Dà Yì tōng jiě 大易通解
Comprehensive Glosses on the Great Yì by 魏荔彤
About the work
A Yōngzhèng-period Yìjīng commentary in fifteen juàn by 魏荔彤 Wèi Lìtóng of Bǎixiāng 柏鄉 (Héběi), composed after his removal from his post as Daotai of the Jiāngchángzhèn 江常鎮 Circuit. Wèi was the son of the Kāngxī-period Grand Secretary 魏裔介 Wèi Yìjiè. The work combines yìli exegesis with selective xiàngshù reading, and the Sìkù editors single out three substantive contributions:
(1) On the relationship between the Yì hexagrams and the HétúLuòshū: Wèi holds that the two only share underlying principle (lǐ xiāng tōng 理相通) and need not be forced into mechanical correspondence;
(2) On the trigram-generation order: he denies that the standard Qián-1 Duì-2 Lí-3 Zhèn-4 Xùn-5 Kǎn-6 Gèn-7 Kūn-8 sequence represents the actual order of trigram generation;
(3) On the structural reading of the upper-and-lower scriptures: the upper scripture opens with QiánKūn and is pivoted at the middle by TàiPǐ; the lower scripture opens with XiánHéng and is pivoted at the middle by SǔnYì; this captures the “joint-and-pivot of the two chapters” (二篇之樞紐) — a substantively original structural reading.
On line-divination, Wèi accepts the standard procedure for one-, three-, and six-changing lines but offers a fresh treatment of the underspecified two-, four-, and five-changing line cases. The Sìkù editors’ chief reservation: Wèi rejects the orthodox “promote yáng, suppress yīn” doctrine, holding instead that “within yīn and yáng both there are excess and deficiency, the central-and-upright, the harmonious virtue, the beautiful and the inauspicious, the perverse and the upright; it is not that yáng is fixed as the jūnzǐ and yīn fixed as the xiǎorén” — a position that the editors regard as “unavoidably intentionally setting up difference” (有意立異).
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated, condensed): The Dà Yì tōng jiě in fifteen juàn was composed by Wèi Lìtóng of our [Qīng] dynasty. Lìtóng, zì Niàntíng, was a man of Bǎixiāng, the son of the Grand Secretary Yìjiè. He held office through Daotai of the Jiāngchángzhèn Circuit. This compilation is what he composed after his removal from office.
His discussion of drawing-the-trigrams holds that the Hé and Luò can only be said to share principle with the trigrams; one need not pierce-and-attribute. Further he holds that Qián-1 Duì-2 Lí-3 Zhèn-4 Xùn-5 Kǎn-6 Gèn-7 Kūn-8 is not the order in which the trigrams were engendered. His discussion of lines incorporates the changing-line treatment, holding that for the divination method: with two lines changing, take the upper line as principal; with five lines changing, divine the unchanging line; with four lines changing, divine the two unchanging lines, still taking the lower line as principal; with the rest, divine the line itself together with the Xiàng statement.
His discussion that the upper scripture opens with QiánKūn and varies at the middle into TàiPǐ, the lower scripture opens with XiánHéng and varies at the middle into SǔnYì — especially captures the joint-and-pivot of the two chapters. All have substantial views.
Only his not believing the earlier Confucians’ “promote yáng, suppress yīn” doctrine — turning over and arguing back-and-forth that “within yīn and yáng both there are excess and deficiency, the central-and-upright, the harmonious-virtue all have beautiful, the inauspicious all have evil; the upright-and-twisted; it is not that yáng is fixed as jūnzǐ and yīn fixed as xiǎorén. Within yīn and yáng both there are jūnzǐ and xiǎorén. The yáng’s beautiful virtue is firm-strength; its inauspicious virtue then is violent-and-fierce. The yīn’s beautiful virtue is soft-yielding; its inauspicious virtue then is treacherous-flattery. The jūnzǐ of yīnyáng both should be promoted; the xiǎorén both should be suppressed. Yīn and yáng both — one principle, one breath — adjusted-and-balanced firm-and-soft, gain-and-loss, excess-and-deficiency, hoping the result will resemble heaven-and-earth’s transformative-running, even-balanced moments. This is the four sages’ application of going-before-the-people, and the heart of assisting transformation; this is why the Yì was made” — this fails to escape intentional difference-setting. Yet his other probings are minute, and on Yì-principle he also brings out much.
Respectfully collated, the seventh 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 Wèi’s removal from office and his probable death; the catalog meta gives “fl. 1724” as his attested period. The bracket here (1720–1730) covers the late-Kāngxī through early-Yōngzhèng years.
The work is a substantively original early-eighteenth-century Yì commentary by a removed-from-office literatus. The combination of (a) refusal to mechanically link HétúLuòshū to the trigrams, (b) refusal to take the conventional eight-trigram order as a generation order, and (c) recognition of the structural pivots TàiPǐ / SǔnYì in the upper and lower scriptures — together constitute a measured reformist position within the Sòng Yì-tradition. Methodologically the work is more independent than it would first appear from its formal Sòng affiliations.
The doctrinal innovation that the Sìkù editors disapprove of — Wèi’s rejection of the “promote yáng, suppress yīn” rule — is in fact one of the more philosophically interesting positions in the early-Qīng Yì corpus. Wèi’s reading rejects the rigid yīnyáng / jūnzǐxiǎorén identification in favor of a more Aristotelian “mean” conception in which excess and deficiency on either side produce vice. This is a recognizably Yōngzhèng-period Lǐxué position, complementary in some respects to the contemporary 顏元 Yán Yuán / 李塨 Lǐ Gōng Yán-Lǐ school’s revisionism — though Wèi is not aligned with that school.
The Sìkù editors’ negative judgment (“intentionally setting up difference”) reflects the Qiánlóng-court editorial preference for orthodox positions; modern readers may find Wèi’s argument more interesting on its own terms.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. Treated occasionally in Chinese surveys of Yōngzhèng-period Lǐxué (Yáng Xiàngkuí 楊向奎 et al.) and in studies of the Wèi family of Bǎixiāng (his father Wèi Yìjiè was an important Kāngxī-period official-statesman).
Other points of interest
The work’s combination of formal Sòng-orientation with three substantive structural innovations — the HétúLuòshū loosening, the trigram-order reform, the TàiPǐ / SǔnYì structural pivot reading — makes it one of the more methodologically productive Yōngzhèng-period Yì commentaries. The yīnyáng polarity-revision is also philosophically important. The work deserves more attention than it has received in modern scholarship.