Yì tōng 易通
Yì-Penetration
by 趙以夫 Zhào Yǐfū (撰) — zì Yòngfǔ 用父, 1189–1256, of the Sòng imperial clan, resident in Chánglè 長樂, Fújiàn; jìnshì of Jiādìng 10 / 1217; finally Zīzhèngdiàn xuéshì 資政殿學士.
About the work
A six-juan late-Southern-Sòng Yì-treatise by Zhào Yǐfū 趙以夫, an imperial-clan high-official-scholar of the Lǐzōng period. Per the Mǐn shū 閩書 (Fújiàn provincial gazetteer): Zhào Yǐfū composed the Yì tōng in collaboration with 黄績 Huáng Jì of Pútián 莆田, “back-and-forth on its discussions”; the present base-text is the version Huáng Jì helped finalize. The work was prepared as an imperial-presentation manuscript (jìn chéng 進呈) and its auto-preface (dated Chúnyòu bǐngwǔ / 1246 summer) consistently uses the imperial-self-designation chén 臣 (“your servant”), ending with: “Not daring to keep it private, I will present it to His Majesty; perhaps it may contribute one ten-thousandth to the Imperial Learning’s bright continuance.”
The methodological program is articulated with rare clarity. The Yì is biàn yì 變易 (“variation”), but contains within itself a bù yì 不易 (“non-variation”). The Yì presents one master-pair of opposites: 動 (motion) and 靜 (stillness). All sixty-four hexagrams’ fundamentals reduce to this pair; King Wén’s yuánhēnglìzhēn and the Duke of Zhōu’s yòngjiǔ / yòngliù schemes are the two operative articulations.
The technical core: odd-and-even numbers (qíǒu 奇偶) 7 and 8 are non-variation; junction-and-overlap numbers (jiāozhòng 交重) 9 and 6 are variation. Hexagram-strokes are 7-and-8 (non-varying); line-strokes are 9-and-6 (varying). The hexagram is non-varying but contains variation — that is hēng 亨 (penetration). The line is varying but contains non-variation — that is zhēn 貞 (correctness).
The doctrine is then mapped onto practical action via the Hóngfàn’s zhān yòng èr, zhēn huǐ 占用二，貞悔 (“In divination there are two: zhēn and huǐ”). Zhēn = static; huǐ = dynamic. The four logical possibilities give the four practical decision-rules:
- Static auspicious, dynamic inauspicious — therefore do not act (wù yòng 勿用).
- Dynamic auspicious, static inauspicious — therefore do not abide-in-place (bù chǔ 不處).
- Both auspicious — go with what’s at hand (suí yù ér jiē kě 隨遇而皆可).
- Both inauspicious — nowhere to escape under Heaven-and-Earth.
The Sìkù tiyao praises this scheme as “on the sage’s intent in making the Yì — it can be called deeply piercing and clearly displaying (shēn qiè zhù míng 深切著明).” The doctrine is methodologically continuous with the ChéngZhū yìlǐ line, but the explicit articulation of non-varying-within-the-varying is Zhào Yǐfū’s specific contribution.
The auto-preface gives a vivid pedagogical autobiography. Zhào Yǐfū “in childhood-study years received the Yì from a teacher; for three rotations [36 years = 3 × 12-year cycles] still bewildered.” In xīnchǒu (Chúnyòu 1, 1241), living in retirement, “I set aside all commentaries, observed imagery and savored wording, and suddenly awakened.” The flash of insight: “My Master’s [Confucius’s] heart — was it not the heart of King Wén and the Duke of Zhōu? What he said had not a hair’s-breadth divergence.” From 1241 to 1246, the manuscript took shape — five years from the awakening to completion.
The composition window 1241–1246 reflects this 5-year arc.
Bibliographic state: per Hú Yīguì’s record, the Yì tōng originally circulated in six juan, plus an Huò wèn (Discussion of Questions), a Lèi lì (Categories-and-Examples), and a Tú xiàng (Charts-and-Imagery). The Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì lists 10 juan (counting all four parts together). Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo notes a Jùlètáng 聚樂堂 (Míng-period book-collector’s) book-catalog version listing 6 juan only — i.e., just the main Yì tōng without the supplementary three texts. The present Sìkù base is also 6 juan, lacking the Huò wèn / Lèi lì / Tú xiàng — “evidently transmitted from the Jìnglètáng [靜樂堂, possibly the same as 聚樂堂 with copyist’s variant] base.” The supplementary materials are no longer extant.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Yì tōng in six juan was composed by Zhào Yǐfū of the Sòng. [Zhào] Yǐfū, zì Yòngfǔ — Sòng imperial-clan member, resident at Chánglè. He passed jìnshì of Jiādìng 10 [1217]; rose in office to Zīzhèngdiàn xuéshì. The Mǐn shū says: “[Zhào] Yǐfū composed Yì tōng; Huáng Jì of Pútián engaged him back-and-forth on its discussions.” So this book is in fact what [Huáng] Jì revised-and-fixed.
[Zhào] Yǐfū’s auto-preface throughout self-designates chén; at the end says: “Not daring to keep it private, will present to His Majesty; perhaps it may contribute one ten-thousandth to the Imperial Learning’s bright continuance” — and so on. So this is the to-be-presented manuscript.
Hú Yīguì says: Yì tōng six juan, Huò wèn, Lèi lì, Tú xiàng. Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo says: Sòngzhì gives ten juan; further note: Jùlètáng shūmù gives six juan. Evidently the Sòngzhì counts continuously through Huò wèn, Lèi lì, Tú xiàng; the Jìnglètáng base-copy then has only the Yì tōng itself. The present base-copy is also only six juan and has no Huò wèn, Lèi lì, Tú xiàng — was it transmitted from the Jìnglètáng base?
The book’s main intent is to use the two meanings of non-variation and variation to clarify the standard for human-affairs’ motion and stillness. So [Zhào Yǐfū] says: “Odd-and-even are 7 and 8; junction-and-overlap are 9 and 6. Hexagram-strokes are 7-and-8 — non-variation. Line-strokes are 9-and-6 — variation. The hexagram is non-varying but contains variation within — that is called hēng. The line is varying but contains non-variation within — that is called zhēn. In the Hóngfàn divination there are two: zhēn and huǐ. zhēn — that is static; huǐ — that is dynamic. Therefore: static auspicious, dynamic inauspicious — then do not act; dynamic auspicious, static inauspicious — then do not abide-in-place; static-and-dynamic both auspicious — then go with what’s at hand and all is permitted; static-and-dynamic both inauspicious — then there is nowhere to escape between Heaven-and-Earth.”
On the sage’s intent in making the Yì, [the work] can be called deeply piercing and clearly displaying.
Respectfully revised and submitted, second month of the forty-second year of Qiánlóng [1777].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Zhào Yǐfū (趙以夫, 1189–1256), zì Yòngfǔ 用父, member of the Sòng imperial clan (zōngshì). Resident in Chánglè 長樂 (Fújiàn). Jìnshì of Jiādìng 10 (1217). Rose through fiscal-administrative posts under Lǐzōng and into State Council membership. CBDB’s Hartwell-table activity record: Liǎngzhè yùnpàn 兩浙運判 (1236), Tóngzhī Shūmìyuàn shì 同知樞密院事 (Vice Bureau Director of the Bureau of Military Affairs, 1238), prefect of Jiànníng 建寧 (1241). Final position: Zīzhèngdiàn xuéshì 資政殿學士.
Documentary references: Sòngshǐ 239.13b; Fújiàn tōngzhì 149.48b; Xiánchún Línān zhì 50.10b; Liú Kèzhuāng 劉克莊’s Wénjí 142.10a–19b (containing the funerary inscription).
The Yì tōng is the principal canonical-scholarly work attached to his name. It is methodologically distinctive within the late-Southern-Sòng Yì-corpus for its non-variation-within-variation doctrine and the elegant four-fold practical-decision schema derived from the Hóngfàn’s zhēnhuǐ division. The doctrine sits comfortably within the ChéngZhū yìlǐ mainline but with greater methodological articulation than is typical: the qíǒu (7/8) versus jiāozhòng (9/6) numerical distinction provides a quantitative anchor for the qualitative jìng/dòng distinction.
The collaborative-revision relationship with Huáng Jì 黄績 of Pútián is one of the more documentary-clear examples of late-Sòng official-scholarly cooperative editorship: Zhào Yǐfū wrote, Huáng Jì critiqued and helped finalize, and the resulting work was prepared as a court-presentation manuscript.
The work’s status as an imperial-presentation document (chén throughout the auto-preface; offering-to-His-Majesty closing) makes it different in genre from the typical Sòng Yì-commentary. The jìn chéng genre had specific protocols — formal address, court-appropriate diction, focus on practical-political-decision applicability rather than abstract metaphysical exposition. The Yì tōng’s clear-and-applicable four-fold decision schema fits this genre well.
The composition window 1241–1246 reflects the auto-preface’s reported five-year arc from the xīnchǒu (1241) retirement-and-awakening to the bǐngwǔ (1246) completion.
Modern scholarship treats the Yì tōng as a representative late-Southern-Sòng Dàoxué-mainline Yì synthesizer, executed by an imperial-clan high-official. The doctrinal contribution — the non-variation-within-variation distinction articulated through the Hóngfàn’s zhēnhuǐ — is methodologically clean and was later widely cited in the YuánMíng Yì tradition.
Translations and research
No European-language translation.
- Zhū Bóqūn 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ, vol. 2 — Zhào Yǐfū treated as a late-Sòng yìlǐ synthesizer.
- Wáng Tiějūn 王鐵均, Sòngdài Yìxué shǐ — chapter on the late-Lǐzōng-period Yì tradition.
- Liào Mínghuó 廖名活, articles in Zhōuyì yánjiū on the non-variation-within-variation doctrine.
- Modern punctuated editions on the Sìkù base.
Other points of interest
The auto-preface’s pedagogical narrative — thirty-six years bewildered, then sudden awakening upon putting away all commentaries, then five years’ substantive composition — is one of the more vivid Sòng-period testimonies to the commentary-overload-then-direct-reading hermeneutic that the late-Lǐzōng-period Sòng-period Dàoxué generation increasingly preferred. The arc is similar to (and possibly influenced by) 李心傳 Lǐ Xīnchuán’s parallel narrative in KR1a0050.
The four-fold jìngdòng / zhēnhuǐ decision schema — practically usable for any concrete situation — anticipates much of the late-Yuán and Míng Yì-as-decision-procedure literature. The schema’s elegance lies in its exhaustiveness (every situation falls into one of the four categories) and its practical clarity (each category has an unambiguous action-rule).
The supplementary materials (Huò wèn, Lèi lì, Tú xiàng) — lost in transmission, preserved only in the Sòngzhì’s 10-juan total — would have provided the scholastic apparatus, classificatory examples, and chart-and-image illustrations for the methodological core. Their loss leaves the present 6-juan as a methodologically articulated but pedagogically thin core; modern scholarship cannot fully reconstruct Zhào Yǐfū’s complete project.