Rì jiǎng Yìjīng jiěyì 日講易經解義
Daily-Lecture Explication of the Yìjīng by 牛鈕, 孫在豐 (奉敕撰)
About the work
A major Kāngxī-period imperial Yìjīng commentary in eighteen juàn, compiled by Niú Niǔ 牛鈕 and Sūn Zàifēng 孫在豐 on the personal command of the Kāngxī emperor. The commission was issued in Kāngxī 19.3.19 = 1680; the work was completed and presented to the throne in Kāngxī 22.12.18 = early 1684. The work originated as the lecture-script for the imperial rì jiǎng 日講 (daily lecture) sessions on the Yìjīng; the published text expands and edits the lecture material into a continuous canonical commentary.
The Kāngxī emperor’s own preface (yù zhì xù 御製序) is unusually substantive: it frames the Yì as the source of the Six Arts (liù yì 六藝) and the foundation of the imperial ruling tradition (citing the Hàn historian Bān Gù’s 班固 liù yì jù wǔ cháng zhī dào, ér yì wéi zhī yuán 六藝具五常之道而易為之原), and presents the commentary as serving both intellectual exposition and statecraft self-cultivation: “to take the four virtues of Qián and embody the protection of the multitudes, … so that great harmony overflows in the realm.” The work thus stands as both an exegetical document and a statement of Kāngxī-period imperial Confucian ideology, anchoring the dynasty’s ruling legitimacy in the canonical Yì.
The exegetical content stays within the ChéngZhū mainstream, drawing on Chéng Yí’s Yìchuán, Zhū Xī’s Běnyì, the Yǒnglè Wǔjīng dàquán selections, and selectively on the previous Shùnzhì-period imperial Yìjīng tōngzhù (KR1a0115). It was the dominant imperial Yì commentary until the larger Yù zuàn Zhōuyì zhé zhōng 御纂周易折中 of 1715 superseded it.
Tiyao
Imperial Preface (Kāngxī 22.12.18 = early 1684, translated): I [the Kāngxī emperor] consider that the way and method of emperors and kings reside in the Six Classics, and that for what reaches to the limits of heaven-and-human, exhausts nature-and-mandate, opens up things and goes before the people, penetrates change and exhausts profit, this principle is set forth in nothing more thoroughly than in the Yì. The Yì as a book combines the four sages’ establishing-of-symbols, setting-out-of-trigrams, and attaching-of-words; it is broad and complete. From of old, the way by which Bāo Xī 包犧, Shénnóng 神農, Yellow Emperor, Yáo, and Shùn ruled the world below was all drawn from this. So the Shī and Shū’s prose, the Lǐ and Yuè’s implements, the Chūnqiū’s acts and events — none did not communicate-and-penetrate in the Yì. The Hàn Bān Gù said: “the Six Arts comprise the way of the Five Constants, and the Yì is its source” — is this not credible?
I rise early and go to bed late, daily diligent in seeking governance principle. Considering that the essentials of governance for the ancient emperors and kings must be rooted in classical learning, I have broadly synthesized the simple and bound documents and have rolled-and-savored their refined treasures. As to the Great Yì I have particularly exhausted research-and-seeking, and have specially commanded the Confucian officials to consult and examine the various Confucians’ notes, subcommentaries, zhuàn, and yì, and to compose the Jiěyì in eighteen juàn, lectured-on by the day, turning back over the words of the hexagrams and lines, deeply probing the import of the making of the Yì.
In broad terms, the work-and-application of creation-and-transformation does not go outside yīn-and-yáng; matched against human affairs, it has the distinctions of upright-and-twisted, virtuous-and-evil. The reasons for the rise-and-fall of fortunes-and-numbers, the reasons for the order-and-disorder of customs-and-conventions, the reasons for the advance-and-withdrawal, growth-and-decline of jūnzǐ and xiǎorén — few are not seen in the bending-and-extension and the variation of the two strokes of odd-and-even. As to embodying it in personal practice and applying it in works-and-undertakings, there is the method of “observing the people and setting up instruction,” there is the application of “communicating virtue and classifying feelings”: fear-and-trembling, self-cultivation-and-examination, in order to govern the body; thinking-of-trouble and pre-defending, in order to maintain the world. Drawing it out and extending, touching-the-class and lengthening, governance principle is complete. I therefore had it cut to blocks and made into a book, promulgated to the world.
I take only the embodying of the four virtues of Qián in order to receive-and-protect the multitudes, and further hope that the various ministries and the hundred officers will join in the public-mindedness of “swearing in the field” of Huàn 渙 and “scattering the crowd,” will achieve the beauty of “the máo root pulling up together” of Tài and “trustingly rising” of Shēng — then the Tài communion will match the bright-and-good [Yáo–Shùn era], and the great harmony will overflow in the realm. This is to suit my intention of taking classical learning as the way of governance.
Kāngxī 22.12.18.
Memorial of presentation (Niú Niǔ, Sūn Zàifēng et al.): [Highly stylized memorial extolling the emperor and announcing completion of the printing of the Rì jiǎng Yìjīng jiěyì; on Kāngxī 19.3.19 the imperial command had ordered that the Yìjīng jiǎngzhāng be cut to blocks; the present submission completes that command.]
The Sìkù tíyào itself is brief and chiefly recapitulates the editorial circumstances; it does not engage in extended substantive critique, treating the work primarily as an imperial document.
Abstract
Composition is fixed precisely: the imperial commission was Kāngxī 19.3.19 = 1680; the imperial preface and presentation were Kāngxī 22.12.18 = early 1684. The bracket here adopts these dates.
The work is the principal Kāngxī-period imperial Yì compilation before the Zhōuyì zhé zhōng 周易折中 (1715). As an institutional document, it combines (1) the rì jiǎng lecture genre, in which Hànlín officials presented daily jīngxué lessons to the emperor — a Kāngxī-period innovation that systematized the moral-political education of the ruler; (2) the imperial-commission editorial format, with the throne directly determining doctrinal content; and (3) the printed-and-promulgated transmission, distributing imperial scholarship as a model for the realm. The Kāngxī emperor’s preface is one of the more substantial early-Kāngxī Confucian ruling-ideology statements, framing the Yì as the foundational document of imperial governance.
The work’s eighteen-juàn structure follows the canonical Yì layout. Doctrinally it stays within the ChéngZhū mainstream and does not engage with the late-Míng xiàngshù-revival currents (Lái Zhīdé, Huáng Dàozhōu); it is also doctrinally more conservative than its successor the Zhōuyì zhé zhōng, which would attempt a more inclusive synthesis under the Kāngxī emperor’s later patronage of Lǐ Guāngdì 李光地.
Translations and research
For the Kāngxī-period rì jiǎng tradition see Frederic Wakeman, The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China (Berkeley: UC Press, 1985), and the Dictionary of Ming Biography / ECCP under “Niú Niǔ” and “Sūn Zàifēng.” For Kāngxī’s broader Confucian self-cultivation see Jonathan Spence, Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K’ang-hsi (Knopf, 1974). No major Western-language monograph on the Rì jiǎng Yìjīng jiěyì specifically located.
Other points of interest
The pairing of the Shùnzhì-period Yìjīng tōngzhù (KR1a0115, 1657) and the Kāngxī-period Rì jiǎng Yìjīng jiěyì (1684) makes the early Qīng’s first three decades unusually well-documented in court Yì-reading practice. Together they show the Qīng court’s deliberate cultivation of imperial Yì-learning as a vehicle of dynastic legitimacy and ruling self-cultivation. Comparison of the two prefaces — Shùnzhì’s brief and procedural, Kāngxī’s substantive and theoretical — also tracks the maturation of Qīng imperial Confucian rhetoric.