Bié běn Zhōuyì běnyì 別本周易本義
The Zhōuyì Běnyì in its Alternate Edition
original commentary by 朱熹 Zhū Xī (1130–1200); edited / re-divided by 成矩 Chéng Jǔ (Míng)
About the work
The post-Yǒnglè condensed four-juan recension of Zhū Xī’s Zhōuyì běnyì, registered as a parallel companion to the original twelve-juan recension KR1a0031. Where KR1a0031 preserves Zhū Xī’s authorial juan-arrangement (upper-and-lower canon as 2 juan + Ten Wings as 10 juan = 12 juan), the present Bié běn follows the post-Yǒnglè dà quán-mediated structure that conjoined Zhū’s commentary with 程頤 Chéng Yí’s KR1a0016 hexagram-and-line ordering, then extracted Zhū’s Běnyì alone — but with Chéng’s juan-divisions retained, scrambling Zhū’s yuán běn into a 4-juan form. The Míng compiler-and-editor 成矩 Chéng Jǔ stabilized this rearranged form for circulation.
The Sìkù tiyao on this Bié běn uses verbatim the same tiyao text as the Yuán běn KR1a0031 (with a small textual slip stating “twelve juan” rather than four — the editors’ copy-paste from the parallel registration); the entire scholarly substance of the entry is therefore the same. The Sìkù registration of the two recensions side by side is the editors’ programmatic statement: the Yuán běn KR1a0031 is the textually authoritative form (the Wú Gé 1265 print with its preserved authorial structure), but the Bié běn (the Yǒnglè-mediated 4-juan form, here in Chéng Jǔ’s redaction) is the form actually current in late-Míng and Qīng pedagogy. Both must be in the imperial library: the textually-correct one for scholars, the historically-current one for the examination tradition.
For full philological-and-doctrinal exposition, see KR1a0031 Yuán běn Zhōuyì běnyì. For the textual-corruption history that produced this Bié běn, see 顧炎武 Gù Yánwǔ’s Rì zhī lù analysis, summarized in the tiyao on KR1a0031.
The composition span 1175–1450 covers the entire period from the original Běnyì’s composition to Chéng Jǔ’s mid-Míng editorial fixing of the Bié běn form. The doctrinal core is Zhū Xī’s 1175–1188; the redactional layer is Yǒnglè-and-after.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Zhōuyì běnyì in twelve [sic: four — the editors’ textual slip from the parallel KR1a0031 registration] 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.
[The tiyao text continues identically with that of KR1a0031. For the full text, see that entry. The substantive arguments — Gù Yánwǔ on the corruption sequence (Dǒng Kǎi → Yǒnglè dà quán → commercial extracted-Běnyì editions → received text); the format-and-marker corruptions; the Wáng-Sù-attribution and Záguà-textual-corruption issues; the imperial-edition Kāngxī precedent — apply to both registrations.]
Respectfully revised and submitted, eleventh 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
The Bié běn Zhōuyì běnyì is the formally-distinct Sìkù registration of Zhū Xī’s Běnyì in its post-Yǒnglè condensed-and-rearranged four-juan form, edited under the Míng editor 成矩 Chéng Jǔ. The doctrinal substance is Zhū Xī’s; the redactional history (the 董楷 Dǒng Kǎi → Yǒnglè dà quán → commercial conflation → Chéng Jǔ’s 4-juan extraction) is documented in detail in the tiyao on KR1a0031.
The Sìkù editors’ decision to register two parallel forms of the Běnyì (the Yuán běn and the Bié běn) reflects their dual loyalty: textual-philological correctness (which favors the Yuán běn) and historical-pedagogical fact (which acknowledges that the Bié běn is the form actually used in Yuán–Míng–Qīng Yì pedagogy). The pattern is unique within the Yì-section: no other commentary receives this dual-registration treatment.
成矩 Chéng Jǔ is otherwise undocumented (CBDB has only the bare entry). His role in fixing the four-juan recension is significant — he is the principal Míng-period editor who stabilized the post-Yǒnglè form — but his biographical context is not recoverable from current sources.
The textual problem the Sìkù editors document at length on KR1a0031 applies especially to the Bié běn: it is the Bié běn that exhibits the corruptions Gù Yánwǔ catalogued (the lost juan-headers, the inserted Tuàn yuē / Xiàng yuē / Wényán yuē markers, the deleted “cóng Wáng Sù běn” attribution, the Záguà gǎn sù / cháng jiǔ → sù / jiǔ abbreviation, the dropped Chéng-citation markers replaced by inserted Chéng-text). Reading the Bié běn against the Yuán běn is the textual-philological exercise the Sìkù editors implicitly recommend.
Editorial cross-reference
For the complete philological-doctrinal-historical exposition of the Běnyì, see KR1a0031 Yuán běn Zhōuyì běnyì. The present registration is the parallel companion-volume.
Translations and research
See KR1a0031 for full bibliography. The translation of choice for the Běnyì is Joseph A. Adler’s The Original Meaning of the Yijing (Columbia, 2020), which translates the restored twelve-juan original; for the four-juan Bié běn form, the older late-Qīng commentaries (李光地 Lǐ Guāngdì’s Yù zuǎn Zhōuyì zhézhōng of 1715 and earlier Sì shū wǔ jīng dà quán-derived editions) preserve the textus.
Other points of interest
The duplication is itself a small monument of the Sìkù editors’ philological-historical pluralism: rather than choose between the textually-correct and the historically-current recension, they register both, and let the reader compare. The parallel implicitly enacts the kind of kǎozhèng method the Sìkù WYG was designed to support.
The Sìkù tiyao’s textual slip — saying “twelve juan” in the Bié běn registration when the actual book is in four — is a small reminder that the Sìkù tíyào itself is not free from copyist errors and that the editors sometimes copy-pasted parallel registrations without full review.
Links
- See KR1a0031 Yuán běn Zhōuyì běnyì for the canonical reference list.
- Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào