Tuī yì shǐ mò 推易始末
The Beginning-and-End of Pushing the Yì by 毛奇齡
About the work
A specialist Yìjīng treatise in four juàn by Máo Qílíng 毛奇齡 (1623–1716), composed as a sequel to and historical-supporting work for his Zhòngshì Yì (KR1a0126). The work systematically gathers all guà biàn 卦變 (hexagram-variation) and guà zōng 卦綜 doctrines from the Hàn through the Sòng — Gàn Bǎo 干寶, Xún Shuǎng 荀爽, Yú Fān 虞翻, and the various Sòng xiāng shēng 相生 / fǎn duì 反對 chart-doctrines — and lays them out for comparison, with Máo’s own Tuī yì zhé zhōng tú 推易折衷圖 appended at the back as the synthesizing diagram. The title “tuī yì” derives from the Xìcí’s gāng róu xiāng tuī 剛柔相推 (“the firm and the soft mutually push each other”); the work continues the yí yì 移易 (line-redistribution) doctrine of the Zhòngshì Yì.
The work’s argumentative center: Zhū Xī’s Běnyì placed the guà biàn tú 卦變圖 at the front of the volume but identified it only as Confucius’s Yì, never positing it as the Yì of King Wén and the Duke of Zhōu; Máo argues that on the contrary, hexagram-variation is the original method of the King Wén / Duke of Zhōu Yì and the proper basis of the 演畫繫辭 (drawing-extension and word-attachment).
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Tuī yì shǐ mò in four juàn was composed by Máo Qílíng of our [Qīng] dynasty. After Qílíng had recited his elder brother’s doctrines and composed the Zhòngshì Yì, he further took the discussions of Yì by Hàn, Táng, and Sòng-onward writers that touch on guà biàn, separately added integration-and-correlation, and made of them this book. Its name “tuī yì” is rooted in the Xìcí zhuàn’s “the firm and the soft mutually push each other” (剛柔相推) — still the yí yì meaning of the Zhòngshì Yì.
The general import: although Master Zhū’s Běnyì set forth the guà biàn tú at the head of the volume, he stopped at taking it as Confucius’s Yì and did not declare it to be the Yì of [Kings] Wén and Zhōu. He therefore went up and examined Gàn Bǎo, Xún Shuǎng, Yú Fān, and the various houses — all who had any doctrine of guà biàn / guà zōng — together with Sòng-onward mutual-engendering and inverted-paired diagrams: he completely listed them in the volume and attached his Tuī yì zhé zhōng tú 推易折衷圖 at the back.
Master Zhū said hexagram-variation is one meaning within the Yì; Qílíng, however, takes it as the original import of the drawing-extension and word-attachment. The Yì’s meaning is broad-and-great, touch-the-class and side-passing — seeing the wise here and the benevolent there, each illuminating one principle. This too is sufficient to bring out joint elucidation with what he composed in the Zhòngshì Yì.
Respectfully collated, the second 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 the Zhòngshì Yì (which it presupposes) and Máo’s death in 1716. The bracket here adopts the same range as the Zhòngshì Yì’s composition window. The work is undated internally.
The work is a focused historical and methodological supplement to the Zhòngshì Yì, narrowing the focus from the broader wǔ yì doctrine to the specific question of guà biàn / yí yì. As such, it is also an important early-Qīng historiographic source on the guà biàn tradition: the comprehensive listing of HànTángSòng guà biàn doctrines and their associated diagrams gives the work documentary value beyond its argumentative position.
The pairing with KR1a0112 (Dǒng Shǒuyù’s Guà biàn kǎo lüè of 1643) is methodologically instructive: where Dǒng treated guà biàn as one valid mode of Yì-reading without being the original mode (the position the Sìkù editors broadly endorsed in their notice on Dǒng), Máo elevates it to the original mode — a more aggressive position the Sìkù editors note without endorsing.
The closing diplomatic formula — that Máo’s reading “is also sufficient to bring out joint elucidation with what he composed in the Zhòngshì Yì” — is the Sìkù editors’ standard non-committal frame for a substantive but contestable doctrine.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. The work is best read alongside KR1a0126 and KR1a0112 for the early-Qīng guà biàn debate.
Other points of interest
The publication of paired major-work-and-supporting-treatise (Zhòngshì Yì / Tuī yì shǐ mò) is a small but characteristic Máo Qílíng tactic: most of his Yì writings come in such paired or grouped sequences, allowing the polemic to be made first in compressed thesis form and then in extended philological-historical form. The technique was adopted by some later Qīng kǎozhèng scholars (notably Hú Wèi for the chart-tradition: Yìtú míng biàn + Hóng fàn zhèng lùn).