Xīxī Yì shuō 西谿易說
Master Xīxī’s Yì-Discussions
by 李過 Lǐ Guò (撰), zì Jìbiàn 季辨, hào Xīxī 西谿, fl. late twelfth century, of Xìnghuà 興化 in Fújiàn
About the work
A twelve-juan late-Southern-Sòng Yì-commentary by Lǐ Guò — a Fújiàn scholar who, late in life, lost his sight and continued his Yì-meditations “with closed mind, silently seeking,” unable to have teachers or friends correct his readings. The work is methodologically ambitious — and methodologically contentious — combining a substantial introductory discussion (xù shuō 序說) on the gǔYì (ancient-Yì) historical-textual tradition with a passage-by-passage exposition of the Shàng jīng and Xià jīng (the canonical text in two parts), without coverage of the Xìcí and below.
The Sìkù tiyao records a substantial auto-preface dated Qìngyuán wùwǔ (1198) — preserved in 董真卿 Dǒng Zhēnqīng’s Zhōuyì huìtōng — in which Lǐ Guò says the work took jǐ èrshí nián 几二十年 (“nearly twenty years”) to complete. The auto-preface is missing in the present Sìkù base-text, which “has many missing characters” from accumulated copying errors. The Sìkù base is therefore “not the [substantively complete] base [Dǒng] Zhēnqīng saw.”
The xù shuō (introductory) juan presents an integrated late-Sòng Yì-historical-textual reconstruction:
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Yì = principle (lǐ 理). “Principle exists before things; therefore there is this principle and then there is this thing; without this principle there is no this thing. Before there was Heaven-and-Earth and the ten-thousand things, there was already the principle of Heaven-and-Earth-and-ten-thousand-things — that is what is called the Way is prior to the Tàijí.” This is the Dàoxué mainstream’s lǐ qián yú qì 理先於氣 doctrinal position, applied as a hermeneutic for the Yì.
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Multiple Yì traditions in succession. Citing Shānhǎi jīng: Fúxī obtained the Hé tú and made the Liánshān; Huángdì obtained the Hé tú and made the Guīzàng (note: Lǐ Guò departs here from the conventional Hsia / Shang / Zhōu attribution); Lièshānshì obtained the Hé tú and made the Zhōu yì. The Hé tú therefore did not “emerge only in Fúxī’s age” but emerged whenever a sage emerged.
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Fúxī drew sixty-four hexagrams, not just eight. Lǐ Guò argues against the Wáng-Bì-line consensus that Fúxī drew only the Bā guà and that hexagram-doubling occurred later (variously assigned to Shénnóng, Yǔ, or King Wén). His evidence: the Xìcí’s thirteen-instrument-from-image account already names hexagrams (Yì, Suí, Huàn, etc.) at the Fúxī / Shénnóng / Huángdì stages, before any conventional doubler appears.
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Documentary discovery: the Sān fén 三墳. Lǐ Guò makes extended use of the Sān fén text — three “fén (mound) writings” — recovered from a peasant’s house in Tángzhōu 唐州 by 毛漸 Máo Jiàn in Yuánfēng era (1078–1085). The three are: Shān fén (Tiānhuáng Fú-Xī’s Liánshān Yì), Qì fén (Rénhuáng Shénnóng’s Guīzàng Yì), and Xíng fén (Dìhuáng Huángdì’s Qián-Kūn Yì). Each is described as having eight base-hexagrams with seven sub-hexagrams under each — totaling eight-times-eight = sixty-four. Lǐ Guò gives detailed lists. Modern scholarship treats the Sān fén as a Sòng-period forgery; the Sìkù editors and 馮椅 Féng Yǐ (Hòuzhāi Yì xué 厚齋易學 KR1a0046) already in the Sòng-Yuán transition treated Lǐ Guò’s reliance on it as a methodological lapse.
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Documentary recovery: the surviving Guīzàng. Lǐ Guò gives substantial extracts from a Guīzàng (the second of the Sān Yì) text he claims still circulated — including a Guīzàng chūjīng 歸藏初經 and Guīzàng qímǔ jīng 歸藏齊母經 with hexagram-name lists. Modern excavated bamboo-strip Guīzàng materials (Wángjiātái 王家臺, 1993) make some of Lǐ Guò’s preservation historically recuperable, though the relationship of his Guīzàng citations to the excavated text remains under study.
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Yáocí is by King Wén, not by the Duke of Zhōu. This is one of Lǐ Guò’s most polemical positions. He argues that during King Wén’s Yǒulǐ 羑里 imprisonment, his “remaking” of the Yì extended to both guàcí and yáocí; the Duke of Zhōu was, at most, an infant, and “could not have presumed to enter into King Wén’s Yì.” His evidence: the explicitly modest expressions (“the king uses sacrifice at the western mountain” / Wáng yòng hēng yú Xīshān; “the king uses sacrifice at Mount Qí” / Wáng yòng hēng yú Qíshān) — Lǐ Guò argues that if these were by the Duke of Zhōu, the Duke would be impertinently “displaying his father’s [supposed] regicidal intent,” which “could not be filial-piety arrived-at.”
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Three-Tradition Calendar and the opening hexagram of each Yì. Lǐ Guò argues that the difference among the three Yì’s opening hexagrams (Liánshān opens with Gèn 艮; Guīzàng opens with Kūn 坤; Zhōu yì opens with Qián 乾) reflects the sāntǒng 三統 (three-systems) calendrical doctrine. Xià established the yín month as year-start (the réntǒng 人統, human-system); the 24-position division places Gèn connected to yín — hence Liánshān opens with Gèn. Shāng established the chǒu month as year-start (the dìtǒng 地統, earth-system); Kūn is earth — hence Guīzàng opens with Kūn. Zhōu established the zǐ month as year-start (the tiāntǒng 天統, heaven-system); Qián is heaven — hence Zhōu yì opens with Qián. This is one of the cleanest Sòng-period readings of the three-Yì’s structural difference.
The Sìkù tiyao’s overall judgment of the xù shuō is mixed but acknowledges its substantive contributions; the editors’ principal complaint is Lǐ Guò’s reliance on the Sān fén.
The hexagram-by-hexagram exposition, by contrast, is criticized for “splitting up the canonical text” (gē liè jīng wén 割裂經文). Example: Qián hexagram’s initial line, “Qián lóng wù yòng” 潛龍勿用 (“submerged dragon, do not use”), is followed in Lǐ Guò’s text by:
- Xiàng yuē: “Qián lóng wù yòng, yáng zài xià yě”
- Wén yán yuē: “Qián lóng wù yòng, xià yě”
- “Qián lóng wù yòng, yángqì qián cáng”
- “Chūjiǔ Qián lóng wù yòng, hé wèi yě? Zǐ yuē…”
— that is, all the Confucius-tradition glosses on this single line are pulled from their respective wing-positions and assembled into one block. The Sìkù verdict: “hopelessly muddled and topsy-turvy, almost untrainable” (gǔ luàn diāndǎo, dài bù kě xùn 汩亂顛倒，殆不可訓). 胡一桂 Hú Yīguì of the Yuán especially attacked this on procedural grounds.
The Sìkù tiyao concludes with rare biographical sympathy: “[Lǐ] Guò late in life lost his sight; with closed-mind silently sought; could not have his teachers and friends correct him; what he attained alone, [is] perhaps not free from being forcefully self-determined; closing his sight and turning back his hearing, his use of mind was sharp and earnest. He also often opens up what earlier ru had not. His crime of disordering the canon, and his merit of glossing the canon, roughly speaking can balance each other.”
The composition window 1180–1198 reflects: the auto-preface’s “nearly twenty years” working-back from the firm 1198 terminus.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Xīxī Yì shuō in twelve juan was composed by Lǐ Guò of the Sòng. [Lǐ] Guò, zì Jìbiàn, a man of Xìnghuà. Dǒng Zhēnqīng’s Zhōuyì huìtōng says: this book has [Lǐ] Guò’s auto-preface in Qìngyuán wùwǔ [1198], saying “almost twenty years for completion.” The present base-text is missing its preface, and the body of the book also has many missing characters — for the transmission-copying has accumulated errors, and it is not the base [Dǒng] Zhēnqīng saw.
The book opens with a xù shuō of one juan; divides into upper and lower jīng with passage-by-passage exposition; does not extend to the Xìcí and below. 馮椅 Féng Yǐ’s Yì xué praises it as much-clarifying, but criticizes it for taking 毛漸 Máo Jiàn’s Sān fén as authoritative. Further, [the work] much splits up canonical text. As: at Qián hexagram’s initial line “Qián lóng wù yòng,” he immediately follows with Xiàng yuē “Qián lóng wù yòng, yáng zài xià yě”; then with Wén yán yuē “Qián lóng wù yòng, xià yě”, “Qián lóng wù yòng, yángqì qián cáng”, “Chūjiǔ Qián lóng wù yòng, hé wèi yě? Zǐ yuē… at this point therefore the gentleman does not use” — hopelessly muddled-and-topsy-turvy, almost untrainable. He was also greatly mocked by Hú Yīguì for this.
His arguing the yáocí as composed by King Wén — saying that the earlier ru’s taking Xīshān and similar characters as referring to King Wén is far-fetched — but expounding Míngyí hexagram with the upper three lines as Jīzǐ’s affair and lower three lines as King Wén’s affair — therefore is again not free from self-disordering of his own example.
For [Lǐ] Guò late in life lost his sight; with closed-mind silently sought; could not have teachers and friends correct him. What he obtained alone is perhaps not free from being forcefully self-determined. Closing his sight and turning back his hearing, his use of mind was sharp and earnest, and he also often opens up what earlier ru had not. His crime of disordering the canon and his merit of glossing the canon, roughly counted, suffice to balance.
Respectfully revised and submitted, tenth 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
Lǐ Guò (李過, fl. late twelfth century; lifedates not securely recorded), zì Jìbiàn 季辨, hào Xīxī 西谿, of Xìnghuà 興化 in Fújiàn (modern Pútián / Xiānyóu region, central Fújiàn). CBDB id 40716; no lifedates, but a note registering the 1198 auto-preface’s “almost twenty years to complete” claim, placing the start of work c. 1180. Career trajectory unclear — the tiyao’s emphasis on his late-life blindness and isolation suggests an essentially private scholarly career.
Methodologically the work is one of the most ambitious gǔYì (ancient-Yì) historical-textual reconstructions of the entire Sòng tradition. Its methodological agenda overlaps with Wú Rénjié’s Gǔ Zhōuyì / Yì tú shuō program (KR1a0042) and with Lǚ Zǔqiān’s Gǔ Zhōuyì recension (KR1a0043), but Lǐ Guò extends substantially beyond either by:
a. Fully developing the Sān fén / Guīzàng documentary materials as evidence for Fú-xī-period 64-hexagram structure. b. Articulating the sāntǒng calendrical reading of the three-Yì’s opening hexagrams. c. Defending King-Wén-only authorship of both guàcí and yáocí. d. Anchoring the Yì-Way ontologically in lǐ 理 (principle) prior to qì 氣 (matter-energy) — the standard ChéngZhū Dàoxué doctrinal position.
The Sān fén problem is the work’s most serious methodological liability. The Sān fén text was already widely regarded as a Sòng-forgery in Lǐ Guò’s own day; Féng Yǐ (Hòuzhāi Yì xué KR1a0046) and Hú Yīguì (Yuán) both criticized Lǐ Guò’s reliance on it. Modern scholarship has confirmed the Sān fén’s late-Northern-Sòng forgery status. However, Lǐ Guò’s Guīzàng citations may preserve materials closer to the genuine ancient Guīzàng tradition; recent excavated-text studies (the 1993 Wángjiātái Guīzàng bamboo-strips) have begun to make Lǐ Guò’s preservation historically recuperable in part.
The compositional structure — a 1-juan substantive xù shuō followed by 11 juan of canonical exposition — is unusual for the Southern Sòng. The xù shuō alone is a major theoretical document; the canonical exposition is more methodologically problematic.
The auto-positioning closure of the xù shuō — Confucius’s “if I had a few more years to study the Yì I might have no big mistake” reading: “the ‘no big mistake’ is no big mistake against King Wén’s heart; the sage does not dare to say he has fully obtained King Wén’s heart, hence ‘no big mistake’ is a humble saying” — is one of the more theologically resonant Sòng-period readings of this famous passage. It locates the Yì-canon’s ultimate ground not in cosmological abstractions but in King Wén’s historical heart-as-realized-Way.
The composition window 1180–1198 follows the auto-preface’s twenty-years-of-work claim back from the firm 1198 terminus.
Translations and research
No European-language translation. The work is principally treated for its xù shuō in modern gǔ-Yì and Guīzàng scholarship.
- Edward Shaughnessy, Unearthing the Changes: Recently Discovered Manuscripts of the Yi Jing and Related Texts (Columbia, 2014) — relevant for the Wángjiātái Guīzàng and its relation to Lǐ Guò’s preserved citations.
- Kjeld Schmidt-Madsen, Jingfang Yixue: A Reconstruction of the Yixue of Jing Fang (forthcoming) — context for the post-Hàn xiàngshù tradition.
- Zhū Bóqūn 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ, vol. 2 — Lǐ Guò treated as a gǔ-Yì reconstructionist.
- Wáng Tiějūn 王鐵均, Sòngdài Yìxué shǐ — chapter on Lǐ Guò and the Sān fén problem.
- Liào Mínghuó 廖名活, articles on Lǐ Guò’s xù shuō in Zhōuyì yánjiū.
- Modern punctuated editions on the Sìkù base.
Other points of interest
The sāntǒng-calendar reading of the three-Yì’s opening hexagrams (Liánshān/Gèn via Xià yín-month start, Guīzàng/Kūn via Shāng chǒu-month start, Zhōu yì/Qián via Zhōu zǐ-month start) is a methodologically clean piece of Yì-and-calendar synthesis. It anticipates by centuries the systematic Yì-and-calendar work of the late-Míng and Qīng evidential-studies tradition.
The blindness narrative — Lǐ Guò losing his sight late in life and continuing to compose by xīnsuǒ 心索 (heart-search) without teacher-friends to correct him — is a small documentary monument of late-Sòng Yì-circle scholarly conditions. The Sìkù editors’ sympathetic verdict (“his crime and his merit roughly counterbalance”) is one of the more humane judgments in the entire Sìkù tíyào corpus.
Lǐ Guò’s argument against Duke-of-Zhōu authorship of the yáocí is methodologically interesting even where one rejects his alternative King-Wén-only attribution. He reasons from filial-piety considerations (the Duke would not have published his father’s putative regicidal intent), from chronological constraints (the Duke was an infant during King Wén’s Yǒulǐ imprisonment), and from textual analysis (the Wáng yòng hēng yú Xīshān / Qíshān passages should not be read as referring to King Wén himself). Modern textual scholarship on the yáocí’s authorship has not generally followed Lǐ Guò’s specific reattribution, but his methodological rigor is recognizable.