Yīchuān Yìzhuàn 伊川易傳
Master Yīchuān’s Commentary on the Yì
(commonly Chéng zhuàn 程傳 or Chéng Yí zhuàn 程頤傳)
by 程頤 Chéng Yí (zì Zhèngshū 正叔, conventionally Master Yīchuān 伊川先生, 1033–1107, of Hénán 河南)
About the work
The single most influential Confucian Yì commentary of the imperial era. 程頤 Chéng Yí — younger of the two Chéng brothers, founder, with his elder brother 程顥 Chéng Hào, of the Luòxué 洛學 (“Luòyáng Learning”) school of Northern-Sòng Dàoxué, and one of the canonical Běi Sòng wǔzǐ 北宋五子 — composed the Yìzhuàn during his political exile in Fúzhōu 涪州 (modern Sìchuān) under the post-1093 anti-Yuányòu reaction (1097–1100). His own preface bears the date Yuánfú 2 (1099). Four juan: upper canon, lower canon, Tuàn zhuàn, Xiàng zhuàn, Wényán. The Xìcí, Shuōguà, and Záguà have no commentary — left undone, on 楊時 Yáng Shí’s authority, because Chéng died before he could complete the work.
Doctrinally, the work is the foundational document of Sòng yìlǐ 義理 (“meaning-and-pattern”) Yì-reading and the principal source of the Sòng-Míng-Qīng examination orthodoxy on the Yì. Chéng’s hermeneutic is succinctly stated in the preface: Yì biàn yì yě, suí shí biàn yì yǐ cóng dào yě 易，變易也，隨時變易以從道也 — “Yì is change; it is change-with-the-time, in order to follow the Way.” Each hexagram is read as an ethical-political situation (shí 時) whose proper response (yìng 應) is determined by attention to the yáo-positions, the zhōngzhèng 中正 (“centred-and-correct”) configurations, and above all the lǐ 理 (“pattern/principle”) inhering in the xiàng 象. Chéng programmatically refuses 邵雍 Shào Yōng’s shù xué 數學 numerological method, just as he refuses the Buddhist-tinged Sū xué of KR1a0015. The reading takes 王弼 Wáng Bì’s KR1a0006 base recension, splits the Xùguà fragments and prefixes them to each hexagram (after 李鼎祚 Lǐ Dǐngzuò’s Jíjiě model KR1a0008), and is in commentary-style consistently lucid, ethical, situational.
The textual transmission is fraught: Yáng Shí’s postface records that Chéng before his death entrusted the manuscript to his disciple 張繹 Zhāng Yì; Zhāng died shortly thereafter; the work scattered. 謝良佐 Xiè Liángzuǒ (Xiè Xiǎndào 謝顯道) recovered a copy in the capital and brought it to Yáng Shí, who collated and edited it through his interim residence at Pílíng (Chángzhōu) in over a year of work. Hence the variation in juan-counts in the early bibliographies (王偁 Wáng Chèng’s Dōng dū shìlüè 6 juan; Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì 9 juan; Èr Chéng quánshū 4 juan, which is the present recension).
The composition window 1097–1099 covers the Fúzhōu exile span: notBefore is the start of his exile (Shàoshèng 4); notAfter is his preface date (Yuánfú 2). Chéng was transferred to Xiázhōu 峽州 in 1100 and rehabilitated under the Huīzōng accession; the work was substantively complete by the preface date, with Xìcí etc. left unwritten at his death seven years later.
The WYG source file KR1a0016_000.txt carries at the head an imperial title-poem by Qiánlóng (Yùzhì tí Sòngbǎn Zhōuyì Chéng zhuàn 御製題宋版周易程傳) judging Chéng’s commentary as “level and proper, words constant” against 朱熹 Zhū Xī’s “deliberate counter-correction in favour of divinatory reading” — a small monument of imperial ratification of Chéng over Zhū on the Yì specifically.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Yīchuān Yìzhuàn in four juan was composed by Master Chéng of the Sòng. Master Chéng’s record stands in the Sòngshǐ Dàoxué zhuàn. The volume is headed by his own preface dated Yuánfú 2 [1099]. Examining the chronology — Master Chéng was assigned to Fúzhōu under the Shàoshèng 4 [1097] political-purge measure, and was reassigned to Xiázhōu under Yuánfú 3 [1100]; so the work must have been completed during the Fúzhōu detention.
王偁 Wáng Chèng’s Dōng dū shìlüè records the work in six juan; the Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì in nine juan; the Èr Chéng quánshū throughout in four juan.
Examining 楊時 Yáng Shí’s postface: “Master Yīchuān composed his Yìzhuàn but did not bring the work to completion before his decease. He charged his student 張繹 Zhāng Yì with the manuscript. Yì soon afterwards died, and the work was scattered and lost. The transmissions among scholars were of no good recension. 謝良佐 Xiè Xiǎndào [Xiè Liángzuǒ] obtained a manuscript in the capital and brought it to me — disordered, repetitious, almost unreadable. I made my way back east, waiting at Pílíng for my next appointment, and there at last began to collate and correct, removing the duplications. After a year and more, the work was finally complete” — and so on. So at the time there was no fixed text, and what was transmitted varied.
The work treats only the upper and lower canon and the Tuàn, Xiàng, and Wényán; it uses 王弼 Wáng Bì’s edition for the base text, and splits the Xùguà into prefatory entries under each hexagram (the Lǐ Dǐngzuò Jíjiě convention). The Xìcí, Shuōguà, and Záguà have no commentary. 董真卿 Dǒng Zhēnqīng holds that this also follows Wáng Bì. We have now examined Master Chéng’s letter to 謝湜 Xiè Shí of Jīntáng, in which he says: “On Yì, one should first read Wáng Bì, 胡瑗 Hú Yuán, and 王安石 Wáng Ānshí — the three masters.” The judgment that Master Chéng draws on Wáng Bì is therefore not without basis. But to suppose he forgoes commenting on Xìcí, Shuōguà, Záguà in imitation of Wáng Bì seems not altogether so. Yáng Shí’s account — that the rough draft was simply not brought to completion — is to be preferred.
Master Chéng did not believe in Master Shào’s shù; so where Master Shào speaks the Yì in numbers, Master Chéng’s commentary here speaks it in lǐ — articulating Heavenly principle and the entirety of human affairs. The ancients in writing books each labour to put forth their own seeing; nothing wrong with each clarifying one meaning. Those who hold to sectarian positions and stand stiff guard over their teacher’s word, not yielding so much as an inch — these are at variance with the original purpose of the older Confucians.
Respectfully revised and submitted, tenth 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
程頤 Chéng Yí (1033–1107) of Luòyáng (modern Hénán) is, with his elder brother 程顥 Chéng Hào (1032–1085), the founder of the Luòxué 洛學 (“Luòyáng Learning”) school of Northern-Sòng Dàoxué and one of the canonical Běi Sòng wǔzǐ 北宋五子. Studied in his youth at the Imperial Academy under 胡瑗 Hú Yuán (KR1a0012); briefly under 周敦頤 Zhōu Dūnyí in his and his brother’s adolescence; rose through court appointments under Shénzōng and Zhézōng to Chóngzhèng diàn shuō shū 崇政殿說書 (“Imperial Lecturer at the Chóngzhèng Hall,” in 1086) under the Yuányòu regency. After the regency’s collapse in 1093, factional reaction sent him into demotion and finally into exile to Fúzhōu in 1097, where he composed the Yìzhuàn. Rehabilitated under Huīzōng’s accession in 1100 but barred from court; died at Hénán in 1107. The Sòngshǐ Dàoxué zhuàn (juan 427) gives him a substantial biography.
The Yìzhuàn is the foundational document of Sòng yìlǐ Yì-reading and one of the most influential commentaries in the entire Confucian classical tradition. Its impact on the Yì tradition runs through five channels:
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The Examination Canon. From its incorporation by the Yuán in the Sì shū wǔ jīng dà quán tradition (formalized 1313) and Míng’s Sì shū wǔ jīng dà quán (1415, KR1a0068) through the Qīng’s continuation of imperial-examination orthodoxy, the Chéng zhuàn together with Zhū Xī’s Běnyì (KR1a0031) constitute the dual-base examination text on the Yì.
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Zhū Xī’s Synthesis. 朱熹 Zhū Xī’s Zhōuyì běnyì programmatically distinguishes Chéng’s yìlǐ reading (which Zhū does not displace) from his own divinatory reading (which Zhū restores as a corrective), but Zhū Xī himself studied Chéng’s Yìzhuàn through 李侗 Lǐ Tóng and incorporated its ethical-philosophical core into his own canonical reading.
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The Sòng-Yuán-Míng yìlǐ line. Yáng Shí (the editor of the present text), 胡宏 Hú Hóng, 胡寅 Hú Yīnxiān, 呂祖謙 Lǚ Zǔqiān, 蔡元定 Cài Yuándìng, 魏了翁 Wèi Liǎowēng, 胡一桂 Hú Yīguì, Dǒng Zhēnqīng, 吳澄 Wú Chéng — all extend, defend, gloss, or systematize Chéng’s commentary.
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The Korean / Japanese reception. The Chéng zhuàn was the canonical Yì commentary in Joseon Korea (Yi T’oegye 退溪 李滉, Yi Yulgok 栗谷 李珥) and in Tokugawa-period Confucian Japan (Itō Jinsai 伊藤仁齋’s response, Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠’s critique).
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Twentieth-century Confucian thought. Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 and Tang Junyi 唐君毅 each engage Chéng Yí’s Yìzhuàn substantively in their twentieth-century reconstructions of Sòng-Míng Dàoxué.
The textual problem of the work — Chéng’s death with Xìcí etc. uncomposed, the Yáng Shí editorial recovery, the variant juan-counts — has been examined exhaustively in modern scholarship; the four-juan Èr Chéng quánshū recension is the canonical settled form, accepted by the Sìkù WYG.
The Hú Yuán → Chéng Yí intellectual transmission (the Sìkù tiyao on KR1a0012 makes this case explicitly) is the most consequential single thread in the Sòng yìlǐ lineage.
Translations and research
Translations:
- Cheng I, I Ching / Yi Ching: The Tao of Organization. A Behavioural Science Vision of Confucian Ethics, Thomas Cleary trans. (Shambhala, 1988) — the only complete English translation of the Chéng Yìzhuàn. Free, paraphrastic, not philologically rigorous, but useful as access.
- Adler 2002 / Adler 2020 — Joseph Adler’s translations of Zhū Xī’s Yì writings (see KR1a0031) consistently engage Chéng Yìzhuàn as the assumed background.
- Tu Wei-ming, “Inner Experience: The Basis of Creativity in Neo-Confucian Thinking,” in Way, Learning, and Politics (SUNY, 1993) — translates and discusses key passages of the preface.
Major scholarship:
- A. C. Graham, Two Chinese Philosophers: The Metaphysics of the Brothers Ch’eng (London Oriental Series 6, 1958; rev. La Salle: Open Court, 1992) — foundational English-language monograph on the Chéng brothers’ philosophy; discusses Yìzhuàn extensively.
- Wm. Theodore de Bary (ed.), Sources of Chinese Tradition (Columbia, 2nd ed. 1999), chapter on the Chéng brothers — translated selections.
- Itō Sōhei 伊藤宗平, Shū-i Tei-shi denkō 周易程氏伝考 (Japanese, mid-20c) — critical text-history.
- Zhū Bóqūn 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ (Huáxià, rev. 1995) — comprehensive Sinophone treatment.
- Pi Xirui 皮錫瑞, Jīngxué tōnglùn 經學通論 Yì section — late-Qīng overview.
- Wáng Tiějūn 王鐵軍 et al., modern punctuated critical editions of the Èr Chéng quánshū / Chéng Yí Yìzhuàn on the Zhōnghuá shūjú base (1981; rev. 2004).
- Tze-ki Hon, The Yijing and Chinese Politics (SUNY, 2005) — the standard English-language treatment of the political-intellectual context of Chéng’s exile-period Yìzhuàn.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ explicit endorsement, against Dǒng Zhēnqīng, of Yáng Shí’s account that Xìcí etc. were uncomposed (rather than deliberately omitted in imitation of Wáng Bì) — and their parallel rejection of sectarian “stand-stiff-guard-on-teacher” Confucianism in favour of “each clarifying one meaning” — together constitute one of the Yì-section’s clearest expressions of the Sìkù’s pluralist-philological editorial line.
The Qiánlóng imperial title-poem at the head of the WYG recension — judging Chéng’s commentary as “level and proper” (píng zhèng 平正), with words “constantly stated” (yán cháng 言常), against Zhū Xī’s deliberate “counter-correction” (jiǎo zhèng 矯正) toward divinatory reading — is one of the few imperial pronouncements in the Sìkù WYG that takes one canonical commentary’s part against another. It is consistent with the Qīng court’s broader pluralism on the Yì: the Chéng-Zhū dual-base examination tradition was kept intact, neither displaced.