Chinese History - 722-481 BC - Spring and Autumn Period
The whole period of the Eastern Chow dynasty is divided into two, the earlier part being called the " Spring and Autumn Period," because that period corresponds roughly with the period which is covered by the chronicle of the "Spring and Autumn" (Chun-chu), edited by Confucius; and the latter part is called the " Fighting States Period": (Chan-kue), because it was a time when China was split up between different States, and fighting was continually going on between them. From the point of view of intellectual cultivation, the latter part of the " Spring and Autumn Period" and the "Fighting States Period " are the most brilliant epochs of Chinese history, because in those days all sorts of mental activity were manifested in China.
The 'Four Books' and the 'Five Classics' are the chief amongst the classical works of the Chinese. The 'Four Books' consist of 'The Confucian Analects,' 'The Great Learning,' 'The Doctrine of the Mean,' and 'The Works of Mencius'; The 'Five Classics' consist of 'The Book of Changes,' 'The Book of History,' 'The Book of Odes,' 'The Book of Rites,' and 'The Spring and Autumn Annals.' The last is the only one of which Confucius is actually the author, though he compiled 'The Book of History' and 'The Odes.'
Of the four books and five classics of China commonly called the "Confucian classics," 'The Spring and Autumn Annals is the most meagre of the lot, devoid even of literary beauty. It is called the Spring and Autumn, and consists of the history of a space of barely 250 years. It contains the record of the kingdom of Lu for two hundred and forty-two years, down to within two years of Confucius' death. There is in it the briefest possible intimations of matters without the slightest tincture of literary ability in the composition. "So-and-so took place." That is all. No details are given; no judgment is expressed."
It is called Spring and Autumn, possibly because the commendations and examples presented in it for imitation are supposed to be life-giving like spring, and the criticisms and rebukes withering like autumn. The Spring and Autumn equinoxes were chosen by the Chinese for the worship of Heaven. But the name Spring and Autumn was in in use before it was given to the compilabefore the time 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. 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. The name may be taken as equivalent to history in general, the historical summaries made in the various States of the kingdom.
Of this book, Mencius says, "Confucius made the Spring and Autumn, and unfilial sons were struck with terror." Confucius actually stakes his reputation in after ages on it. "It is by the Spring and Autumn," said he, "that men will know me, and also by it that they will condemn me." Every word and the turn of every sentence in it are supposed to contain a depth of instruction, which the literati, down to the present day, labour with an astonishing display of ingenuity and learning, to explore and exhihit.
Tso K'iu-ming took it in hand to supply those events, incorporating also others with them, and continuing his narratives over some additional years, so that through him the history of China in all its states, from year to year, for more than two centuries and a half, lies bare. Tso never challenges the text of the master as being incorrect, yet he does not warp or modify his own narratives to make them square with it; and the astounding fact is, that when we compare the events with the summary of them, we must pronounce the latter misleading in the extreme. Men are charged with murder who were not guilty of it, and base murders are related as if they had been natural deaths. Villains, over whose fate the reader rejoices, are put down as victims of vile treason, and those who dealt with them as he would have been glad to do are subjected to horrible executions without one word of sympathy. Ignoring, concealing and misrepresenting are the characteristics of the Spring and Autumn.
And yet this work is the model for all historical summaries in China. The want of harmony between the facts and the statements about them is patent to all scholars, and it is the knowledge of this, unacknowledged to themselves, which has made the literati labour with an astonishing amount of fruitless ingenuity and learning to find in individual words, and the turn of every sentence, some mysterious indication of praise or blame.
A glance at a historical map of Germany during the Thirty Years' War would demonstrate the difficulty, not to say impossibility, of furnishing a synoptic view of the numerous states constantly at war with each other, falling under the nominal sway of the Ch6u dynasty. Each generation of those days presents a different view. The geography of the Ch&u-li, with its nine provinces, or ch&u, bearing such close resemblance to the divisions of the empire under the Great Yii, is a simple affair when compared with that multiplicity of states which began to grow up from small beginnings, some of them attaining great power, others being short-lived and swallowed up by their neighbors. Their development in history may be traced in the Tso-chuan; but as affecting the history of China at large, I shall mention only the more important ones among them. Students who care for further detail will find it in Legge's edition of the historical classic itself.
The development of supremacy among certain states, nominally coming within the jurisdiction of the emperor, is probably to a large extent the result of their geographical position. The states occupying the eastern part of the empire were naturally prevented from expansion by their being situated so close to the sea-coast; those in the north, west, and south had the opportunity to join arms with rude but warlike neighbors, whose territories, by force or persuasion, they managed to incorporate into their own dominions, allowing their populations to amalgamate, spreading Chinese civilization among them, while profiting by their warlike spirit.
The states which most benefited by such a conjuncture were those of Tsin, Ts'in, and Ch'u. The first two names, so similar in sound, should not be confounded with each other; the initial of the tsin (without an apostrophe) being comparatively soft, whereas ts'in is pronounced with a hard explosive almost approaching an aspirate. The countries represented by these names were next-door neighbors and occupied the entire northwest of the present empire. Tsin held the greater part of the present province of Shan-si and the adjoining portion of Chi-li with that portion of Shen-si which lay on and near the opposite shore of the Yellow River. The large tract of country west of it, comprising that fertile valley of the Wei River with a number of seats of the ancient Chinese civilization, had from small beginnings grown into the dominion of the Ts'in state.
Both these states had for centuries to do all the fighting for the Chinese of the interior against their northern and western enemies, the Huns, whose several divisions are mentioned under various names, as we have seen. The result of this fighting was the gradual increase of their military strength. We have seen how the ancestors of the Ch6u emperors originally also occupied a small territory on the western frontier, and how the warlike spirit and the virtue of their rulers was exercised and fostered by their having to do the fighting for that lazy and voluptuous court of the decadent Shang dynasty; also, how thereby, from small beginnings, the dukes of Ch6u had grown so powerful that with the assistance of Huns and other boundary tribes they managed to throw the Shangs out of the field, whose last scion they placed in charge of the kingdom of Corea as a vassal state.
The history of the century from BC 685 to 591, has been entitled the period of the Five Leaders because it exhibits the rise in succession to power of the five States of Ch'i, Sung, Chin, Ch'in, Ch'u. The five great princes who represent the successive periods of dominance are as follows:
1. Duke Huan of Ch'i, B. C. 685-643, whose fame is closely bound up with that of his great Prime Minister, the philosopher Kwan Tzu, or Kwan Chung, noteworthy as the statesman-statistician who obtained a revenue for his master by the levying of taxes upon salt and iron. The philosophical work on government and legislation ascribed to Kwan Tzii and called by his name is now generally regarded as a forgery of later times. Kwan Tzii deserves mention not only as an economist but as a typical Chinese friend. The story of Kwan Tzu and Pao Shuh corresponds in China to the Greek story of Damon and Pythias. "My parents," said Kwan Tzii, "gave me birth but Pao Shuh alone knows my feelings."
Duke Huan was for thirty-nine years the undisputed leader among the feudal chiefs and a successful warrior against China's foreign foes. He was evidently a shrewd judge of merit as is illustrated in the story of how he raised to the position of one of his chief counselors the philosopher, Ning Tsi, whom he discovered earning his bread as a wagoner. The Duke also appeals to us sympathetically as having sent back to her father a favorite wife who persisted in rocking the boat in which they were one day amusing themselves on the Lake. In his last illness the great chief lay neglected whilst his sons quarreled over the succession. It is a serious indictment against the filial piety of the time that the body of the dead ruler lay for months unburied and uncared for and the prestige of the state fell as rapidly as it had risen.
2. Duke Siang of Sung. BC 650-637.
3. Duke Wen of Chin, BC 636-628, who came to the rulership of the State after he had declined to accept the position on terms which appeared to him dishonorable. "Fugitive as I am," he said, " it is not the getting of the State which is precious in my sight but the maintenance of my benevolence and my filial piety." On his way through a certain district, he was once reduced to the necessity of begging for food. A churlish fellow offered him a clod of earth. The future duke bowed, accepted the clod with the remark, "It is Heaven's gift, a gift of the soil, a good omen," 1 and took it along with him, as hopefully as Duke William of Normandy clutched the handful of sand when he slipped upon the sea beach of England. Duke Wen fought a great battle against the State of Ch'u in BC 632 - if not one of the great battles of the world, yet one of the great battles of China; a battle of civilization against barbarism. He died four years after his victory.
4. Duke Mu of Ch'm, BC 659-621.
5. Prince Chuang of Ch'u, BC 613-591, who with success became audacious and sent to the Emperor an insolent message asking the size and weight of the Nine Tripods on which the security of the Empire was said to depend. The reply of the Emperor, Ting Wang, was not without its dignity: "When virtue is brilliant, the tripods are heavy; when the reverse, they are light; Heaven blesses intelligent virtue; on that its favor rests. Though the virtue of Chou is decayed, the decree of Heaven is not yet changed. The weight of the Tripods may not be enquired about."
It will be seen that the ups and downs in the life of the more powerful federal states were greatly dependent on the personal qualities of their leaders. Yet it may be said that the hero who initiated the period of the "Five Leaders" was Duke Huan of Ts'i, who rose to the high position he held among the confederation of dukes and princes by following the advice of his great minister Kuan-tzi. This advice led him, on the one hand, to adopt such measures as would in reality unite the greatest power in his government; on the other, to be absolutely loyal to his emperor, the traditional head of the confederation.
In Zhou emperor King-wang (519-476 BC) was a son of the former King-wang, whose throne name (King) seems identical in its transliteration, but is really written with a different character and pronounced in a different tone. On his accession there was dissension among the brother princes, three of whom claimed the throne, and the emperor had to live for some time outside his capital until his brother Ch'au had fled to the state of Ch'u (519 BC). Under this reign a feud, lasting through many years, arose between the two states of Wu and Yue. The ruler of the state of Wu had usurped the kingship. He reigned from 514 to 496 BC, and removed his capital to the site of the present city of Soochow.
The Spring and Autumn Period, so called from the historical classic of that name, the main text of which is ascribed to Confucius himself, must, of course, be considered as closed before the death of its author in 479 BC. The Tso-chuan commentary carries its accounts about seventeen years farther on, thus covering Yuan-wang's reign. About this time commences, according to some authorities, that period of the Chou dynasty which precedes its downfall, and which is known by the name of Chan-kuo, "the Contending States." But the transition from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Contending States is arbitrary - an artifact of the death of Confucius. So to is the dating of the the outset of the Contending States period, which some would say began seamlessly with the death of Confucius in 479 BC, while others might date it to 403 BC, which is both the year in which three powerful families in Tsin were recognized by the emperor as the heads of so many feudal states, as well as the year in which starts the account of the T'ung-kien-kang-mu, the work of the great historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien, who submitted it to his emperor in 1066 AD.
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