Yè Bābái yì zhuàn 葉八白易傳
Yè Bābái’s Commentary on the Changes by 葉山
About the work
A mid-Míng Yìjīng commentary in sixteen juàn by Yè Shān 葉山 (zì Bābái 八白), composed over nine years from Jiājìng rénzǐ 嘉靖壬子 = 1552 to Jiājìng 39 = 1560. Drafted and revised four times, the work covers only the sixty-four hexagrams’ line statements; the Tuàn 彖, Xiàng 象, Wényán 文言, and other Wings are not treated. Yè takes Yáng Wànlǐ’s 楊萬里 Chéngzhāi yì zhuàn 誠齋易傳 (KR1a0048) as his methodological model — historical exemplification rather than principle-talk — and roams freely through the historical and biographical sources (zǐshǐ 子史) to make each line speak to specific historical situations. The result, as the Sìkù editors note, “borrows the Yì to speak of human affairs” rather than serving strictly as canonical exegesis. Although such a method falls short of canonical scholarship in the strict sense, the editors find Yè’s specific historical applications often well-formed and “sufficient to manifest the rules and admonitions” that the canon makes available — the Yì’s scope being broad enough to embrace such usage.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Yè Bābái yì zhuàn in sixteen juàn was composed by Yè Shān of the Míng. Shān, zì Bābái, of unrecorded native place. Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo cites Zhāng Yúnzhāng’s saying that “Bābái’s beginning and end have no source to be examined; in detail his self-preface suggests he was an aged provincial student.” This book was repeatedly redrafted; the self-prefaces are four. The first roughly says: “I read the Zhōuyì at age ten; ten years on I was able to weary of the schoolmaster’s words; another fourteen years on it was Jiājìng dīngmǎo 丁卯 [editorial note: see Abstract — the cycle is in error; should read jǐyǒu 己酉]; another six years on, I went to the Lùtián Studio and saw Yáng Chéngzhāi’s Yì zhuàn; another nine years on it is now rénzǐ 壬子.”
The second preface is dated guǐchǒu 癸丑 sixth month; the third dīngsì 丁巳 third month; the fourth Jiājìng 39 (1560) seventh month. Rénzǐ is the thirty-first year of Jiājìng (1552); counting back sixteen years from rénzǐ should be dīngyǒu 丁酉 (1537) — Jiājìng has no dīngmǎo; the cycle here written as dīngmǎo is presumably a transmission error. The book began in rénzǐ and ran to the thirty-ninth year of Jiājìng, gēngshēn 庚申 (1560), nine years in all to reach completion. By the year-and-month evidence of the self-prefaces, Shān must have been born in Hóngzhì 17, jiǎzǐ 甲子 (1504); when the book was completed in gēngshēn he was fifty-seven.
The book purely glosses the line statements of the sixty-four hexagrams; the Tuàn, Xiàng, Wényán, and the rest of the ten Wings are all left untouched. The general orientation takes Chéngzhāi’s Yì zhuàn as principal, ranging through the sub-canon and histories with broad disputation as support. He borrows the Yì to speak of human affairs, and the result is not entirely what the canonical meaning encompasses. Yet the way of the Yì is broad and embracing, and what he says is often able to bring the rules and admonitions into clarity.
Respectfully collated, the tenth month of the forty-second year of Qiánlóng (1777). 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 precisely by Yè’s own four self-prefaces: drafting began in 1552 and concluded in 1560, with the work going through three intermediate redrafts. The Sìkù editors’ careful disentangling of the cyclical-date cross-references in the prefaces produces both a corrected dating (dīngmǎo 丁卯 in the first preface should be jǐyǒu 己酉) and a derived birth year for Yè (1504); these reconstructions are followed in the 葉山 person note.
The work belongs to the historical-application school within late-Míng Yì commentary, descended from Yáng Wànlǐ’s late-Sòng Chéngzhāi yì zhuàn (KR1a0048). Methodologically, this is an explicitly non-canonical use of the Yì — the canon as a repository of historical-ethical lessons rather than an object of strict philological exegesis. The Sìkù editors’ judgment is moderate: they grant the genre’s legitimacy on the principle of the Yì’s breadth (Yì dào guǎngdà), while quietly noting that Yè’s exposition is “not entirely what the canonical meaning encompasses.”
The work’s omission of all the Wings is the principal exegetical limitation; the Sìkù editors note it without elaborate criticism.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. The work is occasionally cited in Chinese surveys of the late-Míng yìshǐ 易史 (history-applied Yì) tradition descending from Yáng Wànlǐ.
Other points of interest
The four sequential self-prefaces — drafted 1552, 1553, 1557, 1560 — make the Yì zhuàn one of the more transparently revised Yì commentaries of the mid-Míng, and a useful witness to the iterative compositional practice of an old provincial-grade scholar. The Sìkù editors’ use of the prefaces to back-derive Yè’s birth year is one of the more careful pieces of bio-philological reconstruction in the Yì-class tíyào.