Zhōuyì shì shù 周易筮述
Recital of Milfoil-Divination on the Zhōuyì by 王弘撰
About the work
A specialist early-Qīng treatise in eight juàn on milfoil-divination as the original function of the Yìjīng, by Wáng Hóngzhuàn 王弘撰 (1622–1702) of Huáyīn 華陰. The work is organized as a sequence of ten chapters: (1) origin of divination (yuán shì 原筮); divinatory ritual (shì yí 筮儀); milfoil-stalk numerology (shī shù 蓍數) — the shì yí draws on Zhū Xī supplemented by the Sòng Biànshuǐ 汴水 Zhào-school 趙氏; (2) pulling-method (dié fǎ 揲法); (3) variation-divination (biàn zhàn 變占) — honoring the canonical tradition and rejecting the Hàn Yìlín 易林, drawing on the Zuǒ zhuàn in slight divergence from Zhū Xī; (4) nine-and-six (jiǔ liù 九六); three poles (sān jí 三極); middle line (zhōng yáo 中爻 — i.e., hùtǐ 互體); (5) hexagram virtues (guà dé 卦德); hexagram symbols (guà xiàng 卦象); hexagram-breaths (guà qì 卦氣) — guà qì drawing on Shào Yōng and Zhū Xī, with appended tài yǐ 太乙 secret essentials; (6) hexagram statements (guà cí 卦辭); (7) Zuǒ zhuàn and Guóyǔ divination examples (Zuǒzhuàn Guóyǔ zhàn 左傳國語占); residual discussions (yú lùn 餘論); (8) verified prognosis (tuī yàn 推驗) — drawing on Mr Lù 陸氏 (Lù Yuánbǔ 陸元輔?), with material judged “extremely strange and shocking” omitted.
The work’s argumentative spine: Zhū Xī’s diagnosis (the Yì was originally a divinatory book) is correct, but Hàn divinatory technique (Jiāo Gàn 焦贛, Jīng Fáng 京房, Guǎn Lù 管輅, Guō Pú 郭璞) corrupted the original sage-divination into mere fāngjì 方技 (technical skills). Wáng aims to restore the canonical sage-divination by working strictly from the Yì itself and from its earliest transmission in the Zuǒ zhuàn / Guóyǔ. The Sìkù editors approve this orientation and contrast Wáng favorably with the fāngjì xiǎo shù 方技小數 tradition.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated, condensed): The Zhōuyì shì shù in eight juàn was composed by Wáng Hóngzhuàn of our [Qīng] dynasty. Hóngzhuàn, zì Wúyì, hào Shānshǐ, was a man of Huáyīn. In Kāngxī jǐwèi (1679) he was nominated for the Bóxué hóngcí. Hóngzhuàn, on the basis that Master Zhū said the Yì was fundamentally a divinatory book, composed this compilation to recite its meaning.
[Long enumeration of the eight juàn’s contents: Yuán shì, Shì yí, Shī shù; Dié fǎ; Biàn zhàn; Jiǔ liù, Sān jí, Zhōng yáo (= hùtǐ); Guà dé, Guà xiàng, Guà qì (with appended tài yǐ secret essentials); Guà cí; Zuǒzhuàn Guóyǔ zhàn, Yú lùn; Tuī yàn drawing on Mr Lù — material judged extremely strange and shocking is not included.]
Although this book was specifically composed for milfoil-divination, the great import repudiates the techniques of Jiāo and Jīng and brings out the principle of [Kings] Wén and Zhōu, all pushed back to the canonical meaning. Compared with technical-skills and small-numerologies, it is in any case set apart in distinction.
Respectfully collated, the fifth 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 mature scholarship and his death in 1702; given the Bóxué hóngcí nomination of 1679, the work was probably written in the 1670s–1690s. The bracket here adopts these dates.
The work is the principal early-Qīng Yì monograph specifically on milfoil-divination. Methodologically it stands within the early-Qīng kǎozhèng turn (alongside KR1a0123 Huáng Zōngxī, KR1a0124 Huáng Zōngyán, KR1a0120 Wáng Fūzhī) but applies the kǎozhèng method to a more narrowly technical question: the recovery of the canonical sage-divination from the corrupted Hàn-and-after technical traditions. The combination of Zhū Xī’s Qǐ méng (the milfoil-divination procedure) with the Zuǒ zhuàn / Guóyǔ documentary record is a late-seventeenth-century philological reconstruction project that anticipates Hú Wèi 胡渭 and the later Qīng Yìxué.
The work’s deliberate exclusion of the Hàn divinatory techniques (Jiāo, Jīng, Guǎn, Guō) and the Sòng Tàixuán, Yuán bāo, Qián xū, Huáng jí jīng shì numerologies sets it firmly within the canonical Yì tradition rather than the shùshù 數術 (numerical-art) tradition. The Sìkù editors’ contrast with fāngjì xiǎo shù 方技小數 reflects this. The closing Tuī yàn juàn — verified prognosis examples — is more empirically oriented than the rest of the work and marks a small but interesting concession to the demonstrable application of the divinatory method.
The Shǎnxī Lǐxué context (Wáng was an associate of Lǐ Yóng 李顒’s circle) places the work within the broader early-Qīng northwest Lǐxué network.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. For Wáng’s broader Shǎnxī Lǐxué affiliation see Lin Tongqi, The Confucian Tradition of Late Imperial China (1990s), and Ng On-cho, Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing (SUNY, 2001). For early-Qīng milfoil-divination scholarship more broadly see Richard J. Smith, Fortune-tellers and Philosophers (Westview, 1991).
Other points of interest
The work’s specialization on milfoil-divination — distinct from the broader Yì-commentary genre — makes it one of the cleanest early-Qīng monographs on a single technical aspect of the Yì. The combination with the standard chapter divisions (yuán shì, shì yí, shī shù, dié fǎ, biàn zhàn, etc.) produces a quasi-textbook structure; together with Hú Wèi’s later programmatic Yìtú míng biàn and Mǎo Qílíng’s 毛奇齡 various Yì works, it forms the early-Qīng canon of Yì-method-and-history scholarship.