Scholars › Historian
Zuo Qiuming
Lu figure of the Spring and Autumn period whom Han historians credited with the Zuo Commentary and the Discourses of the States
In an archive hall, tall wooden shelves hold scrolls and bound books with small tags, and one person climbs a ladder with their back turned; a long table in front holds an unrolled river map, a bronze lamp and a copper jug, with a city wall seen through the window.
- Roles
- Historian
Zuo Qiuming was a man of Lu in the Spring and Autumn period about whom very little is known. The Analects quotes Confucius saying that Zuo Qiuming was ashamed of glib words and fawning manners, as he himself was, which suggests the two were roughly contemporary. The Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) states that the gentleman Zuo Qiuming of Lu used the records Confucius had drawn on to compose the Zuo Annals, Sima Qian's letter to Ren An links his blindness to the Discourses of the States (Guoyu), and the bibliography of the History of the Han calls him a court historian of Lu. From the Tang scholars Dan Zhu and Zhao Kuang onward, many have doubted that he wrote either the year-by-year Zuo Commentary (Zuozhuan) or the state-by-state Guoyu. In 647 he was one of twenty-two scholars, with Bu Zixia, given a place beside Confucius in the Confucian temple.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; late Spring and Autumn period, roughly a contemporary of Confucius