法之祖).

e abundant instances of conflict recorded in Zuozhuan take place both between domains and within domains. e four majorSpring and Autumn domains of Qi, Jin, Qin, and Chu annihilated ofthe other domains mentioned in Zuozhuan. Many of these domainswere small and fell with relatively little resistance, but warfare betweenthe major powers could be brutal. “Five great battles” described in Zuo-zhuan are oen cited as examples: Jin and its allies’ victory over Chu atChengpu in (Xi ); Jin’s defeat of Qin at the battle of Yao in (Xi ); Chu’s victory over Jin at Bi in (Xuan ); Jin, Lu, andWei’s decisive defeat of Qi at the battle of An in (Cheng ); and

Chu’s disastrous loss to Jin in the battle of Yanling in (Cheng ).Conflict between the major domains was constant, and small domainsscrambled to survive the violence.

Strife within a single domain, oen within the same lineage or family,could also be relentless. e first major narrative of Zuozhuan describesthe rebellion of a younger brother, supported by his mother, against hisolder brother, the rightful heir to the domain of Zheng (Yin .). etext goes on to record a century of major succession crises in the largerdomain of Jin, provoked in part by the establishment in of asubordinate lineage at Quwo that functioned very much like an inde-

pendent power center (Huan ., ., ., Zhuang .). Fraternal con-flict, ministerial rebellion, and intergenerational strife, oen betweenfather and son, continue on page aer page throughout Zuozhuan. eold Zhou polity was founded on a kinship structure under which royalrelatives were granted vassal domains. Meritorious officials and keyallies who were granted domains oen had marriage ties with the Zhouhouse. Within many of those subordinate domains, kinsmen also heldthe most important offices. is emphasis upon kinship and lineagecontinues throughout the Spring and Autumn period and is reflectedin Zuozhuan. us, we can correctly say that Zuozhuan for the most

part depicts aristocratic society as normative. is dominance of hered-



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itary, lineage-based administrative power is eventually challenged byan emerging meritocracy and a weakening of “family sentiment,” which will come to characterize the Warring States period. Many ofthe Zuozhuan speeches can be regarded as high-minded but ultimately

unsuccessful attempts to slow the decline of the Spring and Autumnkinship order.A number of institutions described on the pages of Zuozhuan aim to

stem the violence and bring stability to the strife-ridden domains. In thebeginning of the Spring and Autumn period, the Zhou court still exer-cised some moral suasion, a faint echo of an earlier time, part memoryand part myth, when they had brought peace to the realm, but theirpower had become vastly diminished. In , Zhou prestige suffereda terrible blow. e domain of Zheng, which had been a close supporterof Zhou and had provided three Zhou chief ministers, launched an

attack on its former ally. Zhu Dan祝聃, a Zheng official, shot the kingin the shoulder, and the latter was saved only when Zhu Dan’s ruler rec-ommended forbearance: “A noble man does not wish always to assertsuperiority over others.”

With Zhou leadership in shambles, meetings between domainsbecame frequent. e Annals provides contemporary evidence of manyof these meetings and notes the covenants that were so frequently andsolemnly sworn between participants, but only Zuozhuan and the othertwo commentary traditions refer to a new order under which one lordwas recognized as first among equals—an “overlord” or “hegemon” (ba

霸), as he is usually called. e first of these overlords was Lord Huan ofQi齊桓公 (r. – ). In the fieenth year of Lord Zhuang of Lu( ), the Annals records a meeting between the Prince of Qi, theDuke of Song, the Prince of Chen, the Prince of Wei, and the Liege ofZheng at a place named Juan. Zuozhuan adds that “Qi was for the firsttime acting as overlord.” e famous Lord Wen of Jin晉文公 (r. – ) also became overlord, striving, at least in theory, to preservethe Zhou order, and other rulers attempted to ascend to the same status.But what slowly emerged was a sort of balance of power or what somehave referred to as a multistate system. Indeed, Zuozhuan describes a

world in which power gradually shied from the “central domains,” suchas Zheng, Song, and Wei, toward the periphery represented by four bigpowers: Jin in the north, Qi in the east, Chu in the south, and Qin in thewest. As time passes, more and more of Zuozhuan’s attention focuses onthese domains and then, in its final decades, on the two new players inthe southeast, Wu and Yue.

As we have noted above, auxiliary aristocratic lineages and ministe-rial lineages become gradually more important in Zuozhuan. For exam-ple, much space is given to members of the three lineages descendingfrom subordinate sons of Lord Huan桓 of Lu (r. – ). One of

these, the Ji季 or Jisun季孫 lineage, came to dominate Lu politics and,



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with the help of the other two lineages descended from Lord Huan魯桓公, even expelled Lord Zhao 魯昭公 from the domain in . Indescribing this humiliating event, the Annals discreetly notes that “thelord retired to Qi,” but Zuozhuan makes it quite clear that his departure

was coerced (see Zhao .). Jin was another domain dominated bypowerful ministers (who, unlike their counterparts in Lu, were notrelated to the ruling house) and beset by lineage rivalries from circa onward; these led to the partition of Jin in by three warringlineages: Han, Weì, and Zhao. Other examples could be given of theascension of originally subordinate lineages. Eventually, almost allSpring and Autumn rulers were “overshadowed by high ministers” whobegan “to dominate state affairs.”

e order Zuozhuan offers as the surest antidote to the growing chaosof the age is ritual propriety, or li禮. In speech aer speech, Zuozhuan

rhetoricians warn of the deleterious results of departures from ritualpropriety. In fact, the motor of historical change—invariably change forthe worse—is deviation from ritual. All the violence and conflict on thepages of Zuozhuan, and perhaps even the transforming processes of his-tory itself, would stop if only leaders would conform to the good orderthat is inscribed in the patterns of ritual propriety. Two external voicesin particular are cited repeatedly in the text as judges of ritual behavior:“the noble man” and Confucius. e former authority, who remainsanonymous and somewhat mysterious, is quoted in seventy-eightinstances distributed relatively evenly throughout the text, while Con-

fucius is quoted twenty-five times, mostly in the years of the Lu Lordswho ruled in the latter part of the Spring and Autumn period. ese are

voices of stability that try to bring order to a political and social worldportrayed as being in decline.

If we reject an account of Spring and Autumn history that is largelybased upon Zuozhuan, we are le with rather scanty material to recon-struct that history. Few would question the credibility of the Annals itselfas an authentic record compiled by Lu domain scribes, but this textcomprises records of only certain types of events and conveys informa-tion very selectively. e Annals does give evidence of a high level of

interdomain diplomacy, along with frequent conflict, but as noted earlierit gives no support to the Zuozhuan notion that for the first century ofthe Spring and Autumn period a particular leader was recognized asoverlord and that other rulers aspired to this status throughout theperiod. Moreover, there is no clear evidence in the Annals for the inter-mittent awareness in Zuozhuan of “a cultural divide between the‘Huaxia’華夏 population and the totality of the ‘Rongdi’戎狄, which bythe middle Spring and Autumn period had clearly gained a meaningsimilar to ‘barbarian’ as the word is used in English.”

e few textual records that can be confidently dated to the Spring

and Autumn period are overshadowed by the large and ever-growing



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body of archaeological finds. Still, the archaeological evidence from earlyChina remains fragmentary and strongly skewed toward the excavationof tombs rather than settlements, although there is some indication thatthis situation is now changing. It has been common for Chinese archae-

ologists to use the textual record as a filter through which to examineand categorize archaeological finds, and archaeological evidence doessubstantiate textual traditions in many instances. However, we mustnote that some of the material evidence does not support what we readin early texts. For example, early Confucian texts, Zuozhuan included,tend to idealize the early years of the Western Zhou and treat it as a radi-cal break from the earlier Shang dynasty. e archaeological evidenceindicates no wholesale cultural shi from the Shang to the Zhou,although the practice of massive human sacrifice does seem to haveceased under the Zhou. e Zhou people, insofar as they represent a new

intrusion into the central China plains, for the most part seem to havecontinued Shang traditions. e idealization of the new Zhou ritualpractice, which supposedly supplanted the older Shang order, mightindeed reflect a ritual reform that actually took place in the MiddleWestern Zhou, sometime around , in an attempt to buttressZhou ruling power when it had begun to decline.

is “Middle Western Zhou Ritual Reform,” as it has come to becalled, seems to have marked a shi from an early ritual world character-ized by rich and sometimes frightening animal motifs on sacrificialbronze vessels and by abundant ritual drinking to a more orderly system

of ritual that reinforced political and social hierarchy, a shi, so to speak,from a more Dionysian to a more Apollonian habit of social interaction.Bronze vessels securely dated to the postreform period are humbler and“suggest a desire to reform the spirit of ritual by reducing its complexityand linking it with everyday activities.” It could indeed be that theremembrance of a superstitious Shang order, which is reflected in SimaQian’s Records of the Historian, is actually a faint remembrance of timesbefore the Middle Western Zhou Ritual Reform. In many ways, then,this reform might have created a foundation for the Spring and Autumn“segmentary aristocracy,” as well as for the skepticism about the super-

natural that characterizes portions of Zuozhuan.Archaeology also attests to a second significant shi, which has been

labeled the “Middle Spring and Autumn Ritual Restructuring.” eassemblages found in tombs during this period, with the noteworthyexception of those deriving from the westernmost domain (Qin), showa growing split between a small elite and the more common people, thelatter including the “lesser elite.” Gradually, Spring and Autumn societyseems to have become dominated by a relatively small subset of rulingfamilies eager to maintain distance between themselves and those theyruled, a trend that may indeed be reflected in the Zuozhuan emphasis

upon lineages, which we have noted above.



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e period of this ritual restructuring also saw an important religioustransformation. Whereas early Zhou tombs emphasize continuitybetween this world and the next, with funerary ritual designed to mirrorthe “basic ritual dimension of the deceased’s social existence,” Spring

and Autumn tomb architecture becomes more domestic, with tombsdesigned as homelike, self-sufficient enclosures intended to keep thedead content and contained. e emphasis is no longer upon “common-ality” but upon “the discontinuity between the living and the dead.” One cannot help but recall in this regard the famous Confucian injunc-tion to “respect the ghosts and spirits and keep them at a distance” or theZheng minister Zichan’s子產 statement, found in Zuozhuan, that “theWay of Heaven is far away, while the Way of men is near at hand.”

It would be extreme to reject the historicity of Zuozhuan outright andto rely instead entirely upon archaeology, the Annals, and a few other

texts or sections of texts for the reconstruction of Spring and Autumnhistory. Most recent studies of Zuozhuan agree that the text derives from

various sources and is composed of strata that accumulated over time.As Yuri Pines observes, “Few would doubt that the Zuo is a compilationof earlier sources.” Enough of these sources, he believes, are sufficientlynear in time to the events they describe that one can use Zuozhuan toreconstruct ideological change in the roughly two and a half centuriesof Spring and Autumn history. But he also provides a list of thirteenZuozhuan passages containing information unavailable at the close ofthe Spring and Autumn period. In addition, Pines notes other “spuri-

ous speeches and interpolations” that have also contaminated the text. For him, then, most of the strata of the text are from the period theydescribe, while a later stratum is clearly of Warring States origin. Whileholding that “early Chinese literary and scholarly practice, by its verynature, produced texts that must frustrate our attempts to fix their ori-gins,” David Schaberg suggests that Zuozhuan draws both upon earliertextual sources and upon a rich tradition of orality. He describes aprocess whereby “anecdotes and speeches were transcribed from the oraltradition” beginning around , a process that then continued forsome time. us, Zuozhuan might be a layered text, but the layers

remain malleable and exceedingly difficult to define and date with anyprecision. is particular conception of the development of Zuozhuan will be explored in much greater detail in part II below.

A. Taeko Brooks discerns some of the same change in Zuozhuan ide-ology noted by Pines. Focusing primarily upon the shiing conceptionsof Heaven (tian天) and ritual propriety, she identifies five layers in thetext and, correlating these with ideology as reflected in other texts, datesthe layers from to . For her, then, Zuozhuan is a layered textthat can be quite precisely dated and ascribed to the mid–Warring Statesperiod. In a study we shall turn to forthwith, Barry B. Blakeley notes

that Brooks’ study “touches almost exclusively on the narratives (espe-



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cially the Discourses)” and is therefore “relevant only to that segment ofthe text.” us, Brooks’ theory of the layered nature of the text leavesthe door open to the possibility that some nonnarrative layers of the textpredate her date.

Blakeley takes a formalistic approach to identifying a number of Zuo-zhuan sources. First of all, he notes a redaction of the Annals embeddedin Zuozhuan that is not always the same as the various versions of the Annals that we possess today. In his conception, those sections of Zuo-zhuan that seem to be duplicates or near duplicates of Annals entries area major part of this source. e implication is that the Zuozhuan we nowfind interwoven with the Annals was based upon explanations of a some-what different transmission of the Annals. Second, Blakeley identifiesother passages that resemble Annals entries but are “presumably derivedfrom chronicles kept in states other than Lu.” ird, Zuozhuan con-

tains commentary, such as the sayings of “the noble man” or of Confu-cius, and “value judgments concerning ritual or behavioral correctness”that might come from quite different hands and might even date from atime later than much of the rest of the text. Fourth, there is clearlymaterial in Zuozhuan that dates to the Warring States period. If we takeaway the parts of Zuozhuan that come from these four sources, we arele with most of the narratives, which constitute the bulk of the text.Blakeley divides this material into two categories. e first of these cat-egories includes what he describes as “simple, straightforward accountsof events that could reasonably represent contemporary records and may

have been transmitted in written form.” ese particular narratives haveneither “didactic function nor entertainment value.” e second cate-gory includes longer, more elaborate narratives that might have beentransmitted orally and are less reliable historically, although these toomust be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Consequently, Blakeley con-cludes that a generalized verdict about the date or reliability of a particu-lar narrative is difficult: “Instead, every segment, even utterance, in thetext must be judged independently.”

Most scholars of early China would agree that it might be as danger-ous to dismiss the historical reliability of all of Zuozhuan as it is to accept

it all uncritically. As the extensive discussion in part II below indicates,we too believe that Zuozhuan is a text of great complexity deriving froma number of practices in early China: extensive record keeping; a strongtradition of teaching, which drew upon and further explicated writtenrecords; an emphasis upon effective rhetoric for political purposes,which led to the production and transmission of model speeches; and ascholarly practice of compiling, transmitting, and circulating texts.Whether future research can further unravel the sources and layers ofZuozhuan and the authenticity of each remains to be seen. But it is likelythat Zuozhuan, carefully used, can contribute to our historical under-

standing of both the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States



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period—that is, both the years it purports to chronicle and the era defin-ing its textual formation.

STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION OF THE TRANSLATION

e base Chinese text we have reproduced is that of Ruan Yuan 阮元(–), which he published in as part of his highly influentialreprint of rare Song editions of the thirteen classics. We have regularlyconsulted and followed the modern punctuated and annotated editionof Yang Bojun楊伯峻 (–), who sometimes alters Ruan’s text. Inthose cases where we adopt a reading differing from Yang and Ruan thatsignificantly affects our translation, we have so noted. While our text isnot a full critical edition consistently listing such variants as those fromDunhuang and Japanese manuscripts, it is practical and serviceable for

the task at hand.Our organization and numbering of the texts of the Annals and Zuo-

zhuan follow Yang Bojun. Accordingly, all Annals entries for a given yearappear before the Zuozhuan entries for the same year. In each case theseentries are numbered successively. us, under “Lord Yin ,” Annals entries are given as ., ., ., ., ., ., and . and are followed byZuozhuan entries . through .. One of the interesting features ofZuozhuan, which indicates that it was originally not just a commentary,is that some Annals lines are not commented upon and, more signifi-cantly, some Zuozhuan entries have no Annals equivalent, as we have

noted earlier. Where a particular Annals entry and a Zuozhuan entryhave a close relationship, we indicate this by giving in parentheses thenumber of the corresponding entry. us, the first Annals entry of LordYin is given as .(), which indicates that the corresponding Zuozhuan entry is Zuozhuan . below, which in turn will be fully numbered as.(), pointing to the corresponding Annals entry above. e lack of anumber in parentheses for any given entry indicates that there is nocounterpart in the other text. We must voice a word of caution: while thecorrespondence between the two texts is oen clear, it occasionallybecomes more questionable and requires subjective judgment. We have

tried to be consistent, but the attentive reader may find passages wherehe or she disagrees with what we have marked or have failed to mark asa correspondence.

For each of the twelve Lords of Lu, we have provided an introduction.e purpose of the introduction is to highlight and clarify some of theimportant events and themes appearing in that particular section of thetext. To further help readers, we give brief introductions to many indi-

vidual entries and, on occasion, even to portions of particular entries. Aswe have noted earlier, one of the difficulties in reading Zuozhuan is thatstory lines or strings of related events are oen broken up by the inter-

position of other events. In introducing entries, we attempt to indicate



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previous entries and later entries belonging to the same sequence ofevents. We also try to identify recurrent themes or figures—for example,the wise barbarian, the humble adviser, communication through riddles,and so forth. is makes it possible to read our translation either succes-

sively or by jumping from place to place to follow a particular series ofrelated entries. e latter way of reading, incidentally, was common inChina, for several re-presentations of Zuozhuan from as early as theSong dynasty conveniently group related entries together.

One of the biggest difficulties one encounters in reading Zuozhuan is that it is replete with personal names. One scholar has counted ,persons who are named in the Annals and Zuozhuan. e largest num-ber are people who come from the domain of Jin (), followed by Lu(), then Chu (), Qi (), Zhou (), Zheng (), Wei (), andSong (). Moreover, many persons in the Annals and Zuozhuan have

two or more names, so that the reader is oen le overwhelmed, if notcompletely bewildered. Naming conventions during the period of timereflected in these texts are extremely complex and oen relate to clanand lineage organization and official ranks and positions. Basically,most elite members of society belong to a large descent group, or xing 姓 (sometimes called a “clan”), and a smaller unit known as a “lineage,”or shi 氏.

Lineage names can be derived from birth sequence (e.g., the Meng孟or Zhongsun仲孫, Ji季 or Jisun季孫, Shusun叔孫, and Shuzhong叔仲 lineages in Lu); the name of the place where the lineage head was put

in power (e.g., Fan 范, Zhao 趙, and Weì魏 in Jin); the birth name of alineage head (e.g., the descendants of Gongzi Dang 公子蕩, the son ofLord Huan of Song宋桓公, became the Dang lineage 蕩氏); the courtesyname of a lineage head (e.g., Gongzi Yan公子偃, the son of Lord Mu ofZheng 鄭穆公, had the courtesy name Ziyou子游, and by his grandsons’generation “You” had become the lineage name 游氏); the name of anoble’s natal domain aer he flees to another domain (e.g., Gongzi Wan公子完 flees from Chen to Qi [Zhuang .a], and his descendants in Qiformed the Chen lineage 陳氏); or a rank in court or in the army (e.g.,the Zhonghang中行 lineage in Jin started with Xun Linfu 荀林父, who

commanded the “central column,” or zhonghang 中行, in the Jin army[Xi .]; the ancestor of the Ji 籍 lineage in Jin obtained that namebecause he was in charge of “texts and documents,” or dianji 典籍 [Zhao.]). Typically, clan names appear in the names of elite females, whereaslineage names appear in the names of males.

Shortly aer birth, persons received a name, or ming 名. A passage inZuozhuan (Huan .) briefly describes the naming ceremony andincludes the Lu minister Shen Xu’s申繻 explanation of appropriate andinappropriate naming. Somewhat earlier in Zuozhuan (Huan .), thereis an example of the potentially disastrous consequences of inappropri-

ate naming. According to early ritual texts, upon the capping ceremony



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for males at the age of twenty and the hair-pinning for females at the ageof fieen, the young person received a second name, or “courtesy name”(zi 字), sometimes called a “style name” or “cognomen” in English-language sources. As Wang Yinzhi 王引之 (–) convincingly

showed, there is oen semantic resonance between a person’s birth nameand courtesy name. Birth sequence indicators are commonly attachedto the courtesy name: meng 孟 or bo 伯 for the eldest, zhong 仲 for themiddle, and shu 叔 or ji 季 for the youngest. In addition, such gendermarkers as zi 子 or fu 父 commonly appear in courtesy names.

A rich variety of possible name forms can arise from these principlesand from several others, such as the use of posthumous names, or shihao 諡號, which supposedly convey an evaluation of a person’s life orachievement. us, it is not unusual in Zuozhuan for a single person tobe called by four or five names, and one of the major characters, the Jin

minister Fan Hui 范會, is called by nine names. Almost all major per-sons have at least two names: the basic lineage name / birth name com-bination and a courtesy name. Designations such as Gongzi 公子 (thelord’s son), Gongsun公孫 (the lord’s grandson), Wangzi王子 (the king’sson), Wangsun王孫 (the king’s grandson), or Wangshu王叔 (the king’suncle) are used with birth names. Different permutations of lineagename, the place(s) a lineage head is put in power, birth sequence, birthname, courtesy name, and office held yield variations for men’s nameforms. For women the components of name forms include varying com-binations of two or three of the following: her birth sequence, the name

or clan name of her natal domain, the name of her natal lineage, theposthumous name of her husband, the name or clan name of her hus-band’s domain, and her own posthumous name.

e conditions under which one name rather than another is used inZuozhuan are not always clear. Whereas in the Annals birth names pre-dominate, in Zuozhuan there is a marked preference for courtesy names.A few tendencies can be identified in the selection of one name overanother. When a person first appears in the text, he is oen identified bybirth name. Characters also refer to themselves by birth name. Zuo-zhuan passages that draw on the Annals or imitate an annals style oen

follow the Annals convention of using the birth name.As much as possible, we have simplified names in our translation by

calling each person by a single name. Some will object to such a practice,since it erases a critical feature of the original text, and some scholarsbelieve that different names convey judgment or information regardingthe provenance of the materials, but Chinese names are difficult enoughfor a nonspecialist to recognize and remember without the added com-plexity of having to deal with several names for virtually every majorcharacter in the text. We have, however, prepared a personal name indexand use a system of superscript references to indicate which of the vari-

ants actually appears in the Chinese text. For example, in our translation



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of Yin . the reader will encounter “Gongzi Huia.” By referring to theindex under “Gongzi Hui,” the name we use throughout Zuozhuan forthis figure, one sees that the superscript “a” corresponds to “Yufu.” isindicates that in the Chinese original of Yin . Yufu is actually the name

being used in this particular instance. In deciding which name to use inour translation, we have sometimes chosen the name we thought anEnglish reader might remember most easily, and we have sometimesdecided to use the variant that actually appears in Zuozhuan most fre-quently or that most clearly indicates the relationship of a particularcharacter to a lineage or clan. e first of these considerations meansthat birth names appear more oen in our translation than in Zuozhuan itself. Sometimes, however, we have not been able to avoid using two dif-ferent names for a single character. e most common examples of thistype occur where one name appears in the Annals, but we have for one

reason or another decided to use another name in Zuozhuan. Since wedo not want to alter the formulaic language of the Annals, we have insuch cases retained the Annals name in our translation of that text andhave added the selected Zuozhuan variant immediately aerward inparentheses. In some cases, the change of status necessitates the use ofdifferent names: for example, Chong’er重耳 becomes Lord Wen of Jin晉文公 and Gongzi Wei公子圍 is later King Ling of Chu楚靈王. In thepersonal name index, we have provided information (when it is available)about dates, lineage affiliations, and kinship relations.

In the case of place-names that coincidentally share the same Manda-

rin romanization and that appear frequently and are of continuing sig-nificance in the narrative, we have used pinyin tone marks to removeambiguities. For example, the large domain 齊 is romanized as “Qi,”whereas the small domain杞 is romanized as “Qǐ,” and the settlement戚,the power base of Wei ministers of the Sun line, is romanized as “Qī.” edomains Xu徐 and Xŭ許 and the domains Wei衛 and Weì 魏 are like-wise differentiated. For the two domains written with the same character,燕, one in the north and one in the south, we have arbitrarily decided towrite the northern domain name as Yan and the southern domain as Yān.All such romanizations can be found in the place-name index.

e nature of the calendar followed in the Annals and Zuozhuan iscomplex and the subject of rich tradition of study, which we will notattempt to summarize here. Years, as noted above, are marked in the

Annals and Zuozhuan by reference to the lords of the domain of Lu:“Lord Yin ,” “Lord Yin ,” . . . , “Lord Ai .” We have inserted a Westerncalendar equivalent aer each of these years—for example, Lord Yin ( )—although there is not a perfect correspondence between thebeginning and ending of years in the ancient Chinese lunar calendar andmodern Western calendars. As one would expect from an annals systemthat derives its name from the sequence of seasons, the four seasons are

almost always noted, with at least one event typically registered for each



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season. In the Zhou calendar, which was used in the domain of Lu, thedesignation chun, “spring,” roughly corresponds to our winter, and soforth. Days in traditional China were named by a sequence of charactersrecurring in a cycle of sixty combinations, the so-called sexagenary

cycle.

is cycle operates independently from the lunar months, so thatit is impossible to tell from the date name in the sexagenary cycle alonehow far into a particular month the event took place. Such correspon-dences, however, have been established, and Yang Bojun regularly pro-

vides in a note the numerical day of the month that corresponds to a datename. In our translation, we reproduce the cyclical date names andthen, following Yang, give the sequence day of the month in parentheses.For example, note the following entry from Lord Xi ( ): “In thetwelh month, on the dingsi day (), the funeral cortege of LordZhuang’s wife arrived from Qi.” Dingsi is the romanized equivalent of

the two-character name of the day in the sexagenary cycle, while “(),”which is added by reference to Yang’s gloss, indicates that in this casedingsi falls on the eighteenth day of the twelh lunar month.

How much and what type of footnoting to provide in a translation arealways difficult decisions. Our goal has been to produce a reader-friendlytranslation. us, we have tried to make our notes useful and have notconsistently supplied footnotes giving information that an early-Chinascholar could easily access from a Chinese-language commentary. Insome instances, we also supply in footnotes alternative versions of par-ticular events as they appear in Warring States texts such as Discourses

of the States (Guoyu 國語), Master Han Fei (Han Feizi 韓非子), and Annals of Master Yan (Yanzi chunqiu晏子春秋), or even the consider-ably later Records of the Historian. ese notes are meant, not as a com-prehensive guide for the sinologist reader, who can find such informationelsewhere, but as an indication to the more general reader of the richtexture of early Chinese texts and the way in which particular accountsare circulated and modified.

One problem with a face-to-face classical Chinese–English transla-tion is that the Chinese text requires so much less space than the trans-lation, leaving a large amount of empty space on the le side page. To

compensate for this, we begin our footnotes on the le side and continuethem, where necessary, on the right. Footnoting in this fashion willmean that the reader’s eyes must oen sweep from the right page to thele page to find the relevant footnote, but it also means that the he andprice of the book the reader now holds have been somewhat reduced!

Translation from early Chinese is a challenging task, especially in thecase of a text as linguistically rich and textually complex as Zuozhuan.We have tried to be reasonably consistent in our translation of terminol-ogy without becoming too rigid. Both the demands of English style andthe basically heterogeneous nature of Zuozhuan itself should allow for

some variance. Certain translation choices, we know, will raise eye-



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brows, if not ire. For example, we have chosen to render guo 國 as“domain” rather than the usual “state.” We do this to remind the readerof two characteristics of the guo in Spring and Autumn China. First, a

guo was a nexus of settlements extending out from a walled central city

or capital, also called guo, toward a border area that was rarely as clearlydelineated as the frontiers of a modern state. Second, power in thedomain was usually a matter of lineage and sublineage relationships,with the lord (Latin dominus, a distant root of the word “domain”) at thecenter. Administrative structures were not elaborate, and official busi-ness was usually a “family affair.” High officers (dafu 大夫) and minis-ters (qing 卿), who come to overshadow many lords of the ruling houses,fill offices that oen become hereditary; their source of power and rev-enue was settlements ( yi 邑) under their administration and jurisdiction.Serving under them are officers (shi 士), usually unranked descendants

of branch lineages serving in chariot units. Inhabitants of the capital( guoren 國人) sometimes seem to be able to act collectively and swaypolicy decisions.

We also have not adhered to the traditional way of translating the fiveranks of early China: gong 公, hou 侯, bo伯, zi 子, and nan 男, usually“duke,” “marquis,” “earl,” “count,” and “baron,” respectively. ese termsnot only lead the reader into the feudal world of medieval Europe butalso convey a sense of hierarchy and orderliness that was not always soclear in the world of early China. Although a Zuozhuan passage indicatesthat these terms for ranks were not an entirely meaningless jumble (Xi

.), they were not applied consistently in Zuozhuan, as Chen Pan陳槃has so persuasively demonstrated. Consequently, we have rendered thefive ranks as “duke,” “prince,” “liege,” “master,” and “head.”

e first of these terms, gong , not only is used to designate the rulersof such domains as Song and Guo but also is a more general honorificbestowed upon every ruler at the time of his death and used consistentlythereaer, usually attached to the ruler’s posthumous name. us, ourtext is organized not around twelve Lu “dukes” but around twelve Lu“lords.” Each of these is identified in the text by his posthumous name(Yin, Huan, Zhuang, Min, etc.), with the honorific title gong that follows

thus being understood as the general honorific “lord.” ings canbecome tricky when, for example, a particular Duke of Song (Song gong 宋公) becomes Lord Shang of Song (Song Shang gong 宋殤公) aer hedies and is buried. Zuozhuan refers to both the “Duke of Song” (e.g., Yin., ., .) and “Lord Shang” (e.g., Yin ., .). We translate the term

gong differently in the second case because every ruler becomes a “lord”when he dies and is given his posthumous name. For example, whenLiege Fuchu of Cao (Cao bo Fuchu曹伯負芻) dies, even though he wasnever a "duke" or a "lord" ( gong ) while alive, he is posthumously namedLord Cheng (Cheng gong成公). Furthermore, gong is also oen used on

its own as a way of referring to a living ruler who is being spoken to or



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mentioned. In the Annals an unqualified gong always refers to the Lordof Lu. In these cases we have typically translated gong as “our lord” toremind the reader that the Annals is a Lu text and maintains that per-spective throughout. But in the case of Zuozhuan, we translate an

unqualified gong as “our lord” when it refers to the Lu ruler and simplyas “the lord” when it refers to the ruler of some other domain. is fea-ture of our translation, which is meant to assist the reader, does have theresult of giving Zuozhuan a Lu point of view that is not so apparent inthe original and may not accurately reflect the origin of the text. Inaddition, Zhou court ministers are also called gong . To differentiate themfrom rulers of domains, we have rendered their names without the geni-tive—Liu Kang gong 劉康公, for example, is translated as Liu DukeKang (rather than Duke Kang of Liu).

Many other translation choices, which we will not describe in further

detail here, deviate from sinological convention, but we hope none ofthese are too jarring or, more seriously, too far removed from the mean-ing of the original. Without pretending that we have necessarily pro-duced a translation superior to that of James Legge, we do think there issome merit in trying to defamiliarize the text somewhat for those read-ers already steeped in Legge’s version. One of the advantages to havingso many different translations of Homer or of the Bible is that the personwho does not read the original languages can move from translation totranslation, gaining new insights and perspectives from each. We hopethat the reader will find what we have produced here to be fresh and

clear. And should our work encourage other translations of this rich andwonderful text, translations with styles and features that set them apartfrom ours, so much the better!

PART II: THE EARLY HISTORY OF ZUOZHUAN

Present consensus holds that Zuozhuan was largely complete by the endof the fourth century . Predictions voiced within the text do notanticipate events much later than those years. Intellectual positions

adopted by historical characters in the work are for the most part con-sistent with trends of this and earlier eras. e text’s diction preservescertain archaic distinctions that were forgotten in later times. Manu-scripts recovered from tombs dating to around show that edu-cated elites of the middle Warring States period were committingphilosophical arguments and historical anecdotes to writing, sometimesin texts thousands of characters long. Some large part of our Zuozhuan likely circulated in writing by that time.

Still, if a nearly complete version of Zuozhuan was being read andtransmitted by the end of the Warring States period, it received surpris-

ingly little attention in the texts that survive from those years. True,


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Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan: Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals

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