Liǎozhāi Yì shuō 了齋易說
Master Liǎozhāi’s Talks on the Yì
by 陳瓘 Chén Guàn (zì Yíngzhōng 瑩中, hào Liǎozhāi 了齋, 1057–1124, of Yánpíng 延平)
About the work
A short Yì commentary, in one juan, by the late-Northern-Sòng anti-Cài-Jīng moralist 陳瓘 Chén Guàn — Liǎozhāi being his self-style. The work as preserved here is a deliberately compressed and aphoristic textus, printed in the early Southern Sòng Shàoxīng era (1131–1162) by Chén Guàn’s grandson 陳正同 Chén Zhèngtóng. 胡一桂 Hú Yīguì records seeing the original print, titled Liǎozhāi Yì shuō, undivided into juan — the present recension agrees with what Hú saw. 馮椅 Féng Yǐ, from Chén’s other grandson 陳大應 Chén Dàyīng, reports that there was a fuller Yì jiě 易解 of Chén’s, not just one juan, in which the analysis was largely guàbiàn 卦變 (“hexagram-change”) and resembled 朱震 Zhū Zhèn’s KR1a0024 approach — that fuller text is no longer extant. The present compressed shuō is what Sòng-Yuán readers received.
Doctrinally, the work occupies an intermediate position between 邵雍 Shào Yōng’s xiāntiān 先天 numerology and the yìlǐ mainstream. 邵伯溫 Shào Bówēn’s Wénjiàn lù records that Chén Guàn in late life took up Master Kāngjié’s [Shào Yōng’s] Yì-doctrine and “completely rejected xiàngshù”; 劉安世 Liú Ānshì (zì Qìzhī 器之) corrected him by pointing out that xiàngshù in the Yì is yù 寓 (“vehicular,” “allegorical-instrumental”), and that the Wáng Bì hermeneutical principle of dé yì wàng xiàng 得意忘象 (“getting the meaning, forgetting the image”) presupposes one has gotten the meaning through the image first; if one cuts off xiàngshù before getting the meaning, “the principle that the Yì is the sage’s sharing-of-fortune-and-misfortune-with-the-people will have no token by which to be foretokened” — citing the Zhuāngzǐ Wàiwù metaphor of the quántí 筌蹄 (fish-trap and rabbit-snare). Chén thereafter integrated Liú’s correction. So the present commentary, although descending in lineage from Shào Yōng, is not strictly xiāntiān numerology but a synthetic Yìshù-and-Yìlǐ reading.
Chén’s prose style is characteristically dense and aphoristic — the canonical-text statements are taken as wisdom-pieces rather than read line-by-line, and the commentary’s enigmatic concentration earned 陳振孫 Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí complaint that “the wording and meaning are deep and obscure.” 晁公武 Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì, however, defends the work: Chén used Yì-numbers to predict national rise-and-fall, with often-verified results — confirming that his understanding of the Yì is real, not merely difficult-prose-disguising-shallow-content.
The composition window 1100–1124 reflects Chén’s late-life turn to the Yì: notBefore his 1100 break with court office (and the start of the long period of demotion-and-exile that culminated in his Hépǔ banishment), notAfter his death in exile.
The catalog meta gives Chén’s lifedates as 1062–1126, but CBDB and Wikidata give 1057–1122; the Sòngshǐ and standard references give 1057–1124. The form 1057–1124 is followed here, with the catalog correction noted.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Liǎozhāi Yì shuō in one juan was composed by 陳瓘 Chén Guàn of the Sòng. Guàn, zì Yíngzhōng, was a man of Yánpíng. Jìnshì of the first class in Yuánfēng 2 [1079]. At the start of Jiànzhōng jìngguó [1101] he was right Sījiàn 司諫 (“Right Reproof Officer”). Once sent a letter to reprove 曾布 Zēng Bù, and in his memorials of impeachment over 蔡京 Cài Jīng and 蔡卞 Cài Biàn — submitted in dozens — he so persisted that he was struck from the rolls and exiled to Hépǔ 合浦, where he died. His record stands in his own Sòngshǐ biography. Liǎozhāi is his self-style.
The present text was printed in the Shàoxīng period by his grandson 陳正同 Chén Zhèngtóng. 馮椅 Féng Yǐ says: “I once met his grandson 陳大應 Dàyīng and saw Liǎozhāi’s complete Yì jiě, not just one juan; mostly on guàbiàn 卦變, similar to 朱震 Zhū Zǐfā [Zhū Zhèn]‘s reading.” 胡一桂 Hú Yīguì says: “I have seen the original print: titled Liǎozhāi Yì shuō, not yet divided into juan.” The present text is what Yīguì saw.
邵伯溫 Shào Bówēn’s Wénjiàn lù says: “[Chén] Guàn late in life acquired [[邵雍|[Shào] Kāngjié]]‘s Yì doctrine and explained it, and altogether rejected xiàngshù. Testing this against Liú Qìzhī [Liú Ānshì] — Qìzhī said: ‘The Yì is fundamentally for use in the world. If one altogether rejects xiàngshù, what is the use of the sages’ setting hexagrams and establishing yáo? Only when one knows that what is in xiàngshù is all yù 寓 (vehicular) can one then discuss the Yì. Hence “gets the meaning and forgets the image; gets the image and forgets the words.” If when one has not yet gotten it, one all at once cuts it off — then the principle of the Yì’s “sharing fortune-and-misfortune with the people” — by what is it to be foretokened? I am afraid that is not the [Zhuāngzǐ’s] quántí point.‘” So Guàn’s Yì-learning was also tested against Liú Ānshì; it does not derive entirely from Master Shào.
His phrasing is rather convoluted, and so Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí complains that “the wording and meaning are deep and obscure.” But 晁公武 Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì says he applies the Yì-numbers to all-under-Heaven’s order-and-decline with substantial verification: so Guàn truly has acquired something on the Yì; this is not a man using deep-and-difficult diction to dress up shallow-and-easy substance. We must not let difficult reading make us discard it.
Respectfully revised and submitted, sixth 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
陳瓘 Chén Guàn (1057–1124), of Yánpíng 延平 in Nánjiàn 南劍 prefecture (modern Nánpíng, Fújiàn), is one of the great moralist-officials of the late Northern Sòng — jìnshì of 1079 in the highest examination class, court official under Zhézōng and Huīzōng, and the most prominent single voice of impeachment against the Cài Jīng faction’s reformist consolidation. His career as a jiànyì 諫議 (“reproof-and-deliberation”) official is recorded in dozens of submitted memorials, more than fifteen of which target Cài Jīng directly; he was repeatedly demoted, exiled, recalled, and re-exiled, and finally died in Hépǔ 合浦 banishment in Guǎngxī under Huīzōng’s anti-Yuányòu reaction. The Sòngshǐ (juan 345) gives him a substantial biography in the Zhōng yì zhuàn.
The Liǎozhāi Yì shuō belongs to the late-Northern-Sòng moralist-Confucian Yì-revival that runs in parallel with the Chéng Yí Luòxué line. Chén’s late-life turn to the Yì reflects the standard Sòng-period pattern of officials in political exile turning to the Yì as the canonical text of the gentleman’s response to political reverses; 蘇軾 Sū Shì’s KR1a0015 Dōngpō Yìzhuàn and Chéng Yí’s KR1a0016 Yīchuān Yìzhuàn are the parallel cases. Chén’s intellectual lineage on the Yì runs from Shào Yōng (transmitting the xiāntiān numerology), to Liú Ānshì (the elder Yuányòu moralist, who corrected him on xiàngshù), to his own synthetic late position — registered now in the present compressed textus.
The work’s textual problem — that there was once a fuller Yì jiě but only the present terse one-juan Liǎozhāi Yì shuō survives — is one of the standard Sòng-period textual situations: a substantial commentary surviving only in a printed selection by the family. Chén Zhèngtóng’s Shàoxīng print is the basis of all later transmission. The Sìkù WYG follows Hú Yīguì’s witness against Féng Yǐ’s report of a fuller version that Hú had not seen, and registers the present work as primary.
Chén Guàn’s Yì cè 易測 (a separate treatise on the Yì-divinatory side) is also recorded in the bibliographies and lost. The poetics of the Liǎozhāi style — terse, oracular, predictive — places the work in the same Sòng-period genre as 司馬光 Sīmǎ Guāng’s Wēngōng Yì shuō KR1a0013 and 劉牧 Liú Mù’s Yìshù gōuyǐn tú KR1a0011 supplementary discussions: thinking-on-the-Yì in compressed form, not formal commentary.
Translations and research
No European-language translation. Specialist literature.
- Chaffee, John W., The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China (Cambridge, 1985) — context for the late-Northern-Sòng moralist-official milieu.
- Charles Hartman, The Making of a Confucian Hero: Lin Yong’s Anti-Reformist Ode 1066 — comparative case for late-Northern-Sòng moral-political prose.
- Liú Yùjiàn 劉玉建, articles in Zhōuyì yánjiū on Chén Guàn — modern Sinophone reassessments.
- Tāng Yìjié 湯一介, Sòng-Míng Lǐxué shǐ 宋明理學史 (1986) — chapter context on the late-Northern-Sòng moral-and-philosophical milieu.
- Modern punctuated editions of the WYG-base text in various Sòng Yì anthologies.
Other points of interest
The Liú Ānshì–Chén Guàn dialogue on whether xiàngshù can be cut off before yìlǐ is reached — the Liú position that the xiàngshù apparatus is a necessary epistemic-instrumental scaffold (the quántí must come before the fish), even though it must ultimately be discarded — is one of the most theoretically substantive moments of Northern-Sòng Yì-hermeneutic debate, and an important precedent for the way 朱熹 Zhū Xī later positions divinatory practice (zhān 占) and xiàngshù in his Yì běnyì programme: not as autonomous goals but as the necessary instrumental access to yìlǐ.
Chén Guàn’s late friendship with 楊時 Yáng Shí (the editor of the KR1a0016 Yīchuān Yìzhuàn) and his exchange with Liú Ānshì place him in the late-Northern-Sòng / early-Southern-Sòng Dàoxué network as a moral-philosophical interlocutor rather than a Chéng disciple proper.