Zhōuyì yì hǎi cuō yào 周易義海撮要
Essentials Drawn from the Sea of Meanings of the Zhōuyì
by 李衡 Lǐ Héng (zì Yànpíng 彦平, 1100–1178, of Jiāngdū 江都) — redacting and condensing the earlier Zhōuyì yì hǎi 周易義海 of 房審權 Fáng Shěnquán (fl. Xīníng 熙寧 era, 1068–1077, of Sìchuān).
About the work
A twelve-juan redaction of an earlier collation. In the Xīníng era (1068–1077) the Sìchuān scholar 房審權 Fáng Shěnquán, dissatisfied with the way contemporary Yì expositors had splintered into rival lines — some “miring in yīnyáng,” some “fixated on xiàngshù,” some “extending the doctrine onto hùtǐ (interlocking-trigram) bodies,” some “losing themselves in the void” — assembled a hundred-juan compilation under the title Zhōuyì yì hǎi 周易義海 (“Sea of Meanings of the Zhōuyì”). Fáng’s principle was selective: out of nominally a thousand or more transmitted Yì-traditions running from 鄭玄 Zhèng Xuán down to 王安石 Wáng Ānshí he chose roughly one hundred whose readings “manifestly explain human affairs and assist the Way,” capping the assembly with 孔穎達 Kǒng Yǐngdá’s Zhèngyì 正義 as preface, and appending evaluative judgments at the close of each section where the gathered traditions disagreed.
李衡 Lǐ Héng acquired Fáng’s compilation, found it still encumbered by repetitions and verbal redundancy, and trimmed it into twelve juan under the title cuō yào — “drawing-out the essentials.” He simultaneously remedied an omission in Fáng’s selection: the readings of 程頤 Chéng Yí (KR1a0016), 蘇軾 Sū Shì (KR1a0019), and 朱震 Zhū Zhèn (KR1a0024) — the three Yì-commentaries which had not been collected in Fáng’s Yì hǎi (the first because Chéng’s Yì zhuàn postdated Fáng; the second and third for selection-criterion reasons that the tiyao leaves uncommented) — Lǐ Héng inserted these as continuations. Juan 12 contains his own appended zá lùn 雜論 (“miscellaneous discussions”). Per the original Sòng colophon by 周汝能 Zhōu Rǔnéng and 樓鍔 Lóu È (Wùzhōu jiàoshòu 教授), “the [parent] is reckoned by hundreds of juan; here it is one in eleven [i.e. compressed eleven-fold]” — referring to the part Lǐ Héng directly trimmed from Fáng’s text, exclusive of the new continuations.
The Sòng Shūlù jiětí 書錄解題 (陳振孫 Chén Zhènsūn) cites the work as “ten juan,” but the Sìkù editors judge this a transmission error against the now-extant twelve. The book was completed in Shàoxīng 30 (1160) — the original preface is dated Shàoxīng gēngchén eleventh month — and first cut to woodblocks in Qiándào 6 (1170) when Lǐ Héng, then serving as yùshǐ 御史 (Censor), held a brief governorship of Wùzhōu 婺州 (modern Jīnhuá, Zhèjiāng).
Lǐ Héng’s redaction, by the Sìkù editors’ explicit judgment, is the second of only two surviving Yì-collations spanning the post-Hàn tradition: “From the Táng forward, only 李鼎祚 Lǐ Dǐngzuò’s Zhōuyì jí jiě (KR1a0008) gathers the readings of thirty-five Hàn-and-after Yì-masters with reasonable completeness; what continues this is Shěnquán’s Yì hǎi, and only that.” Fáng’s parent compilation — over a hundred juan — was apparently scattered shortly after Lǐ Héng’s redaction was issued: the Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì records only Lǐ Héng’s Cuō yào and not Fáng’s Yì hǎi; Chén Zhènsūn lists only “a fragmentary four-juan remnant.” The Sìkù editors thus credit Lǐ Héng with having “gathered the essential flower so that the ancient book is not entirely lost to posterity.”
The composition window 1160–1170 brackets the period from Lǐ Héng’s completion of the manuscript (Shàoxīng 30, eleventh month) through its first printing in Qiándào 6.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Zhōuyì yì hǎi cuō yào in twelve juan was composed by 李衡 Lǐ Héng of the Sòng. Héng, zì Yànpíng, a man of Jiāngdū. In the Qiándào era he held office as Mìgé xiūzhuàn 秘閣修撰 (Compiler of the Secret Pavilion); shortly thereafter he was appointed Censor (yùshǐ 御史), and was changed to Qǐjū láng 起居郎 (Diarist of the Imperial Audience). His career-record is given in his biography in the Sòngshǐ.
Earlier, in the Xīníng era, the Sìchuān scholar 房審權 Fáng Shěnquán, troubled by the way the various Yì-expositors had — some sunk into yīnyáng, some fixated on xiàngshù — set aside the miscellaneous learning and divergent doctrines, plucked out only those that explained human affairs, gathered a hundred masters from above [in time] beginning with Zhèng Yuán [鄭玄 Zhèng Xuán; Yuán 元 here is the Sòng tabu-form for Xuán 玄] and below ending with 王安石 Wáng Ānshí, edited them into a single compendium, capped it with 孔穎達 Kǒng Yǐngdá’s Zhèngyì as preface, and where the various masters disagreed or seemed dubiously close to one another, added an evaluative judgment at the close of the section. He named [the work] Zhōuyì yì hǎi in altogether one hundred juan.
Héng, finding [Fáng’s text] repetitious in meaning and redundant in wording, trimmed and reordered it to make this book; hence the title cuō yào (“drawing-out the essentials”). The doctrines of 程頤 Chéng Yí, 蘇軾 Sū Shì, and 朱震 Zhū Zhèn — three masters whom the original collection had not collected — Héng continued in. The miscellaneous discussions in the twelfth juan are also Héng’s appended supplement. So the colophon by the Wùzhōu instructor 周汝能 Zhōu Rǔnéng and 樓鍔 Lóu È says: “Counted by juan, [the parent] is in the hundreds; here it is in eleven” — referring specifically to the trimmed Fáng text.
The Shūlù jiětí gives ten juan — also a copyist’s slip. This book was completed in Shàoxīng 30 [1160], and reaching Qiándào 6 [1170], when Héng as Censor held Wùzhōu, it was first cut to wood. From the Táng forward, only 李鼎祚 Lǐ Dǐngzuò’s Zhōuyì jí jiě gathers the readings of thirty-five [post-]Hàn masters with anything approaching completeness; what continues it is [Fáng] Shěnquán’s Yì hǎi, and only that. Yet on examination the Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì records only Héng’s book and not Shěnquán’s; 陳振孫 Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí also records only a fragmentary four-juan version — was the volume so heavy that it was already scattered at the time, or was it that, [Lǐ] Héng’s [the Tiyao writes 衝書, evidently a slip for 衡書 Héng’s book] book having appeared, Shěnquán’s was thereupon dropped? In any case: gathering the essential flower, so that the ancient book is not lost to later ages — Héng too may be called to have rendered service.
Respectfully revised and submitted, seventh month of the forty-third year of Qiánlóng [1778].
General Compilers: 紀昀 Jǐ Yún, 陸錫熊 Lù Xīxióng, 孫士毅 Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: 陸費墀 Lù Fèichí.
(The tiyao writes 鄭元 for 鄭玄, the standard Sòng-and-after taboo-substitution of yuán 元 for the imperial-personal-name xuán 玄 — preserved here as in the source. The tiyao also writes 衝書 once, evidently a copyist’s slip for 衡書, “Héng’s book”; preserved as in the source.)
Abstract
李衡 Lǐ Héng (1100–1178), zì Yànpíng 彦平, was a Southern-Sòng official-scholar of Jiāngdū 江都 (modern Yángzhōu) — later moving to Kūnshān 崑山 in Sūzhōu — whose biography appears in the Sòngshǐ. CBDB (id 7276) corroborates the catalog dates 1100–1178 and gives his career-line via Xìnián yàolù (XNYL) 70.8b, 78.12b, the Sūzhōu fǔzhì, and Yǒnglè dàdiǎn references. He was jìnshì in 1132 and rose through several censorate and remonstrance posts to Mìgé xiūzhuàn in the Qiándào era under Xiàozōng.
The work is methodologically more biànzuǎn 編纂 (compilation-redaction) than zhuàn 撰 (composition), although the catalog and frontispiece both label it zhuàn. The substantive heart of the text is the redacted residue of 房審權 Fáng Shěnquán’s Zhōuyì yì hǎi 周易義海, a Northern-Sòng hundred-juan exposition-collation now otherwise wholly lost. Lǐ Héng’s compression to twelve juan, his three additions (Chéng Yí, Sū Shì, Zhū Zhèn), and his miscellaneous-discussion appendix in juan 12 give the work its functional independence. The Cuō yào is, in effect, the principal surviving witness to Fáng’s Yì hǎi tradition.
The work fits within the Southern-Sòng impulse to consolidate the Yì-commentarial tradition: contemporary with Zhū Zhèn’s Zhōuyì jí zhuàn (KR1a0024), shortly preceding the great 朱熹 Zhū Xī recension-and-original-text recovery, and serving as one of the available jí jiě lineage texts that later Yuán-and-Míng compilers (the Sìshū wǔjīng dàquán compilation of 1415, etc.) draw on for pre-Sòng material.
The dating is fixed by the original preface: completed eleventh month of Shàoxīng gēngchén (Shàoxīng 30, 1160), printed Qiándào 6 (1170). The composition window 1160–1170 reflects this completion-to-print interval.
The Sìkù tiyao contains a small but substantively interesting double error worth flagging: it gives the gōngjiào date as Qiánlóng forty-three (1778) — the standard correct year for KR1a0034 in the WYG re-collation pass — while a few other Sìkù yìlèi tiyao for adjacent texts give Qiánlóng forty-five (1780). This is not anachronism but parallel multi-pass review-and-resubmission, which the corpus reflects unevenly. (Following the source as is.)
Translations and research
No European-language translation of the Cuō yào. Specialist literature.
- Zhū Bóqūn 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ 易學哲學史, vol. 2 — discusses the Yì hǎi / Cuō yào lineage in the Northern-to-Southern-Sòng Yì compilation tradition.
- Liào Mínghuó 廖名活, articles on the Sòng Yì-collation tradition in Zhōuyì yánjiū 周易研究.
- Shǐ Yǐngyǒng 史應勇, Sòngdài Yìxué wénxiàn yánjiū 宋代易學文獻研究 — treats the redaction relationship between Fáng Shěnquán’s lost original and Lǐ Héng’s surviving compression.
- Modern punctuated reissues from the Sìkù quánshū base; no critical edition.
Other points of interest
The Yì hǎi / Cuō yào relationship is one of the cleanest cases in the Sòng commentary corpus of a parent collection surviving only through its condensed redaction. Comparing Lǐ Héng’s text against the four-juan fragment of the original Yì hǎi still extant in Chén Zhènsūn’s day (since lost) would have permitted a full reconstruction of the redaction principles; in the absence of that, the Cuō yào’s twelfth juan zá lùn — Lǐ Héng’s own added discussions — is the only direct window onto his selection-and-trimming logic.
The Cuō yào’s preservation of pre-Sòng Yì-readings (via Fáng’s century-spanning gathering) makes it, alongside 李鼎祚 Lǐ Dǐngzuò’s Zhōuyì jí jiě (KR1a0008), one of the two indispensable Yì-fragments-and-citations sources for early Yì-exegesis.