Yì xiàng chāo 易像鈔
Transcribed Symbols of the Changes by 胡居仁
About the work
A long miscellany of Yì-notes in eighteen juàn attributed to Hú Jūrén 胡居仁 (1434–1484) of Yúgān 餘干, the early-Míng Lǐxué scholar known as one of the “Three Pure Confucians” of the Míng (with Cáo Duān 曹端 and Xuē Xuān 薛瑄). The first two juàn comprise Hú’s own self-preface and an anthology of earlier Confucians’ diagrams and discussions that he found congenial. From the third juàn onward, the bulk of the work consists of correspondence-notes (wǎngfù zhájì 往復劄記) on the Yì exchanged with various interlocutors, autobiographical study-notes, and a versified summary (hēkuò gēcí 櫽括歌辭) abridging the work’s import. The Sìkù editors, comparing the surviving recension against the late-sixteenth-century memorial of Censor Lǐ Yí 李頤 (1585), express doubt that the eighteen-juàn complete recension before them is in fact Hú’s own hand: by the time of Lǐ Yí’s submission urging Hú’s enrollment among the Confucian temple’s worthies (Wànlì 13 = 1585), Hú’s Yì and Chūnqiū writings were already reported scattered and out of order; the apparent completeness of the present recension may be a posthumous reassembly by later hands.
Tiyao
Original preface (Hú Jūrén): Since I traveled to the gate of Mr Wú Pìnjūn 吳聘君 [Wú Yǔbì 吳與弼], I have known that line-reciting and verbal flourish are not what is to be studied, and that one ought to take the Way as one’s own task. I cut off intent of advancement in office; in the time so gained I read the Yì for nearly twenty years, and gradually had some attainments. As I read, I transcribed; the accumulated material I could not bear to discard, and I again with my own hand polished it into a volume, naming it Yì xiàng chāo.
An earlier Confucian said: “The Yì as a book is what plumbs the spirit and knows transformation; if not the most refined under heaven, who then can take part in this? The annotations and explications of the world are mostly arbitrary.” This is not merely admonishing failures, but it is enough to say. Although I am not equipped to compose annotation and explication, that what should have been transcribed I did not transcribe, and that what I transcribed I should not have — I am also self-aware that there is no escape from the charge of arbitrariness.
Some say: to spend whole years staring at books and make a livelihood of them — ah, this is to be a paper-eating moth (dùyú 蠹魚)! I reply: books cannot eat moths; people make moths of themselves. Moreover, I have observed the paper-eating moth: throughout its life it makes its livelihood in the books, and yet it lives more by guarding the books than by eating them; it has the moth’s name without the moth’s substance. The moth depends on books to live, separates from them to die; it lives and dies by the books, as the books do, like a mayfly born in the morning and dead by evening in the muddy filth.
Rather than mayfly-life and -death in the mud, better the book-moth life and death in the books. Gòu says: “wrapping fish — no fault; no fish — initial misfortune.” A moth, although tiny, is also a fish. To have family without books, or books without moths — these are the conditions of “no fish wrapping” / “Gòu of the loss.” For the Bù hexagram to be obstructed into a Fēng room, “not to fear peeping into the door, silent — no man there”? — I still fear that I cannot count myself among the moths and shall end up as the mayfly’s morning-and-evening. As to “no business with books” — I dare not blind my own heart. Inscribed by Hú Jūrén of Yúgān.
Sìkù tíyào: Respectfully submitted: the Yì xiàng chāo in eighteen juàn was composed by Hú Jūrén of the Míng. Jūrén, zì Shūxīn 叔心, was a man of Yúgān; he cut off interest in advancement in office and ended his life as a commoner; later he was posthumously titled Wénjìng 文敬. His career is fully shown in the Míng shǐ rúlín zhuàn. The book has at the front a self-preface by Jūrén, which says he read the Yì for twenty years; whatever he attained he transcribed and accumulated, manually polishing it into a volume; he further took earlier Confucians’ diagrammatic-writings, discussions, and sayings agreeing with his own attainments and recorded them. From the third juàn onward, the contents are all back-and-forth notes from discussions of the Yì with others, and his own self-recorded study; he again abridged them as versified summary to bring out their essentials.
Jūrén’s learning, though its source comes from Wú Yǔbì 吳與弼, in solidity far exceeded his teacher’s; in the Míng dynasty, with Cáo Duān 曹端 and Xuē Xuān 薛瑄, he was equally called one of the pure Confucians. His Jū yè lù 居業錄, surviving today, is praised as a true exemplar of the Way-school. His exposition of the Yì is likewise concise and exact, not lapsing into fragmentary or vacuous discourse.
On examination: in Wànlì yǐyǒu (1585) the censor Lǐ Yí 李頤 requested that Jūrén be enrolled among the worthies of the Confucian temple; his memorial says that Jūrén had composed the Yì zhuàn and the Chūnqiū zhuàn, but that today these are quite scattered and out of order. Zhū Yízūn’s 朱彝尊 Jīngyì kǎo lists a Yì tōngjiě 易通解 by Jūrén, with the note “have not seen,” and does not list the present book. Could this book be that Yì tōngjiě under another name? Yet Lǐ Yí by his time already called it scattered and out of order — how, then, is this recension alone complete? One suspects that later men gathered up his scattered words and re-edited them into sequence, and that the work is not Jūrén’s own composition.
Respectfully collated, the fifth month of the forty-third year of Qiánlóng (1778). 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 can be loosely bracketed by Hú’s mature scholarly career. He studied under Wú Yǔbì 吳與弼 (1391–1469) probably in his late teens or early twenties; the self-preface speaks of “twenty years” of Yì-reading; the work cannot be fully complete in any case before his death in 1484. The bracket adopted (1455–1484) covers his active Yì-engagement up to his death. The Sìkù editors’ suspicion that the present complete recension may be a posthumous reassembly is well founded — the Míng Wànlì-period testimony of Censor Lǐ Yí (1585) explicitly reports the Yì and Chūnqiū writings as scattered. The Tōngjiě / Xiàng chāo identification proposed by the Sìkù editors is plausible but not confirmed.
The work’s significance is principally as a witness to the early-Míng Lǐxué Yìxué of the Wú Yǔbì → Hú Jūrén line, methodologically remote from both the technical xiàngshù tradition and the imperial-examination Wǔjīng dàquán synthesis. Hú’s exposition is yìlǐ-oriented and personal; the inclusion of correspondence and study-notes alongside formal exposition gives the work a notebook-like character distinct from contemporary mainstream commentaries.
The notice’s historical-textual scrupulousness — the Lǐ Yí cross-check, the Zhū Yízūn collation, the explicit suspicion of posthumous reconstruction — is one of the more careful Sìkù tíyào on early-Míng materials.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. For Hú’s broader place in early-Míng Lǐxué see the Dictionary of Ming Biography under “Hu Chü-jen” and Carsun Chang, The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought (1957–1962), vol. 2.
Other points of interest
The self-preface’s extended dùyú 蠹魚 (book-moth) parable, with its hexagram-talk turned to autobiographical use, is one of the more idiosyncratic prose passages in the early-Míng Yì-corpus and merits attention as a small piece of Confucian scholarly self-fashioning. Hú’s reading of the Gòu and BùFēng hexagrams here is purely allegorical and stands in pointed contrast to the technical exegesis his successors (Cài Qīng, Lín Xīyuán) would prefer.