Yuán běn Zhōuyì běnyì 原本周易本義
The Zhōuyì Běnyì in its Original Edition
by 朱熹 (Zhū Xī, zì Yuánhuì 元晦 / Zhònghuì 仲晦, hào Huìān 晦庵 / Huìwēng 晦翁 / Yúngǔ lǎorén 雲谷老人 / Cāngzhōu bìngsǒu 滄洲病叟 / Dùnwēng 遯翁, posthumous title Wén 文 (later Huī Guógōng 徽國公), 1130–1200)
About the work
The 1265 (Xiányán yǐchǒu) Jiǔjiāng 吳革 Wú Gé print of Zhū Xī’s Zhōuyì běnyì in its original twelve-juan recension — upper and lower canon as two juan, the Ten Wings as ten separate juan. The textually authoritative recension that was substantially altered in the early Míng’s Sì shū wǔ jīng dà quán of 1415 (where Zhū Xī’s juan-divisions were broken up and inserted into 程頤 Chéng Yí’s KR1a0016 Yìzhuàn arrangement, with embedded Tuàn yuē / Xiàng yuē / Wényán yuē markers added in Chéng’s manner). The Sìkù WYG, on the model of the Kāngxī-period Yù zuǎn Zhōuyì zhézhōng 御纂周易折中 (which adopted this original-recension ordering), restores the original text. 顧炎武 Gù Yánwǔ’s Rì zhī lù 日知錄 documents the sequence of corruptions in detail; the Sìkù tiyao relies on Gù’s account.
The work is the canonical Sòng-period synthesis of yìlǐ 義理 (“meaning-and-pattern”) and divinatory-method (zhàn 占) reading on the Yì — programmatically distinguished from Chéng Yí’s yìlǐ commentary by Zhū Xī’s restoration of the Yì as primarily a divinatory text. Zhū Xī’s preface declares that “the Yì’s root meaning is xiàng and zhàn (imagery and divination)” and that the Confucian Wings, while developing yìlǐ, do not displace the divinatory base. The two readings — Chéng’s yìlǐ and Zhū’s xiàngzhàn — are conjoined in the post-Yuán imperial-examination canon as the dual-base reading on the Yì; through the Yuán Sì shū wǔ jīng dà quán (1313) and Míng’s expanded Wǔ jīng dà quán (1415), this dual-base canonization governed Yì-reading orthodoxy for the next five centuries.
The composition window 1175–1188 reflects Zhū Xī’s mature Yì-work: notBefore the broad span of his early-1170s engagement with 程迥 Chéng Jiǒng KR1a0030 and 蔡元定 Cài Yuándìng on divinatory method; notAfter the conventional terminus of the substantively-complete Běnyì (the Yìxué qǐméng of 1186, KR1a0042, is its theoretical supplement; the Běnyì itself is settled by ca. 1188). Wú Gé’s 1265 print preserved the original juan-divisions long enough to survive into the Sìkù period.
The textual problem the Sìkù editors document at length:
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Format. The Sì shū wǔ jīng dà quán Yì-board uses 22 lines per page, 23 characters per line, with the Běnyì commentary in large characters — different from the other classics’ boards (18×17 with notes in small character). This format anomaly is a sign of the Yǒnglè dà quán editorial scrambling.
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Header insertion. In the original, “Tuàn shàng zhuàn below the meaning…” is preserved as a juan-prefatory note; the modern boards delete the “Tuàn shàng zhuàn” three characters and insert a “Tuàn yuē” marker into the body text in Chéng’s manner. Same pattern for Xiàng and Wényán.
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Chéng-citation markers. In passages where Zhū Xī’s commentary says “Chéng’s commentary covers this” (Chéngzhuàn bèi yǐ 程傳備矣), modern editions insert “the commentary says…” (zhuàn yuē 傳曰) and quote Chéng’s text — unsigned interpolations.
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Wáng Sù attribution. The original notes under “Tuàn shàng zhuàn” the four characters “cóng Wáng Sù běn 從王肅本” (“following Wáng Sù’s recension”); modern editions delete these.
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Záguà textual corruption. The original Záguà zhuàn under “Xián swift, Héng lasting” reads “gǎn swift, cháng lasting” (gǎn sù, cháng jiǔ 感速、常久) — modern editions reduce to “swift, lasting” (sù, jiǔ) — corruption in later transmission.
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Charts and shì yí. The original opens with 9 charts and ends with 5 Yì zàn 易贊 (“Praises of the Yì”) + 1 Shì yí 筮儀 (“Divinatory Ritual”); modern editions place the Shì yí at the front and replace the Yì zàn with various guà gē (“hexagram-songs”) — a complete reorganization.
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Conflation history. The conflation of Zhū–Chéng commentaries into a single book is not a Yǒnglè-era innovation; it begins with 董楷 Dǒng Kǎi’s late-Sòng Zhōuyì zhuàn yì fù lù KR1a0044. The Yǒnglè dà quán simply compounded the editorial damage.
The Wú Gé 1265 print, with juan-end “校正” mark by 劉賓 Liú Bīn of Fùyuán 敷原, is the textually clean archetype the Sìkù editors restore.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Yuán běn Zhōuyì běnyì in twelve juan was composed by Master Zhū of the Sòng. He divides upper-and-lower canon as two juan, and the Ten Wings as ten separate juan.
顧炎武 Gù Yánwǔ’s Rì zhī lù says: “At the start of the Hóngwǔ era, the imperial promulgation of the Five Classics to the Confucian schools of the empire — for the Yì, both Chéng’s and Zhū’s two writings were used, each as its own book. In the Yǒnglè era when the Dà quán was compiled, Zhū’s juan-divisions were cut and inserted under Chéng’s Yìzhuàn, and Zhū’s settled-old-text was correspondingly scrambled. As, for example, ‘The Tuàn is what King Wén attached as wording; “Zhuàn” is what Confucius used to explain the canon. Hereafter wherever it says “Zhuàn,” follow this’” — this is the meaning under the Tuàn shàng zhuàn heading; today the three characters ‘Tuàn shàng zhuàn’ have been deleted and the meaning attached under ‘Greatly is the Qiányuán’. Or ‘The Xiàng is the upper-and-lower two images of the hexagram and the six lines of the two images; what the Duke of Zhōu attached as wording’ — this is the meaning under the Xiàng shàng zhuàn heading; today the three characters ‘Xiàng shàng zhuàn’ have been deleted and the meaning attached under ‘Heaven moves with vigour’. ‘This chapter expands the meaning of the Tuàn zhuàn and exhausts the depths of the two hexagrams Qián and Kūn; the readings of the remaining hexagrams may then be inferred analogically’ — this is the meaning under the ‘Wényán’ heading; today the two characters ‘Wényán’ have been deleted and the meaning attached under ‘The yuán is the chief of the good.’ The Tuàn yuē, Xiàng yuē, Wényán yuē — none of these markers were in Master Zhū’s original; later restorers have added them in following Chéng’s Zhuàn. Later examination candidates, wearied of Chéng’s Zhuàn in its bulk, set it aside and read only the Běnyì; but the Dà quán board was the imperial-promulgated one and could not be retroactively altered. So they took the imperial-board zhuànyì recension and excised Chéng’s Zhuàn, putting Chéng’s ordering on Zhū’s text.”
[Gù Yánwǔ] further says: “The current Sì shū board is 18 lines per page, 17 characters per line, with notes in small characters; the Shū and the Lǐjì match. Only the Yì board has 22 lines per page, 23 characters per line, with the Běnyì commentary all in large characters — differing from each other classic’s. Wherever the Běnyì says ‘Chéng’s Zhuàn covers this,’ modern editions add a ‘Zhuàn yuē’ and quote Chéng’s words — these are all the doings of present-day men.” His distinguishing of the matter is the clearest possible. However: the cutting-up of the Běnyì and its attaching to Chéng’s Zhuàn — this began with 董楷 Dǒng Kǎi of the Sòng (already so), and is not new with the Yǒnglè era. (See the entry under KR1a0044 Zhōuyì zhuàn yì fù lù.)
The present text is the print cut by 吳革 Wú Gé of Jiǔjiāng in Xiányán yǐchǒu [1265]; the imperial inner storehouse used a Sòng cutting from which it was photographically copied. At the head is Gé’s preface; at the end of each juan, the title-line “劉賓 Liú Bīn of Fùyuán 敷原 collated.” The text-format-and-line-arrangement, and the absence of Chéng’s Zhuàn under the Xiàng zhuàn of the Lǚ 履 and Guài 夬 hexagrams — all match what Yánwǔ said.
At the head of the volume there are only nine charts; at the end of the volume are appended five Yì zàn 易贊 and one Shì yí 筮儀 — wholly different from the modern text, which raises the Shì yí to the front and adds extra material like the Guà gē and so on. Under the Tuàn shàng zhuàn heading, the original notes the four characters “cóng Wáng Sù běn 從王肅本” (“following Wáng Sù’s edition”); the modern text deletes them. Further, in the Záguà zhuàn under “Xián swift, Héng lasting”: the modern text has only the four characters “Xián swift, Héng lasting”; readers are constantly puzzled. Verifying against this text, it reads “gǎn swift, cháng lasting” (gǎn sù, cháng jiǔ 感速、常久); the later transmitted print has corrupted it. This is in truth the good edition. So our Holy Ancestor [Sàishèngzǔ Rénhuángdì = Kāngxī]‘s imperially-compiled Yù zuǎn Zhōuyì zhézhōng uses precisely this recension’s ordering, restoring the older text of the Former Sage and breaking through the petty seeing of the vulgar literati. Truly, this is what the Yì-reading household should reverence as the canonical instruction.
Respectfully revised and submitted, twelfth 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
朱熹 Zhū Xī (1130–1200), of Yóuxī 尤溪 in Nánjiàn 南劍 prefecture (modern Fújiàn), is the architect of the canonical Southern-Sòng synthesis of Dàoxué and the most consequential single thinker in late-imperial Confucianism. The Sòngshǐ Dàoxué zhuàn (juan 429) gives him the most extensive single biography in the zhuàn. Jìnshì of 1148; held a series of provincial-academy and court appointments, but spent most of his career in scholarly retirement at Mt. Wǔyí 武夷 and at the Cāngzhōu jīngshě 滄洲精舍 academy. His final years were marked by the Qìngyuán dǎng jìn 慶元黨禁 (“Qìngyuán Faction Ban”) of 1196–1202, in which his school was politically proscribed; he died under the ban in 1200. Posthumously canonized; in 1241 his line was restored to canonical centrality and his Sì shū commentaries became the imperial-examination orthodoxy from 1313 onward.
The Zhōuyì běnyì is one of the four canonical Zhū-Xī commentaries (with Sì shū jí zhù 四書集注, Shī jí zhuàn 詩集傳, and Yìxué qǐméng 易學啟蒙) that constitute the imperial-examination orthodoxy from the Yuán onward. Zhū Xī’s distinctive contribution to Yì-reading: against 程頤 Chéng Yí’s KR1a0016 purely-yìlǐ reading, Zhū restores the Yì to its character as a primarily divinatory text, while preserving the yìlǐ as a derived hermeneutic layer. The xiàng (imagery) and zhàn (divination) are the yì’s root meaning; the yìlǐ developed in the Wings is its expansion. This dual-base reading was substantively absorbed into the imperial canon as the formal companion to Chéng’s yìlǐ-only reading.
Methodologically, Zhū Xī draws from:
- 程頤 Chéng Yí KR1a0016 for the yìlǐ foundation.
- 程迥 Chéng Jiǒng KR1a0030 for the divinatory-method framework.
- 蔡元定 Cài Yuándìng for the Hétú–Luòshū numerology (Yìxué qǐméng’s 9 / 10 reversal of 劉牧 Liú Mù KR1a0011).
- 李侗 Lǐ Tóng (his teacher) for the Lóng 龍 / Mài 脈 metaphysical-cosmological framework.
The textual transmission history the Sìkù tiyao documents is one of the most consequential in the entire Yì commentarial corpus: 董楷 Dǒng Kǎi (late Sòng, KR1a0044) first conjoined Zhū’s Běnyì with Chéng’s Yìzhuàn into a single book; the early Míng Wǔ jīng dà quán (1415) institutionalized this conflation as the imperial-board form; subsequent commercial editions extracted Zhū’s Běnyì from this conflated form, but with Chéng’s juan-ordering preserved — corrupting Zhū’s original twelve-juan structure into a Chéng-mediated form. Gù Yánwǔ’s mid-seventeenth-century Rì zhī lù exposed the corruption sequence; the Kāngxī-era Yù zuǎn Zhōuyì zhézhōng (1715) restored the original ordering; the Sìkù WYG of 1781 ratifies the Kāngxī restoration with the Wú Gé 1265 print as base text.
The work’s reception is enormous. Beyond the imperial-examination orthodoxy:
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Yuán continuations. 胡一桂 Hú Yīguì’s Zhōuyì běnyì fùlù zuǎnshū 周易本義附錄纂疏 KR1a0050, 胡炳文 Hú Bǐngwén’s Zhōuyì běnyì tōngshì 周易本義通釋 KR1a0058, 熊良輔 Xióng Liángfǔ’s Zhōuyì běnyì jíchéng 周易本義集成 KR1a0059 — each engages the Běnyì as base text.
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Korean reception. The Joseon-period Yìjīng tradition (Yi T’oegye 退溪, Yi Yulgok 栗谷) read the Běnyì as the dual companion to Chéng’s Yìzhuàn; the Yi family of Korean Confucians wrote a substantial sub-commentary corpus.
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Tokugawa-Japanese reception. Itō Jinsai 伊藤仁齋 and Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠 each engaged the Běnyì substantively in their kogaku 古學 critique of Sòng–Míng lǐxué.
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Twentieth-century scholarship. Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Tang Junyi 唐君毅, and Joseph Adler in his English-language reconstructions all engage the Běnyì.
The Sìkù WYG twelve-juan recension is the textually-authoritative source.
Translations and research
Translations:
- Joseph A. Adler, The Original Meaning of the Yijing: Commentary on the Scripture of Change (Columbia Univ. Press, 2020) — the canonical complete English translation of the Běnyì in its restored twelve-juan form.
- Joseph A. Adler, Introduction to the Study of the Classic of Change (I-hsüeh ch’i-meng) by Chu Hsi (Global Scholarly Publications, 2002) — the companion translation of the Yìxué qǐméng.
- Selected passages translated in Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, 1963) and in Daniel K. Gardner, Learning to Be a Sage: Selections from the Conversations of Master Chu, Arranged Topically (Univ. of California, 1990).
Major scholarship:
- Joseph A. Adler, Reconstructing the Confucian Dao: Zhu Xi’s Appropriation of Zhou Dunyi (SUNY, 2014) — the principal English-language treatment of Zhū Xī’s Yì-and-cosmological synthesis.
- Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (Univ. of Hawaii, 1992) — definitive treatment of the political-intellectual context.
- Wing-tsit Chan, Chu Hsi: New Studies (Univ. of Hawaii, 1989) — collected essays.
- Kidder Smith, Peter K. Bol, Joseph A. Adler, Don J. Wyatt, Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching (Princeton, 1990) — the chapter “Chu Hsi on the Yijing” is foundational.
- Daniel K. Gardner, Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsueh: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon (Harvard, 1986) — methodological context.
- Lǐ Yuán 李源 / Lǐ Yuǎn 李遠 et al., modern Chinese punctuated editions on the WYG / Sìkù base.
- Bài Shòuyí 白壽彝 (ed.), Zhū Xī Yìxué yánjiū 朱熹易學研究 — modern Sinophone reference.
- Sū Yǒngmíng 蘇勇明, Zhū Xī “Yì běnyì” yánjiū 朱熹《易本義》研究 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, modern editions).
Other points of interest
The Sìkù tiyao’s extensive quotation of Gù Yánwǔ’s Rì zhī lù — itself one of the most influential mid-Qīng historical-philological texts — is one of the most striking pieces of philological-textual reasoning in the entire Sìkù corpus, and is often cited as a model of late-imperial kǎozhèng method. Gù’s reconstruction of the corruption sequence (Dǒng Kǎi → Yǒnglè dà quán → commercial extracted-Běnyì editions → received text) became the standard scholarly account of how Zhū Xī’s original was lost.
The Kāngxī-era Yù zuǎn Zhōuyì zhézhōng (1715) restoration of the original ordering is the imperial-political precedent the Sìkù editors cite in justifying their choice of the Wú Gé 1265 print as base; the work’s place in the Qīng Yì-reading orthodoxy is set by the Kāngxī judgment.
The Wú Gé 1265 print carries the late-Southern-Sòng witness most precisely, only sixty-five years after Zhū Xī’s death; the Sìkù tiyao’s claim that the inner-storehouse Sòng-cutting was used for photographic facsimile copying is one of the more important philological-procedural notes in the Yì section.