易數鉤隱圖

Yìshù gōuyǐn tú 易數鉤隱圖

Charts for Probing the Hidden Meaning of the Figures of the Yì

with appendix Yílùn jiǔshì 遺論九事 (“Nine Bequeathed Discussions”)

by 劉牧 Liú Mù (zì Chángmín 長民 [or Xiānzhī 先之], 1011–1064, of Péngchéng 彭城)

About the work

The foundational pictorial-numerological Yì book of the early Sòng túshū 圖書 (“Charts and Writings”) school. 劉牧 Liú Mù, Tàicháng bóshì 太常博士 (Erudite of the Grand Court of Sacrifices), produced an integrated chart-corpus that visualizes the cosmogonic sequence tàijí 太極 → liǎngyí 兩儀 → sìxiàng 四象 → bāguà 八卦, anchored in his “fifty-five charts” (the number of the Hétú 河圖 + Luòshū 洛書 cosmic numerology), with line-by-line explanatory commentary. The work — circulating in three juan, with a posthumous one-juan appendix titled Yílùn jiǔshì (“Nine Bequeathed Discussions”) covering nine specialized topics — is the predecessor and partial source of the entire later Yì-chart industry: 朱震 Zhū Zhèn’s Hànshàng Yìzhuàn (KR1a0024), the 蔡元定 Cài Yuándìng / 朱熹 Zhū Xī line of Yìxué qǐméng 易學啟蒙 (KR1a0042 and corollary), and the Yuán-Míng xiàngshù tradition.

Liú Mù’s distinctive doctrinal commitment is the assignment of “9” to the Hétú and “10” to the Luòshū — directly opposite the assignment Cài Yuándìng later argued for and Zhū Xī adopted. After Cài–Zhū canonized the reverse scheme in Yìxué qǐméng, Liú Mù’s chart-corpus fell out of canonical-examination use; the work survived in transmission largely because it was preserved in the Daoist Canon (Dàozàng 道藏) — its Dòngzhēn bù línguì lèi 洞真部靈圖類 “Yún” 雲 entry corresponds to the parallel Kanripo entry KR5a0160 (DZ 159) — and was extracted from the Canon by the Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě 通志堂經解 (1680, 何焯 Hé Zhuó ed.) which is the basis of the present Sìkù WYG recension.

The dating window 1030–1064 reflects Liú Mù’s mature scholarly career: notBefore is a conservative lower bound for the work’s circulation under Rénzōng (his work was in circulation in the 1030s–1040s, sponsoring works by 黄黎獻 Huáng Líxiàn, 吳秘 Wú Mì, 葉昌齡 Yè Chānglíng, 宋咸 Sòng Xián, and 李覯 Lǐ Gòu in his lifetime); notAfter is the year of his death.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Yìshù gōuyǐn tú in three juan, with appended Yílùn jiǔshì in one juan, was composed by 劉牧 Liú Mù of the Sòng. Mù, zì Chángmín 長民 (his tomb-inscription gives zì Xiānzhī 先之 — which is correct is not clear, or perhaps he had two zì); a man of Péngchéng [modern Xúzhōu]; rose in office to Tàicháng bóshì. The Sòng[shǐ Yìwén] zhì records Mù’s Xīn zhù Zhōuyì 新注周易 in eleven juan and a Tú in one juan; Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì gives the Tú in three juan. His commentary is no longer extant, only the Tú survives, in a juan-count agreeing with Cháo’s witness.

The Hàn Confucians in their Yì-talk mostly followed the xiàngshù tradition; in the Sòng, within xiàngshù, a further túshū lineage branched off, of which Mù — pre-dating Master Shào [Yōng] 邵雍 — was the first sponsor. Mù’s school descends from 种放 Chōng Fàng, who descended from 陳摶 Chén Tuán — the same source from which the school of Master Shào (descending through 穆修 Mù Xiū and 李之才 Lǐ Zhīcái) descends. But Mù assigns nine to the Hétú and ten to the Luòshū, on which point he diverges from Shào.

His learning flourished under Rénzōng. 黄黎獻 Huáng Líxiàn wrote a Lüèlì yǐnjué 畧例隱訣, 吳秘 Wú Mì wrote Tōngshén 通神, 程大昌 Chéng Dàchāng wrote Yì yuán 易原 — all developing Mù’s account; while 葉昌齡 Yè Chānglíng wrote Tú yì 圖義 to refute him, 宋咸 Sòng Xián wrote Wáng-Liú Yì biàn 王劉易辨 to attack him, and 李覯 Lǐ Gòu in turn wrote Shāndìng Yìtú lùn 刪定易圖論. By the time of 蔡元定 Cài Yuándìng [Cài Jìtōng 蔡季通], Cài held that Mù’s scheme did not match the readings transmitted by 孔安國 Kǒng Ānguó and 劉歆 Liú Xīn, and instead held that ten was the Hétú and nine the Luòshū. Master Zhū followed him and wrote Yìxué qǐméng on this basis. From then on, in the works of 胡一桂 Hú Yīguì, 董楷 Dǒng Kǎi, and 吳澄 Wú Chéng — all in the Zhū-Cài line — Mù’s charts went almost entirely out of transmission.

The present text was issued by the Tōngzhìtáng press; 何焯 Hé Zhuó holds that it was extracted from the Daoist Canon. Examining the Daoist Canon catalogue now: it is in fact in Dòngzhēn bù, “Líng tú lèi” section, “Yún” 雲 character-bin — a piece of evidence that the túshū school descends from Daoist origins. We register and preserve it; this in turn is enough to broaden our information.

In the Southern Sòng 劉敏士 Liú Mǐnshì once printed it at the Zhèyòu Cáo Sī 浙右漕司; that print carried at its head a preface by 歐陽修 Ōuyáng Xiū. 吳澄 Wú Chéng remarks: “Xiū did not believe in the Hétú, and yet there is this preface — it must be a forgery by some later man, and Mù’s descendants believed it in error.” 俞琰 Yú Yǎn also says: “The preface is shallow and crude, not Xiū’s writing.” Their judgments are well grounded; we therefore now strike the preface, on their authority.

The Yílùn jiǔshì covers: 1. Tàihào shòu lóngmǎ fù tú 太皥受龍馬負圖 (“Tàihào received the dragon-horse bearing the Chart”); 2. Liùshí sì guà tuīdàng jué 六十四卦推盪訣 (“Mnemonic for the rolling-out of the sixty-four hexagrams”); 3. Dà yǎn zhī shù wǔshí 大衍之數五十 (“The Great Expansion’s number is fifty”); 4. Bā guà biàn liùshí sì guà 八卦變六十四卦 (“From eight trigrams the sixty-four hexagrams”); 5. Biàn yīnyáng guà 辨陰陽卦 (“Discriminating yīn and yáng hexagrams”); 6. Fù jiàn tiāndì zhī xīn 復見天地之心 (“In Fù hexagram one sees the heart of Heaven-and-Earth”); 7. Guà zhōng jiǔ shì 卦中九事 (“Nine matters within hexagrams”); 8. Qí ǒu shé fǎ 奇偶揲法 (“Odd-and-even counting method”); 9. Yīnyáng lǜlǚ tú 陰陽律呂圖 (“Chart of yīnyáng and the tones of lǜ and lǚ”). [These are titled “yílùn” — “bequeathed discussions” — because] they treat questions earlier Confucians did not address. The original is in a separate juan; Xú-clan’s Jiǔ jīng jiě 九經解 print attaches it as appendix to the Gōuyǐn tú; we now likewise.

Respectfully revised and submitted, eighth month of the forty-fourth year of Qiánlóng [1779].

General Compilers: 紀昀 Jǐ Yún, 陸錫熊 Lù Xīxióng, 孫士毅 Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: 陸費墀 Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

劉牧 Liú Mù (1011–1064), of Péngchéng 彭城 (modern Xúzhōu, Jiāngsū), is the founding figure of the early Northern Sòng Yìtú 易圖 (“Yì-chart”) tradition. His teaching descended from 种放 Chōng Fàng (a major Daoist-affiliated thinker of the Tàizōng court), who in turn received transmission from 陳摶 Chén Tuán — the same source from which 邵雍 Shào Yōng’s Xiāntiān 先天 chart-tradition descends, by way of 穆修 Mù Xiū and 李之才 Lǐ Zhīcái. Liú Mù and Shào Yōng are accordingly counted as the two co-founders of the Sòng Yìtú movement, with the doctrinal split that Liú assigns 9 to the Hétú and 10 to the Luòshū, while 蔡元定 Cài Yuándìng + 朱熹 Zhū Xī later assigned the reverse and canonized that reverse for the Yuán-Míng-Qīng examination tradition.

The work as we have it survives because of its incorporation in the Daoist Canon (Dàozàng) — under what is now Dàozàng 159 (= Kanripo KR5a0160), with the appendix Yílùn jiǔshì under DZ 160 (= KR5a0161) — from which 何焯 Hé Zhuó’s Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě extracted it for canonical-classics circulation in 1680; the WYG version is a refinement of the Tōngzhìtáng text. The Sìkù editors register the Dàozàng origin of the work as a small piece of evidence for the Daoist sources of the entire Sòng túshū tradition — a judgment that aligns with twentieth-century scholarship (esp. Isabelle Robinet and Liú Yǐng 劉影).

Liú Mù’s other work, the eleven-juan Xīn zhù Zhōuyì prose commentary, is wholly lost; only fragments survive through citations in 程大昌 Chéng Dàchāng’s Yì yuán 易原 and other later works. Several of his close contemporaries — Huáng Líxiàn, Wú Mì, Chéng Dàchāng — wrote works developing his chart-corpus; Yè Chānglíng, Sòng Xián, and Lǐ Gòu wrote works refuting it. The most consequential refutation came posthumously, from Cài Yuándìng’s Yìxué qǐméng 易學啟蒙 (compiled with Zhū Xī, completed 1186), which inverted Liú’s Hétú/Luòshū assignments and made the Cài-Zhū version the canonical one.

The dropped Ōuyáng Xiū preface — first added in 劉敏士 Liú Mǐnshì’s Southern-Sòng Zhèyòu Cáo Sī edition — was identified as forgery by 吳澄 Wú Chéng (Yuán) and 俞琰 Yú Yǎn (Yuán) on the grounds that Ōuyáng Xiū’s surviving writings show explicit disbelief in the Hétú; it is conventionally not printed in modern editions and the Sìkù follows that practice.

The textual problem is therefore: Liú Mù’s chart-corpus is genuinely his (the Daoist-Canon recension confirms attribution); the prose commentary is largely lost; the Yílùn jiǔshì is a posthumous compilation; the Ōuyáng Xiū preface is a Sòng forgery; and the work’s whole reception was structured by the late-Sòng polemic that Cài Yuándìng + Zhū Xī finally won.

Translations and research

No complete European-language translation. Specialist literature is substantial.

• Pi-cheng Lo / Lóu Yǔliè 樓宇烈 et al., individual studies of Liú Mù’s diagrams in Wén shǐ zhé 文史哲 and Zhōuyì yánjiū 周易研究.
• Li Shen 李申, Yìtú kǎo 易圖考 (Běijīng dàxué chūbǎnshè, 2001) — the standard modern critical history of the Sòng Yì-tú tradition; the chapter on Liú Mù is the standard reference.
• Zhū Bóqūn 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ 易學哲學史 vol. 2 (Huáxià, rev. 1995) — chapter on Liú Mù versus the Cài-Zhū qǐméng tradition.
• Isabelle Robinet, Taoist Meditation: The Mao-Shan Tradition of Great Purity (SUNY, 1993), Histoire du taoïsme (1991), and articles in T’oung Pao — the scholarly basis for understanding the Daoist provenance of the Sòng túshū tradition that Liú Mù inaugurated.
• Schipper-Verellen, The Taoist Canon (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2004), entries on DZ 159 and DZ 160 (= KR5a0160 and KR5a0161) — the standard reference for the Daoist-Canon recension.
• Bent Nielsen, A Companion to Yi jing Numerology and Cosmology (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003) — entries on Liú Mù, Hétú, Luòshū, túshū xué.
• Tze-ki Hon, The Yijing and Chinese Politics: Classical Commentary and Literati Activism in the Northern Song, 960-1127 (SUNY, 2005) — the standard English-language treatment of the political-intellectual context.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù editors’ explicit registration of the work’s Daoist-Canon provenance (Dòngzhēn bù línguì lèi, yún 雲 character-bin) is a small but important moment of editorial transparency: the Yìtú tradition, although a piece of canonical Confucian classics scholarship, came to the Sìkù editors out of a Daoist transmission line, and they are willing to say so. The same applies to Shào Yōng’s chart materials.

The work’s appendix Yílùn jiǔshì contains the first systematic Sòng-period diagram-treatment of the dà yǎn zhī shù 大衍之數 (“Great Expansion’s number”) of fifty (the Xìcí statement Dà yǎn zhī shù wǔshí, qí yòng sìshí yǒu jiǔ 大衍之數五十，其用四十有九 — “The Great Expansion’s number is 50; its functioning is 49”), and is the principal medieval source for the chart-form of the Yì-divinatory milfoil counting method.

Links

• Wikidata Q11074174
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Daoist Canon parallel: KR5a0160 (DZ 159) + KR5a0161 (DZ 160)
• Chinaknowledge — Yìjīng commentaries