Qǐméng yìjiàn 啟蒙意見
Opinions on the Qǐméng by 韓邦奇
About the work
A mid-Míng systematic exposition of Zhū Xī’s Yì xué qǐ méng 易學啟蒙 (KR1a0035), composed by Hán Bāngqí 韓邦奇 (1479–1555) of Cháoyì 朝邑 in 1503 when he was twenty-five, and printed only later. The catalog meta records four juàn; the Sìkù tíyào discusses five chapter-divisions following Zhū Xī’s own — Běn túshū 本圖書, Yuán guàhuà 原卦畫, Míng shīcè 明蓍策, Kǎo zhàn biàn 考占變, and Qī zhàn 七占 — likely reflecting Hán’s chapter-by-chapter following of Zhū’s Qǐméng structure rather than separate juàn divisions in all recensions. Throughout, Hán expounds Shào Yōng’s 邵雍 xiāntiān 先天 doublings (1 → 2 → 4 → 8 → 16 → 32 → 64) as the proper basis of the hexagrams’ generation; he supplies fuller diagrams than Zhū does and offers a fresh divinatory scheme for the previously underspecified two-, three-, four-, and five-line variation cases — a system modeled on Jiāo Yánshòu’s 焦延壽 Hàn-period Yìlín 易林 of one-hexagram-becoming-sixty-four. The Sìkù editors note candidly that the work’s scriptural authority is “the Sòng Confucians’ Yì, not the Hàn Confucians’ Yì.”
Tiyao
Original preface (Hán Bāngqí, dated Hóngzhì 16 = 1503, second month): The Yì is principle, number, verbal commentary, and symbol — and that is all. Principle is what masters all this; number is what calculates this; verbal commentary is what conveys this; symbol is what depicts this. The chart-and-writing is the carriage of principle, the field of verbal commentary, the completeness of number, the manifestness of symbol. Therefore the sage observed the symbols and drew the trigrams, made naming-numbers and named the lines, polished the verbal commentary and conveyed the meaning, plumbed the depths and exhausted the principle: the Yì was thereby established. From the time the Master spoke of “mutual pushing” (xiāng dàng 相盪), the meaning of the prior-heaven was minute; in this minuteness, later Confucians lost it. Mutual pushing is going from eight to sixty-four; prior-heaven is the doubling-by-one. Their root is the same; their tips diverge; their generation differs; their completion is the same. From the Hàn down, none could unify them.
In the Sòng, Master Shào Kāngjié 邵康節 [Yōng] went from eight to sixteen, from sixteen to thirty-two, from thirty-two to sixty-four; Master Zhū Huì’ān 朱晦庵 [Xī] composed for it the Běn túshū, the Yuán guàhuà, the Míng shīcè, the Kǎo zhàn biàn — and at this point the prior-and-posterior of the Yì first had its order, and the meritorious work of principle, number, verbal commentary, and symbol was great. I [Bāngqí] am dull and given to forgetting; reciting and rehearsing it, where I had attainments I noted them in a notebook to keep against forgetting; I am stupid and slow of insight, and where in thinking and discriminating I had failed to apprehend, I made up my own discussions, intending to bring them up before those who possess the way. Hence I have made for it a complete laying-out of its symbols, an exhausting of its numbers, an additional explication of its verbal commentary; as for principle, there I had nothing to do.
Sìkù tíyào: Respectfully submitted: the Qǐméng yìjiàn in four juàn was composed by Hán Bāngqí of the Míng. Bāngqí, zì Rǔjié, was a man of Cháoyì. He was a jìnshì of the wùchén year of Zhèngdé (1508), and his offices reached as far as Minister of War at Nánjīng; his posthumous title was Gōngjiǎn 恭簡. His career is fully shown in his biography in the Míng shǐ. This compilation, taking up Master Zhū’s Yì xué qǐ méng, brings out and expounds its doctrine.
The first chapter is Běn túshū 本圖書; the second chapter, Yuán guàhuà 原卦畫 — both extending Master Shào’s learning, with detailed diagrammatic explication. The third chapter is Míng shīcè 明蓍策, likewise drawing out the ancient method, and additionally discussing the error in recent times of not making the holding-between-the-fingers (bù guà 不掛) at the latter two transformations of the divinatory procedure. The fourth chapter is Kǎo zhàn biàn 考占變, setting out the old examples for the case where none of the six lines varies and the case where the six lines change in succession. The fifth chapter is Qī zhàn 七占: the cases of all six lines unchanging, all six lines varying, and one line varying all follow the old method; the cases where two, three, four, or five lines vary, however, he establishes a new method to divine. The hexagram-charts laid out are all of one hexagram varying into the sixty-four hexagrams — the same as Jiāo Yánshòu’s Yìlín. Yet his canonical authority is the Sòng Confucians’ Yì, not the Hàn Confucians’ Yì.
Respectfully collated, the tenth 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
Composition is fixed by the self-preface to the second month of Hóngzhì 16 = 1503 — when Hán was twenty-five, before he had passed the jìnshì examination (1508). The work is therefore an early-career production, but its argumentative spine is consistent with what would later become the mature Hán Bāngqí position: a defense of Zhū Xī’s Qǐméng synthesis, supplemented by his own diagrammatic and divinatory elaborations.
The work’s place within Míng Yìxué is precise: it is the leading mid-Míng technical (rather than philosophical) exposition of Zhū Xī’s Qǐméng, and the principal Míng attempt to fill in the underspecified divinatory practice for the multi-line variation cases that Zhū had left vague. Hán’s solution — borrowed in form from Jiāo Yánshòu’s Yìlín — sits in interesting tension with the work’s avowed Sòng-Confucian (rather than Hàn-Confucian) loyalties: the Sìkù editors note this with characteristic dryness without elaborating.
The catalog meta gives four juàn; the Sìkù tíyào discusses five chapter-divisions, reflecting either a different recension or, more probably, that the chapters do not coincide with juàn divisions. The Sìkù recension as printed in the Sìkù quánshū preserves the four-juàn frame.
Hán’s parallel work in music theory, the Yuànluò zhì lè 苑洛志樂, develops the same hexagram-doubling and xiāntiān numerology toward harmonics — in a sense the Qǐméng yìjiàn and Zhì lè form a paired program of mid-Míng numerological recovery.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. For Hán’s broader Shǎnxī Lǐxué circle and his music-theoretical work see Joseph Lam, State Sacrifices and Music in Ming China (Albany: SUNY, 1998), and the Dictionary of Ming Biography under “Han Pang-ch’i.”
Other points of interest
The work’s tactical posture — taking Zhū Xī’s Qǐméng as the canonical inheritance of the Sòng synthesis while quietly resorting to Hàn-period (Jiāo Yánshòu) divinatory technique to fill its lacunae — is a small but characteristic example of the technical-syncretic strain in mid-Míng Yì-learning that lies beneath the surface ascendency of ChéngZhū orthodoxy.