Two Brothers of Cheng and the Mother Who Doted on the Younger
from The Commentary of Mr. Tso
Attributed to Tso Ch’iu-ming (3d century B.C.E.?)
Duke Yin First Year (722 B.C.E.)
In the past, Duke Wu of Cheng had taken a bride from the state of Shen, known as Lady Chiang of Duke Wu.1 Lady Chiang gave birth to the future Duke Chuang and to his brother, Tuan of Kung. Duke Chuang was born wide awake and consequently greatly startled Lady Chiang.2 Therefore she named him Born Awake and came to hate him. But she loved his younger brother Tuan and wished to have him declared heir to the throne of Cheng. Repeatedly she begged Duke Wu to do so, but he would not agree.
Later, when Duke Chuang became ruler of Cheng (743 B.C.E.), Lady Chiang asked him to assign the city of Chih to his younger brother Tuan. But the duke replied, “Chih is a strategic city, the place where Kuo Shu3 met his death. Any other city you have only to ask for.”
She then requested that Tuan be given the city of Ching, and he was accordingly sent to reside there. He came to be called the T’ai-shu or Grand Younger Brother of Ching City.
Chai Chung, a high official of Cheng, said to the duke, “If any of the major cities have walls exceeding a hundred chih in length, they pose a danger to the capital.4 According to the regulations of the former kings, even the largest cities should not exceed one third the size of the capital, while middle-sized cities should be one fifth and small cities one ninth. Now the city of Ching does not fit these dimensions and violates the regulations. You may find yourself unable to endure the consequences!”
The duke said, “Lady Chiang would have it that way—how can I avoid the danger?”
“There is no end to what Lady Chiang would have!” replied Chai Chung. “Better tend to the matter at once and not let it grow and put out runners, for runners can be hard to control. If even plants that have put out runners cannot be rooted out, how much more so the favored younger brother of a ruler!”
The duke said, “If he does too many things that are not right, he is bound to bring ruin on himself. I suggest you wait a while.”
After some time the T’ai-shu ordered that the western and northern border regions acknowledge fealty to him as well as to the duke. The ducal son Lü,5 an official of Cheng, said to the duke, “The state cannot tolerate a system of double fealty! What do you intend to do? If you sanction what the T’ai-shu has done, then I beg leave to serve him rather than you. If you do not intend to sanction it, then I urge you to do away with him before he stirs up the hearts of the people!”
“No need,” said the duke. “He will bring on his own downfall.”
The T’ai-shu proceeded to take over the cities that had previously acknowledged double fealty and make them his own, extending his control as far as Lin-yen. The ducal son Lü said, “Now is the time to act! If he expands his territory, the people will go over to his side.”
The duke replied, “If he acts wrongly, no one will side with him.6 Though he expands his territory, he will face ruin.”
The T’ai-shu completed the building of his walls, called together his men, mended his armor and weapons, equipped his foot soldiers and chariots, and prepared for a surprise attack on the capital of Cheng. Lady Chiang was to open the city to him. When the duke learned the date planned for the attack, he said, “Now is the time!” He ordered the ducal son Lü to lead a force of two thousand chariots and attack Ching. Ching turned against the T’ai-shu Tuan, who took refuge in Yen. The duke attacked him at Yen, and on the day hsin-ch’ou of the fifth month, the T’ai-shu fled the state and went to Kung.7
In the end the duke confined his mother, Lady Chiang, in Ch’eng-ying and took a vow, saying, “Not until we reach the Yellow Springs8 shall we meet again!”
Later he regretted the vow. Ying K’ao-shu, a border guard of Ying Valley, hearing of this, presented gifts to the duke, and the duke in turn had a meal served to him. He ate the meal but set aside the meat broth. When the duke asked him why, he replied, “Your servant has a mother who shares whatever food he eats, but she has never tasted your lordship’s broth. I beg permission to take her some.”
“You have a mother to take things to. Alas, I alone have none!” said the duke.
“May I venture to ask the meaning of that?” said Ying K’ao-shu.
The duke explained why he had made the remark and confessed that he regretted his vow.
“Why should your lordship worry?” said the other. “If you dig into the earth until you reach the springs, and fashion a tunnel where the two of you can meet, then who is to say you have not kept your vow?”
The duke did as he suggested. As the duke entered the tunnel he intoned this verse:
Within the great tunnel,
genial, genial is my joy!
When Lady Chiang emerged from the tunnel she intoned this verse:
Outside the great tunnel,
far-flung, far-flung is my joy!
So in the end mother and son became as they had been before.
The gentleman remarks:9 Ying K’ao-shu was a man of utmost filial piety. He loved his mother, and succeeded in inspiring a similar feeling in Duke Chuang. Is this not what the Book of Odes means when it says:
While filial sons are unslacking,
forever shall be given you good things.10
Translated by Burton Watson
The putative author of the Tso chuan or Tso shih chuan (The Chronicle or, more accurately, Tradition or Commentary of Mr. Tso) is Tso Ch’iu-ming. No biographical information exists concerning him, however, and his relationship to the work that bears his name remains unknown. The word chuan in the title implies that the work was considered a commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals (Ch’un-ch’iu), but it is uncertain whether the Tso chuan was originally compiled for that purpose. Nonetheless, because the period of time that it covers (722–468 B.C.E.) is almost the same as that of the Annals (722–481 B.C.E.) and it contains detailed accounts of events referred to in the latter, the Tso chuan can conveniently serve as a commentary on the Annals—even though the entries do not always match.
The Annals, one of the five main classics of the Confucian tradition, provides a bare record of the events in the various feudal states. The entries are extremely brief, consisting mostly of notices of accessions to rule, marriages, deaths, diplomatic meetings, wars, and other events in the lives of the ruling dukes of the state of Lu and the other feudal states with whom they interacted, along with notations on unusual occurrences in the natural world such as earthquakes, comets, droughts, insect plagues, and so forth, all of which were thought to reflect the political condition of the realm. The Tso chuan, on the other hand, consists of thirty densely written chapters and is China’s oldest work of narrative history. Its entries provide a year-by-year—often month-by-month—account of happenings only mentioned in the Annals. The narratives focus primarily on political, diplomatic, and military affairs, but also contain considerable information on economic and cultural developments.
The original form of the Tso chuan is unknown. The narratives may initially have been grouped under the various states but later broken up and appended to the year-by-year entries of the Annals that focused on the reigns of the dukes of Lu. This rearrangement may have been made in the latter part of the third century C.E. Linguistic and philological evidence, however, indicates that the text was originally composed sometime during the third century B.C.E., considerably later than the date of 463 B.C.E. when it was supposed to have been completed. In spite of the mysteries surrounding its composition, the Tso chuan is a masterpiece of the early prose tradition and has had an immense influence on later Chinese literature and historiography. From the first century on, it was numbered among the texts of the enlarged Confucian canon.
The present selection is the first extended narrative from the Tso chuan and deals with the aftermath of a difficult breech delivery.
1. Shen was ruled by a branch of the Chiang family, hence the bride was referred to as Lady Chiang.
2. The phrase wu-sheng, translated here as “born wide awake,” is also interpreted to mean born just as his mother was waking up, or born feet first. To help explain the mother’s loathing for the child, Ssu-ma Ch’ien in Records of the Grand Historian (Shih chi), ch. 42, the account of the state of Cheng, adds that the birth was a difficult one.
3. An evil ruler of the nearby state of Kuo who made his capital at Chih and behaved evilly until overthrown by Cheng. Duke Chuang fears his younger brother will do likewise.
4. According to commentators, one chih represents a section of city wall one chang in height and three chang (or, according to another theory, five chang) in length. One chang is said to equal ten feet.
5. Kung-tzu, “ducal son,” is a designation used for sons of feudal rulers; kung-sun, “ducal grandson,” is used for grandsons; descendents in the next generation were given a surname of their own. Both Kung-tzu and Kung-sun later became surnames.
6. Or, following Tu Yü’s (222–284) interpretation, “He is acting wrongly and in an unbrotherly manner.”
7. At this point there appears a passage explaining the wording of the Spring and Autumn Annals entry pertaining to these events. In the present translation passages of this type have been omitted.
8. The springs within the yellow earth, a term for the land of the dead.
9. The Tso chuan frequently introduces didactic comments on the events of its narrative in this fashion. Though it has been asserted that “the gentleman” refers to Confucius, this is clearly impossible in many cases. These remarks are presumably judgments made by the author or authors of the Tso chuan, though some may have been added by later hands. There are eighty-four such passages in the Tso chuan.
10. This is from song 247 of the Classic of Odes (see selection 16).