Luxuriant Gems of the Spring and Autumn

The Spring and Autumn (Chunqiu) is a chronicle kept by the dukes of the state of Lu from 722 to 481 B.C.E. Luxuriant Gems of the "Spring and Autumn" (Chunqiu fanlu) follows the interpretations of the Gongyang Commentary, whose transmitters sought to explicate the special language of the Spring and Autumn. The work is often ascribed to the Han scholar and court official Dong Zhongshu, but, as this study reveals, the text is in fact a compendium of writings by a variety of authors spanning several generations. It depicts a utopian vision of a flourishing humanity that they believed to be Confucius's legacy to the world. The Gongyang masters thought that Confucius had written the Spring and Autumn, employing subtle phrasing to indicate approval or disapproval of important events and personages. Luxuriant Gems therefore augments Confucian ethical and philosophical teachings with chapters on cosmology, statecraft, and other topics drawn from contemporary non-Confucian traditions. A major resource, this book features the first complete English-language translation of Luxuriant Gems, divided into eight thematic sections with introductions that address dating, authorship, authenticity, and the relationship between the Spring and Autumn and the Gongyang approach. Critically illuminating early Chinese philosophy, religion, literature, and politics, this book conveys the brilliance of intellectual life in the Han dynasty during the formative decades of the Chinese imperial state.

Dong Zhongshu (195-104 B.C.E.) was a native of the kingdom of Guanquan (part of present-day Hebei Province), where at an early age he mastered the Spring and Autumn. A court-appointed scholar of the Gongyang Commentary to the Spring and Autumn, he was known for his interpretations of disasters and anomalies recorded in the text. Sarah A. Queen is professor of history at Connecticut College. She is the author of From Chronicle to Canon: The Hermeneutics of the "Spring and Autumn" According to Tung Chung-shu; the co-translator, with John S. Major, Andrew Seth Meyer, and Harold D. Roth, of The "Huainanzi": A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China and The Essential "Huainanzi"; and the coeditor, with Michael Puett, of The "Huainanzi" and Textual Production in Early China. John S. Major taught East Asian history at Dartmouth College. Now an independent scholar, he is the author of Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought: Chapters Three, Four, and Five of the "Huainanzi" and the co-translator, with Queen, Meyer, and Roth, of The "Huainanzi" and The Essential "Huainanzi."