Yì biàntǐ yì 易變體義
The Meaning of the Yì in its Changed-Body Reading
by 都絜 Dū Jié (zì Shèngyǔ 聖與, of Dānyáng 丹陽)
About the work
A twelve-juan systematic application of the Zuǒzhuàn hexagram-of-hexagram (X 之 Y) divinatory hermeneutic to every line of the Zhōuyì. 都絜 Dū Jié — Southern-Sòng Lìbù lángzhōng 吏部郎中 (“Director of the Bureau of Personnel”) and prefect of Déqìngfǔ 德慶府 (modern Guǎngdōng) — built the work on his father 都郁 Dū Yù (zì Zǐwén 子文, formerly jiàoguān of Huìzhōu)‘s lifelong Yì-study. The biàntǐ 變體 (“changed-body”) doctrine: each yáo-statement is read as the situation in which that single line has changed, transforming the original hexagram into another. Hence Kūn 6-1 “treads on frost; hard ice arrives” is read as “Kūn into Fù” 坤之復 — the hexagram with the bottom yīn line changed to yáng, yielding Fù (number 24). Each of the 384 lines of the Yì is given a biàntǐ reading. Sister-method to 沈該 Shěn Gāi’s Yì xiǎo zhuàn 易小傳 (KR1a0023), with deeper systematic execution.
The Sìkù tiyao gives illustrative examples of Dū Jié’s method:
- Excellent. Kūn 6-1: biàntǐ = Fù (= 11th-month hexagram), which exactly corresponds to the Yuèlìng progression “first-month: water begins to ice” → “mid-month: ice grows stronger.” Dū’s reading: Kūn (10th-month hexagram) — “treads on frost” stage of icing; biàntǐ Fù (11th-month hexagram) — “hard ice arrives” stage. The seasonal-cosmological alignment is “wholly natural, not strained.”
- Excellent. Jiārén 9-9: biàntǐ = Jìjì. Záguà says “Jìjì is settled”; the Tuàn says “Setting the family right, the world settles.” Dū’s reading: the world’s root is in the nation, the nation’s in the family, the family’s in the self; reflective-self with sincerity is what the line “has faith, awesome, finally fortunate” expresses. The biàntǐ Jìjì exactly corresponds to “the world settles.”
- Strained. Jiārén 6-4 “fù jiā dà jí” (“the rich family, great fortune”): biàntǐ = Tóngrén. Dū reads the wealth-line as Lǎo-Zhuāng-tinged renunciation-through-shared-community, drawing in Lǎozǐ-and-Zhuāngzǐ phrasing. The Sìkù editors flag this as “pursues twisted matchings to fit the hexagram-change theory; the meaning is also not pure,” and as following the 王弼 Wáng Bì–韓康伯 Hán Kāngbó decadent tendency further into the post-Wáng “王宗傳 Wáng Zōngzhuàn / 楊簡 Yáng Jiǎn” (i.e., Lù-Wáng-school) line.
The Sìkù verdict: virtues do not cover flaws, and flaws do not cover virtues; in the absence of much surviving Sòng Yì-commentary, distinguishing these one passage at a time, the book is suitable to register as one school’s view.
The textual problem: the Sòngshǐ records sixteen juan; the Yùhǎi citing the Xù shūmù records the work as “from Qián into Gòu through Wèijì into Xiè — one essay per yáo, totalling 384 essays”; 馮椅 Féng Yǐ’s Yìxué fù lù says “the Dū-clan Yì begins with the principle, then takes up the imagery and meaning; each hexagram ends with a comprehensive discussion.” The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recension, which is what the Sìkù editors had, distributes each yáo-meaning under each yáo without comprehensive hexagram-end discussion — agreeing with the Yùhǎi witness; 王應麟 Wáng Yīnglín saw the same recension already incomplete. The present Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recension further lacks seven hexagrams (Yù, Suí, Dàxù, Dàzhuàng, Kuí, Jiǎn, Zhōngfú) and the last four yáo of Jìn. The Sìkù arrangement is twelve juan (the catalog meta has 12 卷; the original was 16). The book deliberately treats only yáo-meaning, not Tuàn or Xiàng; the canonical text is therefore also not reproduced in full — preserving Dū Jié’s compositional choice.
The composition window 1140–1159 reflects Dū Jié’s mature scholarly career (the catalog meta’s “1124” date appears to be an error, perhaps confused with another text in the corpus). 曾幾 Zēng Jǐ’s preface is dated Shàoxīng 29 (1159), which is the firm terminus.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Yì biàntǐ yì in twelve juan was composed by 都絜 Dū Jié of the Sòng. Jié, zì Shèngyǔ, was a man of Dānyáng. In the Shàoxīng era he was Lìbù lángzhōng and prefect of Déqìngfǔ. Jié’s father Dū Yù, zì Zǐwén, was once jiàoguān of Huìzhōu and devoted his life to Yì-learning; Jié, on the basis of what he had heard from his father, composed this book. Its great purport: that the guà-and-yáo statement-meaning has already been thoroughly discussed by earlier Confucians, so he focuses exclusively on the biàntǐ.
Examining the Zuǒzhuàn’s record of Zhōuyì divinations — what it calls “X-hexagram into Y-hexagram” — there are ten cases in all. They appear, on the surface, to draw on the line-change in the question and to read the situation accordingly, not to be entirely the Yì’s own root meaning. But Wáng Zǐ Bóliáo 王子伯廖, in discussing Zhèng’s gōngzǐ Mánmǎn 鄭公子曼滿, says that “in the Zhōuyì ‘Fēng into Lí’”; Yóu Jí 游吉, in discussing the Chǔ ruler, says that “the Zhōuyì has it: ‘Fù into Yí’ — the lost return: misfortune”; Xún Shǒu 荀首, in discussing the battle of Bì, says “the Zhōuyì has it: ‘Shī into Lín’ — the army goes forth by the rule; otherwise, misfortune”; Cài Mò, in discussing the dragon at Jiàng, says “the Zhōuyì has it: ‘Qián into Gòu’ — submerged dragon: do not act; ‘Tóngrén’ — seeing dragon in the field; ‘Dàyǒu’ — flying dragon in heaven; ‘Guài’ — the dragon-of-perish: regret; ‘Kūn’ — seeing the herd of dragons headless: fortune; ‘Kūn into Bō’ — dragons fight in the wilds”; and so on. None of these are divinatory, and yet all use the biàntǐ. So we know that anciently the Zhōuyì did have this single meaning. But the ancient books are scattered and lost, and the doctrine is not transmitted; Jié by yìlǐ probing has sought its outline.
Among them, those that come together with delightful exactness — like the Kūn 6-1 “treads on frost; hard ice arrives” being said to be “Kūn into Fù” — the Yuèlìng says: in the first month water begins to ice, in the second month ice grows stronger; at the start it is thin and not yet hard, when grown it is hard and difficult to break — so the yáo says “treads on frost” because Kūn is the tenth-month hexagram, and “hard ice arrives” because the biàntǐ is Fù, the eleventh-month hexagram. Or Jiārén upper-nine “having faith, awesome, finally fortunate,” said to be “Jiārén into Jìjì” — the Záguà says “Jìjì is settled”; the Tuàn says “set the family right, and the world settles.” The world’s root is in the nation, the nation’s in the family, the family’s in self; reflect-on-self with sincerity, who dares not listen? Father-son, husband-wife, elder-and-younger-brother — none not abiding their lot and following principle; the world is transformed; nothing to do, and it is settled. Hence the biàntǐ being Jìjì, and the wording “having faith, awesome” — that is the reflect-on-self. The like of these readings does not labor at adventitious matching but is naturally connected; the meaning set up is in each case correct and lofty.
There are also passages that veer to the strained. As at Jiārén 6-4 “the rich family, great fortune,” he says “this is Qián into Tóngrén. From the Way to viewing the self, both family and self are encumbrances on me — let alone wealth! That he has a family is merely ‘sharing with people’; he does not take family as encumbrance. The family’s wealth is also merely ‘sharing with people’; he does not take wealth as encumbrance. Reaching the height of the brilliantly-clear and walking in the central-ordinary, this is the law for the average man.” All such readings strain after twisted matchings to fit the hexagram-change theory; the meaning is also not pure. He further frequently draws on Lǎo-Zhuāng diction to interpret Wén-Wáng’s canonical text — and so the bequeathed defect of 王弼 Wáng Bì and 韓康伯 Hán Kāngbó’s tradition further transforms into the line of 王宗傳 Wáng Zōngzhuàn and 楊簡 Yáng Jiǎn.
But the surviving books from the Sòng to the present are few; this book — though virtues do not cover flaws — neither do flaws cover virtues. To distinguish them and to view them, in order to register one school’s biàntǐ reading, is also not without merit.
The Sòngshǐ records sixteen juan; the Yùhǎi quotes the Xù shūmù saying “from Qián into Gòu through Wèijì into Xiè, by intent expanding the yáo into one essay each — totalling 384 essays”; 馮椅 Féng Yǐ’s Yìxué fù lù says: “the Dū-clan Yì first proceeds by lǐ and then by the xiàng-and-yì; each hexagram has at the end a comprehensive discussion.” We have now examined the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recension: the yáo-meanings are all distributed under each yáo without anything by way of hexagram-end comprehensive discussion — agreeing with the Yùhǎi. What [Wáng] Yīnglín saw is the same recension as the one used in compiling the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn — not the complete version. Now the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn lacks the seven hexagrams Yù, Suí, Dàxù, Dàzhuàng, Kuí, Jiǎn, and Zhōngfú, and the last four yáo of Jìn. Respectfully gathered and arranged, edited into twelve juan. Furthermore, the book treats only the yáo-meaning and does not extend to the Tuàn and the upper-and-lower Xiàng; the canonical text is therefore not reproduced in full — preserving Jié’s original arrangement.
Respectfully revised and submitted, ninth 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
都絜 Dū Jié, zì Shèngyǔ, of Dānyáng 丹陽 (modern Jiāngsū), was a Southern-Sòng court-and-provincial official: Lìbù lángzhōng under Gāozōng’s Hángzhōu court in the Shàoxīng era, and prefect of Déqìngfǔ in modern Guǎngdōng. Father 都郁 Dū Yù was a Huìzhōu jiàoguān — i.e., a local academy teacher — and a lifelong Yì-student. Lifedates of either are not on record.
The Yì biàntǐ yì is the most systematic Sòng-period application of the Zuǒzhuàn’s “X 之 Y” hexagram-change formulation to the entire Yì. Where 沈該 Shěn Gāi’s Yì xiǎo zhuàn (KR1a0023) uses the Zuǒzhuàn divinatory exempla as illustrative reference points within a broader integrated commentary, Dū Jié makes the biàntǐ the exclusive hermeneutic axis: every line of the 384-line corpus receives one essay-length analysis on the biàntǐ logic. The book therefore omits Tuàn and Xiàng commentary entirely.
The Sòng-Yuán-Míng reception positions Dū Jié as a third pole alongside 程頤 Chéng Yí’s yìlǐ (where principle is primary) and 朱震 Zhū Zhèn’s xiàngshù (where imagery is primary); Dū’s “biàntǐ” pole takes the line-change as primary. The execution is uneven: Dū achieves brilliant results where the biàntǐ yields a substantive philosophical correlation (e.g., the Kūn 6-1 / Fù and Jiārén 9-9 / Jìjì readings the Sìkù editors quote at length); but where the biàntǐ relation is too weak to support an ethical-cosmological reading, Dū falls back on Lǎo-Zhuāng-tinged abstract reasoning, drifting toward the post-Wáng-Bì xuánxué tendency the Sìkù editors flag as the precursor of 王宗傳 Wáng Zōngzhuàn and 楊簡 Yáng Jiǎn’s twelfth-and-thirteenth-century xīnxué 心學 (Lù-Wáng-school) commentary tradition.
The textual problem (the Sòngshǐ’s 16 juan vs. the present 12, the loss of seven hexagrams, the absence of the hexagram-end “comprehensive discussion” Féng Yǐ saw) follows the standard pattern of a Sòng commentary recovered through Yǒnglè dàdiǎn fragmentation.
The 曾幾 Zēng Jǐ preface (Shàoxīng 29 = 1159) — preserved at the head of the present recension — is itself a substantial document of mid-Southern-Sòng Yì-thought, situating Dū’s project within the xiàng / shù / yìlǐ / bǔshì fourfold division of Yì-learning and praising Dū’s recovery of antiquity through new exposition.
Translations and research
No European-language translation. Specialist literature is sparse.
- Modern punctuated reissues on the WYG / Sìkù base.
- Liú Yùjiàn 劉玉建, Sòng dài Yìxué shǐ — chapter on biàntǐ tradition.
- Lín Zhōngjūn 林忠軍 articles in Zhōuyì yánjiū on the Sòng Zuǒzhuàn-divinatory line.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù tiyao’s prediction that the Dū Jié strained-Lǎo-Zhuāng tendency would “transform into the line of 王宗傳 Wáng Zōngzhuàn and 楊簡 Yáng Jiǎn” — i.e., the late-Southern-Sòng Lù-Wáng xīnxué line that read the Yì as inner-mind exposition — is a small but interesting bit of intellectual-historical genealogy. It situates the xīnxué reading of the Yì not just in the 陸九淵 Lù Jiǔyuān / Yáng Jiǎn line but also in a strand of the biàntǐ tradition.
The Zēng Jǐ preface’s typology — xiàngxué (image-study), shùxué (number-study), yìlǐ zhī xué (meaning-pattern study), and bǔshì zhī xué (divination study) as the four branches of Yì learning — is one of the cleaner Southern-Sòng articulations of the Yì hermeneutic field.