Yì xiàng gōu jiě 易象鈎解
Hooks and Glosses on the Symbols of the Changes by 陳士元
About the work
A mid-Míng Yìjīng commentary in four juàn by Chén Shìyuán 陳士元 (b. 1516) of Yìngchéng 應城, originally circulated as juàn 58–61 of his collected works the Guī yún biéjí 歸雲別集. The work is dedicated to recovering the symbol-derivations (qǔ xiàng 取象) of the canonical hexagram and line statements — the doctrine that each phrase of the Tuàn and yáo arose from the manipulation of trigram-symbols and their internal components (hùtǐ 互體, fēifú 飛伏, nàjiǎ 納甲, wǔxíng 五行 etc.). Chén invokes Zhū Xī 朱熹 and Zhāng Shì 張栻 as witnesses that these technical methods, although superseded by Sòng yìlǐ, are not to be discarded; he cites Jīng Fáng 京房 as the ostensibly recoverable inheritor of the Tàibǔ 太卜 (Grand Diviner) office’s symbol-tradition. The Sìkù editors regard Chén’s identification of Jīng Fáng’s school with the lost Tàibǔ tradition as historically untenable (Jīng Fáng’s school is documented by the Hàn shū as a divergent branch, and its surviving methods do not foreground symbol), but praise the work’s underlying claim — that the Yì’s function was divination and that divination’s foundation was symbol — as substantively closer to the original import of the canon than the bare yìlǐ talk of his contemporaries.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Yì xiàng gōu jiě in four juàn was composed by Chén Shìyuán of the Míng. Shìyuán, zì Xīnshū, was a man of Yìngchéng. He was a jìnshì of the jiǎchén year of Jiājìng (1544), and his offices reached as far as Prefect of Luánzhōu. This compilation is solely dedicated to bringing out the meaning of the canonical text’s drawing of symbol. At the front is Shìyuán’s self-preface, which says: “Master Zhū Huì’ān and Master Zhāng Nánxuān, who were good at speaking of the Yì, both held that hùtǐ, wǔxíng, nàjiǎ, fēifú, and the like, are none of them to be discarded. Although the Tuàn and lines of King Wén and the Duke of Zhōu are not the trifling apocryphal numerologies of later ages, the way embraces them all without exception. Commentators who proceed only by the principle of the elevated and rare have left things out.”
His gloss on Lǚ 履 says further: “Jīng Fáng’s 京房 learning had its line of transmission. Today’s gentlemen-and-officials reject and do not adopt it. If the sages had not made the Yì on account of divination, but had wished only to establish words to bequeath instruction, then to draw the trigrams and to manipulate the milfoil — what for? Master Zhū says: the Yì’s drawing of symbol must surely have a source from which it came; its doctrines must already have been complete in the office of the Grand Diviner — today they cannot be re-investigated, but it cannot be said that the symbols are arbitrarily set up either. Then how do we know that Jīng’s learning is not what was held in the Grand Diviner’s archives?”
On examination: although the method of the Grand Diviner cannot be re-investigated, the variation-line and component-trigram divinations recorded in the Zuǒ zhuàn still allow its outline to be glimpsed. The Hàn Yì from Tián Hé 田何 down has no divergent doctrine. Mèng Xǐ’s 孟喜 six-day-seven-fraction learning — said to come from Tián Wángsūn 田王孫 — was, however, denied by Tián Wángsūn’s own pupils. Jiāo Gàn’s 焦贛 day-by-day positional method — said to come from Mèng Xǐ — was likewise denied by Mèng Xǐ’s own pupils. Liú Xiàng 劉向, in collating books, also says only Jīng was a divergent party. The Hàn shū rúlín zhuàn’s sources and chains are clearly laid out and can be reverified. Although Jīng’s books are mostly scattered, his Yì zhuàn in three juàn still survives, and the broad outline of his divinatory method can be examined; it is markedly different from what the Zuǒ zhuàn records. For Shìyuán to take Jīng’s Yì as what the Grand Diviner held is utterly without basis. Moreover, Jīng’s method does not at all take symbol as principal; to cite him as evidence for the elucidation of symbol is also to lose his actual character.
Yet his statement that “the Yì takes divination as its function, and divination takes symbol as its core” deeply accords with the original import of the making of the Yì. Hence what he discusses, although on occasion forced and over-precise, is for the most part smoothly fitting; it is in any case better than the empty discourse on names and principles in disregard of the ancient meaning. In this book, under each juàn-heading is also recorded “Guī yún biéjí, juàn so-and-so,” with juàn-numbers from 58 to 61 — meaning that at the time it was incorporated into his collected works (just as Lǐ Shí 李石’s Fāngzhōu jí 方舟集 incorporates an Yì hùtǐ example).
The preface further says: “I formerly composed an Yì huì jiě 彙解 in two juàn, condensing the broad outline.” Examination of the Míng shǐ yìwén zhì shows it lists Shìyuán’s Yì xiàng gōu jiě in four juàn and his Yì xiàng huì jiě in two juàn. So the Huì jiě is also a work bringing out the symbol-learning. As we have not seen its book, we have not entered it in the catalog.
Respectfully collated, the fifth month of the forty-first year of Qiánlóng (1776). 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 bracketed by Chén’s 1544 jìnshì and the active period of his late-Jiājìng to early-Wànlì retirement; the work was incorporated into the Guī yún biéjí during this period. The bracket here (1544–1580) is conservative. The work belongs to the same mid-Míng xiàngshù revival as Xióng Guò’s Zhōuyì xiàngzhǐ juélù (KR1a0098), but is more theoretically ambitious in its attempt to re-anchor the symbol-tradition in a transmitted line going back through Jīng Fáng to the Tàibǔ office of antiquity.
The Sìkù editors’ notice contains a substantial kǎozhèng refutation of the Jīng Fáng / Tàibǔ identification — appealing to the Hàn shū rúlín zhuàn’s clear documentation of Jīng’s school as a deviant branch, and to the substantial difference between Jīng’s surviving Yì zhuàn and the Zuǒ zhuàn’s attested ancient divinatory practice. They concede the work’s underlying premise (the Yì is divinatory; divination rests on symbol) but reject Chén’s specific historical reconstruction.
Together with the Sìkù’s notice of the Yì xiàng huì jiě (a parallel two-juàn condensation by Chén that the editors had not seen) the entry forms a small but interesting case of an Yì-thematized portion of a Míng polymath’s collected works — the work circulated both as part of the Guī yún biéjí and, where the Sìkù editors received it, as an independent four-juàn book.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. For Chén’s broader polymathy (especially his Mèng lín xuán jié 夢林玄解 dream-divination manual), see the Dictionary of Ming Biography and Cynthia Brokaw’s work on late-Míng popular reading culture. Treated in Chinese surveys of late-Míng Yìxué (Zhū Bóhūi, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ vol. 4) as a representative attempt at xiàngshù revival.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù tíyào’s careful disentangling of the actual Hàn Yì genealogy (Tián Hé → Tián Wángsūn → Yáng Hé 楊何 → Mèng Xǐ; with Jīng Fáng as a separate, deviant line per Liú Xiàng) is one of the more substantial kǎozhèng historical reconstructions embedded in the Míng Yì-class tíyào, and is worth reading alongside the parallel reconstructions in the KR1a0098 tíyào (on Wáng Bì → Sòng yìlǐ; Chén Tuán → Sòng chart-tradition).