Zuo Zhuan
The Zuo Zhuan, often translated as The Zuo Tradition or as The Commentary of Zuo, is an ancient Chinese narrative history traditionally regarded as a commentary on the ancient Chinese chronicle Spring and Autumn Annals. It comprises 30 chapters that cover the period from 722 to 468BC, and it focuses mainly on the Chinese political, diplomatic, and military affairs from that era.
For many centuries, the Zuo Zhuan was the primary text through which educated Chinese learned their ancient history. The Zuo Zhuan does not simply explain the wording of the Spring and Autumn Annals, but rather expounds upon its historical background with rich and lively accounts of the history and culture of the Spring and Autumn period. The Zuo Zhuan is the source of more Chinese sayings and idioms than any other classical work, and its concise, flowing style served as a paragon of elegant Classical Chinese. Its tendency toward third-person narration and portraying characters through direct speech and action became hallmarks of Chinese narrative in general, and its style was imitated by historians, storytellers, and ancient-style prose masters for over 2000 years of subsequent Chinese history.
The Zuo Zhuan has a reputation as "a masterpiece of grand historical narrative", but its early textual history is largely unknown, and the nature of its original composition and authorship have been widely debated. The titular "Zuo" was traditionally identified as Zuo Qiuming—an obscure figure of the 5th century BC described as a blind disciple of Confuciusbut there is little actual evidence to support this. Most scholars now generally believe that the Zuo Zhuan was originally an independent work, composed during the 4th century BC, that was later rearranged as a commentary to the Annals.
Textual history
Creation
Despite its longstanding status as the paragon of Classical Chinese prose, little is known of the creation and early history of the Zuo Zhuan. Bamboo and silk manuscripts excavated from late Warring States period tombs, combined with analyses of the language, diction, chronological references, and philosophical viewpoints of the Zuo Zhuan, suggest that its composition was largely complete by 300 BC. No pre-Han dynasty sources, however, suggest that the Zuo Zhuan had to that point been organized into any coherent form. Pre-Han dynasty texts do not directly refer to the Zuo Zhuan as a source, although a few mention its parent text Spring and Autumn Annals. The Zuo Zhuan seems to have had no distinct title of its own during this period, but seems to have simply been called "Annals " along with a larger group of similar texts.In the 3rd century AD, the Chinese scholar Du Yu intercalated the Zuo Zhuan with the Annals so that each Annals entry was followed by the corresponding narrative from the Zuo Zhuan. This became the received format of the Zuo Zhuan that exists today. Some modern scholars believe that the Zuo Zhuan originally was an independent work composed during the latter half of the 4th century BCthough probably incorporating some older materialthat was later rearranged as a commentary to the Annals. During the Han dynasty, Guoyu was often paired with the text, being seen as an effective preface to it given they cover the same period.
Authorship
's 1st century BC Records of the Grand Historian, the first of China's 24 dynastic histories, refers to the Zuo Zhuan as "Master Zuo's Spring and Autumn Annals" and attributes it to a man named "Zuo Qiuming". According to Sima Qian, Confucius's disciples began disagreeing over their interpretations of the Annals after Confucius's death. Zuo therefore gathered together Confucius's scribal records and used them to compile the Zuo Annals in order to "preserve the true teachings." The "Zuo Qiuming" whom Sima Qian references was traditionally assumed to be the Zuo Qiuming who briefly appears in the Analects of Confucius when Confucius praises him for his moral judgment.Other than this brief mention, nothing is concretely known of the life or identity of the Zuo Qiuming of the Analects, nor of what connection he might have with the Zuo Zhuan. This traditional assumption that the title's "Master Zuo" refers to the Zuo Qiuming of the Analects is not based on any specific evidence, and was challenged by scholars as early as the 8th century. Some modern scholars have observed that even if the Zuo Qiuming of the Analects is the "Zuo" referenced in the Zuo Zhuan′s title, this attribution is questionable because the Zuo Zhuan describes events from the late Spring and Autumn period that Zuo could not have known.
Alternatively, a number of scholars, beginning in the 18th century, have suggested that the Zuo Zhuan was actually the product of Wu Qi, a military leader who served in the State of Wei and who, according to the Han Feizi, was from a place called Zuoshi. In 1792, the scholar Yao Nai wrote: "The did not come from one person. There were repeated accretions and additions, with those of Wu Qi and his followers being especially numerous...."
Commentary status
In the early 19th century, the Chinese scholar Liu Fenglu initiated a long, drawn-out controversy when he proposed, by emphasizing certain discrepancies between it and the Annals, that the Zuo Zhuan was not originally a commentary on the Annals. Liu's theory was taken much further by the prominent scholar and reformer Kang Youwei, who argued that Liu Xin did not really find the "ancient script" version of the Zuo Zhuan in the imperial archives, as historical records describe, but actually forged it as a commentary on the Annals. Kang's theory was that Liu Xinwho with his father Liu Xiang, the imperial librarian, was one of the first to have access to the rare documents in the Han dynasty's imperial archivestook the Discourses of the States and forged it into a chronicle-like work to fit the format of the Annals in an attempt to lend credibility to the policies of his master, the usurper Wang Mang.Kang's theory was supported by several subsequent Chinese scholars in the late 19th century, but was contradicted by many 20th-century studies that examined it from many different perspectives. In the early 1930s, the French Sinologist Henri Maspero performed a detailed textual study of the issue, concluding the Han dynasty forgery theory to be untenable. The Swedish Sinologist Bernhard Karlgren concluded, based on a series of linguistic and philological analyses he carried out in the 1920s, that the Zuo Zhuan is a genuine ancient text "probably to be dated between 468 and 300BC." While Liu's hypothesis that the Zuo Zhuan was not originally an Annals commentary has been generally accepted, Kang's theory of Liu Xin forging the Zuo Zhuan is now considered discredited.
Manuscripts
The oldest surviving Zuo Zhuan manuscripts are six fragments that were discovered among the Dunhuang manuscripts in the early 20th century by the French Sinologist Paul Pelliot and are now held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Four of the fragments date to the Six Dynasties period, while the other two date to the early Tang dynasty. The oldest known complete Zuo Zhuan manuscript is the "ancient manuscript scroll" preserved at the Kanazawa Bunko Museum in Yokohama, Japan.Content and style
Content
The Zuo Zhuan recounts the major political, military, and social events of the Spring and Autumn period from the perspective of the State of Lu. The book is famous "for its dramatic power and realistic details". It contains a variety of tense and dramatic episodes: battles and fights, royal assassinations and murder of concubines, deception and intrigue, excesses, citizens' oppression and insurgences, and appearances of ghosts and cosmic portents.Each Zuo Zhuan chapter begins with the Spring and Autumn Annals entry for the year, which is usually terse and brief. It then recounts the Zuo Zhuan content for that year, which often contains long and detailed narratives. The entries follow the strict chronological format of the Annals, so interrelated episodes and the actions of individual characters are sometimes separated by events that occurred in the intervening years. The following entry, though unusually short, exemplifies the general format of all Zuo Zhuan entries.
| Text | Ruler of the State of Lu | Reign Duration | Period of Coverage |
| Duke Yin of Lu | 11 | 722 – 712 BC | |
| Duke Huan of Lu | 18 | 711 – 694 BC | |
| Duke Zhuang of Lu | 32 | 693 – 662 BC | |
| Duke Min of Lu | 2 | 661 – 660 BC | |
| Duke Xi of Lu | 33 | 659 – 627 BC | |
| Duke Wen of Lu | 18 | 626 – 609 BC | |
| Duke Xuan of Lu | 18 | 608 – 591 BC | |
| Duke Cheng of Lu | 18 | 590 – 573 BC | |
| Duke Xiang of Lu | 31 | 572 – 542 BC | |
| Duke Zhao of Lu | 32 | 541 – 510 BC | |
| Duke Ding of Lu | 15 | 509 – 495 BC | |
| Duke Ai of Lu | 27 | 494 – 468 BC |