Yì yuán 易原
The Source of the Yì
by 程大昌 Chéng Dàchāng (zì Tàizhī 泰之, posthumous title Wénjiǎn 文簡, 1123–1195, of Xiūníng 休寧)
About the work
An eight-juan systematic-numerological treatise on the Yì, composed by 程大昌 Chéng Dàchāng — a leading Southern-Sòng court polymath, Lóngtú gé zhí xuéshì 龍圖閣直學士 (“Hànlin Reader-in-Waiting at the Dragon-Diagram Hall”) and acting Lìbù shàngshū 吏部尚書 (“Minister of Personnel”). Per the Sìkù tiyao: “He worked-out and pondered with effort for four years, and the work was completed.” The composition window 1170–1180 is conventional for this four-year span within Chéng’s mature scholarly career.
The work’s distinctive method is the systematic numerological-philosophical analysis of the Yì’s underlying mathematical structure. The opening axis is the Xìcí fifty-five-number scheme (the Hétú-Luòshū + Dàyǎn 大衍 number-of-fifty totalling), which Chéng treats as the yuán (origin / source) of the Yì. He proceeds to systematically analyze guàbiàn 卦變 (hexagram-change) and the diéshī 揲蓍 (milfoil-counting) divinatory method, with full diagrammatic apparatus and frequent independent judgments departing from the older Confucians. The Sìkù tiyao singles out the following Chéng readings (with their methodological rebuttals of standard pre-Sòng-and-Sòng systems):
- Against the 京房 Jīng Fáng / 焦延壽 Jiāo Yánshòu guàqì “line-corresponds-to-day” system (the famous yáozhírì 爻值日 method that distributes 384 lines over 365 days), which Chéng shows to start from Zhōngfú on the Tàichū calendar — incompatible with the Xìcí’s declaration that “the 策 (number-of-counters) of Qián-and-Kūn corresponds to the days of the year.”
- Against the FùGòu generates the hexagrams doctrine (originating with 邵雍 Shào Yōng) — Chéng’s Shuōguà citation argues that Qián and Kūn generate the six-children, so it is impossible that the six-line hexagrams come first and the three-line trigrams afterwards.
- Against 鄭玄 Zhèng Xuán’s “ten-stems-twelve-branches-twenty-eight-mansions” mapping onto the Dàyǎn fifty (a system originating in the Qián záodù), and against 馬融 Mǎ Róng’s adding the Pole-Star, 荀爽 Xún Shuǎng’s adding “use-9, use-6” — Chéng treats all these as ad-hoc forced expansions (“by-intent decisions in pasted matchings, with no fixed and unchanging principle”).
- Against 張行成 Zhāng Xíngchéng’s separately-established twenty-five-number scheme to derive the Dàyǎn — Chéng argues that establishing twenty-five outside of the Xìcí’s fifty-five is “what Confucius nowhere spoke.”
The Sìkù verdict: Chéng’s “cross-checked weighing” of the rival systems and his integrative approach are “everywhere grounded in the Dà zhuàn [the Xìcí], with side-paths and crossings everywhere — substantively bringing out the Yì’s meaning, not just demonstrating prose-virtuosity.” The work was lost between Sòng and Míng (程敏政 Chéng Mǐnzhèng’s Xīn’ān wénxiàn zhì 新安文獻志 preserved only three essays; 朱彝尊 Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo registered “already lost”), and recovered for the Sìkù from over a hundred essays scattered through the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. Edited into eight juan.
The Sìkù editors note that Chéng Dàchāng’s Yǔ gòng tú shuō 禹貢圖說 (“Charts and Talks on the Yǔ Gòng”) was earlier cut into the Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě 通志堂經解 in incomplete form, and likewise re-supplemented in the Sìkù from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn; the present Yì yuán recovery is parallel work for Chéng’s Yì-corpus.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Yì yuán in eight juan was composed by 程大昌 Chéng Dàchāng of the Sòng. Dàchāng, zì Tàizhī, a man of Xiūníng. Jìnshì of Shàoxīng 21 [1151]. Held office through to acting Lìbù shàngshū and Lóngtú gé zhíxuéshì; canonized Wénjiǎn. Dàchāng’s learning is profound and broad; on each canonical text he has discourses. Because the Yì meaning since the Hàn has been a tangle of disorder, he composed this book in order to thread it through. Hard thinking and effortful searching — four years and the work was complete. The Sòng yìwén zhì and the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo both register it.
陳振孫 Chén Zhènsūn says: “He first discusses the fifty-five number and brings the Túshū and Dàyǎn together with it as the yuán of the Yì; the guàbiàn and the dié method all have charts and discussions; everywhere he decides by his own judgment, going beyond the older Confucians.”
We have now examined what he discusses. The “line-corresponds-to-day” division is the Jīng-Jiāo guàqì method, beginning with Zhōngfú by the Tàichū calendar, not consistent with what the Master meant by “the Qián-Kūn-策 corresponding to the days of the year.” The Fù-Gòu generates the hexagrams doctrine begins with Master Shào, but the Shuōguà zhuàn clearly states “Qián-Kūn generates the six-children” — there cannot first be six-line hexagrams and then three-line ones. Zhèng Kāngchéng using the ten-stems, twelve-branches, and twenty-eight-mansions to correspond to the Dàyǎn fifty is rooted in the Qián záodù, with 馬融 Mǎ Róng’s added Pole-Star and 荀爽 Xún Shuǎng’s added “use-9, use-6”: no more than by-intent decisions in pasted matching, without unchanging principle. 張行成 Zhāng Xíngchéng separately establishes a twenty-five-number scheme to derive the Dàyǎn — but then, outside of the fifty-five number, there is also a separate twenty-five number — what Master Confucius nowhere spoke.
His cross-checked weighing — everywhere is able to take its grounding in the Dà zhuàn, with side-paths and crossings — substantively brings something out for the Yì meaning; not just for prose-virtuosity in argumentation.
The book has long had no transmitted recension. Only 程敏政 Chéng Mǐnzhèng’s Xīn’ān wénxiàn zhì records three essays; 朱彝尊 Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo therefore says “already lost.” We have now from material scattered in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovered over a hundred essays, still relatively complete; respectfully edited and arranged, divided into eight juan. Dàchāng’s Yǔ gòng tú shuō was once cut into the Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě in incomplete form; we have already from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn further consulted and supplemented. The present book is again gathered into edition. A book the various Confucians of several centuries had not seen now once again receives signal-honor and is transmitted to the world: thereby the painstaking labor of Dàchāng’s composition can, by this means, not be effaced.
Respectfully revised and submitted, tenth month of the forty-ninth year of Qiánlóng [1784].
General Compilers: 紀昀 Jǐ Yún, 陸錫熊 Lù Xīxióng, 孫士毅 Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: 陸費墀 Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
程大昌 Chéng Dàchāng (1123–1195), of Xiūníng 休寧 in Huīzhōu 徽州 (modern Ānhuī), is a leading Southern-Sòng polymath and one of the most consequential historiographers and geographers of the post-Yán-Yáng era. Jìnshì of 1151 (Shàoxīng 21). Held a series of court appointments under Xiàozōng, Guāngzōng, and the early Níngzōng — culminating in Lóngtú gé zhíxuéshì 龍圖閣直學士 and acting Lìbù shàngshū 吏部尚書. Posthumously canonized Wénjiǎn 文簡. The Sòngshǐ (juan 433) gives him a substantial biography in the Rúlín section.
His scholarly output is unusually broad and substantive. Surviving works include:
- Yǔ gòng lùn 禹貢論 + Yǔ gòng tú 禹貢圖 — the foundational Sòng-period historical-geographic treatise on the Yǔ gòng chapter of the Shàngshū; the most consequential Sòng work on the Yǔ gòng and a major source for early-Chinese historical geography.
- Yì yuán 易原 (KR1a0029) — the present treatise on the Yì’s numerological-philosophical structure.
- Yōng lù 雍錄 — historical-geographic monograph on the western capital region (Chángān, Wèi-water valley).
- Yǎn fán lù 演繁露 — broad-ranging philological-historical encyclopedic bǐjì in 16 juan; one of the major Sòng bǐjì corpora.
- Běi biān bèi duì 北邊備對 — strategic-political memorial on the northern frontier.
- Kǎo gǔ biān 考古編 — antiquarian-philological essays.
The Yì yuán belongs to a Southern-Sòng intellectual tendency — represented also by 陸佃 Lú Diàn, 楊萬里 Yáng Wànlǐ (in Chéngzhāi Yìzhuàn 誠齋易傳 (KR1a0033)), and the early 朱熹 Zhū Xī tradition — to focus on the underlying systematic-conceptual structure of the Yì rather than on hexagram-by-hexagram exposition. Chéng Dàchāng’s treatise is methodologically distinctive in two respects: (1) it ties the Yì explicitly back to its yuán — the Xìcí’s fifty-five-number scheme, treated as the irreducible structural core; (2) it is comprehensively rebuttal-and-corrective: each of Chéng’s positive doctrines is articulated through a careful rebuttal of a rival pre-Sòng or Sòng-period system (Jīng Fáng’s guàqì, Shào Yōng’s Fù-Gòu generation, Zhèng Xuán’s twenty-eight-mansions correspondence, Zhāng Xíngchéng’s twenty-five-number scheme).
The work’s reception in the Sòng-Yuán mainstream was significant — 王應麟 Wáng Yīnglín, 胡一桂 Hú Yīguì, 董真卿 Dǒng Zhēnqīng all engage with it — but it was largely lost between Sòng and Míng, surviving in the Míng only through three essays in Chéng Mǐnzhèng’s Xīn’ān wénxiàn zhì. The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery (over a hundred essays gathered for the eight-juan Sìkù WYG recension) is one of the more substantial recovered works in the Sòng Yì-section.
The catalog meta gives Chéng’s lifedates as 1123–1195; CBDB confirms.
Translations and research
No European-language translation. Specialist literature.
- For Chéng Dàchāng’s broader corpus: David B. Honey, Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology (American Oriental Society, 2001); Ronald C. Egan’s articles on Sòng bǐjì; Charles Hartman’s articles on Sòng historical thought.
- Modern punctuated reissues of Yì yuán on the WYG / Sìkù base.
- Liú Yùjiàn 劉玉建 / Zhāng Tāo 張濤, articles on Chéng Dàchāng’s Yì-numerology in Zhōuyì yánjiū.
- Zhōnghuá shūjú modern critical editions of Yǔ gòng lùn-tú, Yǎn fán lù, Yōng lù — the broader Chéng Dàchāng corpus.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ admiration for Chéng’s work is unusually warm: “A book the various Confucians of several centuries had not seen now once again receives signal-honor and is transmitted to the world: thereby the painstaking labor of Dàchāng’s composition can, by this means, not be effaced.” The four-year compositional effort to which Chéng himself attested, and the work’s near-total disappearance between Sòng and Míng before the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery, supply the editors with a small dramatic narrative of philological resurrection.
Chéng Dàchāng’s positions — especially the rebuttal of Shào Yōng’s Fù-Gòu generation doctrine on the strength of the Shuōguà — represent the kind of careful canonical-textual reasoning that distinguished him from the more programmatic xiàngshù commentators of the Southern Sòng. His relationship to the 劉牧 Liú Mù Yìshù gōuyǐn tú 易數鉤隱圖 (KR1a0011) / 朱震 Zhū Zhèn Hànshàng Yìzhuàn (KR1a0024) xiàngshù line is one of substantive engagement-and-correction rather than rejection.