Xiàng xiàng guǎn jiàn 像象管見
Limited Views on Imaging the Symbols by 錢一本
About the work
A late-Míng Yìjīng commentary in nine juàn by Qián Yīběn 錢一本 (1539–1610) of Wǔjìn 武進, composed over more than twenty years from his early career through Wànlì jiǎchén 萬曆甲辰 = 1604 (the date of his self-titled “tící 題辭”). The work’s title combines two senses of the homophone xiàng: the second character 象 is the canonical “symbol”; the first character 像 (“to image”) is the Dàzhuàn’s gloss on what the symbols do in relation to the human conduct that observes them. Qián’s framework therefore reads the symbols as exemplary patterns that the human observer is to image (xiàng 像) and thereby to “exhaust the human and meet the heavenly” (jìn rén hé tiān 盡人合天).
Methodologically Qián stands apart from both major late-Míng currents: he rejects the Hàn-divinatory schools (Jīng Fáng 京房, Jiāo Yánshòu 焦延壽, Guǎn Lù 管輅, Guō Pú 郭璞) and equally the Sòng chart-tradition of Chén Tuán 陳摶 and Lǐ Zhīcái 李之才, working only from the canonical hexagrams and lines themselves to derive symbolic readings. The argumentative spine — derived from his self-preface — is twofold: first, that getting symbol from verbal commentary cures the disease of empty-suspended principle-talk; second, that recognizing symbol as image cures the disease of vacant principle-without-symbol. The Sìkù editors’ assessment is qualifiedly positive: “occasionally fragmentary and over-extended, but the solid and reasonable predominate.”
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Xiàng xiàng guǎn jiàn in nine juàn was composed by Qián Yīběn of the Míng. Yīběn, zì Guóruì, was a man of Wǔjìn. He was a jìnshì of the guǐwèi year of Wànlì (1583), and his offices reached as far as Investigating Censor of the Fújiàn Circuit. Because he submitted memorials, he was dismissed and returned home; in the early Tiānqǐ he was posthumously honored as Vice Minister of the Court of the Imperial Stud. His career is fully shown in his biography in the Míng shǐ.
Yīběn studied the Six Classics, but particularly probed the Yì. This book does not adopt the doctrines of Jīng [Fáng], Jiāo [Yánshòu], Guǎn [Lù], or Guō [Pú], and does not adopt the meanings of Chén Tuán or Lǐ Zhīcái, but only takes the hexagrams and lines to seek the symbols, and takes the symbols to make clear human affairs. Hence he calls it xiàng xiàng 像象: “xiàng 象 [symbol] is the way of heaven; the xiàng 像 [imaging] of xiàng 象 is the way of exhausting the human and meeting with heaven.” The general import is that, having attained symbol from verbal commentary, the disease of empty-suspended principle-talk is overcome; having known xiàng 象 to be an xiàng 像, the learning of “spirit and brightness, silently completed” obtains. He profoundly rebukes those who speak symbol while leaving principle behind, and those who speak principle while leaving symbol behind, and those who only resemble symbol but still do not know what makes the symbol be a symbol.
Although there are occasional places that are fragmentary and over-extended, the solid and reasonable predominate. He himself says he applied his strength for nearly twenty years; he may indeed be called a man of dedicated intent.
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 bracketed by Qián’s own tící: he says he received office at Lúlíng 廬陵 in 1583 (his examination year) and through Wáng Tángnán 王塘南 and Chén Méngshān 陳蒙山 was first directed toward serious Yì-reading; the manuscript took shape over the next two decades; the tící itself is dated Wànlì jiǎchén 萬曆甲辰 = 1604. The bracket here therefore runs 1583–1604.
The work is one of the more methodologically distinctive late-Míng Yì commentaries: it explicitly rejects both the xiàngshù and the yìlǐ conventional positions, and instead develops a third position that reads the symbols as ethical-pedagogical exemplars to be imaged in conduct. The double-xiàng construction — using the homophonic distinction between 象 (symbol) and 像 (to image) to encode an entire hermeneutic — is Qián’s distinctive contribution. The Sìkù editors’ framing of his polemic — against those who speak symbol-without-principle, principle-without-symbol, or merely-resemble-symbol-without-knowing-what-makes-it-symbol — accurately reproduces Qián’s own three-fold critique.
The work’s reception is intertwined with Qián’s Dōnglín 東林 affiliation: as a member of the WúxīChángzhōu Confucian circle and a colleague of Gù Xiànchéng 顧憲成 and Gāo Pānlóng 高攀龍, his writings became part of the Dōnglín revival of Lǐxué practical learning in the early seventeenth century.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. Qián is treated in studies of Dōnglín thought (Heinrich Busch, “The Tung-lin Academy”; John Meskill, Academies in Ming China) primarily for his political memorials rather than his Yì writings. For the Yì specifically, Zhū Bóhūi 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ vol. 4.
Other points of interest
The work’s title formula — using the two homophonous characters 象 and 像 in deliberate juxtaposition to encode a methodological position — is an unusually self-conscious piece of late-Míng exegetical naming, and would repay treatment as a small case study in Confucian hermeneutic terminology. The relation to the Wáng Tángnán / Chén Méngshān early-Wànlì circle, attested by Qián’s own tící, is also worth noting as part of the immediate intellectual genealogy of Dōnglín Yì-thought.