Page:Ch'un Ts'ew Pt I.pdf/24

Rh The two characters, translated literally, simply mean Spring and Autumn. ‘Anciently,’ says Maou K‘e-ling, ‘the historiographers, in recording events, did so with the specification of the day, the month, the season, and the year, to which each event belonged; and to the whole they gave the name of annals. ‘It was proper that under every year there should be written the names of the four seasons, and the entire record of a year went by the name of Spring and Autumn, two of the seasons, being a compendious expression for all the four.’ ‘Spring and Autumn’ is thus equivalent to—Annals, digested under the seasons of every year. An inspection of the Work will prove that this is the proper meaning of its title. Even if there were nothing to be recorded under any season, it was still necessary to make a record of the season and of the first month in it. Entries like that in the 6th year of duke Yin,—‘It was autumn, the 7th month,’ where the next paragraph begins with ‘ln winter,’ are frequent. If now and then a year occurs in which we do not find every season specified, we may be sure the omission is owing to the loss of a character or of a paragraph in the course of time. Chaou K‘e explains the title in the same way, and so does Too Yu in the preface to his edition of the Tso Chuen. Other accounts of the name are only creations of fancy, and have arisen from a misconception of the nature of the Work. Thus Dr. Williams says, 'The spring and autumn annals are so called, because “their commendations are life-giving like spring, and their censures are life-withering like autumn.' The Han scholars gave forth this, and other accounts of a similar kind, led away by their notions as to the nature of the Work on which I have touched in the preceding section. Not even, as l have said, in the Work itself do we find such censures and commendations; and much less are they trumpeted in the title of it.

7]