Guà biàn kǎo lüè 卦變考略
A Brief Examination of Hexagram-Variation by 董守諭
About the work
A late-Míng treatise in two juàn on the Yìjīng’s guà biàn 卦變 (hexagram-variation) doctrine, by Dǒng Shǒuyù 董守諭 (1596–1664) of Yínxiàn 鄞縣, completed in Chóngzhēn guǐwèi 崇禎癸未 = 1643. The work surveys the entire guà biàn tradition: the Hàn sources (Lǎng Yǐ 郎顗, Jīng Fáng 京房, Shǔ Cái 蜀才, Yú Fān 虞翻); the Sòng / Yuán reception (Zhū Xī’s twelve-cycle guà biàn tú in the Běnyì’s ninth diagram is the principal target); and the late-Míng inheritance (Lái Zhīdé 來知德 et al.). Dǒng’s diagnostic point against Zhū Xī is internal inconsistency: in the Běnyì diagram nineteen hexagrams are derived by guà biàn, but only on the upper scripture for Sòng (and only there) does Zhū’s running commentary actually match the diagram; for Suí, Kùn, Shìkè, and Wèijì on the upper scripture the running commentary derives the hexagrams variously, while the diagram derives them from Pǐ and Tài. Similar inconsistency is identified for the lower scripture (only Jìn matches the diagram). Dǒng’s own positive proposal is that hexagram-variation should be derived from trigram-component analysis (for example, Bǐ 比 from Shī 師 by inverting the position of a yáng line; Qián 謙 from KūnQián component derivation) rather than from the PǐTài twelve-cycle scheme. The Sìkù editors are sympathetic to Dǒng’s diagnostic work and to many of his specific readings (some of which they describe as “fitting cleverly with the canonical text”), but reject as overstated his closing claim that guà biàn is the original meaning of the Yì’s composition.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Guà biàn kǎo lüè in two juàn was composed by Dǒng Shǒuyù of the Míng. Shǒuyù, zì Cìgōng, was a man of Yínxiàn. The book was completed in Chóngzhēn guǐwèi (1643). The general import: the doctrine of hexagram-variation comes from the Hàn learning. Master Chéng [Yí] first abolished and discarded it. Master Zhū however held that “Yīchuān did not believe in guà biàn; therefore at ‘soft comes and patterns the firm’ and the like he had nothing to rely on” — therefore Master Zhū jointly drew on the doctrine and further varied it according to his own sense, in nineteen hexagrams in all — that is the present Běnyì’s ninth diagram.
Shǒuyù maintains that of the upper scripture’s nine variation-hexagram glosses by Master Zhū, only Sòng matches the guà biàn diagram; the others — like Suí derived from Kùn, Shìkè derived from Wèijì — by the diagram are derived from Pǐ and Tài. Of the lower scripture’s ten variation-hexagram glosses, only Jìn matches the diagram; the others — like Fù changing into Shī, Gòu changing into Tóngrén, and the rest of the kind — give the example of Fù-Initial moved up to Shī-Second, Fù-Second moved down to Shī-Initial; Gòu-Initial moved up to Tóngrén-Second, Gòu-Second moved down to Tóngrén-Initial; and the cases of “Initial Nine varies to give the Initial line a Eight” and “Initial Six varies to give the Initial line a Seven” — none of these escape inconsistency of example between front and back.
He therefore upward examined the doctrines of Lǎng Yǐ, Jīng Fáng, Shǔ Cái, Yú Fān, and the various houses, and settled on this diagram, with each hexagram fully laying out the ancient method and decided by his own sense; the Sòng and Yuán Confucians and the Míng-period figures like Lái Zhīdé he also concurrently examined. His words generally have a basis; he is not the same as other houses’ forced piercing-and-chiseling. His confirmation by Tuàn and line statements is not always free of forced attribution, yet for example his saying “Tún is fundamentally Kǎn; Initial Six rises to Second, Nine in the Second descends to Initial — this is the firm and soft beginning to interact”; “Bǐ is fundamentally Shī; one yáng-line dwells in Second is the masses’ principal, hence Shī; varied to dwell in Fifth is what the world adheres to, hence Bǐ”; “Qiān: Qián’s Top Nine comes to dwell in Kūn’s Third — the heavenly way descending and bright; Kūn’s Six in the Third rises to Qián’s position — the earthly way humble and ascending”; “Yù: Fù-Initial varied to Five embodies the Bǐ symbol, hence beneficial to enfeoff lords; Fù-Initial ascended to Three embodies the Shī symbol, hence beneficial to lead an army” — these often coincide cleverly with the canonical text.
Only at the end of the volume does he say: “Some maintain that variation is one meaning within the Yì and not the original import of the drawing of the trigrams and the making of the Yì. I alone hold this is not so” — and so on. This holding is unavoidably excessive. Qián’s and Kūn’s engendering of the six children is comparable to yīn and yáng dividing into the five phases; their pairing into sixty-four hexagrams is comparable to the celestial-stems and earthly-branches pairing into the jiǎzǐ sexagenary; the deriving from the hexagrams the variations of odd-and-even is comparable to the celestial-stem-and-earthly-branch combinations producing the chōng (clash), hé (combination), zhì (control), huà (transformation). Those who refute guà biàn say that there cannot be “a so-and-so hexagram first and a such-and-such hexagram after” — this is like saying of the five phases that water is engendered by gēng and xīn and not transformed at bǐng and xīn, that fire is engendered by jiǎ and yǐ and not transformed at wù and guǐ. Those who hold guà biàn take this as the basis of the making of the Yì, that the sixty-four hexagrams all come from this — this is like taking the transformed breath as the original breath, also at variance with the Yì’s import of mutual generation in the five phases. Therefore the doctrine of guà biàn may not be called other than one meaning within the Yì, and may not be called the original meaning of the Yì. Confucians from the Hàn down have transmitted it; one ought certainly to take from it; preserving it as available for joint reference is acceptable.
Respectfully collated, the eleventh 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 the Sìkù notice to Chóngzhēn guǐwèi = 1643. The bracket here adopts that single year. The work was completed in the year before the fall of the Míng; Dǒng survived the dynastic transition and lived another twenty-one years.
The work is one of the most rigorous late-Míng / early-Qīng treatises on the guà biàn doctrine specifically, and the Sìkù editors’ notice — itself an extended analytical treatment of the issue — is one of the more substantial pieces of Qīng kǎozhèng analysis embedded in the Yì-class tíyào. The editors’ own concluding analogy — guà biàn as parallel to the celestial-stem / earthly-branch chōnghézhìhuà relations of the five-phase / sixty-cycle system — is a striking moment of independent doctrinal reasoning by the editors themselves, going somewhat beyond the work being notice’d.
The work belongs methodologically to the same late-Míng kǎozhèng-precursor tradition as Xióng Guò (KR1a0098) and Chén Shìyuán (KR1a0099), but is more narrowly and rigorously focused on a single technical issue. Together they constitute the principal Míng-period preparation for Hú Wèi’s 胡渭 Yìtú míng biàn 易圖明辨 (1706) — the major Qīng demolition of the Sòng chart-tradition — which Dǒng explicitly anticipates in his analysis of Zhū Xī’s guà biàn diagram.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. Treated in Chinese surveys of late-Míng Yìxué and especially in studies of the guà biàn doctrine (Zhū Bóhūi, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ vol. 4; specialized studies by Liào Míng-chūn 廖明春).
Other points of interest
The Sìkù notice’s extended philosophical conclusion — using the celestial-stem / earthly-branch analogy to argue that guà biàn is one valid mode of Yì-reading without being the original mode — is a representative example of the editors’ willingness to develop their own substantive position rather than confine themselves to mere description. It is also one of the cases in which the Sìkù tíyào becomes itself a piece of Yì-thought rather than only a notice of one.