Zhōuyì xīn jiǎngyì 周易新講義
A New Lecture-Meaning of the Zhōuyì
(also titled Jìn Zhōuyì jiě yì 進周易解義 in some early recensions — “Submitting Explanations of the Zhōuyì”)
by 耿南仲 Gěng Nánzhòng (zì Xīdào 希道, fl. ca. 1115–1126, of Kāifēng 開封)
About the work
A six-juan Yì commentary by 耿南仲 Gěng Nánzhòng — a late-Northern-Sòng court official whose later notoriety as a leading advocate of cession-and-appeasement policy during the 1126 Jurchen siege of Kāifēng casts a long shadow over the present text. Gěng served as Zīzhèng diàn dàxuéshì 資政殿大學士 (“Imperial Adviser of the Zīzhèng Hall”) under Qīnzōng during the Jìngkāng 靖康 crisis; with 吳幵 Wú Jiǎn he led the policy faction that argued for ceding northern territory to the Jin in exchange for peace, and was after the southern crossing demoted and sent into exile, dying in disgrace.
The work appears to have first been presented to Qīnzōng during the latter’s tenure as Crown Prince (when Gěng served as Tàizǐ zhānshì 太子詹事), as the older title Jìn Zhōuyì jiě yì (“Submitting Explanations of the Zhōuyì”) suggests. The composition window 1115–1125 covers Gěng’s tenure as the Crown Prince’s tutor (Qīnzōng was Crown Prince from 1115 until his accession at the Jìngkāng crisis, 1125–1126).
Doctrinally, the work has a single distinctive thesis, programmatically stated in Gěng’s own preface: “Yì’s Way has a chief — it lies in wú jiù 无咎 (‘no fault’). What is ‘lying in wú jiù’? It is what is meant by shàn bǔ guò 善補過 (‘good at supplementing one’s faults’).” Going against human sentiment is xiǎo guò 小過 (“small fault”), going against Heavenly Way is dà guò 大過 (“great fault”); the Yì’s function is to enable the reader to “supplement faults” and so attain the heaven-blessed wú dà guò 無大過 (Confucius’s Lúnyǔ 7.17 — “Give me a few more years; let me at fifty study the Yì; I may then have no great faults”). The reading is concentrated on situational fault-avoidance and remedy.
The Sìkù editors deliver a sharply critical judgment on Gěng’s doctrine, the more striking for the tiyao’s biographical-and-political context: that Gěng’s signature wú jiù hermeneutic — read as the maxim of moral statecraft — corresponds exactly to his own conduct in the 1126 crisis (fear of war, advocacy of peace, drifting accommodation), and that this is the case “where biased classical-learning extends harm to national affairs” (jīngshù zhī piān, huò yán guóshì zhě yě 經術之偏，禍延國事者也). The judgment is one of the strongest political condemnations of a commentator’s doctrine in the entire tiyao corpus. The editors then partially rescue the book by acknowledging that, beyond the signature thesis, Gěng’s situational-ethical commentary has substantial value as moral instruction, surpassing those who “lose themselves in lofty Daoist-sounding empty talk” — and recommend “taking what is good in it.”
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Zhōuyì xīn jiǎngyì in six juan was composed by 耿南仲 Gěng Nánzhòng of the Sòng. Nánzhòng, zì Xīdào, was a man of Kāifēng. During Jìngkāng he was Zīzhèng diàn dàxuéshì and concurrently in the Shūmì yuàn 樞密院 (“Bureau of Military Affairs”); deliberated with 吳幵 Wú Jiǎn on war-and-defense policy and strongly advocated ceding territory; after the southern crossing, demoted and ended his life in exile.
In old recensions of this book some carry the title Jìn Zhōuyì jiě yì; we suspect it is the version presented to Qīnzōng during his time at the eastern palace (i.e., as Crown Prince). At the head is Nánzhòng’s self-preface, which says: “The Yì’s Way has a chief — it lies in wú jiù and that alone. What is ‘lying in wú jiù’? It is what is meant by ‘good at supplementing one’s faults.‘” And further: “What goes against human sentiment is ‘small fault’; what goes against Heavenly Way is ‘great fault.‘”
This account of Nánzhòng’s draws upon and extends Master Confucius’s principle of “no great fault.” But Confucius in writing the Wényán zhuàn says: “know advance and retreat, existence and perishing, and not lose one’s rectitude”; and in the Xiàng zhuàn says: “cloud-thunder Tún; the gentleman accordingly engages in the warp-and-weft.” Action and stoppage are decided by Heavenly principle — in this way the divinatory reader is taught to hold to the Way; the difficult-and-hazardous is met by human-affair effort — in this way the divinatory reader is taught to exhaust the Way. When Confucius says “no great fault,” he is talking about right-and-wrong, not about disaster-and-fortune. If we make wú jiù alone primary, then how is the sage-and-worthy to differ from Huáng-Lǎo? If we say only “do not go against Heavenly Way,” then even Táng’s “Six Loyal-Lost Ministers” might call themselves “men who knew destiny.”
Nánzhòng’s fear of war and his promotion of peace — drifting and accommodating — was hit by his very own qiú wú jiù and wúfútiāndào doctrines. So this is the case where biased classical-learning extends harm to national affairs.
However: in broad outline, the work explains principle through the imagery and gives situational moral instruction passage-by-passage; this is often realistic and helpful, exceeding those who in lofty terms speak the void and obscure the original purpose of the Yì. We may take what is good in it, and that is enough.
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
耿南仲 Gěng Nánzhòng (fl. 1115–1126), of Kāifēng, is one of the most controversial single figures of the Jìngkāng 靖康 crisis (1125–1127) — the late-Northern-Sòng catastrophe in which Kāifēng was twice besieged and finally taken by the Jurchen Jin, with the captive emperors Huīzōng and Qīnzōng deported north and the Northern Sòng dynasty effectively ended. Gěng served Qīnzōng first as Tàizǐ zhānshì 太子詹事 (“Director of the Crown Prince’s Household”) in the years before the accession (Qīnzōng was Crown Prince 1115–1125), then continued in court office under Qīnzōng’s reign as Zīzhèng diàn dàxuéshì. With 吳幵 Wú Jiǎn, Gěng was the principal advocate of the cession-and-appeasement policy that ceded Tàiyuán 太原, Zhōngshān 中山, and Héjiān 河間 to the Jin in early 1126 — the “three commanderies” ceded under treaty — a policy generally viewed by Southern-Sòng historiography (Sòngshǐ and beyond) as the proximate cause of the Jin’s renewed advance. After the southern crossing in 1127 he was demoted and exiled. The Sòngshǐ (juan 352) gives him a sharply critical biography in the Jiān chén zhuàn (“Treacherous Officials”).
The Zhōuyì xīn jiǎngyì belongs to Gěng’s earlier tutorship-and-court phase, before the Jìngkāng crisis. The doctrinal core — that the Yì teaches the management of human conduct so as to attain wú jiù / wú dà guò — is, abstracted from its later political context, a respectable Northern-Sòng yìlǐ position, parallel to the moralist commentaries of 胡瑗 Hú Yuán KR1a0012 and others. The Sìkù editors’ tragic judgment — that Gěng’s own conduct in 1126 was the very kind of “drifting accommodation” that his own commentary’s wú jiù hermeneutic could be enlisted to authorize — is a striking and unusual form of tiyao criticism: not philological-textual but biographical-political, holding the Yì commentary against the commentator’s actual conduct in the Yì-canonized situation of the qiándāi 乾兌 / kūnzhèn 坤震 crisis-and-difficulty hexagrams.
The work itself is competently composed and was used at the Crown Prince’s tutoring sessions — that is, Qīnzōng heard these readings as a youth and may have absorbed Gěng’s wú jiù hermeneutic as a princely-conduct doctrine. The Sòng-Yuán reception is unusually thin: the work does not appear to have circulated widely in the Southern Sòng (晁公武 Cháo Gōngwǔ and 陳振孫 Chén Zhènsūn record but do not engage), perhaps because of Gěng’s posthumous disgrace.
The Sìkù editors’ final partial-rescue (“take what is good in it”) is consistent with their pluralist editorial line on Yì-section work; the principle — that a work’s doctrinal flaws and the author’s political failings can be acknowledged without requiring the book’s removal from the canon — is one of the strongest statements of the Sìkù’s yìlǐ-pluralist editorial ethic in the section.
Translations and research
No European-language translation. Specialist literature.
- Pèi Lúqīng 裴露慶 / Yáng Tāo 楊濤 individual articles in Zhōuyì yánjiū.
- For the historical context: Charles A. Peterson and others’ chapters on the Jìngkāng crisis in Cambridge History of China vol. 5.
- Richard L. Davis, Wind Against the Mountain: The Crisis of Politics and Culture in Thirteenth-Century China (Harvard, 1996), and Court and Family in Sung China, 960-1279: Bureaucratic Success and Kinship Fortunes for the Shih of Ming-chou (Duke, 1986) — for Sòng-historiographic context on Gěng-style cession-faction politics.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù tiyao’s use of biographical-political failure to indict a doctrinal hermeneutic — measuring Gěng’s wú jiù commentary against his actual Jìngkāng conduct — is a methodologically unusual form of tiyao criticism. The standard mode is philological or doctrinal-internal; political-biographical adjudication of doctrine is rare and presupposes a Confucian conviction that the Yì’s moral teaching is finally authorized by the moral conduct of those who claim to teach it. The editors’ point is sharper for being tucked under their normally-genteel rhetorical register.
The book’s title Zhōuyì xīn jiǎngyì — “A New Lecture-Meaning” — would have made sense as part of a Yì-tutoring corpus distinguishing itself from older imperial-tutor treatments; the parallel “Xīn jīng yì” 新經義 (“New Classical Meaning”) corpus of 王安石 Wáng Ānshí’s New Policies imperial-academy programme is the obvious model for the title-form, although Gěng’s doctrinal positions are not Wáng-Ānshí-affiliated.