Zhàoshì Yì shuō 趙氏易說
Master Zhào’s Talks on the Yì
by 趙善譽 Zhào Shànyù (zì Jìngzhī 靜之, hào Shùzhāi 恕齋, 1143–1189, of the Sòng imperial clan)
About the work
A four-juan Yì-commentary by 趙善譽 Zhào Shànyù, an imperial-clan official-scholar of the late Southern Sòng. Zhào Shànyù was first place in the Lǐbù shì 禮部試 (Ministry of Rites examination) of Qiándào 5 (1169), under Xiàozōng. He served as Dàlǐ chéng 大理丞 (Court of Judicial Review), then as Surveillance Commissioner (tíxíng 提刑) of the Tóngchuān 潼川 circuit (eastern Sìchuān), and as Fiscal Vice-Commissioner (zhuǎnyùn pànguān 轉運判官) of the same circuit. Biography in the Sòngshǐ.
The work follows an unusual format: per 陳振孫 Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí, “for each hexagram there is one discussion-essay (lùn yī piān 論一篇).” This is the version Zhào Shànyù presented at court when he was Tóngchuān fiscal commissioner. The Sìkù editors flag the work’s distinctive method: cross-comparison among hexagrams of similar meaning. Three examples (the tiyao’s own selection):
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Yí 頤 (hex. 27, “Nourishment”), Jǐng 井 (hex. 48, “The Well”), and Dǐng 鼎 (hex. 50, “The Cauldron”) all have the meaning of nourishing others. “Is it not because the benefit of nourishing others spreads widely, hence many imageries are taken to display it to people?” Zhào Shànyù further notices that all three hexagrams’ top line is the auspicious one — Yí’s “yóu yí” 由頤, Jǐng’s “wù mù” 勿幕, Dǐng’s “yù xuàn” 玉鉉 — and he ties this structurally to the meaning-cluster.
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Qián 乾 and Kūn 坤 — both have line-statements where only the second and fifth lines are unequivocally good, and all other lines carry words of warning. He follows out the Kūn line-warnings: lǚ shuāng (treading frost — first line, warning at the birth of one yīn), kuò náng 括囊 (tying-the-bag — fourth line, warning at the place of much fear), hán zhāng 含章 (storing-elegance — third, still possible to follow affairs), up to lóng zhàn 龍戰 (dragons fight — top line, the Way exhausted). The systematic warning-structure is identified as “the same intent” as Qián’s line-statements.
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Yí 頤 again: hexagram-body analysis. Lower-trigram Zhèn 震 (Thunder) is active and seeks nourishment: hence its three lines are all inauspicious. Upper-trigram Gèn 艮 (Mountain) is still and knows-where-to-stop: hence its three lines are all auspicious. The yìlǐ moral is read directly off the trigram-body composition.
The Sìkù editors’ verdict: “His discussions are all clear-and-direct and broadly correct (míngbái zhèngdà 明白正大).” 朱熹 Zhū Xī said of him: “[Zhào Shànyù] is able to extend what earlier rú had not yet made clear”; 馮椅 Féng Yǐ’s Yìxué draws extensively on the work, “praising him for being able to ground himself in the meaning of why the hexagram-image is named as it is, and so to cross-collate the wording of guà, yáo, Tuàn, and Xiàng in order to thread together the meaning of the six lines and make his exposition.” This praise, the editors say, is “not empty flattery.”
The transmission state of the Yì shuō is fragile. From the early Míng onward “transmission-copies are virtually nonexistent on the open market”; 朱彝尊 Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo lists it under the note yǐ yì 已佚 (“already lost”). The Sìkù editors recovered it from Yǒnglè dàdiǎn citations placed in the dàdiǎn’s hexagram-by-hexagram organization; eight hexagrams’ essays — Yù 豫, Suí 隨, Wúwàng 無妄, Dàzhuàng 大壯, Jìn 晉, Kuí 睽, Jiǎn 蹇, Zhōngfú 中孚 — are missing in the dàdiǎn and so missing in the present recension. The Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì recorded the work as 2 juan; the Sìkù editors, on account of “the text’s being rather voluminous,” divided it into 4 juan in their reorganization.
The 秦焴 Qín Yù preface (dated Chúnxī bǐngwǔ 1186, ninth month xīnhài-day, written from Jiànkāng 建康) records the publication history. Qín Yù’s father had loved the Yì; Qín Yù himself “for over thirty years was lost as one grasping at wind or chasing shadows”; was instructed by an Yì-scholar friend to read the Yì “by the principle of taking each hexagram as a time, each line as a position”; later, while temporarily governing Ānlù 安陸, was sent the Shùzhāi Yì shuō by his old Wǔlíng 武陵 friend 畢希簡 Bì Xījiǎn (zì Shūwén 叔文); finding the existing print’s blocks too large for student use, he had a smaller-format reprint cut. At the time of the 1186 reprint, Zhào Shànyù had moved from the Tóngchuān fiscal-commissionership to a xiángxíng 祥刑 (“blessing-judgment,” a poetic name for criminal-justice circuit oversight) post in Dōng-Shǔ 東蜀 (eastern Sìchuān).
The composition window 1180–1186 reflects: Zhào Shànyù’s productive Tóngchuān period (during which the work was completed and presented at court), terminating before the Qín Yù 1186 reprint date.
The Yì tǒng lùn 易統論 (“General Discussion on the Yì”) preserved at the head of the surviving recension is one of Zhào Shànyù’s most ambitious theoretical pieces, comparing the Yì to 揚雄 Yáng Xióng’s Tài xuán 太玄: the Yì is “made to display to those-of-the-realm who are jūnfù 君父 (rulers and fathers); its number is heaven enclosing earth and combining the two — the Way of jūnfù.” The Tài xuán is “made to display to those-of-the-realm who are chénzǐ 臣子 (ministers and sons); its number is earth bearing heaven, holding-up and carrying-out — the Way of chénzǐ.” This yīn/yáng–jūn/chén parallel between the two systems is unusually theoretically articulated.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Yì shuō in four juan was composed by the Sòng zōngshì (imperial-clan member) 趙善譽 Zhào Shànyù. Shànyù, zì Jìngzhī, in Qiándào 5 [1169] examined first in the Lǐbù shì; promoted through the ranks to Dàlǐ chéng; Tóngchuānlù tíxíng; zhuǎnyùn pànguān. His career-record is in the Sòngshǐ. This compilation is recorded in 陳振孫 Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí, where Zhènsūn says: “For each hexagram he composed one discussion-essay” — for it was the base presented at court when he was Tóngchuān fiscal commissioner.
Now examining the book: among the various hexagrams whose name-and-meaning are similar, he much cross-collates and seeks the meaning. Thus he says: “Yí, Jǐng, Dǐng all have the meaning of nourishing others — is this not because the benefit of nourishing others spreads, hence many imageries are taken to display it to people?” Again: “Although the meanings of the three hexagrams differ, all take the top line as auspicious — therefore Yí’s ‘yóu yí,’ Jǐng’s ‘wù mù,’ Dǐng’s ‘yù xuàn’ are all in the top line.”
Even within each hexagram’s six lines he often cross-classifies for observation: as in the Qián hexagram, he says: “The jiǔèr line’s wording — decisive admonition is intense; the jiǔsì line’s wording — when in doubt, then advance with it; the jiǔsān line’s wording — extensive, still able to be earnest; the shàngjiǔ line’s wording — direct, and so [it can] be done. The sage’s words are minutely woven and discriminately turned, reaching even to this — only fearing that yánggāng might lean partial.”
Discussing the Kūn hexagram, he says: “Qián and Kūn — only the èr and wǔ two lines are good; the other lines all bear words of warning.” Again: “Lǚ shuāng warns at the birth of one yīn; kuò náng warns at the position of much fear; the third can still hán zhāng and follow affairs; the top reaches lóng zhàn — the Way exhausted: this is the meaning of the Qián hexagram’s line-statements not being uniform.”
Discussing Yí: “Yí: nourishing the upright and not acting recklessly is good. The lower trigram Zhèn — body of motion — has the imagery of activity-and-seeking-nourishment, hence its three lines are all inauspicious. The upper trigram Gèn — body of stillness — has the imagery of stillness-and-knowing-where-to-stop, hence its three lines are all auspicious.”
Discussing Gé: “Inside, brilliant — then seeing principle exhaustively; outside, joyous — then no opposition with human-feeling. Without these, none has been able to make revolution.”
Discussing Jié: “Liùsì — yīnróu and responding to the chū line, again above carrying the jiǔwǔ’s yáng — able to abide, then nowhere to go that is not penetrated; hence ‘hēng: bearing the upper way.’ Jiǔwǔ: residing in the venerated [throne] and obtaining position — gāngjiàn zhōngzhèng — restraint at its appropriate; appropriate, then nowhere to go that is not possible: hence ‘gān jié, jí, wǎng yǒu shàng’; on account of his being in minister-position is why we say abide and penetrate — meaning that he himself can abide and thereby penetrates; on account of his being in ruler-position is why we say sweet and auspicious — meaning what is bestowed upon all-under-heaven, all-men praising him; afterwards is the jí.”
His discussions are all clear-and-direct and broadly correct. Zhūzǐ said of him: “He is able to extend what earlier rú had not yet made clear”; 馮椅 Féng Yǐ’s Yìxué draws much from him, saying: “He is able to root himself in the meaning of why the hexagram-image is named as it is, cross-collating the wording of guà, yáo, Tuàn, and Xiàng so as to thread together the meaning of the six lines, and so make his exposition” — this is no empty flattery.
From the Míng onward, transmission-copies in the outside world are virtually absent; therefore 朱彝尊 Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo notes “yǐ yì — already lost.” Now in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn [the discussions] are fully laid out behind each hexagram, with only eight hexagrams missing — Yù, Suí, Wúwàng, Dàzhuàng, Jìn, Kuí, Jiǎn, Zhōngfú. Therefore [we have] gathered, collated, and made a complete edition, as a resource for Yì-school cross-reference. The Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì originally lists it as 2 juan; we now, the text being rather voluminous, divide it into 4 juan.
Respectfully revised and submitted, ninth 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
趙善譽 Zhào Shànyù (1143–1189), zì Jìngzhī 靜之, hào Shùzhāi 恕齋, was a member of the Sòng imperial clan (zōngshì). CBDB id 50966 corroborates the catalog death year (1189) but does not record an explicit birth year. The catalog 1143 is a defensible inference from the Qiándào 5 (1169) Lǐbù shì first-place result (typical examination-success age 25–30 places the birth in 1139–1144) and is followed here. Sòngshǐ gives him a substantive biography; further references in Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí.
The work’s hermeneutic method — cross-hexagram structural comparison of meaning-clusters — is methodologically distinctive in the Southern-Sòng Yì-corpus. Where 王弼 Wáng Bì → 程頤 Chéng Yí concentrate on hexagram-internal reading and where 劉牧 Liú Mù KR1a0011 → 朱震 Zhū Zhèn KR1a0024 concentrate on xiàngshù generative-numerology, Zhào Shànyù develops a typological reading: groups of hexagrams sharing functional meaning (nourishment: Yí + Jǐng + Dǐng; warning: Qián + Kūn; etc.) are read together, and structural regularities at the line-position level are extracted as yìlǐ lessons. This anticipates by several centuries the Qīng-period typological-and-classificatory Yì-readings of 惠棟 Huì Dòng and 焦循 Jiāo Xún.
The work’s Yì–Tàixuán parallel — read at the Yì tǒng lùn — locates Zhào Shànyù in the xiàngshù end of the field, but a xiàngshù informed by classifying-and-collating impulses rather than by speculative cosmogenesis. The jūnfù / chénzǐ parallel between Yì and Tài xuán is one of the more theoretically substantive late-Sòng readings of Yáng Xióng’s project.
The work’s pedagogical intent is signaled by the Qín Yù 1186 reprint preface: the smaller-format reprint was meant for student use, and was widely read in the Jiànkāng–Húběi educational circuit in the late twelfth century before transmission failed in the Yuán–Míng period.
The Sìkù editors’ reconstitution from Yǒnglè dàdiǎn makes the present text a partial witness — the eight missing hexagrams (Yù, Suí, Wúwàng, Dàzhuàng, Jìn, Kuí, Jiǎn, Zhōngfú) leave gaps — but the surviving 56 hexagram-essays are substantively complete units.
Translations and research
No European-language translation.
- Zhū Bóqūn 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ, vol. 2 — Zhào Shànyù treated as a typological-and-cross-comparative reader of the Yì.
- Liào Mínghuó 廖名活, articles in Zhōuyì yánjiū on Zhào Shànyù’s hexagram-typology.
- Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (Univ. of Hawaii, 1992) — context for the Zhū-Xī-circle reception of Zhào Shànyù.
- Modern punctuated editions from the Sìkù base; no critical edition.
Other points of interest
The 1186 Qín Yù preface — its narrative arc of thirty-year incomprehension, then a friend’s hint that the Yì should be read each-hexagram-as-a-time, each-line-as-a-position (一卦為一時，一爻為一位), then immediate breakthrough — is one of the most autobiographically vivid Southern-Sòng Yì prefaces. The hint Qín Yù records is itself a methodological key: the time-and-position hermeneutic framework is the operating principle of Zhào Shànyù’s whole exposition.
Zhào Shànyù’s typological method is a quiet but real ancestor of the Qīng-period Yì xíngshū lèi 易象書類 (“classified-by-imagery”) Yì-studies of 焦循 Jiāo Xún and others. The cross-hexagram reading procedure is preserved in modern Yì-pedagogy as the standard technique for hexagram-cluster study (e.g. Tài–Pǐ 泰否, Sǔn–Yì 損益, Jìjì–Wèijì 既濟未濟 pairs).