Wēngōng Yì shuō 溫公易說
Wēngōng’s Talks on the Yì
by 司馬光 Sīmǎ Guāng (zì Jūnshí 君實, 1019–1086, posthumous title Wēn Guógōng Wén 溫國公文; conventionally Wēngōng 溫公)
About the work
The unfinished personal Yì notebook of 司馬光 Sīmǎ Guāng — the great Northern Sòng historian, statesman, and conservative leader, principal compiler of the Zīzhì tōngjiàn 資治通鑑 — recovered from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn in the Sìkù period and reissued here in six juan. Although 蘇軾 Sū Shì’s xíngzhuàng 行狀 of Sīmǎ Guāng records the Yì shuō at three juan plus a Xìcí zhù in two juan, and the Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì records Yì shuō in one juan, Yì shuō in three juan, and Xìcí shuō in two juan, the work was never finalized: 晁公武 Cháo Gōngwǔ describes it as “scattered explanations, without arrangement, an unfinished work.” 朱熹 Zhū Xī recounts having received it as a fragmentary text running only as far as Suí 6-2 from 范仲彪 Fàn Zhòngbiāo of Luòyáng; some years later he encountered a fuller printed version in the northern frontier markets and rejoiced.
Coverage in the surviving text is uneven: some hexagrams have commentary on three or four lines, some on only one or two, some none at all. The Xìcí commentary is comparatively complete; the Shuōguà, Xùguà, and Záguà are barely represented (two entries between them). The Sìkù editors verified the recovered text against citations in 陳友文 Chén Yǒuwén’s Jí zhuàn jīng yì 集傳精義, 馮椅 Féng Yǐ’s Yìxué 易學, and 胡一桂 Hú Yīguì’s Huìtōng 會通 — all citations match — and so confirm the reconstructed text as a Sòng original. The composition window 1060–1086 covers Sīmǎ Guāng’s mature scholarly career: notBefore the rough lower bound of his sustained personal Yì-study (he wrote prose on the Yì from his middle years onward), notAfter his death.
The Yuán-Sòng-transition preface preserved at the head of the present recension is by 陳仁子 Chén Rénzǐ (zì Tóngfǔ 同俌, hào Gǔyù 古迂, of Cháilíng 茶陵), a late-Sòng / early-Yuán jìnshì; it is dated bǐngshēn làyuè 丙申臘月 — most likely the bǐngshēn of Dàdé yuánnián 大德元年 (1296), placing it under the early Yuán reissue.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Yì shuō in six juan was composed by 司馬光 Sīmǎ Guāng of the Sòng. Guāng’s record stands in his own Sòngshǐ biography. Examining 蘇軾 Sū Shì’s xíngzhuàng of Guāng, it lists his composing of Yì shuō in three juan and a Xìcí zhù in two juan. The Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì records Yì shuō in one juan and again in three juan, plus a Xìcí shuō in two juan. 晁公武 Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì says: “Yì shuō: miscellaneous explanations of the Yì meaning; without ordering — an unfinished work.”
The Zhū Zǐ yǔlèi says further: “I once obtained the Wēngōng Yì shuō from 范仲彪 Fàn Zhòngbiāo of Luòyáng. It runs as far as Suí 6-2 then breaks off. Several years later a curious-minded acquaintance came on a printed-board version in the northern frontier markets — happy to find the work complete again.” So in the Sòng the recensions in circulation were already various in length; afterward all were lost. 朱彝尊 Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo therefore registers it as “already lost.”
The work is uniquely in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn; what the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn lists, however, in fact does not stop at Suí — it appears to be the fuller copy Master Zhū later acquired. The book glosses some hexagrams across three or four lines, some across one or two, and some hexagrams with no commentary at all; only the Xìcí is fairly complete; from the Shuōguà on, only two entries — agreeing with what Cháo Gōngwǔ said.
Cross-checking now against the citations in Chén Yǒuwén’s Jí zhuàn jīng yì, Féng Yǐ’s Yìxué, and Hú Yīguì’s Huìtōng — every quoted line is present in the recovered text. We may therefore know without doubt this is the Sòng-period original. The places where the gloss is missing are due to Guāng’s not having carried his composition through to completion — exactly as in his Qián xū 潛虛, where he conversely explains the unfinished sections as the true authoritative form. There is no question of textual loss.
In Guāng’s Chuán jiā jí 傳家集 there is a Letter in Reply to 韓秉國 Hán Bǐngguó Dá Hán Bǐngguó shū 答韓秉國書, in which he says: “Wáng Fǔsì interprets the Yì by means of Lǎo-Zhuāng — that is not the Yì’s root meaning, and is not adequate as authority.” The intent is to deeply reject the doctrine of empty-and-mysterious metaphysics. So in his treatment of the situations of things and affairs of past and present, his exposition is everywhere thorough, sustained, and far-reaching. As, for example: at Tóng rén 同人 Tuàn he says: “The gentleman delights in being one with men; the small man delights in being separate from men. The gentleman is one with what is far; the small man is one with what is near.” At Kǎn 坎 Dàxiàng he says: “Water flowing — habituated and unceasing — becomes the great river. A man’s learning — habituated and unceasing — becomes the great worthy.” At Xián 咸 9-4 he says: “If the heart for a moment leans, things from like-categories respond to it; so when delighted one cannot see what is choleric, when angry one cannot see what is delightful, when affectionate one cannot see what is detestable, when revolted one cannot see what is lovable.” Most of his readings do not inherit the older Confucians’ standing accounts, and what he does say is in itself acquired insight — close to daily use, like cloth-and-grain and bean-and-millet.
It is regrettable that the work has been so long submerged that the Yì-commentary writers ultimately did not get to see it. Now, fortunately, in the time of [an] Imperial Court that has honoured and signaled the canonical writings, we are once again able to gather and reorder the surviving leaves; one can know that the essential meaning of an eminent worthy’s writing has not, after all, finally perished from later generations.
We have respectfully collated and revised, broadly modelling the original Sòngshǐ count, and fix the work at six juan, recording it accordingly.
Respectfully revised and submitted, tenth month of the forty-ninth year of Qiánlóng [1784].
General Compilers: 紀昀 Jǐ Yún, 陸錫熊 Lù Xīxióng, 孫士毅 Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: 陸費墀 Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
司馬光 Sīmǎ Guāng (1019–1086), of Xiàxiàn 夏縣 in Shǎnzhōu 陝州 (modern southern Shānxī), is the foremost statesman, historian, and conservative-faction leader of the mid-Northern Sòng. The Sòngshǐ (juan 336) carries his canonical biography. He is principal compiler of the Zīzhì tōngjiàn 資治通鑑 (1067–1084) — the great chronological history of imperial China up to the Five Dynasties — and the leader of the conservative opposition to 王安石 Wáng Ānshí’s New Policies, returning to office under Zhézōng’s regency (1085–1086) and dismantling the Reform programme in the months before his death.
Across his life he wrote prose on the Yì in unsystematic accumulation — he was, by his own and his contemporaries’ admission, never able to bring this material into a finished commentary. The most consequential single document of his Yì learning is his Letter in Reply to 韓秉國 Hán Bǐngguó Dá Hán Bǐngguó shū 答韓秉國書, in which he programmatically rejects 王弼 Wáng Bì’s Lǎo-Zhuāng metaphysical reading of the Yì as alien to the work’s root meaning. Sīmǎ Guāng’s positive view, as the Sìkù tiyao documents, is that the Yì is a practical-ethical book, “close to daily use, like cloth-and-grain and bean-and-millet.” His glosses are characteristically anti-metaphysical, anti-numerological, and oriented toward statecraft and personal conduct.
The textual problem: Sū Shì’s xíngzhuàng records 3 + 2 = 5 juan; the Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì records 1 + 3 + 2 = 6 juan; the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recension yields the present 6-juan reissue. Cháo Gōngwǔ’s report of an unfinished, unsystematized notebook explains the uneven coverage: not loss but non-completion. The Sìkù editors’ point — that this is the same situation as Sīmǎ Guāng’s Qián xū 潛虛 (“Hidden Vacuity”), Guāng’s deliberate emulation of 揚雄 Yáng Xióng’s Tài xuán, where he expressly preserved the unfinished form as the authentic one — locates Yì shuō alongside Qián xū as a programmatically-incomplete philosophical record rather than an aborted commentary.
Sīmǎ Guāng’s other surviving works on the cosmological-philosophical canon include the Qián xū 潛虛, the Tài xuán zhù 太玄注 commentary on Yáng Xióng’s Tài xuán, and the Wén Zhōnggōng wénjí 溫文公文集 (his collected prose). His historical and political Zīzhì tōngjiàn and his memorandum collections are the principal record of his Northern-Sòng career.
The Yuán-period preface by Chén Rénzǐ (古迂 Gǔyù) at the head of the present recension is itself a small monument: it places Sīmǎ Guāng’s Yì shuō alongside 陳摶 Chén Tuán’s chart-tradition (transmitted through 邵雍 Shào Yōng), 周敦頤 Zhōu Dūnyí’s Tàijí tú (received through the Chéngs), 朱震 Zhū Zhèn’s “Hànshàng” xiàngshù synthesis, Zhū Xī’s “Kǎotíng” divination-centred reading, and the “Héshā” (Línchuān) xiàng-centred school — placing Wēngōng Yì shuō alongside the major Sòng-period Yì-traditions and judging it “uniquely lucid” (yóu zuì tōngchàng 尤最通暢).
Translations and research
No European-language translation. Specialist literature.
- Hé Yìméng 何益盟 / Liú Tíng 劉婷 et al., individual essays in Zhōuyì yánjiū 周易研究 — modern reassessments of Sīmǎ Guāng’s Yì.
- Anthony William Sariti, Monarchy, Bureaucracy and Absolutism in the Political Thought of Ssu-ma Kuang (PhD diss., Georgetown, 1970) — political-philosophical context.
- Robert Hartwell, “Historical Analogism, Public Policy, and Social Science in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century China,” AHR 76 (1971) — methodological context.
- Peter K. Bol, “Government, Society and State: On the Political Visions of Ssu-ma Kuang and Wang An-shih,” in R. Hymes and C. Schirokauer (eds.), Ordering the World (Univ. of California Press, 1993) — for the Wáng Ānshí controversy that frames Sīmǎ Guāng’s Yì.
- Liú Yùjiàn 劉玉建, Sīmǎ Guāng Yì-xué yánjiū 司馬光易學研究 (Lǚ-shàng / Bākè, 2010s) — modern Sinophone monograph.
- Lóu Yǔliè 樓宇烈 (ed.), modern punctuated editions of Wēngōng Yì shuō on the Sìkù base.
- Ji Xianlin and others’ reissues of the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn-recovered text.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ parallel between the unfinished Yì shuō and the deliberately-unfinished Qián xū — that what looks like incompleteness is in part Sīmǎ Guāng’s compositional method — is one of the more interesting interpretive moves in the tiyao corpus, and is consonant with twentieth-century reassessments of Sīmǎ Guāng as a “pluralist” reader of canonical texts.
The work is the principal Northern-Sòng Confucian Yì-commentary explicitly attacking Wáng Bì’s Lǎo-Zhuāng reading on doctrinal grounds; through Sīmǎ Guāng’s prestige and the wide influence of his Letter to Hán Bǐngguó, this anti-Wáng-Bì stance enters the broader Sòng-Confucian Yì-revival.