Zhōuyì jí zhù 周易集註
Collected Commentary on the Zhōu Changes by 來知德
About the work
A late-Míng Yìjīng commentary in sixteen juàn by Lái Zhīdé 來知德 (1525–1604), composed over twenty-nine years (1570–1598) in the deep mountains of Wànxiàn 萬縣 (Sìchuān). The work is the principal late-Míng monument of independent Yìxué, organized around a renewed application of the Xìcí’s cuò 錯 (paired hexagrams across yīnyáng) and zōng 綜 (inverted hexagrams) framework, supplemented by the Hàn hùtǐ 互體 (component-trigram) method that Lái calls zhōng yáo zhī xiàng 中爻之象. He distinguishes eight species of xiàng (hexagram-feeling, hexagram-stroke, great-symbol, middle-line, paired, inverted, line-variation, divinatory-symbol) and works through each line of each hexagram by first laying out the symbol-derivation, the character-meaning, and the cuòzōng relations, and then giving the line’s proper exegesis. The result is, in the Sìkù editors’ phrase, miǎo xīn lì suǒ 冥心力索 — “ferreting out by deep concentration of mind” — and was hailed in the late Míng as a unique exegetical achievement (絕學). The work’s reception was polarized: many followed it; an equal or greater number attacked it; the Sìkù editors steer a moderate course, defending its substantive contribution to symbol-exegesis while rebuking Lái’s self-aggrandizing preface (which had claimed that the Yì had been lost for two thousand years after Confucius and was now revived in him).
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Zhōuyì jí zhù in sixteen juàn was composed by Lái Zhīdé of the Míng. Zhīdé, zì Yǐxiān, was a man of Liángshān. He was a jǔrén of the rénzǐ year of Jiājìng (1552). In the thirtieth year of Wànlì (1602) the supreme commander Wáng Xiàngqián 王象乾 and the regional inspector Guō Zǐzhāng 郭子章 recommended him; he was conferred the office of Hànlín Court Awaiter. Zhīdé, on grounds of old age and illness, declined; an edict conferred the office on him as he was, without requiring him to take it up. His career is fully shown in the Míng shǐ rúlín zhuàn. After his provincial-examination success Zhīdé moved to Wànxiàn and lived in the deep mountains, refining his thoughts on the Yì-principles. From Lóngqìng gēngwǔ (1570) to Wànlì wùxū (1598), over twenty-nine years, this book was completed.
His doctrine takes only the Xìcí’s cuò zōng qí shù 錯綜其數 in order to discuss the Yì symbols, and uses the Záguà 雜卦 to handle them. Cuò 錯 is yīnyáng paired contrast — as in the prior-heaven round-diagram Qián cuò Kūn, Kǎn cuò Lí, “the eight trigrams cuò one another” — that is. Zōng 綜 is one-up-one-down, as in Tún 屯 and Méng 蒙: it is fundamentally one hexagram, as Tún below it is Tún, as Méng above it is Méng — the King Wén Xùguà records this. His discussion of cuò has the four-cardinal cuò and the four-corner cuò; his discussion of zōng has the four-cardinal zōng, the four-corner zōng, the zōng of cardinal-by-corner, and of corner-by-cardinal. His discussion of symbols has: the symbol of hexagram-feeling, the symbol of hexagram-stroke, the symbol of the great-symbol, the symbol of the middle-line, the symbol of the cuò hexagram, the symbol of the zōng hexagram, the symbol of the line-variation, and the symbol within the divination.
His commentary in each case first explains the symbol-meaning, the character-meaning, and the cuòzōng meaning, and then glosses the proper meaning of the basic hexagram and basic line. All these come from deep mind and forceful searching, getting at their tips, and through reciprocal triangulation in side-passing he establishes his own doctrine. At the time it was held to be a transmitting-school. Yet the upper and lower scriptures’ eighteen-hexagram-each scheme is fundamentally Shuì Yǔquán’s 税與權 old doctrine, and what he says about the middle-line symbols is also the Hàn-onward hùtǐ method — only that Zhīdé pushes and unfolds it horizontally and vertically, dedicatedly bringing out this meaning, and thereby is more thorough than the earlier Confucians.
His self-preface, however, is highly self-positioning, going so far as to say that “after Confucius died and the Yì was lost, two thousand years were as one long night” — surely the production of a man hidden away in a village schoolhouse, who could not exhaust the bequeathed texts and secret cataloging-traditions, who could not exhaust the discussions of the venerable masters and old Confucians, but who, by self-illumination of the heart, occasionally got an attainment, and immediately raised himself to the size of the kingdom of Yèláng! Hence in the past hundred-odd years there have been many who trust his doctrine, and not few who attack it. Yet the way of the Yì is deep and broad, embracing the multitude of symbols; following any one cleavage in, one is able to wind through and connect, and thereby to bring out elucidations. It is not necessary to dismiss everything as fragmentary and excessively detailed.
Respectfully collated, the ninth 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 precisely by Lái’s own preface and the Sìkù notice: 1570–1598, twenty-nine years in mountain seclusion at Wànxiàn. The bracket here adopts these dates exactly. The work was completed when Lái was seventy-three; he lived another six years.
The work is the principal late-Míng monument of xiàngshù-revival Yìxué (alongside Xióng Guò’s KR1a0098 for the mid-century and Chén Shìyuán’s KR1a0099 for the same period). Methodologically, Lái’s distinctive contribution is the systematic and thorough application of cuòzōng analysis to the entire canon — earlier writers had used cuò and zōng incidentally; Lái uses them comprehensively as the principal exegetical instrument. His eight-fold typology of symbol (hexagram-feeling, hexagram-stroke, great-symbol, middle-line, cuò, zōng, line-variation, divinatory) became influential in the late-Míng and Qīng.
The Sìkù editors’ assessment is mixed in a characteristic way: they grant the work substantial contribution within its method (cuòzōng and hùtǐ exegesis taken to their limit), correctly identify its main precedents (Shuì Yǔquán 税與權 for the eighteen-hexagram-per-half scheme; Hàn-tradition hùtǐ for the middle-line method), but rebuke Lái’s grandiose self-preface as the production of a self-isolated village scholar. The closing observation — that the Yì is so deep that any single hermeneutic cleavage in admits of fruitful exposition, and one need not therefore dismiss complexity as mere fragmentation — is one of the more memorable concluding lines in the Yì-class tíyào.
The work’s reception in the late Míng and Qīng was deeply polarized. The Lái school in Sìchuān continued in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the Qīng kǎozhèng scholars (Huì Dòng 惠棟, Zhāng Huìyán 張惠言) generally regarded Lái as overreaching but as a serious technical predecessor.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. Treated extensively in Chinese surveys of late-Míng Yìxué (Zhū Bóhūi, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ vol. 4) as the principal late-Míng xiàngshù-revival commentary; see also studies of the Sìchuān Lái school in the eighteenth century (Liào Píng 廖平 etc. for late inheritance). For Lái’s place in late-Míng intellectual history see the Dictionary of Ming Biography under “Lai Chih-te.”
Other points of interest
Lái’s twenty-nine-year mountain seclusion to compose a single work makes the Jí zhù one of the more striking late-Míng instances of Confucian scholarly retreat as a methodological choice; it also produced a commentary unusually free of contemporary polemical entanglement. The comparison with Lín Xīyuán’s prison-bound Cún yí (KR1a0095) and Yáng Jué’s KR1a0096 suggests that mid- and late-Míng Yì-commentary writing repeatedly took shape in conditions of voluntary or involuntary withdrawal from official society — a pattern that may itself merit further study.