Hòuzhāi Yì xué 厚齋易學
Master Hòuzhāi’s Yì-Studies
by 馮椅 Féng Yǐ (撰), zì Yízhī 儀之 — also given as Qízhī 奇之, hào Hòuzhāi 厚齋, fl. 1217, of Nánkāng Dūchāng 南康都昌, modern Jiāngxī
About the work
A fifty-juan tripartite Yì-compendium by Féng Yǐ, a Southern-Sòng jiā jū shòu tú 家居授徒 (“home-residing, teaching disciples”) scholar of Nánkāng who composed a vast canonical-corpus reaching over 200 juan across the Yì, Shū, Shī, and Lùn-Mèng (the Sòng-period grouping that produced the Sì shū). The Sòngshǐ registers the lifework summarily in the biography of Féng Yǐ’s son, 馮去非 Féng Qùfēi: “His father Yǐ stayed home and taught disciples; the works he composed — Yì, Shū, Shī, YǔMèng jíshuō and the like — totaled over two hundred juan; today most are not transmitted; only his collated Yì-discussions still scatter in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn.” The Hòuzhāi Yì xué is therefore the principal surviving witness to Féng Yǐ’s vast scholarly project.
The work is organized as three internally distinct sub-treatises, originally composed and circulated as separate books and only secondarily (in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn compilation) merged. Per 胡一桂 Hú Yīguì’s Yì xué qǐméng yì zhuàn 易學啟蒙翼傳 (Yuán), citing the Sòng zhōngxīng yìwénzhì, Féng Yǐ “under Níngzōng composed Yì jízhù 易輯注, Yì jízhuàn 易輯傳, and Yì wàizhuàn 易外傳; further holding that 程迴 Chéng Huí and 朱熹 Zhū Xī had not yet exhausted the corrections to the Confucian Tradition’s namings, he changed Tuàn yuē and Xiàng yuē to Zàn (eulogies). And taking from Suí Jīngjízhì the [report of a] Shuō guà 3-piān, he changed Xìcí shàng / Xìcí xià to Shuō guà shàng / Shuō guà zhōng.” 俞琰 Yú Yǎn’s Dú Yì jǔ yào 讀易舉要 confirms the same.
The three sub-treatises:
- Jí zhù 輯注 (4 juan in the Sìkù reorganization) — collated glosses on the Tuàn 彖 and Xiàng 象 alone; treats them as the jīng (canonical text) proper.
- Jí zhuàn 輯傳 (28 juan) — honors the Tuàn and Xiàng as canonical text and demotes the entire Ten Wings to commentary status; gathers Sòng exegetical commentary by category.
- Wài zhuàn 外傳 (18 juan) — takes the Ten Wings as canonical text; appends the various ru’s discussions, with Féng Yǐ’s own judgments.
The Sìkù editors note that the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn compilation broke up Féng Yǐ’s tripartite structure, dispersing the materials hexagram-by-hexagram and merging the Wài zhuàn into the Jí zhù / Jí zhuàn mass; even the Wài zhuàn title was suppressed. The Sìkù recovery, by careful collation, restored the original three-book structure to 4 + 28 + 18 = 50 juan.
Methodologically the work has several distinctive features:
a. Use of ancient-script (gǔwén) variants in canonical text. Substitutions per the auto-preface and tiyao: Kūn hexagram’s huáng cháng 黄裳 → cháng 常 (different graph for “skirt”); Méng hexagram’s dú méng 瀆蒙 → dú 黷; Tún hexagram’s pán huán 磐桓 → bān 般; zhān rú 邅如 → dǎn 亶; Shī hexagram’s dà rén 大人 → dà jūn 大人 [variant graph]; Lǚ hexagram’s zī fǔ 資斧 → qí fǔ 齊斧. Each variant traces back to ancient-text precedent; the editorial principle is methodologically continuous with the gǔyì reconstruction line of Wú Rénjié KR1a0042 and Lǚ Zǔqiān KR1a0043.
b. Restoration of dropped hexagram-names. Lǚ 履, Pǐ 否, Tóngrén 同人 — Féng Yǐ holds the canonical text has long suffered hexagram-name drops at these points and supplements them.
c. Editorial trimming. Gòu hexagram’s Tuàn statement nǚ zhuàng, wù yòng qǔ 女壯勿用取 — Féng Yǐ argues the nǚ character is a copyist’s redundancy and should be dropped. The Sìkù editors register this without endorsement.
d. Categorical exposition in the Jí zhuàn. Each hexagram receives sequential headings: guàxù 卦序 (sequence), guàyì 卦義 (meaning), Tuàn yì 彖義 (Tuàn-meaning), yáo yì 爻義 (line-meanings), xiàng zhān 象占 (image-and-divination). The Sìkù editors describe this as “minutely divided and item-distinguished, extremely detailed and complete.”
e. Documentary preservation. The Jí zhuàn draws on 王安石 Wáng Ānshí, Zhāng Bì 張弼, Zhāng Rǔmíng 張汝明, Lǐ Chūnnián 李椿年, Lǐ Yuánliàng 李元量, 李舜臣 Lǐ Shùnchén, Lǘqiū Xīn 閭丘昕, Máo Pǔ 毛樸, 馮時行 Féng Shíxíng, Lán Tíngruì 蘭廷瑞 — “all of whose complete works are no longer transmitted; their general outlines are preserved only by virtue of this work.”
The Wài zhuàn’s reordering of the Xìcí as Shuō guà upper-and-middle (following 吳仁傑 Wú Rénjié’s earlier proposal in Yì tú shuō 易圖說 (KR1a0042)) was rejected by 董真卿 Dǒng Zhēnqīng’s Zhōuyì huìtōng 周易會通 (Yuán) but accepted by 楊時喬 Yáng Shíqiáo (Míng) on the strength of Suízhì documentary precedent. The Sìkù editors register the position as “the fault of liking-the-strange” (hào qí zhī guò 好奇之過), but the closing verdict on the work as a whole is generous: “Looked at as a triad, all three books are evidentially-grounded through and through, broadly thoroughly penetrating; the essence is not to be obscured by one or two minor blemishes.”
Title-history: Dǒng Zhēnqīng and Hú Yīguì call the work Yì jí 易輯; Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì calls it Yì xué 易學; 馬端臨 Mǎ Duānlín’s Wénxiàn tōngkǎo calls it Hòuzhāi Yì xué 厚齋易學. 王湜 Wáng Shì (Northern Sòng) earlier had a different work titled Yì xué; to disambiguate, the Sìkù editors follow the Tōngkǎo title.
The work’s reception: Hú Yīguì’s Qǐméng yì zhuàn further notes that 汪標 Wāng Biāo of Póyáng (Yuán) compiled a great Jīngzhuàn tōngjiě 經傳通解 — a master-collection of Yì-commentaries — using Féng Yǐ’s Yì jiě as the base-text and seeking out further ancient and contemporary additions. Wāng Biāo’s work is also lost; “at the SòngYuán transition, [Féng Yǐ’s] book was much-prized; today, [Wāng] Biāo’s book also lost — this book is therefore all the more to be treasured” (tiyao).
The composition window 1190–1217 brackets: Féng Yǐ’s mature scholarly career under Níngzōng (per the Sòng zhōngxīng yìwénzhì attribution); the auto-preface dated Sòng Jiādìng 10 dīngchǒu (1217) summer fifth month, xīnmǎo day past full moon. This is the firm terminus.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Hòuzhāi Yì xué in fifty juan was composed by Féng Yǐ of the Sòng. [Féng] Yǐ, zì Yízhī (one source: Qízhī), hào Hòuzhāi, a man of Nánkāng Dūchāng. The Sòngshǐ Féng Qùfēi zhuàn says: “His father, Yǐ, stayed home and taught disciples; the books he authored — Yì, Shū, Shī, YǔMèng jíshuō — totaled over two hundred juan.” Today most are not transmitted; only his collated Yì shuō still scatters in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn.
Examining Hú Yīguì’s Qǐméng yì zhuàn, citing the Sòng zhōngxīng yìwénzhì: “Under Níngzōng, Féng Yǐ composed Yì jízhù, jízhuàn, wàizhuàn; further holding that Chéng Huí and Zhū Xī had not yet exhausted [the corrections of] the Confucian Tradition’s namings, he changed Tuàn yuē and Xiàng yuē to Zàn (eulogies). And, having seen the Suí Jīngjízhì’s Shuō guà three piān, he changed Xìcí zhuàn upper-and-lower to Shuō guà upper-and-middle.” Yú Yǎn’s Dú Yì jǔ yào says the same.
Now examining what the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn contains: only the Jí zhù and Jí zhuàn, with no so-called Wài zhuàn — much at variance with the older accounts. Verifying against [Féng] Yǐ’s auto-preface: at that day they were each a separate book. The Jí zhù glossed only the Tuàn and Xiàng. The Jí zhuàn honored the Tuàn and Xiàng as canonical text and retired the Ten Wings as commentary. The Wài zhuàn took the Ten Wings as canonical text, appending the various earlier ru’s expositions, deciding by his own judgment.
The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn’s compilation was not done by a single hand; the editors carved-up his text and miscellaneously appended it under each hexagram and line — and so simultaneously consigned the very name Wài zhuàn to oblivion. Now, by repeated cross-collation, [the work has been] reorganized as: Jí zhù in four juan, Jí zhuàn in twenty-eight juan, Wài zhuàn in eighteen juan — still divided as three books to restore its original [structure].
The Jí zhù often uses ancient-script. As: Kūn hexagram’s huáng cháng 黄裳 — its cháng is written cháng 常; Méng hexagram’s dú méng 瀆蒙 — its dú is written dú 黷; Tún hexagram’s pán huán 磐桓 — its pán is written bān 般; its zhānrú — written dǎn 亶; Shī hexagram’s dà rén — written dàrén (variant); Lǚ hexagram’s zī fǔ — written qí fǔ 齊斧. Although these differ from the present base-text, all are rooted in the ancient meaning. As to Lǚ, Pǐ, Tóngrén — these hexagrams [he holds] originally lost their hexagram-names and that the names should be supplied; or Gòu’s Tuàn “nǚ zhuàng wù yòng qǔ” — [he] takes the nǚ character as redundant — these are [Féng] Yǐ’s own-emergent views.
The Jí zhuàn — for each hexagram divides into the categories of guàxù, guàyì, Tuàn yì, yáo yì, xiàng zhān — finely-analyzed-and-item-distinguished, extremely detailed and complete. Its gathering-and-collecting is also rather broad and thorough: as Wáng Ānshí, Zhāng Bì, Zhāng Rǔmíng, Lǐ Chūnnián, Lǐ Yuánliàng, Lǐ Shùnchén, Lǘqiū Xīn, Máo Pǔ, Féng Shíxíng, Lán Tíngruì — all of these masters’ complete works are now no longer transmitted, [and their] general outlines are preserved only by virtue of [this book].
The Wài zhuàn’s gathering-of-many-words is also much developed. Its taking [of the Xìcí] as Shuō guà — following Wú Rénjié’s base — is rebutted by Dǒng Zhēnqīng’s Zhōuyì huìtōng, with good reason. Yáng Shíqiáo (Míng)‘s Zhōuyì gǔjīnwén takes it as agreeing with the Suízhì — this is the fault of liking-the-strange. But looking at the three books together — they are root-on-root grounded, broadly penetrating; the essence is not to be obscured by one or two minor blemishes.
The Qǐméng yì zhuàn further says: Wāng Biāo of Póyáng hand-edited the various masters’ Yì-glosses into one great-collection, named Jīngzhuàn tōngjiě, using [Féng] Yǐ’s Yì jiě as the base-text, seeking ancient and contemporary glosses to add in. Evidently at the SòngYuán transition [Féng Yǐ’s] book was much-prized. Today, [Wāng] Biāo’s book also is not transmitted; this book is therefore all the more to be treasured.
Dǒng Zhēnqīng and Hú Yīguì both call this book Yì jí. The Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì gives Yì xué; the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo gives Hòuzhāi Yì xué kǎo. Wáng Shì earlier had an Yì xué, so it is appropriate to differentiate; we therefore follow the Tōngkǎo’s title.
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
Féng Yǐ (馮椅, fl. 1217, lifedates not securely recorded), zì Yízhī 儀之 (or Qízhī 奇之), hào Hòuzhāi 厚齋, of Nánkāng Dūchāng 都昌 (modern Dūchāng county, north of Póyáng Lake, Jiāngxī). CBDB id 48317 has him without lifedates. The auto-preface of 1217 (Jiādìng 10) is the firm anchor for his floruit.
He was a quintessential Southern-Sòng jiā jū shòu tú 家居授徒 (“home-residing, teaching disciples”) scholar of the Zhū-Xī mainline — never holding substantial office, but composing a vast canonical-commentary corpus across the Yì, Shū, Shī, and Sìshū traditions, totaling over 200 juan. Most of this corpus was lost in independent transmission; the Hòuzhāi Yì xué is the principal surviving fragment. His son Féng Qùfēi had a Sòngshǐ biography (juan 425) — within which the father’s lifework is summarily described.
His learning derives from his uncle (bózǔfù 伯祖父) 馮黼 Féng Fú, whose name “was famous in the three-academies for this canonical [Yì]” (auto-preface). The auto-preface explicitly registers the lineage of Sòng gǔyì reconstruction work that prepared Féng Yǐ’s project: 邵雍 Shào Yōng first fixed the canon-and-commentary order; Lǚ Wēizhòng 呂微仲 (= 呂大防 Lǚ Dàfáng) and Cháo Yǐdào 晁以道 (= 晁說之 Cháo Yuèzhī) followed and emended; Wú Dòunán 吳斗南 (= Wú Rénjié, Gǔ Zhōuyì 古周易 KR1a0042) further corrected; Chéng Huí (Shāsuí Chéng Kějiǔ 沙隨程可久) and Zhū Xī (Huìān Zhū Wéngōng 晦菴朱文公) provided commentaries — “although the namings still have minor inappropriacies, King Wén’s complete canon is now sky-high and sun-bright.”
Methodologically Féng Yǐ stands at the late-Sòng synthesis-point of the gǔyì (ancient-text) and Zhū-Xī-line traditions. The tripartite structure (Jí zhù on TuànXiàng; Jí zhuàn with the Ten Wings demoted; Wài zhuàn with the Ten Wings as canon) reflects an unusually careful internal-distinction methodology: rather than collapse all Yì tradition into one narrative, Féng Yǐ separates the Tuàn-and-Xiàng exposition (closest to the canonical King Wén / Duke of Zhōu layer) from the broader Confucian-school commentary (the Ten Wings), giving each its own treatment.
The documentary preservation function of the Jí zhuàn is comparable to that of the Dà Yì cuì yán 大易粹言 (KR1a0041) and 李衡 Lǐ Héng’s Zhōuyì yì hǎi cuō yào 周易義海撮要 (KR1a0034): without it, ten or more Northern-and-Southern Sòng Yì-commentators (the list in the tiyao) would be substantively unreadable. The Hòuzhāi Yì xué is therefore one of the four indispensable Sòng Yì-corpus preservation works, alongside the Cuō yào, the Cuì yán, and the Zhōuyì jí jiě 周易集解 of 李鼎祚 Lǐ Dǐngzuò (KR1a0008).
The composition window 1190–1217 covers Féng Yǐ’s productive scholarly maturity through to the firm 1217 auto-preface terminus.
Translations and research
No European-language translation. The Hòuzhāi Yì xué is treated principally as a documentary source.
- Zhū Bóqūn 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ, vol. 2 — Féng Yǐ as the late-Sòng synthesizer of gǔyì and Zhū-school traditions.
- Wáng Tiějūn 王鐵均, Sòngdài Yìxué shǐ — extensive treatment of the Hòuzhāi Yì xué.
- Liào Mínghuó 廖名活, articles on Féng Yǐ’s Jí zhù / Jí zhuàn / Wài zhuàn tripartite structure in Zhōuyì yánjiū.
- Modern punctuated reissues from the Sìkù base.
Other points of interest
The auto-preface’s account of the Yì’s textual history — Fú Xī drew the eight; King Wén composed the guàcí and yáocí; the Duke of Zhōu was traditionally credited with the yáocí but Féng Yǐ argues this is mistaken; Confucius composed the zàn (eulogy-passages, i.e. Tuàn and Xiàng of the Ten Wings); his disciples composed the zhuàn (commentary, i.e. Wén yán, Shuō guà, Xù guà, Zá guà); the Xìcí itself is King Wén’s canon, not commentary, mistakenly later treated as commentary — is one of the most ambitious Sòng-period reconstructions of the Yì’s composite textual genesis.
The reordering of the Xìcí as Shuō guà upper-and-middle — controversial in the Sìkù editors’ eyes — is a substantive philological hypothesis based on the Suí Jīngjízhì’s record of Shuō guà in three piān. Modern scholarship has not generally followed Wú Rénjié → Féng Yǐ on this point, but the reasoning is methodologically clean.
The disappearance of nine-tenths of Féng Yǐ’s lifework (over 200 juan reduced to 50 via Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery) is a sobering demonstration of the precarity of late-Sòng scholarly transmission. The Hòuzhāi Yì xué fortunately survived because of its inclusion in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn.