The Transformation of the Spring and Autumn Annals into a Work of Revelation : a Study of the Kung-yang Chuan

Abstract

The moral and political authority of the sage and sovereign as they appear in the Kung-yang Chuan 公羊傳 has become absolute, and they have become the sage and sovereign of the Way of Heaven which subsumes the ritual structure. For this reason, modelling themselves according to revelations sent from Heaven, they bear responsibility in the Way of Heaven ; they are, however, unable to bear responsibility in the Way of Man. This is the same as in the case of the sage and sovereign of the I-chuan 易傳. In the I-chuan, the revelations of Heaven are manifested in Heaven-sent prodigies, transformations, images and t'u-shu 図書, revelatory documents. In the Kung-yang Chuan, they are manifested in portents, tsai-i 災異, and the like, but these portents correspond to the prodigies, transformations and images of the I-chuan, albeit not to its t'u-shu. But in the works which read the will of Heaven as well as its law, such as I-chuan, these are revelatory documents in essence although portents in form. Consequently, works in which the Mandate and will of Heaven read in portents have been inscribed by the sage are the same as the t'u-shu and are, so to speak, another revelatory documents. Further, the so-called "abstruse words" wei-yen 微言 of the Kung-yang Chuan are the sage's records of Heaven-sent revelations and of conduct modelled according to them, and so the wei-yen are also another revelatory documents and records of conduct written on their model, that is to say, the documents born of the revelatory diagrams, t'u 図. From the above facts it is possible to conclude that the Kung-yang Chuan turned the Spring and Autumn Annals into a revelatory text. The Kung-yang Chuan was written in an attempt to establish the ritual structure, with the purpose of "ordering the disorder and restoring it to rectitude" under the imperial domination of the House of Han which took its stand in the Way of Heaven. As a result of it, this work caused the absorption of the Way of Man into the Way of Heaven, just as did the I-chuan. We may also consider that it was influenced by the Shang-shu 尚書, the Shang-Shu Ta-chuan 尚書大傳 and so on, and was completed at the time extremely close to that of its release to the public at the hands of Hu-mu Sheng 胡母生.