Dōngpō Yìzhuàn 東坡易傳
Master Dōngpō’s Commentary on the Yì
(also called Pílíng Yìzhuàn 毘陵易傳)
by 蘇軾 Sū Shì (zì Zǐzhān 子瞻, hào Dōngpō 東坡, 1036–1101) — with substantive contributions from his father 蘇洵 Sū Xún and brother 蘇轍 Sū Zhé
About the work
The Yì commentary of 蘇軾 Sū Shì — the great Northern-Sòng poet, statesman, and exile — composed in the form 陸游 Lù Yóu records as a project of the entire Sū family: 蘇洵 Sū Xún began the work in his late years and died before its completion; he charged his two sons Shì and Zhé to carry it on; Shì completed the substantive draft first; Zhé sent his analyses to Shì for incorporation. The Méng 蒙 hexagram in the present text is still in Zhé’s wording. The work is therefore credited to Shì as principal author but is in fact a Sān-Sū 三蘇 (“Three Su”) collaboration. Nine juan, yìlǐ method.
The work circulated in the Yuányòu period (post-1086) under the title Pílíng Yìzhuàn 毘陵易傳 (“Master Pílíng’s Yì Commentary”), per Lù Yóu’s Lǎoxué ān bǐjì 老學庵筆記: when the Yuányòu proscription banned distribution of works under proscribed officials’ names, the editors substituted “Master Pílíng” (Pílíng = Chángzhōu 常州, where Sū Shì had died) to keep the book in circulation. The original title returned only after the rehabilitation. Modern catalogues use Dōngpō Yìzhuàn.
The work is the locus classicus for the Northern-Sòng “Sū xué” 蘇學 reading of the Yì — the Sū-family Confucian-with-Buddhist-and-Daoist-overtones interpretive style that 朱熹 Zhū Xī later denounced in his Záxué biàn 雜學辨 (“Refutation of Mixed Learning”) as the first item of “mixed” (i.e., heterodox-syncretic) reading. The Sìkù editors, while acknowledging the Buddhist-tinted passages (especially at Qián Tuàn on xìng 性 and mìng 命), give a measured judgment: Zhū Xī’s actual rebuttals in Záxué biàn number only nineteen items, of which four are textual rather than doctrinal and one acknowledges Sū’s correctness — leaving fourteen actual disputes against the work as a whole, “barely one percent” of the commentary, “not enough to condemn the book.” They further note that Zhū Xī’s Yǔlèi contains the more measured judgment that Sū has substantive insight on “physical principles” in many places.
The composition window 1080–1101: notBefore is the rough lower bound for Sū Shì’s settled work on his father’s bequest project after 1066 (his father’s death) and the Huángzhōu 黃州 exile years (1080–1084) in which he is documented as actively studying the Yì; notAfter is his death in Chángzhōu (Pílíng).
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Dōngpō Yìzhuàn in nine juan was composed by 蘇軾 Sū Shì of the Sòng. Shì’s record stands in his own Sòngshǐ biography. The book is also called Pílíng Yìzhuàn. 陸游 Lù Yóu’s Lǎoxué ān bǐjì says that the book at first encountered the Yuányòu faction proscription: it could not openly bear Shì’s name, and was therefore titled “Master Pílíng” — Shì having ended his life at Chángzhōu [= Pílíng].
蘇籀 Sū Zǎo’s Luánchéng yíyán 欒城遺言 records that 蘇洵 Sū Xún composed an Yìzhuàn but died with the work unfinished, charging his two sons to fulfil his intention. Shì’s text was completed first; 蘇轍 Zhé then sent his own readings to Shì. The present Méng hexagram is still Zhé’s reading. So this book is in truth a co-labour of the Sū father and brothers; the title “by Shì” notes only the achiever.
Sū Zǎo also reports that [Sū] Xún in his late years read the Yì and dwelt on the yáo and xiàng — gaining the affective dynamics of firmness-and-suppleness, distance-and-nearness, joy-and-anger, with-and-against-grain. Hence Master Zhū says of [Sū Shì’s] commentary that it merely “develops the meaning of love-and-hate striving against each other, true-and-false responding to each other,” and judges it coarse-and-shallow. 胡一桂 Hú Yīguì records 晁說之 Cháo Shuōzhī’s word: that Shì in writing Yìzhuàn regretted not knowing shù xué [numerology], and that his learning is further mixed with Chán Buddhism. So Master Zhū wrote Záxué biàn and placed this book of Shì’s at the head.
But what Master Zhū rebuts is no more than nineteen items. Of these, four are about the textual sense; one says that Sū’s reading is sound but not exhausting the matter. The items the Master will not accept are therefore only fourteen — not even one in a hundred parts of the entire book, hardly enough to make this book a defective book. Moreover, the Zhū Zǐ yǔlèi also once said that on the principles of things [Sū] does have insightful perceptions — so the Master never finally gave it up.
Now examining the book — its glosses on the Qián hexagram Tuàn zhuàn and the doctrines of xìng 性 (“nature”) and mìng 命 (“mandate”) do, indeed, slip into wandering and indistinct territory and verge upon heterodox learning [i.e., Chán]. But its other expositions of principle and circumstance are concise in phrase and clear in meaning, often bringing out a hard-to-show sentiment, deeply realising the spirit of the side-by-side analogy. In broad outline, it is close to 王弼 Wáng Bì; but Wáng’s commentary only develops the Xuán spirit, while Shì’s commentary mostly cuts close to human affairs. Its prose is broad-ranging and analytic, capable of stimulating the reader. How is one to dismiss it sweepingly?
李衡 Lǐ Héng in writing his Zhōuyì yìhǎi cuō yào 周易義海撮要 KR1a0029, 丁易東 Dīng Yìdōng in writing his Zhōuyì xiàng yì 周易象義, and 董真卿 Dǒng Zhēnqīng in writing his Zhōuyì huì tōng 周易會通 KR1a0064 — all extract and quote Shì’s readings; this is no accident.
In the Míng, 焦竑 Jiāo Hóng first obtained an old recension and printed it; 閔齊伋 Mǐn Qíjí reprinted it in red-and-black ink, the production rather elegant but no actual collation. 毛晉 Máo Jìn further included it in his Jīndài mìshū 津逮秘書. Of the three recensions, Máo’s is the most corrupt: at Jiàn 9-9, even the canonical text has been emended to read “hóng jiàn yú kuí” 鴻漸於逵 [a textual fabrication of KR1a0010 Zhōuyì jǔzhèng] — and from that one can imagine the rest. We therefore take Jiāo Hóng’s recension as the basis, and so the present text is not too far from the genuine.
Respectfully revised and submitted, fourth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: 紀昀 Jǐ Yún, 陸錫熊 Lù Xīxióng, 孫士毅 Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: 陸費墀 Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
蘇軾 Sū Shì (1036–1101), of Méishān 眉山 (modern Sìchuān), is the most consequential literary-political figure of the mid-Northern Sòng — jìnshì 1057, master of every major literary genre (shī poetry, cí lyrics, fù rhyme-prose, biāo / zhuàng memorials, occasional prose), and a leading conservative-faction politician under 王安石 Wáng Ānshí’s New Policies and again under the post-1086 Yuányòu reaction. The Sòngshǐ (juan 338) gives him a long canonical biography. He is conventionally one of the Táng-Sòng bā dà jiā 唐宋八大家 (“Eight Great Masters of the Táng and Sòng”) of classical prose.
The Dōngpō Yìzhuàn is the most important Sū-family scholarly project. 蘇洵 Sū Xún (1009–1066) initiated the work in his late years; on his death in 1066, his sons Sū Shì and 蘇轍 Sū Zhé took it up under his explicit charge. Shì completed his substantive draft probably during his Huángzhōu exile (1080–1084) — exile being the time at which Sòng officials of his rank typically did their most committed scholarly work — and revised through his subsequent years of fluctuating fortune (Hangzhou, Yangzhou, Dingzhou, then again exile to Huìzhōu and Hǎinán under Zhézōng’s anti-Yuán-yòu reaction, 1093–1100). The final form was complete by his return north and death at Chángzhōu (= Pílíng) in 1101. Sū Zhé’s contribution is most visible at the Méng hexagram, where the present text retains Zhé’s wording.
Doctrinally, the Dōngpō Yìzhuàn is the textbook example of Northern-Sòng Sū xué 蘇學 — the third school of Sòng Yì-reading, alongside the Chéng-Zhū yìlǐ line and the 劉牧 Liú Mù – 邵雍 Shào Yōng túshū line. The Sū reading is characterized by:
- Affective-political reading of yáo-positions and -relations. The hexagram is read as a configuration of human-affective energies in interaction — gāngróu 剛柔 (firmness-suppleness), yuǎnjìn 遠近 (distance-nearness), xǐnù 喜怒 (joy-anger), nìshùn 逆順 (with-grain-against-grain) — with each yáo-statement treated as a moment in a dynamic emotional-political situation rather than as a numerological cipher.
- Buddhist-tinged metaphysical glosses on xìngmìng. At Qián Tuàn and Wényán, Sū’s exposition of “nature” and “mandate” draws on Chán Buddhist meditative-philosophical idiom, in line with his lifelong intellectual association with chánsì 禪寺 abbots and his own committed if syncretic Buddhist practice.
- Lucid, prose-oriented exposition. Sū writes the Yì commentary as he writes everything else — in the lapidary, analytical, deeply readable prose style for which he is canonized in classical literary history.
The work was Zhū Xī’s principal target in his programmatic Záxué biàn 雜學辨 (“Refutation of Mixed Learning”), where Sū Shì leads the list of Sòng “syncretic” thinkers. The Sìkù editors’ careful counting (nineteen rebuttals minus four textual minus one acknowledgment = fourteen actual disputes, less than 1% of the commentary) is itself a small monument of kǎozhèng polemic-disarming, and shows the Sìkù yìlǐ-pluralist editorial line under Jǐ Yún reasserting Sū’s standing against the Zhū-orthodox dismissal. Zhū Xī’s own Yǔlèi witness is here invoked against his more public Záxué biàn attack — a textbook procedural move.
The textual problem the Sìkù editors handle: the late-Míng and early-Qīng recensions diverge significantly. Jiāo Hóng’s print preserves the closest-to-original; Mǐn Qíjí’s red-and-black-ink reprint is presentationally elegant but uncritical; Máo Jìn’s Jīndài mìshū recension propagates the Zhōuyì jǔzhèng fabrications (including the Jiàn 9-9 kuí 逵 emendation) into the canonical-text apparatus and is therefore the worst of the three. The Sìkù WYG follows Jiāo Hóng.
Translations and research
No complete European-language translation. Selective passages translated in studies of Sū Shì.
- Ronald C. Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (Harvard, 1994) — standard biography; the chapter on Sū’s exile-period scholarship treats the Yìzhuàn.
- Beata Grant, Mount Lu Revisited: Buddhism in the Life and Writings of Su Shih (Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1994) — the key study for the Buddhist undercurrent that Zhū Xī flagged in the Yìzhuàn.
- Sū Shì, Sū Shì wénjí 蘇軾文集 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1986) — standard prose collection; relevant prose materials including the early Lùn Yì 論易 essay.
- Jīn Shēngyáng 金生楊, Sū Shì Yìzhuàn yánjiū 蘇軾易傳研究 (Sìchuān dàxué chūbǎnshè or modern reissue) — modern Sinophone monograph.
- Zhū Bóqūn 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ (Huáxià, rev. 1995) — chapter on the Sū family’s Yì.
- Su Yi-cheng 蘇宜成 / Yáng Wéijié 楊維傑 et al. modern punctuated editions on the WYG / Jiāo Hóng base.
- Liú Wēiyǐng 劉維瑛, articles in Zhōuyì yánjiū — modern reassessments.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ careful itemization of Zhū Xī’s actual Záxué biàn rebuttals against the Dōngpō Yìzhuàn — and the conclusion that less than 1% of the commentary is targeted — is one of the clearer cases in the tiyao corpus of editorial pushback against received Zhū Xī orthodoxy on Northern-Sòng intellectual history. The Sìkù editorial team’s yìlǐ pluralism in the Yì section is at this point on display.
The Lù Yóu anecdote of the title-change to “Master Pílíng” under the Yuányòu proscription is the principal early-modern record of Sòng-period censorship-by-attribution: an authorized circumventing of an imperial ban by changing the author-attribution rather than the text. The pattern is analogous to the late-Míng / early-Qīng practice of deliberately mislabeling authorship to escape Wènzì yù 文字獄 prosecution.
Sū Shì’s death-place was Chángzhōu 常州, which had been called Pílíng 毘陵 in Hàn and Six-Dynasties times; “Master Pílíng” is therefore not a reference to his birthplace (Méishān, Sìchuān) but to the place of his death.