Zhōuyì zhájì 周易劄記
Notebook on the Zhōuyì by 楊名時
About the work
A Yōngzhèng-Qiánlóng-period Yìjīng notebook in two juàn by 楊名時 Yáng Míngshí (1660–1736), the principal pupil of 李光地 Lǐ Guāngdì and leading transmitter of the Lǐ Guāngdì school of Yìxué. The work is undated but post-dates the imperial Yù zuàn Zhōuyì zhé zhōng (KR1a0117) of 1715, which it cites in evidence. The work proceeds in zhájì 劄記 (notebook) form rather than continuous canonical commentary. While Yáng’s exposition of the Shuōguà zhuàn and his appended discussion of 朱熹 Zhū Xī’s Qǐ méng extend the xiāntiān diagrammatic tradition (in keeping with his master Lǐ Guāngdì’s interest), his canonical exegesis is purely yìli-oriented and does not engage in chart-and-numerology speculation. The work is methodologically consistent with the Lǐ Guāngdì line: respectful of Chéng-Zhū without slavish conformity, substantive but not polemical.
The Sìkù editors single out the comparison with Yáng’s pupil 夏宗瀾 Xià Zōnglán (whose Yì shuō 易說 records the master-pupil dialogues from Yáng’s Yúnnán Governor period): Yáng’s master-line exposition surpasses Xià’s pupil-elaborations in depth (the editors give the example of Jiàn yù kòu 漸禦寇 explained by reference to “wild geese keeping watch by night” as a “shallow” pupil-reading, with Yáng’s master-discussion still bearing Lǐ Guāngdì’s residue).
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Zhōuyì zhájì in two juàn was composed by Yáng Míngshí of our [Qīng] dynasty. Míngshí, zì Bīnshí, was a man of Jiāngyīn. He was a jìnshì of the xīnwèi year of Kāngxī (1691), and his offices reached as far as Minister of Rites; his posthumous title was Wéndìng. This compilation is what he recorded in reading the Yì. With no preface or postscript before-and-after, the year-month of its completion is unclear. Observing what is cited within, it is apparently still after the Imperial Zhōuyì zhé zhōng.
Míngshí was originally taken-up as a jìnshì by Lǐ Guāngdì, hence his Yì-learning he much obtained from Guāngdì. Although his Shuōguà zhuàn gloss and his appended discussion of the Qǐ méng and the like quite push-and-extend the xiāntiān diagrams, he does not reach the point of fragmentariness or forced attribution. As to his exegesis of the canonical zhuàn, he purely takes meaning-and-principle as principal and does not touch on symbol-and-number; in general toward the meaning of Chéng and Zhū he does not casually-differ nor casually-agree. Within the Sòng learning, he may be called clear and substantive.
When Míngshí was Yúnnán Governor, Xià Zōnglán once followed him to question the Yì. The Yì shuō he composed is all checked against Míngshí. The questions and answers are fully laid out within Zōnglán’s book. Yet what Zōnglán says — for example, his evidence of “Jiàn yù kòu” by reference to “the lone goose calling-the-watch” and the like — is quite shallow, not reaching what Míngshí discusses, which still has the bequest of Guāngdì.
Respectfully collated, the tenth 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 bracketed by the Zhōuyì zhé zhōng’s 1715 publication (which the work cites) and Yáng’s death in 1736; the bracket here adopts these dates.
The work is the principal early-eighteenth-century continuation of the Lǐ Guāngdì school of Yìxué. Methodologically conservative and Chéng-Zhū-aligned, it represents the orthodox Qiánlóng-court Yìxué position — a moderate inheritance of the Kāngxī-period synthesis without the methodological innovations of the contemporary Yán-Lǐ school (KR1a0140 李塨 Lǐ Gōng) or of the early Qīng kǎozhèng tradition (the Huáng brothers, 胡渭 Hú Wèi, 毛奇齡 Máo Qílíng).
The pairing with Xià Zōnglán’s pupil-record Yì shuō (separately preserved) gives the work a master-pupil dialogical context. The Sìkù editors’ explicit comparison — favoring Yáng’s master-discussion over Xià’s pupil-derivations — is one of the cleaner illustrations in the Yì-class tíyào of the editors’ attention to intra-school transmission quality.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. For the Lǐ Guāngdì school continuation under Yáng Míngshí see ECCP under “Yang Ming-shih” and the standard Lǐ Guāngdì literature.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the cleaner cases of high-Qīng court-Confucian Yì-learning continuity through the Kāngxī-Yōngzhèng-Qiánlóng transition. Yáng’s combination of strict canonical exegesis with cautious xiāntiān diagrammatic interest reflects the calibrated court-orthodox position established by Lǐ Guāngdì in the Zhé zhōng and continued through the Qiánlóng era.