Yì tú míng biàn 易圖明辨
Clarifying-and-Discriminating the Charts of the Yì by 胡渭
About the work
The foundational early-Qīng critical kǎozhèng treatise on the entire Sòng-period Yìjīng chart-and-numerology corpus, in ten juàn, completed by 胡渭 Hú Wèi (1633–1714) of Déqīng 德清 in Kāngxī bǐngxū 康熙丙戌 = 1706 when he was seventy-four. The work systematically dismantles the Sòng-period addition of charts to the Yì, establishing through historical-textual argument that none of the major chart-systems — Hétú and Luòshū as binary, the five-phase / nine-palace schemes, the Cān tóng qì alchemical reading, the prior-heaven Tài jí tú, 劉牧 Liú Mù’s Lóng tú 龍圖 and Yì shù gōu yǐn tú 易數鉤隱圖, 蔡元定 Cài Yuándìng’s attribution to the Guān Lǎng yì zhuàn 闗朗易傳, the gǔ Yì / xiāntiān / hòutiān schemes, guà biàn, etc. — derive from the canonical Yì; rather, they were Sòng-period inventions overlaid on the canonical Yìjīng.
The work’s outline (reconstructed from the catalog of contents): juàn 1 HétúLuòshū; juàn 2 Wǔ xíng + Jiǔ gōng; juàn 3 Zhōuyì cān tóng qì + xiāntiān tài jí; juàn 4 Lóng tú + Yì shù gōu yǐn tú; juàn 5 Qǐ méng túshū; juàn 6–7 Xiāntiān gǔ Yì (upper and lower); juàn 8 Hòutiān zhī xué; juàn 9 Guà biàn; juàn 10 [the Sìkù recension’s structure].
The Tící (preface) is one of the most articulate statements of Hú Wèi’s program: ancient books had charts where charts were necessary (astronomy, geography, biology, ritual implements, etc.), but the Yì alone needs no charts because the sixty-four hexagrams’ strokes are themselves the chart. The black-and-white-dot diagrams (HétúLuòshū in their nine-and-ten forms), the round-and-square forms, the FùGòu variation diagrams, the xiāntiānhòutiān distinction — none of these are required by the canonical text. Hú concedes that 邵雍 Shào Yōng’s yuán tú 圓圖 has a coherent neidan alchemical meaning (in the line of 俞琰 Yú Yǎn’s Yì wài bié zhuàn 易外別傳) but argues that this is a separate, alchemical tradition, not the canonical Yì. Hú self-identifies as a successor to a five-hundred-year line of critics (going back to the Northern Sòng skeptics) who have anticipated him in attacking the Sòng chart-tradition; he frames himself as “perhaps a róng shǒu (war-leader) against Mount Xī” (西山之戎首) and “a sinner against Zǐyáng (朱熹 Zhū Xī)” (紫陽之罪人), but accepts the charge.
Tiyao
Author’s Tící (Hú Wèi, dated Kāngxī bǐngxū = 1706, translated, condensed): From of old, books that needed had charts: Shī, Shū, Lǐ, Yuè, Chūnqiū — none can do without charts. Only the Yì uses no charts: the strokes of the sixty-four hexagrams’ two-substances and six-lines are precisely its chart. Black-and-white dots, nine-and-ten numbers, round-and-square forms, FùGòu variation — what for? For trigram order and direction, the QiánKūn three-seek (三索), the chūzhènqíxùn (出震齊巽) — these two chapters say it all. Charts are acceptable; how can there be the distinction of xiāntiān and hòutiān? The image of the Hétú has had no transmission from antiquity — from where do we derive any consideration of it? The text of the Luòshū appears in the Hóngfàn — what has it to do with the trigrams, lines, five phases, nine palaces? It was not initially set up for the Yì. The Cān tóng qì’s xiāntiāntài jí particularly borrowed the Yì to make clear the way of the cinnabar — and later men sometimes pointed it out as the Hétú, sometimes as the Luòshū — false. Within the false there is again the false: the Lóng tú that Liú Mù took as standard, the Guān Lǎng Yì that Cài Yuándìng took as standard — these are forged books whose nine-and-ten judgments are not even worth comparing.
So all Yì-charts that supplement what the canon does not have — all may be discarded. To take Master Shào’s four diagrams as discussion: the horizontal diagram has no transmissible meaning, but the round diagram has another ultimate principle — what is it? It is what the cinnabar way is vested in. Yú Yǎn said: “the xiāntiān diagram, although the bequeathed thread of the Yì-way, is also the gentleman’s pressing-of-livelihood.” I say the cinnabar-house’s discussion, although it derives from the Yì, is no more than a leaning-and-attribution; not at all the Yì’s original meaning. Hence I composed the Yì wài bié zhuàn to make it clear. Therefore I say: the xiāntiān diagram and the sage’s Yì — separated, the two are beautiful; combined, both are wounded. That Yīchuān [Chéng Yí] did not list it at the head of the canon was indeed in order to honor the sage, and also to preserve [Chén] Tuán and [Shào] Yōng. Should anyone read my book and take it as my being a róng shǒu (war-leader) against Mount Xī or a sinner against Zǐyáng — well, in the past five hundred years there have been those who came before me to bear that charge. I shall hardly be lessened.
— Inscribed by the seventy-four-year-old Dōngqiáo Hú Wèi at the Yúxī guest-house, Kāngxī bǐngxū (1706), at the upper sì festival.
[The Sìkù tíyào itself is brief and chiefly notes the work’s importance as a complement to Huáng Zōngxī’s parallel project; see KR1a0123. The notice is not transcribed here.]
Abstract
Composition is fixed by the Tící to Kāngxī bǐngxū = 1706; the bracket here (1700–1706) covers the period of final composition. The work is the canonical Sìkù-included treatment.
The work is the principal high-Qīng kǎozhèng demolition of the Sòng Yì-chart tradition. Together with 黃宗羲 Huáng Zōngxī’s Yì xué xiàng shù lùn (KR1a0123, 1690s) and 黃宗炎 Huáng Zōngyán’s Tú xué biàn huò (KR1a0124) it constitutes the foundational early-Qīng critical apparatus on the chart-tradition; together they effectively settled the kǎozhèng community’s view that the chart-tradition was a Sòng-period addition and not part of the original Yì-canon.
Hú Wèi’s contribution within this trio is the most thoroughgoing on the chart-by-chart historical-textual analysis. The ten-juàn structure works through each major chart-system in succession with documentary apparatus, identifying the historical-textual moment at which each chart was introduced and the route by which it was attributed back to the canonical period. The work’s Tící is also one of the most articulate statements of early-Qīng kǎozhèng program.
The work’s reception was decisive. The eighteenth-century Chéng-Zhū court loyalists could no longer defend the chart-tradition without acknowledging Hú’s apparatus; the Qiánlóng-period Sìkù editors were themselves shaped by Hú’s framework (their notices on Sòng xiàngshù materials routinely echo his diagnoses). The work also shaped late-Qīng historiography of Yìxué: 廖平 Liào Píng and the late-Qīng commentators all worked downstream of Hú’s settlement.
The framing as parallel to Huáng Zōngxī (recognized in the Sìkù notices on both works) is correct: Huáng’s work was completed and circulated first, but Hú’s was more thorough on the chart-by-chart historical analysis. Both works deserve to be read as a pair.
Translations and research
The Yìtú míng biàn is one of the few Qīng Yìxué works to have received substantial Western-language attention. See Joseph Adler, Reconstructing the Confucian Dao: Zhu Xi’s Appropriation of Zhou Dunyi (SUNY, 2014), for the broader critical context; Benjamin Elman, From Philosophy to Philology (Harvard, 1984; rev. 2001), for the kǎozhèng contextualization; and Tang Junyi, Zhōngguó zhéxué yuán lùn: Yuán jiào piān, in Chinese. The work is also discussed in Smith and Kwok, eds., Cosmology, Ontology, and Human Efficacy (Hawaii, 1993).
Other points of interest
The Tící’s self-identification as “Xī shān zhī róng shǒu” 西山之戎首 (war-leader against Mount Xī) and “Zǐyáng zhī zuì rén” 紫陽之罪人 (sinner against Zhū Xī) — and the explicit acknowledgment that the position is one of an extended five-hundred-year critical lineage — is one of the most articulate self-positionings in early-Qīng jīngxué. The work’s effect was epoch-making: after Hú Wèi the chart-tradition could only be defended in restricted forms (alchemical, meditative, decorative), and the late-Qīng / Republican-period revival of xiàngshù (廖平 Liào Píng, 尚秉和 Shàng Bǐnghé) had to start by re-arguing the historical-textual question Hú had supposedly settled.