Héngqú Yì shuō 橫渠易說
Master Héngqú’s Talks on the Yì
by 張載 Zhāng Zài (zì Zǐhòu 子厚, conventionally Master Héngqú 橫渠先生, 1020–1077, of Mèixiàn 郿縣)
About the work
The personal Yì commentary of 張載 Zhāng Zài — the founder of the Northern-Sòng “Guānxué” 關學 (“Guān-region Learning”) and the philosopher of qì 氣 (“psycho-physical stuff”) who articulated the foundational doctrines that 程頤 Chéng Yí, 程顥 Chéng Hào, and 朱熹 Zhū Xī later inherited. Three juan: upper canon (one juan), lower canon (one juan), Xìcí zhuàn through Záguà zhuàn (one juan), with eleven general discussions appended at the end. The work is markedly more terse than Chéng Yí’s Yìzhuàn (KR1a0015); only canonical passages on which Zhāng has substantive commentary are quoted in the text — long stretches of canonical text are simply omitted, since they receive no exposition. The Sìkù editors note this as a Confucian writing-virtue: the Confucian “writes only when he has truly grasped something, not by counting how much.”
The doctrinally distinctive feature of the work is Zhāng’s deliberate use of Lǎozǐ language to articulate Yì doctrine — at Qián Tuàn he applies yíng zhī bù jiàn qí shǒu, suí zhī bù jiàn qí hòu 迎之不見其首，隨之不見其後 (“approaching it one does not see its head; following it one does not see its rear,” Lǎozǐ 14); at Wényán he applies gǔ shén 谷神 (“the valley-spirit,” Lǎozǐ 6); at Xìcí “drumming up the ten thousand things without sharing in the sage’s anxieties” he applies tiāndì bùrén, yǐ wànwù wéi chúgǒu 天地不仁，以萬物為芻狗 (“Heaven and Earth are not benevolent; they treat the ten thousand things as straw dogs,” Lǎozǐ 5). The Sìkù editors observe carefully that Zhāng “borrows Lǎozǐ’s language but his meaning is different — this is not, as in the Wèi-Jìn writers, an assimilation of Lǎo and Yì.” (Zhāng is using the Lǎozǐ idiom to develop a thoroughly Confucian philosophy of qì-cosmology, against the 王弼 Wáng Bì line.)
The Sìkù editors flag one reading they find unsatisfactory: at Bǐ 比 “hòu bù xǐng fāng” 后不省方 (the Tuàn-statement of Bǐ), Zhāng reads “hòu” as referring to “a successor-ruler maintaining the founder’s establishment, in conditions of plenty and ease, not deeply attentive to affairs” — which strikes them as forced. They explicitly refuse to twist their tiyao to defend Zhāng on this point.
The composition window 1060–1077 reflects Zhāng’s mature scholarly career under Yīngzōng and Shénzōng: notBefore the rough lower bound for his settled philosophical synthesis, notAfter his death.
The work appears in the WYG with an appendix not at the head but conventionally annexed: 呂大臨 Lǚ Dàlín’s Héngqú xiānshēng xíngzhuàng 橫渠先生行狀 (“Conduct-Account of Master Héngqú”), 1 juan, by Zhāng Zài’s principal student Lǚ Dàlín (1044–1091).
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Héngqú Yì shuō in three juan was composed by 張載 Zhāng Zài of the Sòng. The upper canon is one juan, the lower canon is one juan, and from the Xìcí zhuàn on through the Záguà is one juan; at the end there are eleven general discussions. This book, compared to Chéng’s Yìzhuàn, is even more terse: often within several dozen lines of canonical text not a single line is commented on, and the volume consequently does not reproduce the canonical text in full — it carries only the passages on which there is commentary. The Confucian’s word: it must be that something has truly been grasped before it is recorded, and is not measured by how much there is.
His exposition: at Qián Tuàn he applies the language “approaching it one does not see its head, following it one does not see its rear”; at Wényán he applies the language “the valley-spirit”; at “drumming up the ten thousand things without sharing in the sage’s anxieties” he applies “Heaven and Earth are not benevolent, they treat the ten thousand things as straw dogs.” All these borrow Lǎozǐ’s language, but their meaning is in fact different — this is not, as with the Wèi-Jìn men, the conjoining of Lǎo and Yì into one. Only his explanation of “the [reigning] queen does not inspect the regions” — read as a “successor ruler who maintains the founder’s establishment, in conditions of plenty and ease, not deeply attentive to affairs” — seems on the meaning unsettled. This too cannot be stretched into a defence on Zài’s account.
Respectfully revised and submitted, seventh 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
張載 Zhāng Zài (1020–1077), of Mèixiàn 郿縣 in Fèngxiángfǔ 鳳翔府 (modern Méixiàn 眉縣 in Shǎnxī), is the founder of the Northern-Sòng “Guānxué” 關學 (“Guān-region Learning”) and one of the four canonical Běi Sòng wǔzǐ 北宋五子 (“Five Masters of the Northern Sòng”) together with 周敦頤 Zhōu Dūnyí, 邵雍 Shào Yōng, 程顥 Chéng Hào, and 程頤 Chéng Yí. Jìnshì of 1057 (Jiāyòu 2). Held a series of court and provincial appointments and lived for most of his life at his Héngqú 橫渠 farmhouse in Mèixiàn, where he ran an academy of dedicated students that included 呂大臨 Lǚ Dàlín, 呂大防 Lǚ Dàfáng, and the Sūshì 蘇氏 brothers 蘇昞 Sū Bǐng and 蘇昱 Sū Yùn. The Sòngshǐ Dào xué zhuàn (juan 427) gives him a substantial biography.
His foundational doctrines:
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The reduction of all reality to qì 氣 (“psycho-physical stuff”). Against Wáng Bì’s wú 無 (“non-being”) metaphysics, Zhāng argues that qì — never created and never destroyed, oscillating perpetually between jù 聚 (“condensed”) and sàn 散 (“dispersed”) states — is the underlying substance of all reality. Tàixū 太虛 (“supreme tenuity”) is qì in maximally rarefied state; the ten thousand things are qì in coalesced state. The doctrine is articulated programmatically in his Zhèngméng 正蒙 (“Correcting the Unenlightened,” posthumously edited).
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The doctrine of “the people my siblings, all things my companions” (mín wú tóng bāo, wù wú yú yě 民吾同胞，物吾與也). Articulated in his short Xīmíng 西銘 (“Western Inscription”), the manifesto of universal-ethical Confucianism that Chéng Yí canonized as the foundation of Sòng Dào xué. Together with the Dōngmíng 東銘 (“Eastern Inscription”), incorporated as a chapter of the Zhèngméng.
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The four-fold civil-philosophical mission of “establishing one’s heart for Heaven-and-Earth; establishing destiny for the human masses; continuing the lost learning for the past sages; opening peace and stability for ten thousand generations” (wèi tiāndì lì xīn, wèi shēngmín lì mìng, wèi wǎngshèng jì juéxué, wèi wànshì kāi tàipíng 為天地立心，為生民立命，為往聖繼絕學，為萬世開太平). The single most-cited Confucian programmatic line of the Sòng-Míng millennium.
The Héngqú Yì shuō shows Zhāng’s doctrines in their Yì-application: qì cosmology applied to hexagrammic transformation; the Xìcí’s “alternation of yīn and yáng” read as the cyclic jùsàn of qì; the Tuàn’s “great origin” read as tàihé 太和 (“supreme harmony” of qì’s self-balance). The selective coverage and the deliberate Lǎozǐ-citation idiom (philosophically inverted into a Confucian frame) are characteristic of his Zhèngméng style as well.
The text was edited posthumously: Zhāng’s mature Yì lectures were probably the immediate antecedent of the work. The eleven concluding “general discussions” are conventionally treated as Zhāng’s own programmatic essays on Yì-doctrine; the appended xíngzhuàng of Lǚ Dàlín supplements the text as primary biographical witness.
The work’s reception in the Sòng-Yuán is principally through Chéng Yí (who read it during his early visits to Zhāng’s Héngqú academy) and through Zhū Xī, who wove substantive Zhāng Zài material into the Jìnsī lù 近思錄 (1175). Most of Zhāng’s Yì-doctrine is more accessible through the Zhèngméng and the Xīmíng than through the present commentary; but for readers tracing the qì-cosmology onto the canonical Yì hexagram-and-line statements, Héngqú Yì shuō is the primary witness.
Translations and research
No complete European-language translation of Héngqú Yì shuō. Zhāng Zài’s broader corpus (especially Zhèngméng and Xīmíng) is well represented in translation.
- Ira E. Kasoff, The Thought of Chang Tsai (1020–1077) (Cambridge, 1984) — the standard English-language monograph; the chapter on Yì exegesis treats the present commentary substantively.
- Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, 1963) — partial translation of Xī míng and Zhèng méng.
- Yvonne Schulz Zinda (transl.), Zhang Zai: Rectifying Obscurations / Zheng meng (Open Court, in progress).
- Zhāng Zài, Zhāng Zǎi jí 張載集 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1978; rev. 2006) — the standard Sinophone critical edition of all of Zhāng’s writings, including Héngqú Yì shuō, Zhèng méng, Jīng xué lǐ kū 經學理窟, the Xī míng, and supplementary materials.
- Mèng Péiyuán 蒙培元, Zhāng Zǎi tā xué chǎnxī 張載哲學闡析 — modern Sinophone monograph.
- Zhū Bóqūn 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ (Huáxià, rev. 1995) — chapter on Zhāng Zài’s Yì.
- Liú Jié 劉節 / Liáng Yùn-huá 梁雲華 et al., articles in Zhōuyì yánjiū — modern reassessments of Zhāng’s Yì.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ analytical observation that Zhāng’s deliberate use of Lǎozǐ idioms is a philosophical inversion (Confucian content in Daoist phrase) rather than the philosophical assimilation of the Wèi-Jìn Xuánxué writers — is one of the more sophisticated formal-historical observations in the tiyao corpus on the Sòng Yì-revival’s relationship to its Wáng Bì inheritance.
The work’s exclusion of canonical passages on which Zhāng has no commentary, the Sìkù editors register as a virtuous Confucian compositional principle (“write only when one has truly grasped something”) rather than a textual corruption — implicitly inverting the standard scholarly anxiety around canonical Yì commentaries that fail to cover the entire base text.
The accompanying xíngzhuàng by Lǚ Dàlín, Zhāng’s senior student, is one of the most important biographical sources for Zhāng Zài and the Northern-Sòng Dào xué milieu more broadly.