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A Tell-Tale Mistake in the Lü Shi Chunqiu: the Earthquake Supposedly in the Eighth Year of Wen Wang of Zhou

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A Tell-Tale Mistake in the Lü Shi Chunqiu: the Earthquake Supposedly in the Eighth Year of Wen Wang of Zhou A Tell-tale Mistake in the Lü shi Chunqiu: The Earthquake Supposedly in the Eighth Year of Wen Wang of Zhou In chapter 6 of the Lü shi Chunqiu, titled “Last month of Summer,” the fourth sec- tion is titled “Zhi yue” (制樂), meaning approximately “(good) government and (harmonious) music”—but although other sections do have something to do with music, the word “yue” here perhaps must have its other reading and sense, le, “felicity.” The section recounts three incidents, concerning Tang of Shang, Wen Wang of Zhou, and Duke Jing of Song, and in each case good words and acts of the ruler are rewarded by a reversal or negation of misfortune.* The story about Wen Wang reads as follows: When Wen Wang of Zhou had been ruler for eight years, in the sixth month of the year (sui liu yue) Wen Wang went to bed sick. Five days later there was an earthquake, and to the east, west, south and north, it did not go beyond the capital suburbs. His officers were all frightened and said, “Please let us avert the curse.” Wen Wang replied, “How?” they an- swered, “We could mobilize the people and extend the city walls; wouldn’t that avert it?” Wen Wang said, “No. Heaven displays an evil omen in order to punish someone who is guilty. I must be the guilty person, and heaven is doing this to punish me. If I were now to mobilize the people to extend the walls, this would double my guilt. This won’t do.” Wen Wang then carried out a reform of his conduct of rites and administration; whereupon, In no time at all, his sickness stopped. Wen Wang had ruled for eight years when the earth- quake happened. Forty-three years after the earthquake, when he had ruled in all fifty-one years, he died. This was Wen Wang’s way of cutting short calamity. I shall neglect the quaint but familiar religious aspects of this story. The prob- lem that draws my attention is that Wen Wang did not reign for 51 years. As I think I have proved (“The Dates of Western Chou,” HJAS 43, 1983), his reign in Zhou began in 1101 BC, and after two years completing mourning for his father Ji Li, ?? Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Branch of the American Oriental Society, University of Colorado at Boulder, October, 1989 Open Access. © 2018 Nivison/JAS, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501505393-007 A Tell-tale Mistake in the Lü shi Chunqiu 6 Wen’s official calendar began in 1099; he died in 1050, thus reigning a total of 2+50, or 52 years.1 Why does the Lü shi Chunqiu get the reign-length wrong? We discover why when we examine the record of this earthquake in the Bam- boo Annals (Zhushu jinian). There it is recorded as having occurred in the sixth month of the 3rd year of the next-to-last Shang king Di Yi. But as I have also shown (in the same article), the Annals’ reign for Di Yi, said there to be nine years, is ten years short; it was actually 19 years, 1105–1087. 2 Therefore, the record of the earthquake should read “13th year” rather than “3rd year,” making the actual date 1093. But 1093 was not the 8th year of Wen Wang. In his official calendar it was the 7th year, while counting from his succession it was actually his 9th year. This corresponds to the mistaken reign length: not 51 years, but 50 years in his official calendar, and 52 years actually. Now notice the way the Lü shi Chunqiu account reads: “When Wen Wang of Zhou had been ruler for eight years, in the sixth month of the year (sui liu yue) Wen Wang went to bed sick …” Why the repetition of “Wen Wang” here? I submit that the author of this essay must at this point have been copying from a lost source, that read something like this: “In the 8th year of Wen Wang … sui, 6th month, Wen Wang went to bed sick …” The narrative from which the cop- ying was done must have had some event in the 8th year, either before the sixth month of that year or undated as to month, which has been omitted as irrelevant to the writer’s interest in the Lü shi Chunqiu account. It would be natural for this original account, when proceeding to a new episode, to repeat “Wen Wang.” The writer of the Lü shi Chunqiu essay simply copies this. But also, as he copies, he supposes that “sui” in sui liu yue, the opening phrase in the episode that interests him, simply resumes “8th year,” thus meaning “in that year”; whereas actually it must mean “after a year.” That is to say, the earthquake actually took place in the sixth month of the 9th year, which was indeed 1093, the 13th year of Di Yi. The year of Wen’s death, which we know to be 1050, is then exactly 43 years later—as the ?? 1 For Wen’s dates, see especially HJAS 43:517–524. The Bamboo Annals account gives Wen 52 years of reign, 1113–1062, his death occurring 9 years after a conjunction dated 1071. This con- junction has been back-dated 12 years (which would be one Jupiter cycle), from 1059. That Wen had a calendar beginning in 1099 is proved by lunar eclipse recorded in the “Xiao kai” chapter of the Yi Zhou shu, as being in Wen’s 35th year; the eclipse was actually in March of 1065 (see HJAS 43:521). 2 For Di Yi’s dates, see HJAS 43:558, note 87, for part of the argument. Oracle inscriptions for a campaign in a late Shang king’s 10th and 11th years (Chen Mengjia, Yinxu buci zongshu, Beijing, 1956, pp. 301–4) can be dated to 1077–76 (see HJAS 43:501), so the first year of the reign, which can be shown to be that of Di Xin, was 1086. ! 6 A Tell-tale Mistake in the Lü shi Chunqiu writer’s source text must have told him, without saying that the total reign was 51 years, which it was not. This conclusion can be confirmed by examining another dated event in the Bamboo Annals. The present text dates the death of Wu Wang of Zhou to the 12th month of his 17th year. But Professor Edward Shaughnessy (HJAS 46 (1986)) has proved that the date should be the 14th year, and that the distortion in the Annals’ chronology results from a bamboo slip having been moved from the Cheng Wang chronicle to the end of the chronicle for Wu Wang.3 This means that in the Annals as originally written, Wu died just two years after the Conquest of Shang, at the very end of the year. One now can compare this with an account of Wu’s death in the Yi Zhou shu, “Zuo Luo” (chapter 48). This says that Wu after the Conquest made the Shang prince Lu Fu ruler of the Shang to continue the Shang sacrifices; then Wu estab- lished three of his own brothers, Guan-shu and two others, as overseers of the conquered lands and of the Shang officials. The account continues, “Having done this, the king returned home, and then sui 12th month died in Hao (the Zhou cap- ital). Another part of the Yi Zhou shu, “Da Kuang” (chapter 38) starts out, “13th year: The king was in Guan, and with Guan-shu personally functioning as over- seer of Yin (i.e., in the ceremony), the lords of the eastern regions all received gifts from the king…” If Wu Wang did indeed die at the end of his 14th year, we see from this that the phrase “sui 12th month” must mean “a year later, in the 12th month.” This is the meaning that the commentator Kong Zhao gives for this phrase, and he is now proved to be right.4 (And I, I must admit, was wrong in “The Dates of Western Chou,” for there I interpreted sui as meaning “in the same year,” but specifically in the Xia calendar; thus I dated Wu’s death to the chou (post-sol- sticial) month at the beginning of 1043, rather than to the 12th month at the end of the year.) Interestingly, we see that although the word sui does not appear in the Bam- boo Annals, had its author seen the word (as he may well have) in the dates in the other two texts—the Yi Zhou shu and the source text for the Lü shi Chunqiu ac- count—he probably would have interpreted it correctly. There is one other case like these, where sui must have been used correctly in some early text recounting events that are also recounted in the Annals without ?? 3 Edward L. Shaughnessy, “On the Authenticity of the Bamboo Annals,” HJAS 46:149–180. 4 Kong Zhao worked in the middle of the +3rd century, probably before the recovery of the Bam- boo Annals. Some editions give a variant text: “a year being completed” (cheng sui), instead of “then, in a year” (nai sui). My argument is in effect that sui alone in a date means cheng sui. A Tell-tale Mistake in the Lü shi Chunqiu 6 " using the word sui, and again the account in the Annals is correct,5 while the source text has been copied into a text we now have, in such a way that sui is taken incorrectly to mean “of this year” rather than “after a year.” This case thus is like the error in the Lü shi Chunqiu, and it must be similarly late.
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