Zhōuyì kǒuyì 周易口義
The Oral-Lecture Meaning of the Zhōuyì
oral lectures of 胡瑗 Hú Yuán (zì Yìzhī 翼之, 993–1059, of Tàizhōu Rúgāo 泰州如皋, conventionally Master Āndìng 安定先生); recorded and edited by his student 倪天隱 Ní Tiānyǐn (mid-Northern Sòng)
About the work
The classroom-lecture Yì commentary of 胡瑗 Hú Yuán — known to posterity as Master Āndìng 安定先生 from his late residence — recorded by his student 倪天隱 Ní Tiānyǐn from the lectures Hú delivered at the Imperial Academy (Tàixué 太學) and at the Hú-school in Húzhōu and Sūzhōu, in the 1040s and 1050s. Twelve juan; yìlǐ 義理 (“meaning-and-pattern”) method. Together with 王弼 Wáng Bì’s Zhōuyì zhù (KR1a0006), it is one of the two foundational sources of the Northern Sòng Confucian yìlǐ revival, and via 程頤 Chéng Yí (KR1a0015 Yìzhuàn) it directly shapes the entire Sòng-Míng Neo-Confucian Yì-reading.
The Sìkù tiyao documents the textual issue: the Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì records two distinct titles under Hú Yuán’s name — Yì jiě 易解 in ten juan and Zhōuyì kǒuyì 周易口義 in ten juan — but post-Sòng evidence (晁公武 Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì and 李振裕 Lǐ Zhènyù’s argument as quoted by 朱彝尊 Zhū Yízūn) shows that these are a single work: Hú Yuán did not personally compose, but lectured, and Ní Tiānyǐn took down his master’s words; the title Kǒuyì (“Oral Meaning”) records that origin, while Yì jiě is the same work under another, generic, title. The Sòngshǐ has erroneously split them. The Sìkù registers the work in twelve juan.
The decisive testimony for Hú Yuán’s influence on Chéng Yí is in Chéng’s own Yìzhuàn: at the Guān 觀 Tuàn “I have heard from Master Hú Yìzhī,” at Dàxù 大畜 9-9 “I have heard Master Hú say…,” at Guài 9-3 “Master Hú Āndìng moves the text…,” at Jiàn 漸 9-9 “Master Hú Āndìng reads lù 陸 as kuí 逵” — i.e. Chéng Yí’s most consequential Yì commentary acknowledges Hú as authority on multiple textually-substantive readings. The Yīchuān nián pǔ 伊川年譜 records Chéng Yí’s enrollment at the Imperial Academy under Hú’s directorship in the Huángyòu 皇祐 era (1049–1054). 朱熹 Zhū Xī’s Yǔlèi 語類 likewise testifies: “Hú Āndìng’s Yì is clear and direct.”
The composition window 1040–1080 covers the lecture-and-redaction span: notBefore is a conservative lower bound for Hú Yuán’s mature Yì-teaching at Húzhōu (the famous “Húzhōu method,” promoted by 范仲淹 Fàn Zhòngyān’s appointment of Hú to the local academy), notAfter the conventional terminus for Ní Tiānyǐn’s redactional work as marked by his own death (probably ca. 1080).
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Zhōuyì kǒuyì in twelve juan is a redaction by 倪天隱 Ní Tiānyǐn of his teacher 胡瑗 Hú Yuán’s Yì doctrine. Yuán, zì Yìzhī 翼之, was a man of Tàizhōu Rúgāo. Recommended by 范仲淹 Fàn Zhòngyān, he was raised from commoner status (bùyī 布衣) to the post of Jiàoshū láng 校書郎 (“Editor in the Imperial Library”), and rose through the ranks to Tàixué bóshì 太學博士; he retired and went home. His record stands in his own Sòngshǐ biography. Tiānyǐn’s life-history is not in detail recoverable. 葉祖洽 Yè Zǔqià in his Chén Xiāng xíngzhuàng 陳襄行狀 mentions that 陳襄 Chén Xiāng had two sisters, one of whom married a jìnshì named Ní Tiānyǐn — likely the same man. Dǒngshì Yánlíng jí 嚴陵集 carries his stele-text Tónglú xiànlìng tímíng bēijì 桐廬縣令題名碑記 — suggesting he once served in Mùzhōu [Yánlíng prefecture].
His Yì doctrine takes yìlǐ as primary. 邵伯溫 Shào Bówēn’s Wénjiàn qián lù 聞見前錄 records Master Chéng in his letter to 謝湜 Xiè Shí saying: “Reading the Yì, one should first study the three masters — 王弼 Wáng Bì, Hú Yuán, and 王安石 Wáng Ānshí.” Sānyuán 劉紹攽 Liú Shàobān in his Zhōuyì xiángshuō 周易詳説 says: “Master Zhū holds Master Chéng’s learning sourced in Master Zhōu — but examining Chéng’s Yì zhuàn one finds not a word about tàijí. At the Guān hexagram Tuàn he says ‘I heard from Master Hú Yìzhī: “Standing on top, he forms the model of all under Heaven.“’ At Dàxù 9-9 he says: ‘I heard Master Hú say “the road of Heaven flows through, xíng; the hé character is wrongly added.“’ At Guài 9-3 he says: ‘Master Hú Āndìng moves the text and reads “[The line is] the rib-cheek; there is misfortune. Going alone he meets rain. As if drenched, but with anger; the gentleman makes a decisive end of it; no fault.“’ At Jiàn 漸 9-9 he says: ‘Master Hú Āndìng reads lù 陸 as kuí 逵.’ Examining the Yīchuān nián pǔ, it says: ‘In the Huángyòu era he attended the Imperial Academy; the Hǎilíng Master Hú Yìzhī was at that time chiefly directing the teaching, and on receiving the master’s tested writings was greatly amazed and at once invited him in, settling him in a Teaching position.’ We may suppose he must from that point onwards have studied with him.” [So Chéng Yí’s Yì learning is heavily indebted to Hú Yuán; the world has known him only as descended from Zhōu Liánxī, but does not know that his exposition of the Yì mostly derives from Master Yìzhī.]
The doctrine is one earlier writers had not reached. Verifying it now against Chéng’s Yìzhuàn — it is exactly so. The Zhū Zǐ yǔlèi also says: “Hú Āndìng’s Yì is clear and direct, exact and proper.” So this book in the Sòng was reckoned the foundational source of yìlǐ Yì-reading.
The Sòngshǐ records Yuán’s Yì jiě in ten juan and his Zhōuyì kǒuyì in ten juan [as two separate works]. 朱彝尊 Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo quotes 李振裕 Lǐ Zhènyù saying: “Yuán in his teaching wished to compose but did not achieve it; his student Ní Tiānyǐn recorded it; and because it was not the master’s own writing it was titled Kǒuyì — ‘Oral Meaning.’ Later writers either call it Kǒuyì or call it Yì jiě — there are not in fact two books.” The point has no formal documentation in the older record, but examining 晁公武 Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì one finds the same observation: “The Hú Āndìng Yìzhuàn is in fact a redaction by his student Ní Tiānyǐn, and not the master’s own composition; hence the head of each entry begins ‘Master said.‘” The doctrine here matches that of Kǒuyì; and the listing places it under “Yìzhuàn” without separately listing “Kǒuyì.” So Yì jiě and Kǒuyì are confirmed as a single book; the Sòngshǐ erroneously splits them in two — the case is plain.
Respectfully revised and submitted, third month of the forty-third year of Qiánlóng [1778].
General Compilers: 紀昀 Jǐ Yún, 陸錫熊 Lù Xīxióng, 孫士毅 Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: 陸費墀 Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
胡瑗 Hú Yuán (993–1059), of Tàizhōu Rúgāo 泰州如皋 (modern Jiāngsū), was the most consequential pre-Chéng-Zhū yìlǐ teacher in the Northern Sòng. Conventionally known as “Master Āndìng” 安定先生 from his late residence at Āndìng 安定 in Húzhōu, he was the architect of the so-called “Húzhōu method” (Húzhōu fǎ 湖州法) of Confucian academic instruction — separating “jīng yì zhāi” (the master’s hall, dedicated to broad classical learning) from “zhì shì zhāi” (the practical-affairs hall, dedicated to applied learning in arithmetic, military strategy, hydraulics, and astronomy). Recommended into office by 范仲淹 Fàn Zhòngyān, he rose to Tàixué bóshì 太學博士 at the Imperial Academy in the Huángyòu era; the Yīchuān nián pǔ records that 程頤 Chéng Yí, the future founder of the Sòng Yì-reading orthodoxy, was Hú’s student at the Academy. The Sòngshǐ Rúlín zhuàn (juan 432) gives him a substantial biography.
倪天隱 Ní Tiānyǐn (mid-Northern Sòng) is poorly documented; he is recorded as a jìnshì and as having served as xiànlìng of Tónglú 桐廬 in Mùzhōu (modern Zhèjiāng). His marriage to a sister of 陳襄 Chén Xiāng (1017–1080) places his active life in the 1050s–1080s. He took down Hú’s Yì lectures, edited them into the present twelve-juan textus, and the title Kǒuyì (“Oral Meaning”) preserves the redactional fact: this is master-from-pulpit recorded by student-in-class, not Hú’s own composition.
Hú Yuán’s distinctive contributions to yìlǐ are: (1) the systematic textual emendation programme that Chéng Yí adopts (the Guài 9-3 reordering, the Jiàn 9-9 lù/kuí reading, the Dàxù deletion of hé, etc.); (2) the foregrounding of yìlǐ as ethical-political doctrine over xiàngshù numerology; and (3) the close reading of Wényán and Xiàng commentary as the master’s own moral teaching. The Sòng-Míng yìlǐ mainstream — Chéng Yí, 朱熹 Zhū Xī, 王應麟 Wáng Yīnglín, 董楷 Dǒng Kǎi, 胡一桂 Hú Yīguì, 吳澄 Wú Chéng — descends substantively through Hú’s classroom rather than through any “transmitted lineage” Zhū Xī later reconstructed. Zhū Xī’s own Yǔlèi explicitly registers Hú’s clarity and exactness.
The work shares with Wáng Bì’s commentary the decision to read the canonical text through yìlǐ glossing, but it is markedly more textually critical: Hú is willing to emend the canonical text on philological grounds in places where Wáng Bì merely glossed, and several of his proposed emendations propagated through Chéng Yí into the Yuán-Míng-Qīng examination canon.
The textual problem the Sìkù editors resolve — that the Sòngshǐ doubled the work into “Yì jiě” plus “Kǒuyì” — is itself a small case-study in Sòng-period bibliographic confusion when a single classroom record is differently titled by different transmitters.
Translations and research
No European-language translation. Specialist literature is principally Sinophone.
- Liú Cùnrén 柳存仁 / Wú Yī 吳怡 et al. modern punctuated editions of Zhōuyì kǒuyì on the WYG base.
- Zhū Bóqūn 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ 易學哲學史 vol. 2 (Huáxià, rev. 1995) — chapter on Hú Yuán as the founder of Sòng yìlǐ.
- Hé Zélíng 何澤靈 / Lín Suxīn 林素芬, articles in Zhōuyì yánjiū 周易研究 — modern reassessments of the Hú-Chéng line of transmission.
- Tze-ki Hon, The Yijing and Chinese Politics: Classical Commentary and Literati Activism in the Northern Song, 960-1127 (SUNY, 2005) — places Hú Yuán within the Northern-Sòng activist-Confucian milieu.
- Liú Shǎojūn 劉紹軍, Hú Yuán yánjiū 胡瑗研究 (Húběi rénmín, various editions) — modern monograph.
- Peter K. Bol, “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China (Stanford, 1992) — foundational treatment of Hú Yuán in the broader Sòng intellectual transition.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù tiyao’s claim — extracted from Liú Shàobān’s Zhōuyì xiángshuō — that Chéng Yí’s Yì doctrine “mostly derives from Master Yìzhī, while the world only knows him as descended from [Zhōu] Liánxī,” is an unusually bold sectarian-history correction in the tiyao corpus: the editors are explicitly subordinating the standard Sòngshǐ Dàoxué zhuàn genealogy (周敦頤 Zhōu Dūnyí → Two Chéngs → Zhū Xī) to a hidden classroom transmission (Hú Yuán → Chéng Yí → Zhū Xī) on the Yì specifically. The point has been generally accepted by twentieth-century scholarship.
The “Húzhōu method” of separating broad classical learning from applied technical learning, although institutional rather than philological, is a significant prelude to the Northern-Sòng pluralization of curriculum and a precedent for 王安石 Wáng Ānshí’s New-Policies academy reforms a generation later.