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2. That we are not to seek for any deep or mystical meaning in the title is still more evident from the fact that the name was in in use, use before it was given to the compilation of Confucius. The first narrative of the Tso Chuen under the second year of duke Ch‘aou, when Confucius was only eleven years old, shows that this was the case in Loo. Then the principal minister of Tsin, being on a visit to the court of Loo, examined the documents in the charge of the grand-historiographer, and ‘saw,’ we are told, ‘the Yih with its diagrams and the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Loo.’^[1]

But the records, or a class of the records, of every State in the kingdom of Chow appear to have been called by this name of Spring and Autumn. In the ‘Narratives of the States,’ the appointment of Shuh-hëang to be tutor to the heir-apparent of the State of Tsin is grounded on ‘his acquaintance with the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw.’^[2] I take the name there as equivalent to history in general,—the historical summaries made in the various States of the kingdom. Shuh-hëang’s appointment was made in B.C. 568, about twenty years before Confucius was born. In the same Narratives, at a still earlier date, it is laid down as a rule for the heir-apparent of the State of Ts‘oo, that he should be taught the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw.^[3] According to Mencius, the annals of Loo went by the name of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, while those of Tsin were called the Shing, and those of Ts‘oo the T‘aou-wuh.^[4] All these, however, he says, were books of the same character; and though the annals of different States might have other and particular names given to them, it seems clear that they might all be designated Ch‘un Ts‘ëw. Thus we have a statement in Mih Teih that he ‘had seen the Ch‘un-ts‘ëw histories of a hundred States’;^[5] and elsewhere we find him speaking of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Chow, the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Yen, the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Sung, and the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Ts‘e.^[6]

 

1. 觀書於太史氏,見易象與魯春秋. In my translation of this passage on p. 583, I have omitted inadvertently to render the 見易象, and the whole might be taken as if ‘the Ch‘un Ts'ëw of Loo' were not one of the documents in the keeping of the historiographer.
2. 羊舌肸習於春秋,乃使傅太子彪;—see the 國語,晉語,七, at the end.
3. 教之春秋;—See the 國語,楚語,上, art I. The prince to be taught was the son of king Chwang, who died B.C. 590.
4. Men IV. Pt. ii. XXI. 2. 晉之乘,楚之檮杌,魯春秋,一也.
5. 吾見百國春秋史. See the 墨子佚文, appended to the 15th Book of his Works.
6. In his 明鬼,下.

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