Zhòngshì Yì 仲氏易
The Yì of the Second-Eldest [Brother] by 毛奇齡
About the work
A major early-Qīng Yìjīng commentary in thirty juàn by Máo Qílíng 毛奇齡 (1623–1716, also Máo Shēn 毛甡, hào Xīhé 西河) of Xiāoshān 蕭山. The work is nominally attributed to Máo’s elder brother Máo Xīlíng 毛錫齡 (the “second-eldest” zhòng 仲 of the title) — who had been deep in Yìxué but never wrote his ideas down, instead transmitting them orally to his son Máo Wénhuī 毛文輝 — with Máo Qílíng (after his return home and his brother’s death) gathering Wénhuī’s recollections and elaborating them into book form. Tradition reports that Máo Qílíng, after his post-1679 return home, spent sixty-four days in rented Hángzhōu lodgings writing one hexagram per day; the Sìkù editors take this report at face value as evidence that the work is in fact Máo Qílíng’s own composition transparently attributed to his brother.
The work’s principal substantive contribution is the wǔ yì 五義 (Five Meanings) doctrine of Yì-method: (1) biàn yì 變易 (variation, the standard understanding); (2) jiāo yì 交易 (mutual exchange — these two together being Fú Xī’s Yì, known to predecessors); (3) fǎn yì 反易 (rotational reversal — observing a hexagram by inverting it: Tún 屯 ↔ Méng 蒙, Xián 咸 ↔ Héng 恒); (4) duì yì 對易 (yīnyáng pairing — comparing yīn-and-yáng strengths and softnesses across hexagrams: upper-scripture Xū 需 / Sòng 訟 against lower-scripture Jìn 晉 / Míngyí 明夷); (5) yí yì 移易 (line-redistribution — examining how an aggregation of yīn-or-yáng lines redistributes to form a different hexagram: Tài 泰 with three yáng below and three yīn above; move line 3 to position 6, three yáng go up and one yīn comes down, producing Sǔn 損; etc.). Máo claims that fǎn, duì, and yí yì together constitute King Wén’s and the Duke of Zhōu’s Yì, and that the entire post-Hàn-Jìn tradition has lost them.
In Máo’s structural reading: the canonical Xùguà 序卦 (Hexagram Sequence) operates by fǎn yì; the canonical chapter-division operates by duì yì; the Xìcí 繫辭 derivations operate by yí yì. The Sìkù editors describe the argument as “very clever” (其言甚辨) but unavoidably tendentious in its forced piecing-together; they nonetheless concede the work substantive value as one school’s reading, since Máo grounds his arguments in gǔ rén (ancient sources) rather than purely speculative reading.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Zhòngshì Yì in thirty juàn was composed by Máo Qílíng of our [Qīng] dynasty. Qílíng — one name Shēn — zì Dàkě, hào Qiūqíng (also Chūqíng), and known by his ancestral place as Xīhé, was a man of Xiāoshān. In Kāngxī jǐwèi (1679) as a lǐnjiān student he was summoned by examination for the Bóxué hóngcí and appointed Hànlín Examination Editor.
Originally Qílíng’s elder brother [Máo] Xīlíng was deep in the Yì but had not composed a book; he merely from time to time orally transmitted to his son Wénhuī. Later, when Qílíng was furloughed and returned home, Xīlíng had already died; he therefore took up what Wénhuī had heard and added his own ideas to embellish them, completing this book. Some transmit that after Qílíng’s furlough-return, he rented lodging at Hángzhōu and composed one hexagram per day — sixty-four days, and the book was complete. Although it takes his brother as the cover-name, in fact the explanation is precisely Qílíng’s own. To judge by reason, this is perhaps so.
The general import: the Yì combines five meanings — first, biàn yì (variation); second, jiāo yì (mutual exchange) — these are Fú Xī’s Yì, what the predecessors knew; third, fǎn yì, observing it by examining its with-and-against, scrutinizing its facing-and-backing, and turning to look — like Tún turning to Méng, Xián turning to Héng, and so on; fourth, duì yì, comparing its yīn-and-yáng, lifting up its firm-and-soft, and observing it in pair — like the upper scripture’s Xū / Sòng paired with the lower scripture’s Jìn / Míngyí, like the upper scripture’s Tóngrén / Dàyǒu paired with the lower scripture’s Guài / Gòu, and so on; fifth, yí yì, scrutinizing its dividing-and-gathering, calculating its going-and-coming, and shifting upward-and-downward — like Tài being a hexagram of yīnyáng class-gathering, shifting line 3 to be line 6, three yáng going up and the yīn coming down, then becoming Sǔn; like Pǐ being a hexagram of yángyīn class-gathering, shifting line 4 to be the initial line, four yáng coming and the initial yīn going, then becoming Yì 益, and so on — these are the Yì of King Wén and the Duke of Zhōu, in fact what the Hàn and Jìn onward did not know. Hence by fǎn yì he uses the Xùguà; by duì yì he uses the chapter-divisions; by yí yì he uses the Yǎn yì xì cí 演易繫詞.
His words are very clever. Although they do not escape the failure of forced-piecing-and-attribution by-prose-seeking-to-prevail, in general he draws and cites the ancients — different from those who, by mind-mystery and conjecture, purely use empty words to claim having reached the Yì before the strokes were drawn. This too can be supplied as one school’s reading.
Respectfully collated, the fourth month of the forty-fourth year of Qiánlóng (1779). 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 Máo’s post-1679 furlough and his death in 1716; the legend of sixty-four-days-one-hexagram-per-day suggests a relatively concentrated composition in the late 1680s or 1690s. The bracket here (1685–1700) reflects this. The exact composition date is undocumented.
The work is one of the most substantively original early-Qīng Yì commentaries: the wǔ yì doctrine is a genuinely new structural reading of the Yì, integrating the canonical Xùguà, the upper-lower scripture division, and the Xìcí derivations under a single fivefold typology. Whether the doctrine is correct as a historical reconstruction of King Wén’s and the Duke of Zhōu’s actual practice (Máo’s claim) or merely as a fertile post-hoc analytical scheme (the Sìkù editors’ diplomatic suggestion) is a separate question; the doctrine has had substantial influence on subsequent Yì-scholarship.
Máo’s broader scholarly polemic — opposing the Sòng Lǐxué synthesis on multiple fronts, including the chart-tradition (Tài jí tú shuō yí yì, Hé tú Luò shū yuán shùn biàn) and the Yì-method itself (Tuī yì shǐ mò, Chūnqiū zhàn shì shū) — gives the Zhòngshì Yì a clear position within the broader early-Qīng kǎozhèng turn. The attribution to his elder brother is rhetorical: the Sìkù editors’ frank diagnosis that “in fact the explanation is precisely Qílíng’s own” is the standard view.
The work’s reception in the eighteenth century was polarized. Lǐ Guāngdì’s 李光地 Zhōuyì zhé zhōng (KR1a0117) of 1715 — composed as Máo was still alive — does not engage with Máo’s wǔ yì doctrine. Later high-Qīng kǎozhèng scholars (Huì Dòng 惠棟, Zhāng Huìyán 張惠言) treated Máo as a serious technical predecessor while criticizing his polemical excesses.
Translations and research
For Máo Qílíng’s broader role in the early-Qīng kǎozhèng movement see Benjamin Elman, From Philosophy to Philology (Harvard, 1984; rev. 2001), and ECCP under “Mao Ch’i-ling.” For the Zhòng-shì Yì specifically see Zhū Bóhūi, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ vol. 4. No major Western-language monograph specifically on the Zhòng-shì Yì located.
Other points of interest
The literary device of attributing one’s own work to an elder brother (with the brother’s deceased status making rebuttal impossible) is a small but interesting case in the rhetoric of late-imperial scholarly humility — and the Sìkù editors’ frankness in calling it out is characteristic of their willingness to read past authorial framings. Máo’s prolific output across the early-and-middle Kāngxī period makes him also one of the most important documentary witnesses to the late-seventeenth-century Confucian scholarly transition.