Studies in Middle Archaic Chinese

Abstract

The Spring and Autumn Annals purports to be the chronicles of the city-state of Lu from the year 721 to the year 482 BC. Prima facie there is little reason to doubt that it is what it purports to be. The Annals consists of brief dated entries, arranged by year, season, month and sometimes by day, recording the accessions and deaths of the rulers of Lu, their marriages, their visits to other states, the visitors they received, and similar matters of consequence to the Court. Some entries concern other states,-particularly those which have to do with inter-state relations. They record the covenants, for example, into which Lu entered with its neighbours. Apart from this, there are entries concerning unseasonal weather, catastrophes, and ominous portents. In short, the Spring and Autumn Annals is the sort of primitive archive-type record which might plausibly be expected to have been kept at this period,-a cumulative record made by the recorders of the Court. There is, however, a persistent Chinese tradition that Confucius either