Zhōuyì qiǎn shù 周易淺述
A Plain Account of the Zhōuyì by 陳夢雷
About the work
A Kāngxī-period Yìjīng commentary in eight juàn by 陳夢雷 Chén Mènglèi (1650–1741), composed in Kāngxī jiǎxū 康熙甲戌 = 1694 during his first exile at Shàngyángbǎo 尚陽堡 in Liaoning. The work takes 朱熹 Zhū Xī’s Běnyì as principal authority and supplements with 王弼 Wáng Bì’s notes, 孔穎達 Kǒng Yǐngdá’s zhèngyì, 蘇軾 Sū Shì’s zhuàn, 胡廣 Hú Guǎng’s Wǔjīng dàquán (i.e. the Yǒnglè Zhōuyì zhuànyì dàquán KR1a0091), and 來知德 Lái Zhīdé’s (KR1a0100) commentary. Where these earlier authorities do not address a passage or where Chén’s own reading diverges from them, he sets out his own opinion separately. The work bears the marks of its compositional setting: Chén’s fánlì candidly states that “of the several thousand houses that have glossed the Yì, I have not been able to read broadly” (解易數千家未能廣覽) — a frank admission of the limited library available to an exiled scholar.
The work’s distinctive method, as set out in the fánlì, is to ground all reading in xiàng 象 (symbol): “principle and number cannot be displayed; principle cannot be exhausted — therefore both are vested in symbol. If one knows the symbol, principle and number lie within it, and divination too can be savored from the symbol.” Chén accepts Zhū’s principle-readings but rejects Zhū’s guà biàn doctrine; accepts Lái Zhīdé’s symbol-method but rejects Lái’s cuò zōng (paired-and-inverted) framework. The work thus stands as a moderate, library-limited mid-Kāngxī Zhū-Xī-school Yì commentary that nonetheless succeeds in cleaning out chart-tradition entanglements (轇轕). The Sìkù editors note that the appended thirty diagrams at the end of the work are by Chén’s friend 楊道聲 Yáng Dàoshēng — described as “forced and trifling” (穿鑿煩碎) and “in fact not actually corresponding to Chén’s book” — the editors preserve them only because they are present in the original recension and represent one school’s reading.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Zhōuyì qiǎn shù in eight juàn was composed by Chén Mènglèi of our [Qīng] dynasty. Mènglèi, zì Xǐngzhāi, was a man of Mǐnxiàn. He was a jìnshì of the gēngxū year of Kāngxī (1670), and held office as Hànlín Compiler. By reason of an offense he was demoted-and-garrisoned. Later, by imperial grace, he was summoned back to collate the copper-plate type. Again by reason of an offense he was demoted-and-garrisoned, dying at his garrison post.
This compilation was completed in Kāngxī jiǎxū (1694) — written when he was first sent to Shàngyángbǎo. The general import takes Master Zhū’s Běnyì as principal, joined with Wáng Bì’s notes, Kǒng Yǐngdá’s zhèngyì, Sū Shì’s zhuàn, Hú Guǎng’s Dàquán, and Lái Zhīdé’s notes. Where the various commentators have not reached, and where his views and the Běnyì’s differ, he separately sets forth his own ideas to make them clear. Apparently his travel-trunk was short of books, hence his sources stop here. His fánlì says “of the several thousand houses that have glossed the Yì, I have not been able to read broadly” — solid words, in fact.
Yet his doctrine: “the Yì’s meaning-store does not go outside principle-number-symbol-divination. But number cannot be displayed and principle cannot be exhausted, hence both are vested in symbol. If one knows the symbol, principle and number lie within it, and divination too can be from the symbol savored.” Hence what he glosses takes elucidation of symbol as principal. His position-takings are mostly close to human affairs, with no slipperiness of “speaking of mind, speaking of heaven” or fragmentary phantasm. Although his exposition of principle mostly reveres Master Zhū, he does not adopt Master Zhū’s guà biàn doctrine. His symbol-taking, although jointly drawing on Mr Lái, does not adopt Mr Lái’s cuò zōng discussion. He is also quite able to sweep clean the entanglements.
Only the thirty diagrams appended at the back of the volume are by his friend Yáng Dàoshēng — forced-and-trifling, in fact not actually corresponding to Mènglèi’s book. We let them remain in the original recension; moreover Yì-exposition originally has this one school. We provisionally let them stand in the old form, placing them in the position of “do not discuss, do not deliberate.”
Respectfully collated, the ninth 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 fixed by the Sìkù notice to Kāngxī 33 = 1694, during Chén’s first exile at Shàngyángbǎo. The bracket here adopts the single year. The work was completed when Chén was forty-four; it was his major scholarly project of the exile period, before his recall to court (where he would compile the much larger Gǔjīn túshū jí chéng).
The work is a moderate Kāngxī-period Yì commentary; its principal historical interest is twofold: (1) as a documentary witness to the conditions of Confucian scholarship in early-Qīng exile (limited library, focused engagement with a small canonical set of authorities); (2) as the Yì-precursor of Chén’s later monumental work on the Gǔjīn túshū jí chéng, where the Lǐshù 理數 (principle-and-number) section heavily develops the Yìxué themes treated in compressed form here.
The work’s symbol-centered methodology — taking xiàng 象 as the integrative ground in which principle, number, and divination all reside — is methodologically interesting and represents a particular Kāngxī-period synthesis position: more xiàng-emphasizing than 李光地 Lǐ Guāngdì (KR1a0132–KR1a0133) but less aggressively xiàngshù-systematic than 來知德 Lái Zhīdé (KR1a0100) or 毛奇齡 Máo Qílíng (KR1a0126).
The Sìkù editors’ frank handling of the appended Yáng Dàoshēng diagrams — preserving them in the original form but explicitly distancing them from Chén’s substantive work — is one of the editors’ more delicate cases of separating an author from associated paratext. The “do not discuss, do not deliberate” formulation is a careful editorial half-measure.
Translations and research
For Chén Mènglèi’s broader career and the Gǔjīn túshū jí chéng attribution question see ECCP under “Ch’en Meng-lei” and Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (Harvard, 2012, rev. 2015). No major Western-language monograph specifically on the Zhōuyì qiǎn shù located.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the cleanest cases in the Yì-corpus of an exile composition, and its candid fánlì — admitting limited library access — is one of the more honest authorial self-disclosures in the corpus. The pairing with 楊爵 Yáng Jué’s Zhōuyì biàn lù (KR1a0096) of the Jiājìng prison years and 黃道周 Huáng Dàozhōu’s Yì xiàng zhèng (KR1a0110) of the Chóngzhēn prison years extends the genre of confinement-composition Yì-commentaries into the Kāngxī period.