Zhōuyì xiàng cí 周易象辭
Symbol-and-Word on the Zhōuyì by 黃宗炎
About the work
A major early-Qīng Yìjīng commentary in twenty-two juàn by Huáng Zōngyán 黃宗炎 (1616–1686), Míng loyalist and younger brother of Huáng Zōngxī 黃宗羲. Appended in the Sìkù recension are two further works by the same author: Zhōuyì xún mén yú lùn 周易尋門餘論 in two juàn and Tú xué biàn huò 圖學辨惑 in one juàn — both of which had separate single-volume editions but were originally listed in the Xiàng cí table of contents as appendices, hence the Sìkù combines them. The work’s argumentative spine is a sustained polemic against the Chén Tuán 陳摶 chart-tradition combined with substantive yìlǐ exegesis of the canonical hexagrams and lines.
The Sìkù editors’ assessment is positive but precise about two characteristic flaws: (1) occasional eccentric readings — most strikingly Huáng’s gloss of Guī mèi yǐ xū 歸妹以須 (“returning sister with xū”) as referring to xū fà 鬚髮 (beard-and-hair) on the basis of the trigram Yí 頤 (cheek) underneath, against the standard reading of xū as yǎ 婭 (the lowly female); (2) excessive reliance on Hàn-period seal-script etymology to derive canonical character meaning — a practice the editors compare critically to Wáng Ānshí’s 王安石 Xīn yì 新義 Zì shuō 字說, which they regard as a methodological dead end. Apart from these, the editors give the work substantive credit, particularly for the cited Kūn exegesis (“Qián is great; Kūn is able to match it and reach equality, this is Qián’s greatness, Kūn also reaches it; hence ‘utmost’”) and similar penetrating yìlǐ readings.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated, condensed): The Zhōuyì xiàng cí in twenty-two juàn, with appended Xún mén yú lùn in two juàn and Tú xué biàn huò in one juàn, was composed by Huáng Zōngyán of our [Qīng] dynasty. Zōngyán, zì Huìmù, was a man of Yúyáo, the younger brother of Zōngxī. His exposition of the Yì forcefully repudiates the learning of Chén Tuán; therefore his glossing of the lines and symbols is uniformly meaning-and-principle as principal.
For example, on the Tuàn of Kūn he says: “Qián is already great; Kūn is able to match Qián and reach equality with it — this is Qián’s greatness; Kūn also reaches it. Hence it says ‘utmost.’ Qián with the original gives, and Kūn receives it — this is Kūn’s ‘original’; there is not a separate ‘original.‘” The meaning is what earlier men did not bring out, and on the import of “carrying heaven and moving with the time” and the way of “no completion has end,” it is all clearly fluid. His other glosses are mostly of this kind, all of which can be supplied as one reading of an Yì-school.
As to taking Guī mèi yǐ xū — xū as the lowly woman — the old reading was originally not to be exchanged; but Zōngyán, taking xū as attaching to Yí in motion, glosses xū as xū fà 鬚髮 (beard-and-hair). This is unavoidably a wound from love-of-the-strange. Further, on the character-meanings of the Yì he much cites seal-script (zhuàn wén 篆文) to gloss them — and this also fails to escape the abuse of Mr Wáng’s 王 Xīn yì dedicatedly using the Zì shuō. They should be viewed distinguishingly.
The appended Xún mén yú lùn in two juàn and Tú xué biàn huò in one juàn are roughly similar in import. The two books each have separate single-volume editions, yet examination of the Zhōuyì xiàng cí’s table of contents in fact lists these two books, calling them appendices — they are not separately self-contained compilations. We have now still combined them, so that they may go forth in mutual support.
Respectfully collated, the eighth 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 Huáng’s mature post-1644 scholarship and his death in 1686. The bracket here adopts these dates. The work is undated internally; the Sìkù notice does not narrow it.
The work is the major early-Qīng yìlǐ + anti-chart-tradition Yìjīng commentary by the younger of the two Huáng brothers. With his brother 黃宗羲’s Yì xué xiàng shù lùn (KR1a0123), they constitute the leading Yúyáo Huáng-family early-Qīng contribution to the Yìxué of the MíngQīng transition.
The work’s tripartite structure — main commentary (Xiàng cí) + supplementary essays (Xún mén yú lùn) + chart-critique (Tú xué biàn huò) — gives substantive treatment to all three of the early-Qīng Yì-priorities: canonical exegesis, methodological reflection, and demolition of the Sòng chart-tradition. The combination is rare among early-Qīng Yì commentaries and makes Huáng Zōngyán’s work a fuller treatment of the Yì than even his brother’s. The Sìkù editors’ careful observation that the three works belong together as an integrated unit (despite their separate-volume circulation) is methodologically sound and is preserved in the Sìkù quánshū arrangement.
The two characteristic flaws the editors identify — eccentric individual readings and over-reliance on seal-script etymology — are both characteristic of one wing of late-Míng / early-Qīng Yìxué (Wú Chéng’s 吳澄 line for the first; Méi Zúdé 梅族德’s late-Míng strain for the second) and reflect Huáng’s broad rather than narrow scholarly engagement.
Translations and research
Huáng Zōngyán has received less Western-language attention than his brother. No major Western-language monograph specifically on the Zhōuyì xiàng cí located. For the broader Huáng-family context see Lynn Struve’s bibliographic work and Theodore de Bary’s writings on the elder Huáng Zōngxī. In Chinese: standard treatments in Zhū Bóhūi 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ vol. 4, and in Jiāng Guǎnghuī 姜廣輝, Yì xué shǐ.
Other points of interest
The pairing of the two Huáng brothers — Zōngxī (1610–1695) and Zōngyán (1616–1686) — both writing major Yì works against the Chén Tuán chart-tradition in the same Yúyáo retreat under the Qīng makes the early-Kāngxī period one of the densest moments of family-shared scholarly engagement with the Yì in Chinese history. The combination of KR1a0123 (Zōngxī) and KR1a0124 (Zōngyán) with KR1a0120 (Wáng Fūzhī) and the slightly later Hú Wèi’s Yìtú míng biàn (1706) marks the early-Qīng Yì kǎozhèng turn at its peak.