Nánxuān Yì shuō 南軒易說
Master Nánxuān’s Talks on the Yì
by 張栻 Zhāng Shì (zì Jìngfū 敬夫 / Qīnfū 欽夫, hào Nánxuān 南軒, 1133–1180, of Hànzhōu Miánzhú 漢州綿竹 in Sìchuān; the son of the Southern-Sòng chief minister 張浚 Zhāng Jùn)
About the work
The surviving fragment of an originally eleven-juan Yì-commentary by 張栻 Zhāng Shì — one of the three principal Dàoxué masters of the Southern-Sòng Qiándào and Chúnxī generation alongside 朱熹 Zhū Xī and 呂祖謙 Lǚ Zǔqiān, sometimes grouped as the Dōngnán sān xiānshēng 東南三先生. The original work, in eleven juan, treated the full sixty-four hexagrams together with the Xìcí. By the late Yuán only the hexagram-half had already begun to suffer losses (董真卿 Dǒng Zhēnqīng reports the Qián 乾 and Kūn 坤 hexagram-commentaries already missing in his day). The text now extant in the Sìkù quánshū, in three juan, contains only the Xìcí-zhuàn 繫辭傳 commentary — the entire sixty-four-hexagram half is gone — and even of the Xìcí the upper fascicle’s opening section is missing, the surviving fragment beginning at the Xìcí’s “Tiānyī dìèr 天一地二” passage.
The transmission line of the surviving fragment runs through a Yuán-dynasty Zhìyuán rénchén year (1292) re-printing prepared by 胡順父 Hú Shùnfù (hào Héqīng 和卿, an instructor at the Gànzhōu 贛州 Confucian school) under the patronage of “Wánggōng 王公 of Lǔ, hào Dōngquán 東泉,” then on circuit as Surveillance-Commissioner of the Zhānggòng 章貢 area. The motivating intention, as Hú’s preface (季冬既望, late twelfth month, 1292) explains, was to print Zhāng Shì’s Xìcí-commentary as a companion-piece to fill the gap in 程頤 Chéng Yí’s Yì zhuàn (KR1a0016), which (by 尹焞 Yǐn Tūn / Yǐn Héjìng’s 尹和靖 testimony) “stops at the hexagrams and does not extend to the Xìcí.” This is why the surviving fragment is the Xìcí alone: the 1292 reprint was, from the start, a targeted Xìcí-supplement — the hexagram-half it inherited still complete from Zhāng Shì’s original was, ironically, never reprinted in this companion-edition lineage and so was lost in turn.
The Sìkù base-text is the manuscript copy made by 曹溶 Cáo Róng of Jiāxīng 嘉興 from the 1292 Hú Shùnfù printing. Cáo’s hand-copy preserved only what Hú had reprinted; that is, the Xìcí commentary, and within it the upper fascicle is missing its opening section. The Sìkù editors note that the head of the surviving fragment is titled “Xìcí shàng juan xià 繫辭上卷下” — i.e. “the lower part of the upper fascicle of the Xìcí” — confirming that what is lost is precisely the upper-part of the Xìcí upper fascicle.
The Sìkù editors specifically correct two prior bibliographic misattributions:
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曹學佺 Cáo Xuéquán’s Shǔzhōng guǎngjì 蜀中廣記 listed the eleven-juan work under the name of Zhāng Shì’s father 張浚 Zhāng Jùn (1097–1164). The Sìkù editors examine Zhāng Jùn’s separately surviving Zǐyán Yì zhuàn 紫巖易傳 (KR1a0026) and confirm that it is a wholly distinct work — Cáo Xuéquán’s attribution is “decidedly mistaken.”
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朱彝尊 Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo 經義考 also gives the work as eleven juan (per the Yuán-period state), with the note “未見” (“not seen”) and the citation of Dǒng Zhēnqīng on the missing Qián and Kūn hexagrams. The Sìkù editors thus position their three-juan extant text as more impaired than even what Dǒng knew.
The composition window 1160–1180 covers the productive scholarly decades of Zhāng Shì’s mature life from his Yuèlù academy 嶽麓書院 phase (where he taught from c. 1167) through to his death in office at Jiānglíng in Chúnxī 7 (1180). No precise dating internal to the surviving Xìcí fragment is available; the bracket reflects the maturest period of his Yì-engagement consistent with the preface and with his correspondence on the Yì with Zhū Xī.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Nánxuān Yì shuō was composed by 張栻 Zhāng Shì of the Sòng. We note that 曹學佺 Cáo Xuéquán’s Shǔzhōng guǎngjì lists the work in eleven juan and ascribes it to 張浚 Zhāng Jùn. On examination, Jùn’s Zǐyán Yì zhuàn exists as a separate book; this is a different work. Xuéquán is decidedly in error. 朱彝尊 Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo also lists eleven juan, with the note “not seen,” and cites 董真卿 Dǒng Zhēnqīng saying that the Qián and Kūn hexagram-commentary was already missing.
The present base-copy is the manuscript made by 曹溶 Cáo Róng of Jiāxīng from the printed edition prepared in the rénchén year of Zhìyuán [1292] by 胡順父 Hú Shùnfù, xuézhèng (Sub-prefect Instructor) of the Gànzhōu lù Confucian School. As copied, all sixty-four hexagrams are now lost: the text begins at the Xìcí “Tiānyī dìèr” chapter — more impaired than what Zhēnqīng saw. Yet the head of the fascicle is titled “Xìcí shàng juan xià,” and Shùnfù’s preface states: “Wánggōng of Lǔ, hào Dōngquán, on circuit as Surveillance Commissioner over Zhānggòng and other paths, in his hours of public leisure, used to recite Yīchuān’s Yì zhuàn and lamented that it specifically lacked the Xìcí; he set his heart on hunting one out and so obtained Nánxuān’s exposition of the Yì-Xìcí. He copied it and stored it at home, and when [Wánggōng’s text] would prove the missing complement to make a complete book, he showed it to the zhīshì (administrator) Wú [holder of the Jiāngshìláng rank] 吳將仕, [who] cut it to woodblocks at the school, to fill the missing-and-lost, so that it would circulate alongside the [Chéng] Yì zhuàn’s old large-character base-text.” So the original cutting of this book also began only with the Xìcí; and Cáo Róng’s hand-copy lost only its upper-fascicle’s upper-part.
At the close of the preface there are three small impressions — one a Qiān hexagram, one reading “Húshì of Gànzhōu” (which tells us [Hú] Shùnfù was a Gàn man), one reading “Héqīng” — evidently his zì.
Respectfully revised and submitted, second 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
張栻 Zhāng Shì (1133–1180), zì Jìngfū 敬夫 / Qīnfū 欽夫, hào Nánxuān 南軒, was a Southern-Sòng Dàoxué master from Miánzhú 綿竹 in Hànzhōu (Sìchuān). The son of the chief minister 張浚 Zhāng Jùn (1097–1164, the Sòng general and chief opponent of Qín Huì who recovered Sìchuān after the Jin invasion), Zhāng Shì studied with 胡宏 Hú Hóng (1106–1162) of the Húxiāng xué 湖湘學 line, succeeded Hú Hóng as principal teacher at the Yuèlù Academy 嶽麓書院 in Tánzhōu 潭州 (modern Chángshā), and conducted a famous protracted philosophical correspondence with 朱熹 Zhū Xī (1130–1200) and 呂祖謙 Lǚ Zǔqiān (1137–1181) — the three together known to later tradition as the Dōngnán sān xiānshēng 東南三先生 (“Three Masters of the Southeast”). CBDB id 7164 corroborates the catalog dates; he was jìnshì by yīn-privilege rather than examination, served in Lìbù lángzhōng 吏部郎中, Yánjiǎng 延講 lecture-position to the heir apparent, and finally as Pacification Commissioner of Jīngnán 荊南 / Húběi (Jiānglíng), where he died in office.
The Yì shuō was probably composed in the Yuèlù period (c. 1167 onward); references to Zhāng Shì’s Yì-views are scattered through his correspondence with Zhū Xī (collected in Zhū Xī’s Wén jí juan 31–35, 89, 95B, etc.). The original eleven juan covering all sixty-four hexagrams plus the Xìcí is structured along Chéng-Yí yìlǐ lines, with substantial xiàng-numerological apparatus characteristic of the Húxiāng-school synthesis. The 1292 Hú Shùnfù Xìcí-only reprint, made specifically as a Xìcí-supplement to Chéng Yí’s Yì zhuàn, is the bottleneck through which only the Xìcí-half survived; the hexagram-commentary half of the work, although still presumably intact in Yuán dynasty book-collectors’ hands, was not reprinted in this companion-book lineage and dropped out of transmission.
Modern scholarship (Chén Lái 陳來, Zhū Xī zhéxué yánjiū; Yǐn Hèfū 殷鶴福, articles on Húxiāng-school Yìxué) has reconstructed parts of Zhāng Shì’s lost hexagram-commentary positions from Zhū Xī’s correspondence-rejoinders and from quotations preserved in later Yuán-and-Míng Yì compilations.
The CBDB record (id 7164) places Zhāng Shì in a notably dense kinship-and-discipleship network: maternal grandfather of Yùwén Shízhōng 宇文時中 [2101], son-in-law of Yùwén Shízhōng 宇文時中 [7409], father-in-law of Hú Hóng’s son. He was a friend of 楊萬里 Yáng Wànlǐ, who composed his funerary inscription. Zhū Xī’s Wén jí juan 89 contains Zhū’s lengthy memorial inscription for Zhāng Shì.
Translations and research
No European-language translation of the Nánxuān Yì shuō fragment.
- Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (Univ. of Hawaii, 1992) — Zhāng Shì–Zhū Xī correspondence and the Dàoxué mainstream consolidation.
- Conrad Schirokauer, Neo-Confucian Education: The Formative Stage (UC Berkeley, 1989), chapter on the Yuèlù Academy under Zhāng Shì.
- Chén Lái 陳來, Zhū Xī zhéxué yánjiū, especially the chapters on the Zhū–Zhāng Yì-correspondence.
- Lín Yuèhuì 林月惠, articles on Zhāng Shì’s Zhōngyōng-and-Yì readings.
- Modern punctuated editions of the Nánxuān xiānshēng wénjí 南軒先生文集 from the Sìkù base; partial reconstructions of the lost hexagram-commentary in the apparatus to recent Yuèlù shūshè 嶽麓書社 collected editions.
Other points of interest
The 1292 Hú Shùnfù preface — written under the patronage of “Wánggōng of Lǔ, hào Dōngquán” (Wáng Gòuchén 王構臣? more likely 王惲 Wáng Yùn, although neither is certainly identifiable from the partial title) — is one of the more vivid Yuán-dynasty preface-pieces about how a Sòng Dàoxué text gets re-issued as a companion-piece (pèiběn 配本) to plug a perceived gap in Chéng Yí’s Yì zhuàn. The preservation logic — keep what fills a recognized canonical gap, drop what duplicates an already-circulating canonical commentary — is responsible for the Yì shuō’s survival in this fragmentary form.
尹焞 Yǐn Tūn’s (Yǐn Héjìng 尹和靖, 1071–1142) saying transmitted at the head of the preface — “Better than reading other books is reading the Yì alone; better than looking at Yīchuān’s miscellaneous talks is looking at Yīchuān’s Yì zhuàn alone; better one day to recite one hexagram, and in idle hours look at the Xìcí” — is itself a central Dàoxué dictum on Yì-study practice and is widely cited (e.g. Zhū Xī’s Yǔlèi 67) as foundational for the Yīchuān-line Yì-pedagogy of the Sòng–Yuán transition.