Yì xiǎo zhuàn 易小傳
The Lesser Commentary on the Yì
by 沈該 Shěn Gāi (zì Shǒuyuē 守約 [or Yuányuē 元約], d. 1166, of Wúxīng 吳興)
About the work
A six-juan Yì commentary by 沈該 Shěn Gāi — Southern-Sòng Zuǒ púyè 左僕射 (“Vice Director of the Left of the Department of State Affairs”) and Xiū guóshǐ 修國史 (“Compiler of the State History”); hence widely known in Sòng-period reception as Shěn Chéngxiàng Yì zhuàn 沈丞相易傳 (“Chancellor Shěn’s Yì Commentary”). The work was submitted to the court memorial-style; Gāozōng issued an imperial commendation (xiáng yù 降勅褒諭) particularly praising the lùn 論 (“discussion”) essays appended after each hexagram. The composition window 1140–1160 covers Shěn’s ascendancy under the Shàoxīng era; precise dating within that span is not currently established.
Doctrinally, the work has a single distinctive feature: the systematic recovery of the pre-Confucian Zuǒzhuàn divinatory tradition for canonical Yì-reading. Shěn’s method:
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The zhèngtǐ / biàntǐ division. Zhèngtǐ 正體 (“proper body” — the unchanged hexagram and yáo) develops the meaning of the imagery and the yáo-statement; biàntǐ 變體 (“changed body” — the hexagram-change hexagram resulting from one or more line-changes) supplies the meaning of motion-and-transformation. The aim is to integrate the canonical hermeneutic principles “watching the imagery, toying with the word; watching the change, toying with the divination.”
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The Zuǒzhuàn divinatory canon. For divinatory exempla, Shěn takes wholly the Zuǒzhuàn (and Guóyǔ) cases: Cài Mò 蔡墨’s reading of “Qián into Gòu” as “the submerged dragon: do not act” with the corresponding “Tóngrén line is ‘the seeing-dragon-in-the-field’”; the Zhōu Historian’s reading of “Guān into Pǐ” for the birth of Chén Jìngzhòng 敬仲; Bǔ Yǎn 卜偃’s reading of “Dàyǒu into Kuí” for the Qín-led restoration of the Zhōu king; and so on. The systematic application of these examples as the canonical model of Yì-divination is Shěn’s distinctive contribution — and the basis for his post-Sòng reception’s mixed verdict.
The Sìkù tiyao records that 林至 Lín Zhì in his Yì pí zhuàn 易禆傳 dismissed Shěn’s reading as “constrained” (jū luán 拘攣). The Sìkù editors defend Shěn against Lín: in the post-southern-crossing intellectual milieu, Yì-talk was monopolized by either 程頤 Chéng Yí’s Yīchuān Yìzhuàn 伊川易傳 (KR1a0016) lǐ or by 邵雍 Shào Yōng’s shù (and the 劉牧 Liú Mù line); Shěn alone “investigated the bequeathed canon and discussed the Three-Dynasties divinatory method.” That this was out of fashion does not make it wrong: “the Zuǒzhuàn is not far from antiquity, and what it records of bǔshì divination mostly precedes Confucius; Confucius praising the Yì never once denounced [those readings] as wrong — perhaps the Tàibǔ-administered Zhōu-gōng-bequeathed method was after all here and not there.”
The textual problem the editors note: 陳振孫 Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí records that Shěn also composed a Xìcí bǔzhù 繫辭補注 of over ten items, appended at the end of the work. The present recension has none — long lost.
The CBDB death-year is 1166. The catalog meta gives no dates; the Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì and other Sòng catalogues record the work without authorial dates. Shěn’s biography is in Sòngshǐ (juan 387).
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Yì xiǎo zhuàn in six juan was composed by 沈該 Shěn Gāi of the Sòng. Gāi, zì Shǒuyuē — also written Yuányuē 元約; which is correct is unclear. A man of Wúxīng. Took the jìnshì on the “Jiànwáng list” [the list recommended by the Jiànwáng Zhào Shèn = future Xiàozōng]. In the Shàoxīng era he rose in office to Zuǒ púyè concurrently Xiū guóshǐ; for this reason the Sòng-period record refers to this book as Shěn Chéngxiàng Yì zhuàn. He once submitted it as a memorial to the court; Gāozōng issued an imperial commendation, particularly praising the discussion-essays appended after each hexagram.
The book uses the zhèngtǐ to elucidate the meaning of the yáo-and-imagery, and uses the biàntǐ to deliberate the meaning of motion-and-change, in order to align with the principles of “watching the imagery and toying with the word” and “watching the change and toying with the divination.” For divination, he uses entirely the divinatory examples carried in the Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn — for instance Cài Mò saying “‘Qián into Gòu’: ‘the submerged dragon: do not act’; the corresponding Tóng rén says ‘the seeing-dragon-in-the-field.‘” 林至 Lín Zhì in his Yì pí zhuàn found Shěn’s reading constrained.
Surely after the southern crossing, those who spoke the Yì either championed Master Chéng’s lǐ or championed Master Shào’s shù. Shěn alone investigated the bequeathed canon and discussed the bǔshì method handed down from the Three Dynasties — going against the time and differing from the prevailing fashion, his being dismissed by entrenched parties is to be expected. But the Zuǒzhuàn is not far from antiquity, and the divinations it records mostly fall before Confucius. Confucius’s praise of the Yì never one place rejected them as wrong — perhaps the old method that the Tàibǔ office held, transmitted from the Duke of Zhōu, was after all here [in the Zuǒzhuàn tradition] rather than there [in the later Chéng-and-Shào readings].
陳振孫 Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí says that Shěn also had a Xìcí bǔzhù in over ten items, appended at the end of the work. The present recension has none — clearly already long lost.
Respectfully revised and submitted, eighth month of the forty-second year of Qiánlóng [1777].
General Compilers: 紀昀 Jǐ Yún, 陸錫熊 Lù Xīxióng, 孫士毅 Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: 陸費墀 Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
沈該 Shěn Gāi (d. 1166), of Wúxīng 吳興 in Húzhōu 湖州 (modern Zhèjiāng), is one of the major mid-Southern-Sòng court officials, Zuǒ púyè under Gāozōng in the late Shàoxīng era. The Sòngshǐ (juan 387) gives him a biography. Jìnshì on the “Jiànwáng list” — the candidates recommended by Crown Prince Zhào Shèn 趙昚 (the future Xiàozōng) before his accession.
The Yì xiǎo zhuàn is the foundational document of the Sòng-period antiquarian zhèngbiàn tǐ 正變體 hermeneutic on the Yì. Shěn’s project is the systematic application of the Zuǒzhuàn’s divinatory citations as the canonical model of Yì-reading, integrated with the post-Wáng-Bì yìlǐ glossing of the canonical text. The position is unusual in the Southern-Sòng landscape and the Sìkù tiyao’s spirited defence of Shěn against Lín Zhì registers the editors’ awareness that he is an interesting outlier — not Chéng-line, not Shào-line, but a third thing.
The Zuǒzhuàn’s twenty-some divinatory passages — Bì Wàn’s 畢萬 divination at the founding of Jìn (Míngōng 1, Tún into Bǐ); Mùjiāng 穆姜’s pre-divination at the birth of Lord Mù (Míngyí into Qiān); Cuī Wǔzǐ 崔武子’s divination on his marriage (Kǎn into Xùn); Bǔ Túfǔ 卜徒父’s divination at the QínJìn battle of Hányuán 韓原 (Gǔ); Lord Wén of Jìn’s pre-restoration divination at Qín (Tài’s zhēnTún huǐYù); the Battle of Bì 邲 divinations (Xun Shǒu and others) — are systematically catalogued in Shěn’s preface and supply the divinatory frame for his hexagram-by-hexagram readings. The collection is one of the most thorough Sòng-period assemblages of the Zuǒzhuàn divinatory corpus.
The lost Xìcí bǔzhù — the “supplementary commentary on the Xìcí” of more than ten items, present in Chén Zhènsūn’s witness but absent from the present recension — would have completed the work as an integrated Yì commentary; its loss is one of the standard Sòng-Yuán-transition transmission losses for a Sì míngchén-period commentary.
Shěn’s reading was largely overtaken by the 朱熹 Zhū Xī Zhōuyì běnyì 周易本義 (KR1a0031) tradition (which independently restored divinatory reading of the Yì via a different route — focusing on the Yì’s own statements rather than on the Zuǒzhuàn corpus). But Shěn’s antiquarian mode survived in the xiàngshù lineage and resurfaced in late-Míng / early-Qīng kǎozhèng Yì-scholarship.
Translations and research
No European-language translation. Specialist literature.
- Kidder Smith, “Sung Literati Thought and the Shih chi,” JAOS 109 (1989) — context on Sòng antiquarian hermeneutics.
- Kidder Smith, Peter K. Bol, Joseph A. Adler, Don J. Wyatt, Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching (Princeton, 1990) — the standard English-language reference for Sòng Yì-thought; the chapters on Shào Yōng and Cheng Yi situate the divinatory line that Shěn represents.
- Modern punctuated reissues on the WYG / Sìkù base.
- Liú Yùjiàn 劉玉建, Sòng dài Yìxué shǐ, chapter on Zuǒzhuàn-divinatory revival.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù tiyao’s explicit defence of Shěn Gāi against Lín Zhì’s “constrained” critique — pointing out that Zuǒzhuàn divinatory citations are pre-Confucian and uncriticized by Confucius — is one of the more interesting moments in the tiyao corpus of antiquity-honoring philological reasoning being mobilized against post-Sòng yìlǐ sectarianism. The argument is similar in spirit to the Sìkù tiyao’s parallel defence of 蘇軾 Sū Shì’s Dōngpō Yìzhuàn (KR1a0015) against Zhū Xī’s Záxué biàn attack: in both cases, the editors are willing to push back against received Zhū-Xī-line orthodoxy where philological-historical reasoning supports it.
The lost Xìcí bǔzhù would, if recovered, fill an important gap in the Southern-Sòng Xìcí commentary tradition between 胡瑗 Hú Yuán’s Zhōuyì kǒuyì 周易口義 (KR1a0012) (which had no Xìcí commentary) and 朱震 Zhū Zhèn’s Hànshàng Yìzhuàn 漢上易傳 (KR1a0024) (which has a substantial one).