DID CONFUCIUS WRITE THE ANNALS OF LU?[1]
I have received a copy of your book, entitled “Some difficult points in the Annals,” which I regard as a specimen of accurate scholarship. Based upon the works of Tan Chu and Chao K‘uang, it certainly surpasses both of them; and as for the work of Hu An-ting, the less said the better. Nevertheless, my humble opinion, with which I invariably end up, is that the book we know as the Annals of Lu is not the work of Confucius.
Confucius said of himself,[2] “I edited, but did not write,”―the writing of Annals being the business of the official historiographers. Now Confucius was not an official historiographer, and “he who does not hold an office cannot direct its administration.”[2] How could he usurp the function of the historiographers, and without authority do their work for them? There is the saying, “By the Annals I shall be known, by the Annals I shall be blamed,”[3] as though Confucius was taking up the attitude of an uncrowned king, which not only the Master himself would not have done, but which the Prince and his Ministers, and the official historiographers, would not have tolerated. Further, Confucius said, “What I have written, I have written; what I have cut out, I have cut out. Tzŭ-yu and Tzŭ-hsia cannot add a single phrase;”[4] yet though he laid down his pen at the capture of the ch‘i lin,[5] the Annals continued to be written from the 14th to the 16th year of Duke Ai, when Confucius died and the record came to an end. Whose pen was it that provided the Annals of those three years? Whose were the additions? From this it is clear that the Lu State had its
- ↑ See under K‘ung Fu-tzŭ (Confucius). It was Mencius who first attributed these Annals to Confucius, and he makes the Master say, “By these Annals alone will men know me; by these Annals alone will men blame me.” They were written at a time when morality was at a low ebb, and their object was, as Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien tells us, to frighten rebellious Ministers and unfilial sons. They are known to the Chinese by the picturesque name of “Springs and Autumns,” which means nothing more than “Annals,” a more convenient term.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Thus recorded in the “Discourses.”
- ↑ Condensed here in the Chinese to four words, “Know me, blame me,” which could only be understood by those familiar with the quotation given above.
- ↑ The authority is the historian, Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien (q.v.).
- ↑ A fabulous animal, known to collectors of curios as the kylin. It was regarded as an evil omen, and Confucius announced that his own end was at hand. Two years later he died (479 b.c.)
