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The Historical Value Of The Chun/Chyou, A. Brooks
The Historical Value Of The Chun/Chyou, A. Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
The Spring and Autumn period (late 08th to early 05th centuries) is of interest in its own right, and for Chinese historiography in general. I here argue that the Chun/Chyou (CC) or “Spring and Autumn” text, ostensibly a Lu court chronicle, is the best, and the only primary, source for the period.1 I also dispute the competing claim of the Dzwo Jwan (DJ), which some view as a fuller, and a more accurate, account of the Spring and Autumn centuries.2
Defeat In The Chun/Chyou, A. Brooks, E. Brooks
Defeat In The Chun/Chyou, A. Brooks, E. Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
We here consider how victory and defeat are treated in the Chun/Chyou. We find that the Lu court of Spring and Autumn times viewed military operations not in a chivalric or moralizing way, like characters in Dzwo Jwan (DJ) narratives of Spring and Autumn events, but in a cold-eyed military advantage way.
Military Capacity In Spring And Autumn, A. Brooks
Military Capacity In Spring And Autumn, A. Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
It has been said that the states of Spring and Autumn (0770-0479) deployed large armies, drawn in part from the general populace.1 But our only contemporary source, the Lu chronicle Chun/Chyou (CC), implies a more limited situation: small elite chariot forces, few battles,2 and tactical frugality. The size of these forces did increase over the period,3 but no major state was destroyed by them. I here review the major features of the military system of the time, noting the limits on what it could achieve – limits that were surpassed only by reorganizing the state itself, a reorganization which virtually …
Re-Dating The Sources, A. Brooks
Re-Dating The Sources, A. Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
The sources for history are basic to history, and an accurate idea of the chronology of the sources is basic to the task of understanding the sources themselves historically. We cannot effectively investigate the history of China’s formative Warring States or classical period without knowing which of these texts are earlier and which are later. I here describe a systematic attempt to reach a better understanding of Warring States text chronology. But before saying how we have approached the chronology problem, I should first say why we think there is a problem – a problem that has not been solved …
Evolution Of Ba "Hegemon" Theory, A. Taeko Brooks
Evolution Of Ba "Hegemon" Theory, A. Taeko Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
Everyone knows that the ba institution, the Jou Kings’ delegation of power to a series of strong vassals, was important in Spring and Autumn China.1 Unfortunately for this consensus, the Chun/Chyou (CC), our primary source, does not mention the ba institution. The later Dzwo Jwan (DJ) does mention it, and uses three different terms for it: mv ng-ju, [hou]-bwo, and ba! . None of these terms appears in the CC. I find that the three DJ terms reflect three stages in the evolution of the ba theory, and that the theory is not an 07th century historical fact, but an …
Enfiefment Renewal In Lu, A. Taeko Brooks
Enfiefment Renewal In Lu, A. Taeko Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
Three times in the Chun/Chyou chronicle, the Jou King confers a mandate (ming ) on a Lu ruler. The details of these incidents shed light on the nature of Jou enfiefment, as it persisted after the loss of Jou military power in 0771.
Mwodz 17-19 "Against War", A. Taeko Brooks
Mwodz 17-19 "Against War", A. Taeko Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
The MZ 17-19 essays expound a well-known and characteristic tenet of Micianism. They share with MZ 14-16 the fact that each essay is twice the length of the preceding (successively 425, 1,172, and 2,016 words).1 As a supplement to my previous studies,2 I here consider the structure and rhetorical strategy of each essay, to show that (1) each is complete in itself, in further refutation of the fragment theory, and that (2) the series is developmental, in further refutation of the idea that they are parallel but geographically separate versions of the same thing.3
Mwodz 14-16 "Universal Love", A. Taeko Brooks
Mwodz 14-16 "Universal Love", A. Taeko Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
I here examine the Mwodz Jyen Ai or “Universal Love” triplet. As with MZ 17-19, I wish to ask whether they may be regarded as a developmental series, rather than (as Graham claims)1 a group of variants, and to consider their specifics in more detail than was possible in my paper on the Mician ethical chapters.2
The Fragment Theory Of Mz 14, 17 And 20, A. Taeko Brooks
The Fragment Theory Of Mz 14, 17 And 20, A. Taeko Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
A C Graham has suggested that the three shortest ethical triplet chapters, those which do not begin with the standard opening formula “Our Master Mwodz says”, are not chapters, but fragments or summaries of other chapters; specifically, that MZ 17 (now titled “AgainstWar”) is “a fragment from the lost ending of chapter 26” (“Will of Heaven”), and that MZ 14 and 20 are “complete summaries of the Mohist doctrines of universal love and thrift in expenditures without illustrative quotations or answers to objections and almost without close parallelisms with chapters in the same triad.” 1 I have previously argued that …
The League Of The North, A. Taeko Brooks
The League Of The North, A. Taeko Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
Among the 104 “covenants” (mvng ) in the Chun/Chyou (CC) chronicle, what distinguishes the 16 tung-mvng (Legge “covenanted together”)? The commentaries give no convincing answer.1 But there must have been some feature that made these covenants different for those entering into them. On considering the political context, I find that the tung-mvng covenants were a sort of collective security agreement, meant to enforce solidarity among the northern states against the military threat from southern and non-Sinitic Chu. I also note that this north/south polarity virtually defines the middle period of Spring and Autumn.
Distancing Ji In The Chun/Chyou, A. Taeko Brooks
Distancing Ji In The Chun/Chyou, A. Taeko Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
Ji in the Chun/Chyou (CC) can be a verb “overtake, go as far as” or a coverb linking one noun with another noun. The Gungyang Jwan (GYJ) and Gulyang Jwan (GLJ)1 commentaries ascribe to coverb ji the meaning “and” or a nuance of secondary involvement (lei).2 Legge (Ch’un 5) calls the latter meaning “recondite;” Dobson, Schuessler, and Wang Li do not mention it. I find that ji is a secondary, specifically a distancing, “and.”3 I ascribe that nuance, when present, not to any retrospective Confucian “praise and blame” coding in the CC, a theory still widely accepted, but to the …
The Mician Ethical Chapters, A. Taeko Brooks
The Mician Ethical Chapters, A. Taeko Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
The Mwo (MZ) consists of 71 numbered units, conventionally called chapters. The first 39 of these are on ethical or other doctrinal topics. Of them, 30 (MZ 8-37) are grouped in ten sets of three, which I will call triplets, each set having a collective title; 2 (MZ 38-39) form a duplet, also with a collective title; the other 7 (MZ 1-7) are individually titled singlets. Stylistic inconsistencies occur among and within triplets, in a pattern which suggests evolution over time. I here propose an order of composition of the triplets from this internal evidence, and extend that argument to …
The Lu Lore Tradition, A. Taeko Brooks
The Lu Lore Tradition, A. Taeko Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
I here define an information transmission mode, distinct from both the orally transmitted and the written text, and demonstrate its variability over time. “Confucius” in Analects (LY) 5:15-24 comments on several figures from his own and earlier times. I see these figures as part of an 05c Lu elite lore tradition. By “lore tradition” I mean a body of information having no fixed textual form, either written or oral, propagated by contact within a group. I will study the stability of this tradition by considering it at three points: (1) the Chun/Chyou (CC) chronicle (0721-0479), (2) the LY 5 comments …
The History And Historiography Of Jyw, A. Taeko Brooks
The History And Historiography Of Jyw, A. Taeko Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
Non-Sinitic Jyw was located at 35 35’ N, 118! 50’ E, east of the Lu capital and astride the upper Shu River valley, the major north/south route to the lowlands of eastern Chi. Jyw appears often in the Lu chronicle Chun/Chyou (CC), but it was not one of the great states of the age. I here compare the treatment of Jyw in the CC, which acknowledges it routinely, and in the Dzwo Jwan (DJ), which reshapes Jyw into a textbook example of misrule and deserved destruction.
The Syi-Gung Transition, A. Taeko Brooks
The Syi-Gung Transition, A. Taeko Brooks
A. Taeko Brooks
George Kennedy inaugurated the rational study of the Chun/Chyou (CC) by suggesting that the completeness of CC data for the deaths of non-Lu rulers need not be a coded message from some later moral arbiter, but may simply reflect the information available to the Lu court, and that this in turn might depend on the quality of interstate communications.1 I here develop this suggestion, and argue for a turning point under Syi-gung (r 0659-0627), within Kennedy’s “gradually widening horizon” – a change, part of which indeed entailed a wider geographical awareness, in the position of Lu as one of the …