Yì xiàng zhèng 易象正
Rectifying the Symbols of the Changes by 黃道周
About the work
A late-Míng / early-Southern-Míng Yìjīng commentary in sixteen juàn by Huáng Dàozhōu 黃道周 (1585–1646), the great late-Míng Yìxué polymath, Hànlín official, and Southern Míng martyr. According to Mèng Yīngchūn’s 孟應春 testimony, the work was begun in Chóngzhēn gēngchén 崇禎庚辰 = 1640 in the Western Storehouse (Xī kù 西庫, the Imperial Prison’s western section) where Huáng was at one of his three imprisonments; he completed twenty-four diagrams there, then on his subsequent transfer to the Northern Prison (Běi sì 北寺) extended the work into a sixty-four-symbol Xiàng zhèng. According to Liú Lǚdīng 劉履丁, however, Huáng had had a manuscript Yì běn xiàng 易本象 in eight juàn and Chóu xiàng 疇象 in eight juàn dating thirty years earlier — these are presumably the proximate drafts of the present work.
Methodologically the Xiàng zhèng extends Huáng’s earlier programmatic Sān Yì dòng jī 三易洞璣 (which used hexagram diagrams to predict fortune-and-misfortune), now applying yáo biàn 爻變 (line-variation) to derive a zhī guà 之卦 (resulting hexagram) for each of the six lines of each hexagram, in conscious revival of the Zuǒ zhuàn / Guóyǔ divinatory technique. Huáng’s self-preface argues that all Yì-exegesis from the Spring-and-Autumn period through the Two Hàn worked from the moving line; only with Yú Fān 虞翻 and Wáng Bì 王弼 did exegesis turn to the basic hexagram and its proper resonances, abandoning the seven-eight-nine-six distinction. The Xiàng zhèng restores the moving-line method. The work also includes (in juàn 1) an application of the Hàn day-by-line correspondence to the King Wén hexagram-order in order to project successive dynasties’ rule-and-ruin, and (in two final juàn) thirty-five diagrams reconstructing the HétúLuòshū numerological self-multiplications, plus diagrams (Shī dǒu chā 詩斗差, Shī yuán mìng 詩元命, Chūnqiū yuán mìng 春秋元命) drawn from the Hàn wěishū 緯書 sì shǐ wǔ jì 四始五際 doctrine.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Yì xiàng zhèng in sixteen juàn was composed by Huáng Dàozhōu of the Míng. Dàozhōu, zì Yòuyuán 幼元, also Chīruò 螭若, was a man of Zhāngpǔ 漳浦. He was a jìnshì of the rénxū year of Tiānqǐ (1622), and in the Chóngzhēn period his offices reached as far as Lesser Director of the Office of the Heir Apparent. After the fall of the Míng he served the Táng prince Yùjiàn 聿鍵 [Lóngwǔ emperor of the Southern Míng] and rose to Minister of Rites and Director of Military Affairs. Going out from Wùyuán 婺源, his army was scattered; he was captured and refused submission, dying for his cause. His career is fully shown in his biography in the Míng shǐ. In Qiánlóng yǐwèi (1775) the imperial bestowal of the posthumous title Zhōngliè 忠烈 was made.
This book — Mèng Yīngchūn says — was first created at the Western Storehouse in Chóngzhēn gēngchén (1640), with twenty-four diagrams complete; on his transfer to the Northern Prison [where he was held during the Wù sè qù 五色去 incident], with the bitter pain at his fingers having just begun to abate, he further made the Xiàng zhèng of the sixty-four [hexagrams]. Liú Lǚdīng, however, says that thirty years earlier Dàozhōu already had an Yì běn xiàng in eight juàn and a Chóu xiàng in eight juàn — these are presumably the draft text of this book.
Dàozhōu had earlier composed the Sān Yì dòng jī 三易洞璣, which by hexagram-diagram pushed forward fortune-and-misfortune but did not extend to the lines’ variation symbols. This book takes each hexagram’s six lines and follows them through to their zhī hexagram in order to observe the variation — that is, the ancient divinatory method laid out in the Zuǒ zhuàn internal and external chronicles.
His self-preface says: “All Yì-exegesis from the Chūnqiū through the Zuǒ guó and the two Hàn dynasties’ famed Confucians proceeded by the moving line; from Yú Fān and Wáng Bì on, exegesis began to proceed by the basic hexagram and its proper resonance, observing attack-and-take, only discussing yīnyáng, firm-soft, and not distinguishing seven-eight-nine-six. Although the Yì has the line ‘firm and soft mixed and dwelling,’ the hexagram has no principle of being unmoving in observing-and-savoring divination. The Xiàng zhèng dedicatedly proceeds by the moving line in order to make this clear.” This is the main import of the composition.
The first volume catalogs one juàn that takes the Hàn-dynasty line-by-line day-correspondence method to project, against King Wén’s hexagram-order, the order-and-disorder of successive dynasties. The two final juàn use the Hétú and Luòshū numbers in mutual self-multiplication and division to make thirty-five diagrams. His Shī dǒu chā diagram, Shī dǒu chā tuì xiàn diagram, Shī yuán mìng diagram, and Chūnqiū yuán mìng diagram are based on the Hàn wěishū doctrine of the four beginnings and five articulations, but separately extended into a method of projection — to mutually serve as inner-and-outer with his own Sān Yì dòng jī.
Although his glossing the eleven lines explained in the Dàzhuàn as all moving-line elucidations is unavoidably forced, Zhū Cháoyīng 朱朝瑛 also said: “The Yì xiàng zhèng is Dàozhōu’s own Yì — it is what Confucius did not speak fully and what the words did not exhaust meaning. Yet the extension and touching-of-class is also one corner of the Yì.” The Sòng Confucian Shěn Gāi’s 沈該 Yì zhuàn and Dū Jié’s 都絜 Yì biàn tǐ yì are both elucidations of the zhī hexagram, similar in layout to this book; but in this book, under each line, the basic hexagram’s Tuàn statement is first laid out, then the Xiàng statement of the basic hexagram, and then the Xiàng statement of the line itself and Confucius’s Xiàng statement — different from Mr Shěn’s and Mr Dū’s books. To preserve the work as a “side-tradition” outside the two earlier houses is in any case acceptable.
Respectfully collated, the tenth 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 precisely by the testimony of Mèng Yīngchūn (in prison from 1640) and Huáng’s death (1646). Earlier draft material under different titles (Yì běn xiàng, Chóu xiàng, attested by Liú Lǚdīng) extends back into the 1610s, but the work in its present form took shape in Huáng’s 1640–1645 prison years and was completed before his Southern-Míng martyrdom. The bracket here therefore runs 1640–1646.
The work is one of the most distinctive late-Míng Yì commentaries: it deliberately revives the pre-Yú-Wáng yáo biàn method, and consciously stands against the entire post-Wáng-Bì exegetical tradition (both yìlǐ and SòngYuán xiàngshù) by returning to the Zuǒ zhuàn / Guóyǔ divinatory practice. The combination with apocryphal-numerological projection (Hàn wěishū sì shǐ wǔ jì doctrine) makes it also one of the more programmatically Hàn-revivalist Míng Yì commentaries.
The work’s reception is intertwined with Huáng’s status as the principal Southern Míng Yì-scholar-martyr: it is read in the Qīng both as a substantive revival of pre-Sòng Yì-method and as a literary monument to late-Míng Confucian loyalism. The Sìkù editors’ notice is unusually long and detailed, with substantial textual quotation from Huáng’s preface and from Zhū Cháoyīng’s defense. The Qiánlóng-period bestowal of the posthumous title Zhōngliè 忠烈 (1775) is explicitly mentioned in the notice — making the work also a vehicle for the Qiánlóng court’s politics of selectively rehabilitating Míng loyalists.
The Sòng-period parallels Shěn Gāi’s Yì zhuàn and Dū Jié’s Yì biàn tǐ yì are noted but distinguished as different in compositional layout — Huáng’s distinctive contribution is the systematic combination of zhī guà analysis with full canonical citation under each line.
Translations and research
For Huáng Dàozhōu’s broader Yìxué and his Southern-Míng career, see Lynn Struve’s work on Southern-Míng historiography and the Dictionary of Ming Biography under “Huang Tao-chou.” On his prison-period Yì writings see Ng On-cho, Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing (SUNY, 2001). In Chinese: Zhū Bóhūi, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ vol. 4. No major monograph on the Yì xiàng zhèng specifically located in Western languages.
Other points of interest
The Yì xiàng zhèng is one of the more remarkable Confucian works composed in confinement — alongside Yáng Jué’s Zhōuyì biàn lù (KR1a0096) of the Jiājìng prison cohort and Lái Zhīdé’s Zhōuyì jí zhù (KR1a0100) of mountain seclusion — and a small case for the relation between Yì-commentary writing and the conditions of the late-Míng official’s life under adversity. Huáng’s parallel project the Sān Yì dòng jī 三易洞璣 forms a complementary text to the Xiàng zhèng and would repay joint study.