Inventing the Spring and Autumn Period

Abstract This article proposes that the invention of the concept of Spring and Autumn (Chunqiu; ca. 722–481 BCE), the only Chinese historical period named after a text, was neither early nor inevitable. A diachronic analysis of the word chunqiu shows that it began to denote the Chunqiu period in late Western Han (ca. 48 BCE–9 CE). An eschatological prediction in the first century BCE was instrumental in generating this temporal sensibility. Many used the time frame of 242 years with 12 reigns from the Chunqiu, a canonical text purportedly composed by Confucius, to predict that the Han dynasty would soon come to an end. Wang Mang, who overthrew the Han and fulfilled the prophecy, intensified this sensibility. Just as the Western Han was born as a historical period, so was Chunqiu as its historical analogue. Subsequently, historians artificially extended the length of the former to align it with the latter. The emergence of Chunqiu is thus a story about how numerology shaped the interaction between visions of the future and of history, textuality, temporality, political action, classical studies, and historiography in ancient China. The telling of this story complicates our understanding of the history of periodization, a problematic yet essential practice that concerns every historian.