Similarities And Differences In Event-recording Between Gongyang Zhuan And Guliang Zhuan

After the death of Confucius, his disciples had been drifting apart on explaining and elaborating his work Chunqiu, which had gradually developed into several different schools. The major works made by three of them, which are Gongyang, Guliang and Zhuoshichunqiu, differ greatly in the interpretation of the word-using, the implicit principles behind the words, and the exact historical events recorded in Zhuozhuan. People started to compare their differences in Han dynasty, reaching a general agreement that as a historiography, Zhuozhuan excels in recording events, while as works in philosophy, Gongyang and Guliang shine in delivering sermon. As a result, when later scholars researching Gongyang and Guliang, they mainly focus on the judgments behind the seemingly indifferent words, as well as the frequently-used patterns in narrating, rather than consider the historical events chronicled in those. Yet in this paper, comparison and analysis are conducted to see the similarities and differences in these two works, which should be academically significant.To begin with, investigations are made to clearly see all the works relating to Chunqiu in pre-Qin period and straighten the exact process in which Luchunqiu developed into a classic in philosophy originating as a work in history. Considering that both Gongyang and Guliang derived from Chunqiu, clarifying the special way of recording events in Chunqiu is significant, as well as major different explanations made by previous researchers. Chunqiu is long-termly considered with deep meanings and implicit judgments by using seemingly indifferent words, which means in order to have a full picture of the historical events, other contemporaneous references are needed, which also means different understandings of certain sentences are supposed to be expected. Aside from that, people also tried hard to excavate the standards used in Chunqiu, according to which certain events were recorded and others were not.Next, the sources of the events written in Gongyang and Guliang are also discussed in this paper. When we compare the contents of these two books with Zuozhuan, we can see that both the events and their explanations in Gongyang and Guliang are relatively with fallacies. It seems that the sources of the events in Gongyang and Guliang were different from those of Zuozhuan. As a conclusion, we believe that those events were mainly based on the abundant historical references from pre-Qin dynasty, in which same events were portrayed in different ways. By analyzing the similarities and differences of the description of same event in Gongyang and Guliang, we can to a great extent uncover the prosperity of historical events in different versions, as well as their spreading.Moreover, we are trying to find proper explanations for such differences. In fact, the final editions of these two books were developed through a rather long time by two different groups of disciples-one made their research in Qi area, while the other group was mainly in Lu area-where they had opportunities to contact entirely different versions of same historical events, causing the divergence in the understanding of same sentences in Zuozhuan. Also, the original ideologists of Gongyang and Guliang tried hard to find relevant historical legends to develop the sentences in Zuozhuan, separately. As a result, when Gongyang and Guliang were finally written down on bamboo tablets and textiles as final drafts, they differed considerably in events-recording.Finally, according to above discussions, we also try to reveal the geographical influences on the recording patterns in Gongyang. Since early Qing dynasties are of highlighted regional features, the pre-Qin scholars differs greatly both in their own characteristics and in the attitudes towards historical events. In fact, affected by the distinctive language, customs, conventions and cultures in Qi area, Gongyang was with exclusive features.