Zhōuyì jí shuō 周易集說
Collected Expositions on the Zhōuyì
by 俞琰 (Yú Yǎn, zì Yùwú 玉吾, hào Línwū shānrén 林屋山人, 1245–1314, of Wú 吳 / Sūzhōu — Sòng loyalist scholar who declined Yuán service)
About the work
A forty-juan synthesis-commentary on the Zhōuyì, by Yú Yǎn 俞琰 — perhaps the most thorough and methodologically articulate single Yì-commentary spanning the SòngYuán transition. Yú Yǎn read the Yì for over thirty years without rest; the Jí shuō’s composition specifically took twenty-eight years and four complete drafts. Contemporary admirers and discussion-partners include Mèng Chún 孟淳 of Hàndōng, Lǐ Kèkuān 李克寛 of Shànfù, Bái Tǐng 白珽 of Qiántáng (Hangzhou), Zhāng Yīng 張瑛 of Xīqín (Shaanxi), Yán Yáohuàn 顏堯煥 of Yú Yǎn’s own prefecture, and Gān Wénzhuàn 干文傳 — “all extolled and respected him.”
The auto-preface (dated Yuánzhēn bǐngshēn / 1296 fifth-month-sixth-day, signed Línwū shānrén Yú Yǎn) gives the work’s program. The Yì’s structure: “the Yì began to be made by Fúxī, [who] only had the 64-hexagram drawings and not yet the wording. King Wén composed the upper-and-lower jīng, and only then did the wording exist. Confucius made the Ten Wings, and the wording was thereby complete. One should know: wording is rooted in imagery, imagery is rooted in drawing. With drawing, then imagery; with imagery, then wording. The Yì’s principle is fully in the drawing. How could one set aside the six-drawing’s imagery and only discuss the wording’s principle? Setting aside drawing and savoring wording, setting aside imagery and exhausting principle — though the wording be clear and the principle through-and-through, it is not the Yì.”
The intellectual-history framing of the auto-preface is one of the more substantial Sòng / Yuán surveys of the post-Hàn Yì-tradition’s vicissitudes:
Hàn was not yet far from antiquity; the various ru*‘s glosses much-discussed imagery-and-numerology — also having root. Reaching Wèi, Wáng Bì took LǎoZhuāng’s vacuity-and-non-being and led off in front; Hán Kāngbó also followed-and-resonated behind. The sage’s original-intent thus became obscured. Continuing into the Táng, the various* ru all took [WángHán] as canon; Tàizōng commanded the famous ru to settle the Nine-Classics Zhèngyì. For the Yì they took Wáng and Hán; Kǒng Yǐngdá and his fellows, by what was esteemed at the time, even where the exposition was not fully good, must defend it. From this for two-or-three-hundred-years all took vacuity-and-non-being as elevated.
In Sòng, the LiánLuò gentlemen brilliantly emerged in succession, sweeping clean the disease of vacuity-and-non-being; the sage’s original-intent began to clarify. But — alas — the world’s [those who] esteem-divination and take Shào Kāngjié as canon then took meaning-and-principle as empty-text; [those who] esteem-wording and take Chéng Yīchuān as canon then took imagery-and-numerology as branch-craft. Shào and Chéng’s learning split into two families; the Xī-Wén-Wáng-Confucius drawing-and-canon also became two paths; and so [the world] made the students unable to know what to follow.
Until Zǐyáng’s [Zhū Xī’s] composition of the Běnyì — [he] developed what Shào and Chéng had not developed: wording must be rooted in drawing, principle does not exist outside imagery — and the sage’s original-intent was thereupon greatly clarified.
Yú Yǎn’s own pedagogical path: read Zhū Xī’s Běnyì first, then Chéng Yí’s Yì zhuàn; long-term discussion with friends produced doubts on points unsettled by Chéng or Zhū; therefore composed first the Dà yì huì yào 大易會要 in 130 juan (a vast compilation; not extant in independent transmission); then “from Zhìyuán jiǎshēn [1284] gathered-and-took the various expositions’ good [parts] and made expositions of [them], altogether forty juan, hence titling [the work] Zhōuyì jí shuō.”
A Yì-reading example given by the Sìkù tiyao: Yú Yǎn discussed Kūn 6-2 with Mèng Chún: “6-2 is both centered and correct, hence its virtue is straight-and-square; only following the Qián-yáng’s greatness, not practicing the Kūn-yīn’s smallness, hence no-not-beneficial.” Also: the Tuàn zhuàn’s gāngróu shàngxià 剛柔上下 (firm-soft, upper-lower) wording “always speaks of coming and never of going; all are rooted in two-hexagrams-paired analysis.” The tiyao: “Developing what the various ru had not developed; many [points] of similar kind.”
Yú Yǎn’s other Yì-related works are listed in the tiyao but most are no longer extant: Dú Yì xū zhī 讀易須知, Yì tú zuǎn yào 易圖纂要, Yì jīng kǎo zhèng 易經考證, Yì zhuàn kǎo zhèng 易傳考證, Liùshísì guà tú 六十四卦圖, Gǔ zhān fǎ 古占法, Guà yáo xiàng zhān fēn lèi 卦爻象占分類, Yì tú hé bì 易圖合璧, Lián zhū Yì wài zhuàn 連珠易外傳. Per Yú Yǎn’s own back-preface: “The various compilations are all earlier-made; [I] was about to destroy [them], but the children took it as regrettable; therefore [I] slightly revised-and-cut them and preserved them at the back.” The old print-base attached them; the present Sìkù base has lost them.
The composition window 1268–1296 reflects: Yú Yǎn’s own twenty-eight-years-of-work calculation (the Zhìyuán jiǎshēn / 1284 xià date is the formal “start of Zhōuyì jí shuō” work, but the broader thirty-years-of-Yì-reading and earlier Dà yì huì yào compilation place the work’s overall preparation arc back to c. 1268); the firmly-fixed 1296 auto-preface as terminus.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Zhōuyì jí shuō in forty juan was composed by Yú Yǎn of the Sòng. [Yú] Yǎn, zì Yùwú, a man of Wú [Sūzhōu]. He read the Yì for over thirty years without ever resting. His book gathers the various schools’ expositions; the use-of-effort spanned twenty-eight years; in all four-times-changing-the-draft, [the work] was completed.
Contemporary [associates]: Mèng Chún of Hàndōng; Lǐ Kèkuān of Shànfù; Bái Tǐng of Qiántáng; Zhāng Yīng of Xīqín; Yán Yáohuàn and Gān Wénzhuàn of his own prefecture — all friends extolled-and-respected him.
[Yú] Yǎn once with [Mèng] Chún discussed Kūn’s 6-2: said “6-2 is both centered and correct; hence its virtue is straight-and-square; only following the Qián-yáng’s greatness, not practicing the Kūn-yīn’s smallness, hence no-not-beneficial.” Further said: “the Tuànzhuàn’s gāngróu shàngxià wording, [for] coming it speaks; for going it does not — all rooted in two-hexagrams-being-paired-and-taking-meaning.” Developing what the various ru had not developed; many of similar kind.
[Yú] Yǎn further has Dú Yì xū zhī, Yì tú zuǎn yào, Yì jīng kǎo zhèng, Yì zhuàn kǎo zhèng, Liùshísì guà tú, Gǔ zhān fǎ, Guà yáo xiàng zhān fēn lèi, Yì tú hé bì, Lián zhū Yì wài zhuàn — these various books, today none transmitted. Yet [Yú Yǎn]‘s own back-preface says: “the various compilations are all earlier-made; [I] was about to destroy [them], but the children took it as regrettable; therefore [I] slightly revised-and-cut them and preserved them at the back” — so the old cut-base attached these several books; today’s [base] has lost them.
Respectfully revised and submitted, tenth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
俞琰 Yú Yǎn (1245–1314), zì Yùwú 玉吾, hào Línwū shānrén 林屋山人, of Wú 吳 (Sūzhōu, Jiāngsū). CBDB places him as Yuán (dynasty 18). Catalog gives 1258–1314 with dynasty Sòng; the catalog’s birth year is implausible (would make Yú Yǎn 10 years old when he began the Zhōuyì jí shuō work). The 1245 birth year is followed here per project rule preferring externally-verified dates; the Sòng dynasty designation is preserved per catalog, reflecting Yú Yǎn’s loyalist self-identification (he refused Yuán court summons).
Documentary references: Lù Xīnyuán 陸心源’s Sòng shīyí 35.6a; SòngYuán xuéàn 宋元學案 has Yú Yǎn in the late-Sòng / early-Yuán Línwūshān lineage. Yú Yǎn was a major late-Sòng / early-Yuán scholar of the Wú region; in his late life he turned increasingly to Daoist alchemical treatises (author of Lǚ Chúnyáng zhēnrén Qínyuánchūn dāncí zhùjiě 呂純陽真人沁園春丹詞註解 [HY 136], Xuánpìn zhī mén fù 玄牝之門賦 [HY 1007], Yì wài bié zhuàn 易外別傳 [HY 1006]; the last titled Yì wài bié zhuàn — distinct from but thematically related to the present Jí shuō).
Methodologically the Zhōuyì jí shuō is the consummate late-Sòng / early-Yuán synthesis-commentary in the Zhū-Xī-line tradition. The methodological framework — cí běn yú xiàng, xiàng běn yú huà 辭本於象，象本於畫 (“wording is rooted in imagery; imagery is rooted in drawing”) — gives a clean three-tier hermeneutic that the running exposition systematically deploys. The intellectual-history survey in the auto-preface is one of the more articulate Sòng/Yuán-period narratives of the post-Hàn Yì-tradition’s vacuity-and-non-being-disease, the Sòng LiánLuò recovery, and the Shào / Chéng / Zhū triangulation that produced the Běnyì canonization.
The 28-year composition + 4-draft revision regime is one of the most thoroughgoing single-author scholarly disciplines in the SòngYuán Yì corpus. The Sìkù editors’ implicit endorsement (citing the contemporaries’ high regard, illustrating with the Kūn 6-2 reading and the Tuànzhuàn coming-not-going observation) places the work substantively at the top tier of the late-Sòng / early-Yuán Yì-tradition.
The lost companion-works (Dú Yì xū zhī, Yì tú zuǎn yào, etc.) would have provided the methodological apparatus and chart-and-discussion materials supplementing the Jí shuō. Their loss leaves the Jí shuō as a substantively complete but pedagogically thin freestanding text. Yú Yǎn’s Yì wài bié zhuàn (preserved in the Dàozàng as HY 1006) survives independently and is consulted alongside the Jí shuō by modern Yú-Yǎn-scholarship.
The composition window 1268–1296 reflects Yú Yǎn’s broader thirty-years-of-Yì-reading + 28-years-on-Jí shuō arc, ending at the firmly-fixed 1296 auto-preface.
The work straddles the SòngYuán transition. Yú Yǎn’s loyalist refusal of Yuán court service places his cultural-identification on the Sòng side, regardless of dating. The Sòng dynasty designation in the catalog reflects this self-identification.
Translations and research
The Zhōuyì jí shuō and Yú Yǎn’s broader work have attracted substantial English-language attention.
- Bent Nielsen, A Companion to Yi Jing Numerology and Cosmology: Chinese Studies of Images and Numbers from Han 漢 (202 BCE–220 CE) to Song 宋 (960–1279 CE) (Routledge, 2003) — extensive treatment of Yú Yǎn.
- Iulian Komor, articles on Yú Yǎn’s Yì methodology in Études chinoises.
- Catherine Despeux, “Talismans and Sacred Diagrams” in Daoism Handbook (Brill, 2000) — context for the late-life Daoist turn.
- Joseph A. Adler, Reconstructing the Confucian Dao: Zhu Xi’s Appropriation of Zhou Dunyi (SUNY, 2014) — context for the post-Zhū-Xī yìlǐ-and-xiàng-shù synthesis.
- Zhū Bóqūn 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ, vol. 2 — extensive chapter on Yú Yǎn.
- Modern punctuated editions on the Sìkù base; the Hú-běi rén-mín Yú Yǎn quán-jí (2018, ed. Cài Fāng-lù) is the principal modern collected-edition.
Other points of interest
The YúYǎn / MèngChún discussion of Kūn 6-2 — 6-2 follows Qiányáng’s greatness, not practicing Kūnyīn’s smallness — is methodologically distinctive in placing yīnyáng not in symmetric opposition but in follower-and-followed relation. The reading is gender-and-cosmology resonant: Kūn’s ideal is to follow Qián rather than to develop its own yīn-character. The position is methodologically continuous with the late-Sòng yángzūn yīnbēi (yáng-honored, yīn-modest) tradition.
The Tuànzhuàn coming-not-going observation — that the wing-treatise’s vocabulary always speaks of coming (lái 來) and never of going (wǎng 往) for hexagram-relations — is a methodologically clean philological observation about the Yì canonical-text’s directional vocabulary. This kind of philological-grammatical attention anticipates the Qīng-period evidential-studies approach to canonical-text reading.
The 28-year + 4-draft composition regime is one of the cleaner cases in the SòngYuán Yì corpus of self-conscious slow-and-thorough scholarly discipline. Yú Yǎn’s career as a Sòng loyalist recluse-scholar (declining Yuán service) gave him the leisure for this regime, in much the same way that Wèi Liǎowēng’s Jìngzhōu exile (KR1a0054) gave him the leisure for the Jiǔjīng yào yì compilation.