Zhōuyì yáobiàn yìyùn 周易爻變易縕
The Hidden Treasures of the Changes through Line-Variation in the Zhōu Yì by 陳應潤
About the work
A late-Yuán Yìjīng commentary by Chén Yìngrùn 陳應潤 (zì Zéyún 澤雲) of Tiāntái 天台, completed at Tóngjiāng 桐江 around 1345–1346 with a preface by Huáng Jìn 黃溍 dated zhìzhèng bǐngxū 至正丙戌 (1346). The catalog gives the extent as eight juàn; the Sìkù notice says four juàn — a discrepancy in the surviving recensions. Methodologically it is the first decisive Yuán-period revolt against the Chén Tuán 陳摶 chart-and-numerology synthesis: Chén rejects the xiàntiān 先天 hexagram-positions of Shào Yōng 邵雍 as a misreading of the Shuōguà’s Tiāndì dìngwèi passage, dismisses Zhōu Dūnyí’s 周敦頤 wújítàijí metaphysics as ungrounded in the Yì, and treats Shào’s elaborate diagrams as alchemy mistaken for canon. In their place he restores the Shuōguà’s Dì chū hū Zhèn 帝出乎震 passage as the sole authority for hexagram positions, takes the Tàijí–Liǎngyí–Sìxiàng schema as referring straightforwardly to heaven-and-earth and to the four directions, and reads the Yì through a yáo biàn 爻變 (line-variation) method modeled on the Chūnqiū zuǒzhuàn’s formula “such-and-such hexagram changes to such-and-such hexagram” — and likely on Jiāo Gàn’s 焦贛 Hàn-period Yìlín 易林.
Tiyao
Respectfully submitted: the Zhōuyì yáo biàn yì yùn in four juàn was composed by Chén Yìngrùn of the Yuán. Yìngrùn was a man of Tiāntái; his life-particulars are not fully known. Huáng Jìn’s 黃溍 collected works contain a preface to this book, which gives his zì as Zéyún and records that in the Yánvyòu period he rose from being a Confucian instructor in Huángyán to a prefectural clerk; some years later he was reassigned as a clerk in Míng[zhōu] 明; in zhìzhèng yǐyǒu (1345) he was reassigned as a guest-secretary at Tóngjiāng. The first juàn carries Chén’s own self-preface dated zhìzhèng bǐngxū (1346) — editorial note: Zhū Yízūn’s 經義考 records this preface as dated zhìzhì bǐngxū — but zhìzhì contains rénxū and not bǐngxū, the cycle and era do not agree; moreover Huáng Jìn’s preface itself is dated zhìzhèng bǐngxū, and inside it Huáng says he served as deputy magistrate of Nínghǎi in the Yánvyòu period and went on to other offices, ending with retirement at Jīnhuá 金華; Huáng was a Yánvyòu 2 jìnshì, and from there to the zhìzhì rénxū year (1322) is only six years — far too soon for him to have been “begging old age” — so this must be an error in the Jīngyì kǎo blocks, not in the present transmitted copy. The work was thus completed at Tóngjiāng.
The general import of the book is that the talk of mysterious metaphysical principles falls into Lǎo and Zhuāng, that the prior-heaven diagrams are mixed with the doctrines of the Cāntóng qì alchemy and its furnace-and-fire, and that all such are not the original import of the Yì. He therefore, in his discussion of the eight trigrams, takes only the Shuōguà passage Dì chū hū Zhèn as the canonical positions of the eight trigrams, and takes the passage Tiāndì dìngwèi — which Master Shào identifies as the prior-heaven positions — as the function of the eight trigrams in mutual interaction (xiāng cuò), holding that King Wén in his elaboration of the Yì could not possibly have inverted Fú Xī’s text in self-contradiction. In his discussion of the Tàijí, Liǎngyí, and Sìxiàng, he takes Heaven and Earth as the Liǎngyí and the four directions as the Sìxiàng, holding that before the eight trigrams have been divided there cannot already exist the milfoil-divination method partitioning yīn and yáng into great and small. As to Master Zhōu’s [Dūnyí’s] doctrine of wújí, tàijí, the two breaths and the five phases — that, he holds, is one school’s discourse and not appropriate for explaining the Yì. From the Sòng onward, the resolute breaker of Chén Tuán’s learning begins precisely with Yìngrùn.
The annotated text uses the Wáng Bì 王弼 base; only the upper and lower scriptural sections of the sixty-four hexagrams are included. Following the Chūnqiū zuǒzhuàn’s formula “such-and-such hexagram changes to such-and-such hexagram” — for instance, Qián’s shift to Gòu 姤 yields “the dragon submerged, do not yet act”; Qián’s shift to Kūn yields “the seeing of the multitude of dragons without head: auspicious,” and so on — he therefore titles the work Yáobiàn 爻變 (Line-Variation). His statement that one hexagram may transform into sixty-four hexagrams and the six lines may transform into three hundred eighty-four lines is precisely the format of the Hàn-dynasty Jiāo Gàn 焦贛 Yìlín 易林; this too is the pushing-back of the meaning of variation-and-penetration to the ancient divination method, and is not idle conjecture. Each line is in many cases corroborated by historical event. Although such corroborations are not invariably apt, the use of the hexagram-symbol to manifest fortune and misfortune, and to settle advance and withdrawal, does in fact accord with the sage’s intent in making the Yì and bequeathing instruction. Among Sòng-style Yì expositions of the Yuán, this work is conspicuously one of those that stand out in their own right.
Respectfully collated, the third month of the forty-fourth year of Qiánlóng (1779). 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
Composition is dated by both prefaces (Chén’s self-preface and Huáng Jìn’s introductory preface) to zhìzhèng bǐngxū 至正丙戌 (1346); Chén indicates he had been working on the project for two or three decades, with the manuscript drafted in spare time at Tóngjiāng after his reassignment there in 1345. The dating bracket here therefore runs 1345–1346.
The work’s significance is principally polemical and methodological. Chén’s twin moves — restoring Dì chū hū Zhèn as the canonical authority for hexagram positions while reading Tiāndì dìngwèi as a description of trigram interaction rather than a hidden prior-heaven diagram, and reactivating Hàn-period Yìlín-style yáo biàn as a reading method — together constitute the most consistent late-Yuán dissent from the Chén Tuán / Shào Yōng / Zhōu Dūnyí synthesis that had become orthodox. The Sìkù editors recognize this and explicitly label him as the first Sòng-after scholar to “decisively break with the learning of Chén Tuán” (毅然破陳摶之學者自應潤始). His work prefigures the more thorough Qīng kǎozhèng dismantling of the chart-tradition by Hú Wèi 胡渭’s Yìtú míng biàn 易圖明辨, which the Sìkù editors plainly admire.
The Sìkù editors’ textual notice on the dating of Chén’s self-preface is also of independent value: by triangulating Huáng Jìn’s career particulars, the cycle-and-era system, and the Yuán jìnshì records, they correct Zhū Yízūn’s misdated reading of the preface (zhìzhì for zhìzhèng) and demonstrate that Zhū’s error is in the Jīngyì kǎo blocks, not the transmitted Sìkù copy. The catalog meta lists eight juàn; the Sìkù notice and most other witnesses give four — the discrepancy is unresolved here.
Huáng Jìn’s preface adds the small but historically valuable detail that Chén had earlier published a poetry collection (Yěqù zhī shí 野趣之什) that Zhào Mèngfǔ 趙孟頫 (Zǐáng 子昻) had prefaced, and a yǒngshǐ 詠史 cycle prefaced by Yuán Mì 袁桷 (Bózhǎng 伯長) — fixing his place in the late-Yuán Tiāntái–Jīnhuá literary network.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. Treated in Chinese surveys of late-Yuán Yìxué (Zhū Bóhūi 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ vol. 3) as the principal late-Yuán dissenting voice against the Chén Tuán chart-tradition, and as a precursor of the Qīng kǎozhèng recovery of pre-Sòng Yì-reading methods.
Other points of interest
The work’s title — Yáo biàn yì yùn 爻變易縕 — is itself a programmatic statement: the “hidden treasures” (yùn 縕, derived from the Dàzhuàn’s Qián Kūn qí Yì zhī yùn yé 乾坤其易之縕耶) are precisely those things made visible only when one reads the Yì through line-variation. Chén’s restoration of the Hàn Yìlín method is among the earliest substantial post-Sòng acknowledgments of the technical-divinatory dimension of the Yì’s pre-imperial transmission.