Zhōuyì xiàng xiàng shù 周易像象述
Recital of Imaging the Symbols of the Zhōu Changes by 吳桂森
About the work
A late-Míng Yìjīng commentary in ten juàn by Wú Guìsēn 吳桂森 (zì Shūměi 叔美) of Wúxī 無錫, completed in Tiānqǐ yǐchǒu 天啟乙丑 = 1625 after fifteen years of work. The book is explicitly a “recital” (shù 述) of the Yìxué of his teacher Qián Yīběn 錢一本 (錢一本) — Qián’s three previous Yì-writings, the Xiàng xiàng guǎn jiàn 像象管見 (KR1a0104), the Xiàng chāo 像抄, and the Xù chāo 續抄. The base text follows the zhùshū 注疏 recension; only the six-stroke hexagram-diagrams at the head of each hexagram are deleted. The work opens with a methodological essay, the Xiàng xiàng jīn zhēn 像象金鍼 (Golden Needle of Imaging the Symbols), summarizing the work’s principles. The exegesis proceeds character by character and phrase by phrase, exhausting the yìlǐ 義理 of each. The original print preserved marginal commentary in red ink: notes signed “Master Jǐngyì Gāo” 景逸髙先生 are by Gāo Pānlóng 高攀龍 (高攀龍); unsigned annotations are by Qián Yīběn himself.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Zhōuyì xiàng xiàng shù in ten juàn was composed by Wú Guìsēn of the Míng. Guìsēn, zì Shūměi, was a man of Wúxī. He once joined Gù Xiànchéng 顧憲成 and Gāo Pānlóng in lecturing at the Dōnglín, and further studied the Yì with Qián Yīběn 錢一本 of Wǔjìn. Yīběn had composed the Xiàng xiàng guǎn jiàn and other writings; Guìsēn took up his ideas and pushed them to their limit, completing this book and naming it xiàng xiàng shù — recital of imaging the symbols — in token of his having transmitted from a master. The canonical text uses the zhùshū recension; only the six strokes at the head of each hexagram are deleted.
At the head of the volume the Xiàng xiàng jīn zhēn 像象金鍼 — Golden Needle of Imaging the Symbols — is laid out, marking out the great import. Within the volume, the gloss in each case takes one character or one phrase and exhausts its meaning-and-principle, with quite a few fresh ideas worth consultation.
By Guìsēn’s self-preface, the book was completed in Tiānqǐ yǐchǒu (1625). Above the lines of the original recension are red-character evaluations: those calling them “annotations of Master Jǐngyì Gāo” are by Pānlóng; those without signature are by Yīběn. Examination shows that Pānlóng died in Tiānqǐ bǐngyín (1626), so he was indeed in time to see the book; Yīběn, in the Wànlì period, on account of memorial-discourse as a censor, was demoted and died, and in Tiānqǐ xīnyǒu (1621) was already posthumously honored as Vice-Minister of the Court of the Imperial Stud — he could not have lived to see this book. Yet Guìsēn in the Wànlì dīngsì year (1617) had studied with Yīběn at Mount Guīshān 龜山 and was already drafting this work, settling its readings as the occasion arose. The self-preface saying “occasionally what I had recited I would present to the master, and the master would settle it face to face — alas, before I had completed half, the master had withdrawn his staff [i.e. died]” — precisely this is what this refers to. Then Guìsēn’s book has indeed sources of inheritance, and is not the production of one’s own private mind.
Respectfully collated, the ninth 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 is bracketed by Wú’s own preface: drafting began with his 1610 (gēngxū 庚戌) study of Qián’s Guǎn jiàn, continued through 1613 (guǐchǒu — sees Xiàng chāo) and 1617 (dīngsì — sees Xù chāo at Mount Guīshān, with face-to-face revision under Qián’s eye), and was completed in 1625 with the writing of the self-preface. The bracket here therefore runs 1610–1625. The Sìkù editors’ careful chronological reconstruction — checking Wú’s stated dates against the death-dates of Qián Yīběn (1610) and Gāo Pānlóng (1626) — concludes that the work indeed has sources in face-to-face instruction with Qián, and is not a posthumous fabrication.
The work is the principal monument of the immediate-pupil-school of Qián Yīběn within the late-Wànlì / Tiānqǐ Dōnglín Yìxué tradition. It transmits, in expanded and re-articulated form, Qián’s distinctive xiàngxiàng hermeneutic (the symbol-reading using the homophonic 像/象 distinction). The presence of marginal annotations from both Qián and Gāo Pānlóng makes it also a small documentary record of the late-Wànlì Dōnglín Yì-discussion circle.
The Sìkù editors’ assessment is unusually warm. The quiet textual point — that the marginal notes from Qián must reflect the manuscript drafts circulating before his 1610 death rather than annotations to the finished 1625 work — is a representative example of the editors’ attention to compositional sequence even within Míng materials.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. For the broader Dōnglín Yìxué network see Heinrich Busch on the Tung-lin Academy (1955–56) and the Dictionary of Ming Biography under “Wu Kuei-sen” (limited entry).
Other points of interest
The work, with KR1a0104 (its source), is one of the cleanest cases of master-pupil Yì-textual transmission in the Míng — and the Sìkù editors’ inspection of the marginal annotations to validate the chronology is one of the more careful pieces of Sìkù paleographic-textual reasoning preserved in the Yì-class tíyào.