Tóngxī Yì zhuàn 童溪易傳
Master Tóngxī’s Tradition on the Yì
by 王宗傳 Wáng Zōngchuán (撰), zì Jǐngmèng 景孟, hào Tóngxī 童溪, jìnshì of Chúnxī 8 / 1181, of Níngdé 寧德 in Fújiàn
About the work
A thirty-juan xīnxué Yì commentary by Wáng Zōngchuán, who is paired by the Sìkù editors and the late-Sòng Yì-tradition with 楊簡 Yáng Jiǎn (author of Yángshì Yì zhuàn KR1a0037) as the joint founders of the Sòng xīnxué (mind-doctrine) reading of the Yì — the line that, as the Sìkù tiyao on Yáng Jiǎn explicitly says, “using xīnxìng to explain the Yì begins with Wáng Zōngchuán and Yáng Jiǎn.”
Wáng Zōngchuán was jìnshì of Chúnxī 8 (xīnchǒu, 1181). Three years after his examination success he became jiàoshòu 教授 (Educational Officer) at Qūjiāng 曲江 / Sháozhōu 韶州 (modern Shaoguan, Guangdong). Two further years and the Yì zhuàn was completed — placing the work’s composition window at 1184–1186. The book was published a generation later: in Kāixǐ 1 (1205), Wáng Zōngchuán’s clansman 王䮐 Wáng Yú, then resident in Wǔlíng 武陵, wrote to 林焞 Lín Tūn (zì Bǐngshū 炳叔), then magistrate of Kāihuàxiàn 開化縣 in Qúzhōu 衢州, requesting Lín to compose a preface for the impending publication by 劉日新 Liú Rìxīn.
Lín Tūn’s preface — preserved at the head of the work — gives important biographical detail. Lín Tūn writes: “[Wáng Zōngchuán] and I were born in the same district, studied at the same school, qualified the same xīnchǒu year — I know his comings-and-goings most fully.” Per Lín Tūn, Wáng Zōngchuán was a heavy drinker who “after each cup discussed the Yì”; once said: “My remote ancestor [Wáng] Wénzhōng [文中, i.e. 王通 Wáng Tōng, the Suí-Táng Wénzhōngzǐ 文中子] was no good at debating; if I should encounter the fùlíngzhě [the carrying-fungus disputant of the Zhuāngzǐ’s Lè bǐ shēng fable], I would stare him down, expand my courage, and snuff out his fungus, leaving him hungry, saying: “If you have nothing for others, what do you have for yourself?"" — a vividly Chán-flavored anecdote.
The Sìkù tiyao registers Wáng Zōngchuán’s doctrinal program as one of radical hexagram-and-line dismissal: “his exposition broadly bypasses Liáng-Mèng [the Han-period xiàngshù tradition of Liáng Qū 梁丘 and Mèng Xǐ 孟喜] and takes 王弼 Wáng Bì as canon. Hence his book relies entirely on heart-realization (xīn wù 心悟) and forcefully attacks the disease of imagery-and-numerology, even comparing them to mistaken-prescriptions of the materia medica that kill people.” The auto-preface develops this comparison: in antiquity the recluse-doctor 陶弘景 Táo Hóngjǐng (Yǐnjū 隱居) was asked which is graver, mistaking the Yì or mistaking the materia medica — Táo answered: the Yì*‘s mistakes do not kill, but the materia medica’s mistakes do*. Wáng Zōngchuán reverses this: “the materia medica’s mistakes mistake people’s lives; the Yì*‘s mistakes mistake people’s hearts. Once the heart is mistaken — form preserved, nature lost — one becomes a ghost or beast; the disaster is more grievous than mere killing.*”
The signature philosophical formula, preserved in Lín Tūn’s preface: xìng běn wú shuō, shèngrén běn wú yán 性本無説，聖人本無言 — “Nature is originally without speech; the sage was originally without words.” The Sìkù editors flag this as “not free of admixture from alien learning” (bù miǎn shè yú yì xué 不免涉於異學) — i.e. Chán-Buddhist mind-doctrine.
The tiyao sets out the comparative position with care:
Wáng Bì’s Yì started by honoring the originary-emptiness (yuánxū 元虚) so as to expound the meanings-and-principles; the Hàn learning, beginning here, then changed; the Sòng ru’s sweeping-away of the ancient methods actually sprouted from this. Yet Hú [Yuán 胡瑗] and Chéng [Yí] inherited his yìlǐ but located it in human-affairs, hence they seem shallow-and-near but are pure-and-substantive; [Wáng] Zōngchuán and [Yáng] Jiǎn inherited his yuánxū and sought it in nature-and-Heaven, hence they seem high-and-deep but are illusory-and-vague (huàn yǎo 幻窅).
The tiyao then locates the Tóngxī Yì zhuàn historically. A parallel third witness from the same generation: 沈作喆 Shěn Zuòzhé (jìnshì Shàoxīng 5 / 1135), in his Yù jiǎn 寓簡 — composed in Chúnxī 1 (1174), exactly contemporary with Wáng Zōngchuán — devoted juan 1 largely to Yì-principle “generally taking Buddhism as authority.” The tiyao concludes: “Using Chán to explain the Yì began at the start of the Southern Sòng. Only [Shěn] Zuòzhé did not write a complete book; [Wáng] Zōngchuán and [Yáng] Jiǎn each have a completed compilation, displaying clearly the alien canon-line.”
The Sìkù record-and-preserve rationale: “The Chūnqiū’s writing-of-events and the Tángōng’s exposition of Lǐ both insist that one must be careful at the point where a variant begins. We record and preserve this compilation, that students may know how — from the late-Míng Wànlì era onward — the use of xīnxué to explain the Yì derives its branching from these two men. As we likewise preserve the Zhōulǐ readings of Yú Tíngchūn 俞庭椿 and Qiū Kuí 邱葵, the intent is the same.”
Bibliographic note: 董真卿 Dǒng Zhēnqīng erroneously gives Wáng Zōngchuán as “a man of Línān” (Hangzhou); but Lín Tūn’s same-place-same-school-same-year preface leaves no doubt that Wáng Zōngchuán was a Níngdé man.
The composition window 1184–1186 reflects: Lín Tūn’s preface dating the work’s three-years-after-jìnshì + two-years-after-jiào-shòu-appointment writing arc from 1181 xīnchǒu through to 1186.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Tóngxī Yì zhuàn in thirty juan was composed by Wáng Zōngchuán of the Sòng. [Wáng] Zōngchuán, zì Jǐngmèng, a man of Níngdé. Jìnshì of Chúnxī 8 [1181]; held office as Educational Officer of Sháozhōu. Dǒng Zhēnqīng takes him as a man of Línān; Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo says: the present base-text has a preface by Lín Tūn of Níngdé saying “[He and I] were born same place, studied same school, qualified the same xīnchǒu year” — therefore taking him as Línān is wrong.
[Wáng] Zōngchuán’s exposition broadly bypasses LiángMèng and takes Wáng Bì as canon. Hence his book relies entirely on heart-realization and forcefully attacks the disease of imagery-and-numerology, even comparing them to mistaken-prescriptions of the materia medica that kill people. [Lín] Tūn’s preface relays [Wáng] Zōngchuán’s discussion as: “Nature is originally without speech; the sage was originally without words” — speech that is not free of admixture from alien learning. With Yáng Jiǎn’s Cíhú Yì zhuàn their canonical-intent is the same.
For Wáng Bì’s Yì started by honoring the originary-emptiness so as to expound the meanings-and-principles; the Hàn learning, beginning here, then changed; the Sòng ru’s sweeping-away of the ancient methods actually sprouted from this. Yet Hú [Yuán] and Chéng [Yí] inherited his yìlǐ but located it in human-affairs, hence they seem shallow-and-near but are pure-and-substantive; [Wáng] Zōngchuán and [Yáng] Jiǎn inherited his yuánxū and sought it in nature-and-Heaven, hence they seem high-and-deep but are illusory-and-vague.
Examining: Shěn Zuòzhé in composing his Yù jiǎn, juan 1 largely discusses Yì-principle, generally taking Buddhism as authority. [Shěn] Zuòzhé was jìnshì of Shàoxīng 5 [1135]; his Yù jiǎn was composed in Chúnxī 1 [1174], precisely contemporary with [Wáng] Zōngchuán. So: using Chán to discuss the Yì began at the start of the Southern Sòng. Only [Shěn] Zuòzhé had no completed book; [Wáng] Zōngchuán and [Yáng] Jiǎn each have completed compilations, displaying clearly the alien canon-line.
The Chūnqiū’s writing-of-events and the Tángōng’s exposition of Lǐ must be careful at the place where the variant begins. We record and preserve this compilation, that students may know how — from the Míng Wànlì era onward — taking xīnxué to discuss the Yì derived its branching from these two men. As we likewise preserve those who discuss the Zhōulǐ: Yú Tíngchūn and Qiū Kuí — the intent is the same.
Respectfully revised and submitted, twelfth month of the forty-fifth year of Qiánlóng [1780].
General Compilers: 紀昀 Jǐ Yún, 陸錫熊 Lù Xīxióng, 孫士毅 Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: 陸費墀 Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Wáng Zōngchuán (王宗傳, fl. 1181–1206), zì Jǐngmèng 景孟, hào Tóngxī 童溪, of Níngdé 寧德 in Fújiàn (modern Níngdé prefecture, eastern Fújiàn). CBDB id 37678 records him without lifedates. His jìnshì of Chúnxī 8 (1181) — the same year as his lifelong friend Lín Tūn 林焞 — places his birth roughly mid-twelfth century. The conventional reckoning is fl. 1180s–early 1200s.
His ancestral claim to Wáng Tōng (the Suí-Táng Wénzhōngzǐ 文中子, 584–617) — preserved in Lín Tūn’s preface — is doctrinally significant: it positions Wáng Zōngchuán as continuing a line of yìlǐ-philosophical Yì-reading that bypasses the post-Hàn xiàngshù tradition and roots itself in the high-Táng synthesis of Confucian-Buddhist-Daoist thought (Wáng Tōng having been the Suí-Táng exponent of such a synthesis).
The work’s intellectual program — xìng běn wú shuō, shèngrén běn wú yán 性本無説，聖人本無言 — is one of the cleanest pre-Yáng-Jiǎn formulations of the xīnxué Yì hermeneutic. The hexagrams and lines are, in effect, expedient devices (upāya) of the sage’s pedagogical compassion; the Yì itself, as ultimate Way, is wordless. Reading the Yì therefore requires xīn wù 心悟 (heart-realization) rather than xiàngshù analysis.
The convergence with Yáng Jiǎn (KR1a0037) is striking but apparently independent: Wáng Zōngchuán composed his Yì zhuàn 1184–1186; Yáng Jiǎn’s shànbǐng 扇柄 awakening with 陸九淵 Lù Jiǔyuān is variously dated to the 1170s–1180s, and Yáng Jiǎn’s Cíhú Yì zhuàn is later still. The two men reached the same xīnxué hermeneutic by independent routes — Wáng Zōngchuán via the Wáng-Bì → Wáng-Tōng yuánxū line; Yáng Jiǎn via Lù Jiǔyuān’s Xiàngshān school. The Sìkù editors’ joint listing reflects this convergent rather than dependent origin.
The Sìkù preservation rationale — “to make it known how, from late Míng Wànlì onward, taking xīnxué to expound the Yì derives its branching from these two men” — is methodologically articulate. Wáng Zōngchuán is preserved as one of two ancestor-figures for the late-Míng Yì-Chán (Yì-and-Chán) synthesis (蘇濬 Sū Jùn’s Míngmíngpiān 冥冥篇, 焦竑 Jiāo Hóng’s reading, 王畿 Wáng Jī’s Yì essays, etc.).
Lín Tūn’s preface preserves the fùlíngzhě 負苓者 anecdote — Wáng Zōngchuán’s bravura debate-style about-debating remarks — which is one of the more vivid pieces of late-Sòng Yì-circle social-history available. The combination of heavy drinking + Yì-after-cup discussion + Chán-style overturning of opponents gives a portrait of the late-Southern-Sòng xīnxué circle as a recognizably Chán-influenced lay-intellectual milieu.
The composition window 1184–1186 is firmly fixed by Lín Tūn’s preface. The 1205 publication date by Liú Rìxīn — separated from completion by twenty years — reflects the typical Sòng-period pattern of manuscript circulation followed by formal printing only after considerable reception-time.
Translations and research
No European-language translation of the Tóngxī Yì zhuàn.
- Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (Univ. of Hawaii, 1992) — Wáng Zōngchuán is briefly discussed as a xīnxué exponent contemporary with Yáng Jiǎn.
- Edward T. Ch’ien, Chiao Hung and the Restructuring of Neo-Confucianism in the Late Ming (Columbia, 1986) — for the Wáng Zōngchuán → Yáng Jiǎn → Sū Jùn → Jiāo Hóng line into Míng Yì-Chán.
- Zhū Bóqūn 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ, vol. 2 — Wáng Zōngchuán treated as the proximate ancestor of the xīnxué Yì line.
- Lín Yuésuì 林月惠, Yáng Jiǎn xīnxué yánjiū 楊簡心學研究 — discusses Wáng Zōngchuán in the comparative context.
- Modern punctuated editions on the Sìkù base.
Other points of interest
The Yì-versus-běncǎo (materia medica) comparison-trope — Táo Hóngjǐng’s “the Yì*‘s mistakes do not kill but the běncǎo’s mistakes do*”; Wáng Zōngchuán’s reversal “the běncǎo kills the body but the Yì kills the heart” — is one of the more striking single rhetorical figures in the entire Sòng Yì-corpus. The figure is widely cited in late-Míng Yì-Chán literature and may have circulated independently in the form of Wáng Zōngchuán’s reversal.
The Wáng Tōng ancestral claim — whether genealogically substantive or only doctrinally rhetorical — is the kind of late-Sòng Yì-reception detail that places the Tóngxī Yì zhuàn in a longer arc reaching back to the Suí-Táng Wénzhōngzǐ tradition. Wáng Tōng’s Yì-readings, preserved fragmentarily in the Wénzhōngzǐ zhōngshuō 文中子中說, would themselves repay comparison with Wáng Zōngchuán’s surviving thirty juan.