Yì zhuó 易酌
Pondering the Changes by 刁包
About the work
A Míng-loyalist / early-Qīng Yìjīng commentary in fourteen juàn by Diāo Bāo 刁包 (1603–1669) of Qízhōu 祁州, a jǔrén of the late Míng who refused Qīng office. Composed during Diāo’s post-1644 retirement and revised over an extended period, the work uses the Wáng Bì zhùshū 注疏 base text and takes Chéng Yí’s 程頤 Yìchuán and Zhū Xī’s 朱熹 Běnyì as its dual authorities. Although Diāo occasionally treats xiàngshù, he restricts this to the post-Chén Tuán Sòng tradition (Lǐ Zhīcái 李之才) rather than the Hàn-onward technical tradition. The work was nearly cut to blocks during the early Kāngxī by Lù Lǒngqí 陸隴其 (then in office at Língshòu 靈壽) but the project did not proceed; Diāo’s grandson Diāo Xiǎnzǔ 刁顯祖 in Yōngzhèng 1 (1723) re-edited the manuscript with his own additions — a fánlì, Záguà diagrams at the head, and jǐn àn 謹案 notes in small characters throughout the body — and printed the work in this form. The original preface declares the work both “a ferry-bridge to canonical learning” and “a standard for the examination craft” — a dual claim the Sìkù editors firmly redirect: Diāo’s intent was elucidation of the way (明道), not examination preparation; treating it as the latter would falsify his original intent.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated, condensed): The Yì zhuó in fourteen juàn was composed by Diāo Bāo of our [Qīng] dynasty. Bāo, zì Méngjí, was a man of Qízhōu; in the previous Míng he was a jǔrén of the xīnmǎo year of Tiānqǐ (1631). The book uses the zhùshū base text, with the Chéng zhuàn and Běnyì as principal. Although there is also occasional discussion of symbol-and-number, all of it is the learning of Chén Tuán and Lǐ Zhīcái, not the method transmitted from the Hàn onward.
The original preface says that Lù Lǒngqí, when in office at Língshòu, wished to cut it to blocks but did not carry it through; in the early Yōngzhèng, his grandson Xiǎnzǔ further added to it from his own ideas. The fánlì, the Záguà diagrams at the head of the volume, and the small-character jǐn àn notes within are all by Xiǎnzǔ’s brush. The original preface also calls this book “a ferry-bridge for canonical learning, also the standard of the examination craft.”
Examining: Bāo at the start of [our] dynasty went to and fro with the various Confucians, lecturing-and-learning. His writing is rooted in meaning-and-principle and takes only elucidation of the way as principal — not at all calculated for the examination test. The book’s pushing-and-elucidating of the Yì-principles is in general clear and upright, sufficient to wing Chéng and Zhū. Within the Sòng learning he in fact deeply has attainments. To take it as an examination book would be to lose much of Bāo’s original intent.
Respectfully collated, the tenth month of the forty-fifth year of Qiánlóng (1780). 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 Diāo’s post-1644 retirement and his death in 1669. The bracket here adopts these dates. The 1723 republication by Diāo Xiǎnzǔ included substantial editorial additions but did not alter the original 14-juàn structure.
The work is a representative early-Qīng northern Lǐxué Yì-commentary, methodologically close to Sūn Qíféng’s KR1a0119 (the two were intellectual associates) but more conservatively ChéngZhū in doctrinal alignment and more philologically grounded in its acknowledgment of Wáng Bì’s base text. The Sìkù editors’ frank redirection of Diāo Xiǎnzǔ’s preface claim — that the work is for “examination craft” rather than for “elucidation of the way” — is one of the editors’ more pointed redirections of a posthumous editorial framing.
The grandson’s two-decades-later (1723) edition is also of interest as a small case in the early Qīng family-recovery transmission of Míng-loyalist scholarly manuscripts. The supplementary material (fánlì, Záguà diagrams, jǐn àn notes) is preserved in the Sìkù edition and is a small layer of Yōngzhèng-period editorial reception of late-Míng / early-Qīng Yìxué.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. For the broader early-Qīng northern Yì tradition see Ng On-cho, Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing (SUNY, 2001); for Lù Lǒngqí’s near-printing of the work see ECCP under “Lu Lung-ch’i.”
Other points of interest
The transmission profile — original manuscript completed in the Shùnzhì period, near-printing under Kāngxī (Lù Lǒngqí), eventual printing under Yōngzhèng with grandson’s additions — makes the work a small case study in the multi-generational Qīng family-and-school transmission of Míng-loyalist scholarship. The Sìkù editors’ implicit critique of Xiǎnzǔ for adding the examination-craft framing to his grandfather’s intent-of-the-way is also a small example of the editors’ careful distinction between an author’s intent and an editor’s repositioning.