Zhōuyì bài shū 周易稗疏
Stalk-Glosses on the Zhōuyì by 王夫之
About the work
A Míng-loyalist / early-Qīng Yìjīng notebook in four juàn by Wáng Fūzhī 王夫之 (1619–1692), with an attached Zhōuyì kǎo yì 周易考異 in one juàn (the catalog meta records this as appendix). Composed during Wáng’s long mountain retreat at Héngyáng (where he refused Qīng office), the work is a zhájì-style 劄記 reading-notebook: each entry takes a few characters of the canonical text as its lemma without reproducing the canon in full, and supplies textual-philological argument. The work does not run continuously through every hexagram and line; it treats only those passages where Wáng saw a genuine textual or philological problem.
The Sìkù editors give the Bài shū an unusually warm assessment: it neither follows the Chén Tuán chart-tradition nor the Jīng Fáng divinatory school, refuses xiàntiān diagrams and wěishū miscellany “with great force” (排之甚力), and equally avoids vacuous metaphysical talk in the LǎoZhuāng manner. “Among recent expositors of the Yì, the most evidentially-grounded” (於近時說易之家為最有根據). The notice carefully calibrates Wáng’s strengths and occasional lapses (a contested pán 鞶 / dài 帶 reading on Sòng 訟; a missed Liáng Wǔdì 梁武帝 reading on Dà Chù 大畜’s hé tiān zhī qú 何天之衢; the strained qín 禽 / huò 獲 gloss on Jǐng 井) with characteristic Qiánlóng-period evenhandedness.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated, condensed): The Zhōuyì bài shū in four juàn, with appended Kǎo yì in one juàn, was composed by Wáng Fūzhī of our [Qīng] dynasty. Fūzhī, zì Érnóng, hào Jiāngzhāi, was a man of Hànyáng [error for Héngyáng]; in the previous Míng he was a jǔrén. This compilation is his reading-the-Yì notes, taken with the brush as he read; hence each entry only raises a few characters of the canonical text as its lemma, and does not fully lay out the canon. Where there were doubtful passages he composed kǎo biàn 考辨 examinations and arguments; hence he does not exhaust hexagram by hexagram and line by line in setting up the discussion.
The general orientation does not believe in Chén Tuán’s learning, nor in Jīng Fáng’s technique. Toward the prior-heaven diagrams and wěishū miscellany, he repels them all with great force. He likewise does not engage in empty talk of the metaphysical-mysterious or attach himself to the import of LǎoZhuāng. Hence his words always have evidence and his meanings always have principle. Among recent expositors of the Yì, he is the most evidentially-grounded.
Among the entries: his gloss on Sòng 訟’s pán dài 鞶帶 saying “dài has no name ‘pán’; pán is the pán tassel of carriage-decoration; dài is what attaches the pendant-and-ribbon and the fú knee-cover” — examination of the Zuǒ zhuàn’s “the empress’s pán mirror,” with Dù Yù’s gloss of pán as dài, and the Shuōwén’s pán character which Xǔ Shèn also notes as dà dài — how can it be said that dài has no name ‘pán’? Or his Hé tiān zhī qú 何天之衢: Liáng Wǔdì glossed hé 何 as hè 荷 (to bear), seen in Jīngdiǎn shìwén — Fūzhī also takes it as the meaning of “to bear and carry,” but cites Zhuāngzǐ’s “bearing cloud-and-vapor” as evidence and does not draw on Liáng Wǔdì’s gloss; this too is an occasional failure of examination. As to Jǐng 井’s jiù jǐng wú qín 舊井無禽, glossing qín 禽 as huò 獲 (capture) — this is unavoidably forced piercing-and-attribution.
Yet others — like his citing the Lǐ’s “the lord even commanded his officers to wear yellow lower-garments, the lower officials wore mixed-color lower-garments” to confirm huáng cháng yuán jí 黃裳元吉 (the beauty of the yellow lower-garment); his citing the Zuǒ zhuàn’s bān mǎ 班馬 to confirm chéng mǎ bān rú 乘馬班如 (whose chéng should be read in the falling tone); his citing the military method’s “front-left low, rear-right high” to confirm Shī zuǒ cì 師左次; together with his discussions of Dì Yǐ 帝乙 not being the father of Zhòu, of Wáng yòng xiǎng yú Xī shān 王用亨于西山 not being King Wén, of Lín 臨’sx eight months and Fù 復’s seven days, of the Yì’s reverse counting, and of the Hétú and milfoil-divination — all these have systematic threads.
Although the volume is small, it is in any case a piece of evidentially-grounded learning.
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 by Wáng’s post-1644 / 1650 mountain retreat and his death in 1692. The bracket here adopts these dates. The work is undated internally; the Sìkù notice does not narrow it.
The work is the Sìkù-included member of Wáng Fūzhī’s larger Yì corpus. Three larger works — the Zhōuyì wài zhuàn (extended philosophical commentary), the Zhōuyì nèi zhuàn (systematic close exegesis), and the substantial Zhōuyì kǎo yì — were not received by the Sìkù editors as separate items (only the small Kǎo yì survives here as appendix). The Sìkù’s exclusion of Wáng’s substantive philosophical Yì writings reflects the work’s own surface character (notebook-form, philological focus) rather than a critical judgment.
The Sìkù notice’s high praise — most evidentially-grounded among recent Yì commentators — places Wáng definitively within the early-Qīng kǎozhèng turn that Hú Wèi 胡渭 would soon consummate (Yìtú míng biàn, 1706). This makes the Bài shū a small but historically significant precursor of the high-Qīng kǎozhèng tradition.
The note that the Sìkù gives Wáng’s native place as Hànyáng 漢陽 is an error; standard biographical sources give Héngyáng 衡陽 (correctly preserved in 王夫之’s person note).
The substantive philological points the Sìkù notice highlights — Dì Yǐ not being the father of Zhòu, Wáng yòng xiǎng yú Xī shān not referring to King Wén, the proper readings of Lín’s eight months and Fù’s seven days, the Yì’s reverse counting, the Hétú and milfoil-divination critiques — collectively constitute a substantial philological program that takes Wáng’s Bài shū well beyond conventional notebook commentary.
Translations and research
Wáng Fūzhī has been the subject of substantial Western-language scholarship; for the Yì writings specifically see Tang Junyi 唐君毅, Zhōngguó zhéxué yuán lùn: Yuán jiào piān (Hong Kong, 1977), and Liú Cǎiqín 劉采琴. In Chinese: Xiāo Jiéfū 蕭萐父, Wáng Chuánshān píngzhuàn (Nánjīng University Press, 1986), is the standard biography. No major Western-language monograph specifically on the Bài shū located. For Wáng’s broader Lǐxué and historical thought see Tien Chen-ya, The Philosophy of Wang Fu-chih (1980).
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ inclusion of the small Bài shū (and not the larger Yì-philosophical writings) makes the Sìkù’s reception of Wáng partial in a particular way: it preserves Wáng-the-philologist while passing over Wáng-the-philosopher. This is a small case in the Sìkù’s general editorial preference for evidentially-grounded textual scholarship over philosophical synthesis. The Sìkù’s frank correction of Wáng on specific philological points (the pán / dài debate; the missed Liáng Wǔdì gloss) is also characteristic of their willingness to discipline a generally admired scholar.