Zhōuyì cān yì 周易參義
Combined Meanings of the Zhōu Changes by 梁寅
About the work
A Yuán-dynasty Yìjīng commentary in twelve juàn by Liáng Yín 梁寅 (1303–1389) of Xīnyú 新喻, completed in zhì yuán 至元 6 = 1340. Its method, signalled in the title, is to cān 參 — combine, triangulate — Chéng Yí’s 程頤 Yìchuán 易傳 (which takes principle as its main concern) with Zhū Xī’s 朱熹 Běnyì 本義 (which takes symbol-and-divination as its main concern), reconciling and merging the two into a single integrated reading and supplementing them with selected later glosses. The text follows the gǔyì 古易 division of upper and lower scripture and the ten Wings — the order Zhū Xī had adopted from Lǚ Zǔqiān’s 呂祖謙 (呂祖謙) recovered base text. The Sìkù editors describe Liáng’s exposition as plainspoken, anchored in everyday human conduct, neither lapsing into metaphysical vacuity nor straining for symbolic correspondences.
Tiyao
Respectfully submitted: the Zhōuyì cān yì in twelve juàn was composed by Liáng Yín of the Yuán. Yín, zì Mèngjìng, was a man of Xīnyú. At the close of the Yuán he was summoned to be instructor at the Confucian school of the Jíqìng circuit, but declined on account of his aged parents. The following year, with arms rising, he withdrew into hiding to teach. At the start of the Míng he was summoned to compile the books of ritual and music; when the work was about to confer office, he again declined on grounds of illness and returned home, raising a hut at Mount Shímén 石門山. His pupils called him Liáng wǔjīng — Liáng of the Five Classics. He composed Shī yǎnyì 詩書演義, Zhōulǐ kǎozhù 周禮考註, Chūnqiū kǎoyì 春秋考義, and various other works. This Zhōuyì cān yì was completed in zhì yuán 至元 6 (1340).
The general import is that Master Chéng’s zhuàn takes principle as its main concern, while the Běnyì takes symbol as its main concern, and there is some divergence between them; he therefore fuses, balances, and combines them into one, and further draws on the various Confucians’ sayings to bring out their meaning. His division of the upper and lower scriptures and ten Wings entirely follows the ancient Yì sectional order — that is, the Lǚ Zǔqiān recension that Master Zhū used. His exposition of the canonical meaning is plain and close to people; in speaking of principle he does not stray into emptiness, in speaking of symbol he does not stray into forced correspondence. In the main he takes the matters of daily customary conduct as his ground for showing the trigger of advance and withdrawal, gain and loss; hence his exposition is concise, sharp, detailed, and clear, far different from the entanglements of other houses. Although he is unable to dissect the most refined microparticulars, when one judges his solidity and uprightness he is in any case unashamed to be called the discourse of a true Confucian.
Respectfully collated, the fourth month of the forty-fifth year of Qiánlóng (1780). 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 firmly dated by the Sìkù notice to zhì yuán 6 = 1340 — Liáng’s thirty-eighth year, well before the YuánMíng transition that would shape his later career. The dating bracket here therefore narrows to the year of completion. The work is among the more methodologically clean late-Yuán Yì-syntheses, taking as its explicit project the integration of the two principal Sòng commentaries — Chéng Yí’s Yìchuán and Zhū Xī’s Běnyì — that the more elaborate Hú Yīguì / Dǒng Zhēnqīng tradition had instead arranged in stratified layers (cf. KR1a0086).
The Sìkù editors’ assessment is moderately positive: they regard Liáng as honest, judicious, and clear, but stop short of treating him as an original Yì-thinker. The dating is also noteworthy for placing him in the same late-1340s generation as Qián Yìfāng (KR1a0087, 1346), Xiè Méng (KR1a0084), and Chén Yìngrùn (KR1a0088, 1346) — a moment in late-Yuán Yìxué when the Hú Yīguì school synthesis (Dǒng Zhēnqīng’s Huìtōng) had become available and four very different responses to it could appear within a half-decade.
Liáng’s broader career — declining office at the YuánMíng transition, working briefly on the Hóngwǔ ritual reform, then returning to teach at Mount Shímén — places him squarely in the Yuán-loyalist Confucian milieu of late-fourteenth-century Jiāngxī, alongside such figures as Sòng Lián 宋濂 (whom he assisted at the Hóngwǔ court).
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. Treated in Chinese surveys of Yuán Yìxué (Zhū Bóhūi 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ vol. 3) as a representative late-Yuán Chéng-Zhū synthesis. For Liáng’s broader Yuán-Míng transition career see Edward Farmer, Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation, and biographical entries in the Dictionary of Ming Biography under “Liang Yin.”
Other points of interest
The Cān yì’s method — integrating Chéng and Zhū rather than stratifying them — would prove the dominant pedagogical model in early Míng Yì learning, mediated through the Yǒnglè 永樂-period Wǔjīng dàquán 五經大全; in this respect Liáng is more representative of the future of Míng Yìxué than the more elaborate Yuán syntheses of Dǒng Zhēnqīng.