Yì jīngyùn dàyì 易精蘊大義
The Great Meaning of the Refined Treasures of the Changes by 解蒙
About the work
A late-Yuán Yìjīng commentary in twelve juàn by Xiè Méng 解蒙 of Jíshuǐ 吉水 (Jí’ān 吉安, Jiāngxī 江西). The work is structured as a collected commentary: under each Tuàn 彖 and line statement, Xiè gathers earlier expositors’ glosses and then closes with his own elucidation, marked with the formula “Méng wèi” 蒙謂. Although originally written for the examination market — the work explicitly serves chǎngwū jīngyì 場屋經義 candidates — the Sìkù editors judge it a competent and well-distilled compilation that brings out essentials. Xiè follows the practice of Zhū Xī’s Shī jí zhuàn 詩集傳 in citing earlier glosses without attribution, so the named provenance of his quotations is largely lost; the Sìkù editors note that this material is, in any case, the residue of pre-Yuán scholastic exegesis. The work was already listed as lost in the early Qīng (Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo), and was recovered by the Sìkù editors substantially intact from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典, with only seven hexagrams and parts of Jìn 晉 missing.
Tiyao
Respectfully submitted: the Yì jīngyùn dàyì in twelve juàn was composed by Xiè Méng of the Yuán. Méng, zì Qiúwǒ 求我, was a man of Jíshuǐ; the Jiāngxī tōngzhì gives his zì as Láiwǒ 來我, but this is a graphic error from the similarity of forms. In tiānlì yǐsì (1329) he sat the Jiāngxī provincial examination together with his elder brother’s son [Xiè] Zǐshàng 子尚, zì Guānwǒ 觀我, and the two were both at that time famed for their adeptness with the Yì. Zǐshàng’s Zhōuyì yìyí tōngshì has long been without a transmitted copy. Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo lists Méng’s book here likewise with the note “lost.” On checking, the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 still carries much of Méng’s work: apart from the seven hexagrams Yù 豫, Suí 隨, Wúwàng 无妄, Dàzhuàng 大壯, Kuí 睽, Jiǎn 蹇, Zhōngfú 中孚, and the last four lines of Jìn 晉, all the rest is complete in sense and clearly preserved.
His method, under the Tuàn and line statements, is to gather earlier Confucians’ discussions and at the end to bring out his own meaning, distinguishing the latter with the two characters “Méng wèi” 蒙謂. Although the work was originally composed for the examination market, in synthesizing the multitude of voices it is well able to grasp their essentials. Whatever he glosses on his own authority is also concise and clear: in his note on Yí 頤 6/3 he writes, “the way of nourishment takes quietude as the absence of fault. Lines two and three are of the active body, hence inverting and brushing aside is inauspicious; lines four and five are of the still body, hence inverting and brushing aside is also auspicious — three lines of Zhèn 震 are inauspicious, three lines of Gèn 艮 are auspicious — this much can be seen.” On Héng 恒 he writes, “Héng has two senses. To benefit from rectitude is the constancy of unchanging — that whereby the constant is embodied; to benefit from there being somewhere to go is the constancy of unceasing — that whereby change is exhausted. Heaven and earth and the sage are able to be constant precisely because they are able to exhaust change.” Although the meanings he sets out have their roots largely in earlier writers, his exegesis is sharply illuminated and is genuinely of use to later students.
As for the various commentators he quotes: he often does not give the surname. This follows Master Zhū’s example in the Shī jí zhuàn. Although it is now impossible to trace each citation’s source completely, all such material is in the end the residual discourse of the various classical masters of the period before Sòng and Yuán. We have respectfully arranged the text in order, corrected its errors and corruptions, and divided it into twelve juàn, recording it in the canon. Xiè Jìn’s 解縉 Chūnyǔ táng jí refers to this book as Yìjīng jīngyì; the Jīngyì kǎo refers to it as Zhōuyì jīngyùn; what the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn heads the text with is in fact “Xiè Méng’s Zhōuyì jīngyùn dàyì.” The two earlier sources have both made occasional errors of memory; we now adopt this title as authoritative, so as not to lose its proper name.
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.
Abstract
Xiè Méng sat the Jiāngxī provincial examination in tiānlì yǐsì 天厯乙巳 (1329); the work was therefore composed at some point thereafter, and certainly before the fall of the Yuán in 1368 — these dates form the bracket adopted here. The work belongs to the late-Yuán examination Yìxué tradition: it is a jíshì-style 集釋 commentary aimed at producing usable readings for examination candidates, structurally close to similar Yuán compilations on the Four Books and the Shī. Its preservation profile is unusually clear: by Zhū Yízūn’s day (late seventeenth century) it had vanished from independent circulation, and was only recovered by the Sìkù editors from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 — itself one of the Sìkù project’s most important compilation-recovery efforts.
The work’s textual identity — including the disagreement among Xiè Jìn (Míng), Zhū Yízūn (early Qīng), and the Dàdiǎn itself over the title — is settled by the Sìkù editors in favor of the Dàdiǎn form Zhōuyì jīngyùn dàyì 周易精蘊大義; the printed Sìkù recension preserves the title as Yì jīngyùn dàyì 易精蘊大義, dropping the Zhōu prefix.
Doctrinally, Xiè works within the Chéng–Zhū tradition with a notable inclination toward symbol-and-line analysis (the cited gloss on Yí uses the Zhèn-Gèn component-trigram contrast to read the line statements), but follows the Shī jí zhuàn in suppressing attribution of earlier sources. The Sìkù notice’s praise of his exegetical clarity is on the moderate end of Sìkù judgments and probably accurate.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature in Western languages located. The work is occasionally cited in Chinese surveys of Yuán Yìxué (Zhū Bóhūi 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ vol. 3) as a representative late-Yuán examination commentary.
Other points of interest
The recovery profile is itself instructive: the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn served as the principal repository through which the Sìkù editors restored numerous lost or fragmentary Yuán Yì works, of which this is among the better-preserved exemplars. The hexagram-shaped lacunae of the Sìkù recension (seven specific hexagrams missing, plus the tail of Jìn) reflect the Dàdiǎn’s own losses by the late eighteenth century rather than any intrinsic property of Xiè’s original.