Zhōuyì běnyì tōngshì 周易本義通釋
Comprehensive Exposition of the Original Meaning of the Zhōu Changes by 胡炳文
About the work
The Zhōuyì běnyì tōngshì is a Yuán-dynasty subcommentary in twelve juàn devoted to Zhū Xī’s 朱熹 Zhōuyì běnyì 周易本義 (KR1a0036). Its author, Hú Bǐngwén 胡炳文 (1250–1333) of Wùyuán 婺源, was a leading Huīzhōu transmitter of the Zhū Xī school. Following the model of Zhū Xī’s Sìshū jízhù 四書集註, Hú gathered glosses from earlier and contemporary commentators and silently incorporated them into a running explication of Zhū’s text, paring an earlier and bulkier compilation he had titled Jīngyì 精義 down into the more compact “comprehensive exposition” preserved here.
Tiyao
Respectfully submitted: the Zhōuyì běnyì tōngshì in twelve juàn was composed by Hú Bǐngwén of the Yuán. Bǐngwén, zì Zhònghǔ, was a man of Wùyuán; the Xīn’ān wénxiàn zhì 新安文獻志 considers him one wholeheartedly committed to the learning of Master Zhū. As to the Changes of Fú Xī 伏羲 and King Wén 文王, the prior- and posterior-heaven configurations: Shào Yōng 邵雍 illuminated the diagrams of the prior-heaven order, while Chéng Yí 程頤 expounded the verbal commentary of the posterior-heaven order. Although Shào and Chéng were contemporaries and natives of the same region, their teachings did not converse with one another. It was only when Master Zhū collated and combined them that the principles and the numerologies were at last complete.
Bǐngwén in turn took up Master Zhū’s writings, weighed and corrected them, and consulted the Yì expositions of various schools to bring out their mutual illumination. He first titled the work Jīngyì 精義, but later, troubled by its prolixity, abridged and condensed it, renaming it Tōngshì 通釋. As commentators have remarked: without the Běnyì there is no means of seeing into the Yì; without the Tōngshì there is no means of fully drawing out the import of the Běnyì. Holding fast to the words of a single master and thereby setting aside the rest of the schools may indeed be unavoidably narrow; yet the byways of Sòng-era Yì studies were extraordinarily mixed — those who spoke of numerology often fell into ingenuity, those who spoke of principle often fell into forced reading. To find a path that is even, level, comprehensive, and clearly marked out, one must in the end take Master Zhū as the mean. Bǐngwén’s contribution as one of his “wing-feathers” cannot therefore be effaced.
Respectfully collated, the ninth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng (1781). Editor-in-chief: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief proofreader: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
(The catalog also preserves Hú’s own Tōngshì lì 通釋例, a four-point editorial preface explaining that the work follows the format of Zhū Xī’s Sìshū jízhù by silently absorbing earlier glosses, takes its title from the earlier Tōngshì of Huáng Gàn 黃幹 of Miǎnzhāi 勉齋, and, where Zhū Xī’s recorded sayings show that the Běnyì contains material he had not yet revised, follows Zhū’s stated intentions rather than the unrevised text.)
Abstract
Composition can be placed in the early fourteenth century: Hú Bǐngwén’s productive years fall in the late Sòng / early Yuán transition, and the Tōngshì presupposes both his own earlier Jīngyì and a mature engagement with the Zhū Xī school’s reception of the Běnyì. The bracket adopted here (1300–1333) covers the plausible window between Hú’s mid-career and his death. The Sìkù editors’ notice records the work’s transmission as essentially complete in twelve juàn, matching the Běnyì’s structure. Hú’s editorial method — borrowed openly from Zhū Xī’s own treatment of the Four Books — embeds glosses from earlier Yì commentators (often in single phrases) without naming them, on the principle that what is by Zhū’s standard correct should be incorporated as common stock rather than tagged with proprietary attributions. The Sìkù editors regard him as narrow in his exclusive devotion to Zhū but defend the work as a salutary corrective against the more extravagant numerological and principle-driven readings of the late Sòng. The text was preserved in the Wényuān gé 文淵閣 Sìkù quánshū and is cataloged in the Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào under Yì 易類. Hú’s parallel project on the Four Books, the Sìshū tōng 四書通, applies the same method.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located in Western languages. The work figures in Chinese-language histories of Yuán Yìxué (Zhū Bóhūi 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ 易學哲學史, vol. 3) as a representative example of the Huīzhōu Zhū Xī school’s Yì transmission.