Huìshì Yì shuō 惠氏易說
The Huì-Family Discourse on the Yì by 惠士奇
About the work
A Yōngzhèng-period Yìjīng commentary in six juàn by 惠士奇 Huì Shìqí (1670–1741), the second-generation founder of the Sūzhōu Huì-family Hànxué 漢學 Yìxué tradition that would reach its high point in his son 惠棟 Huì Dòng’s work. The work is Hànxué-oriented (專宗漢學) and takes xiàng 象 (symbol) as principal — explicitly written as a corrective to the post-王弼 Wáng-Bì yìli tradition’s “empty-words exposition of the canon” (空言説經之弊). Citations are unusually broad and substantive; the work is the first major Qīng-period reconstruction of Hàn-school Yì-method through systematic citation of 虞翻 Yú Fān, 京房 Jīng Fáng, 孟喜 Mèng Xǐ, 鄭玄 Zhèng Xuán, and the broader Hàn-period tradition.
The Sìkù editors’ assessment is qualifiedly approving: they grant Huì broad and well-grounded scholarship and recognize his work as substantively superior to the late-Míng yìli tradition’s mediocre repetition. They cite specific examples of “love of broadness, fondness for the strange” (愛博嗜奇) where Huì’s enthusiasm leads him into forced or insufficiently grounded readings — the most striking is his attribution of Yìxué sophistication to 莊子 Zhuāngzǐ (“Zhōu was refined in the Yì, hence well-talked of yīnyáng; the earlier Confucians who expounded the Yì all do not match him”). The other examples cited are at the level of individual passage-readings (the Sòng / Zhū dānzhū attribution; Yú shī gloss; Guān guó zhī guāng gloss; jì yú bāo sāng gloss; xiān zhāng zhī hú hòu shuō zhī hú gloss). The summary diagnosis is that Huì has minor flaws but his substantive contribution is “in fact unwearable” (實不可磨) — distinct from the Míng-style “guarding-one-master-saying” tradition.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated, condensed): The Yì shuō in six juàn was composed by Huì Shìqí of our [Qīng] dynasty. Shìqí, zì Zhòngrú, was a man of Wúxiàn. He was a jìnshì of the jǐchǒu year of Kāngxī (1709) and held office as Hànlín Reader-in-Waiting. This book miscellaneously glosses the hexagrams and lines, exclusively revering Hàn-learning, taking symbol as principal. He has the deliberate intent of correcting the abuse of empty-words exposition since Wáng Bì; hence his cited evidence is extremely broad. But unavoidably he is somewhat lost to mixedness.
For instance: glossing Sòng, citing Xún Shuǎng’s “Sòng zhī yán xiōng yě” — taking the “qiúsòng” 嚚訟 of Dānzhū as the “qiú xiōng”; glossing Dìzǐ yǔ shī 弟子輿尸, citing Zuǒ zhuàn’s “Zhìzǐ shī zhī” — taking shī as the army-commander; glossing Guān guó zhī guāng, citing Pìnlǐ’s “qǐng guān” and Zuǒ zhuàn’s Jì Zhá observing music and Hán Xuānzǐ observing books — to confirm “guān guó” — all are lost to the cramped. Glossing jì yú bāo sāng — taking sāng (mulberry) as sāng (mourning, loss) without examination-evidence; glossing xiān zhāng zhī hú hòu shuō zhī hú — changing the lower hú to hú (jug) and citing the Hūn lǐ’s hú zūn and the Tài xuán’s hú fù as evidence — all are excessive love of broadness, fondness for the strange, unable to cut.
At the head, in discussing Qián’s Tuàn zhuàn dà míng zhōng shǐ 大明終始, citing Zhuāngzǐ’s Zài yòu 在宥 chapter — “I do for you reach to dà míng above; reach to that ultimate-yáng’s source. I do for you enter the yǎo míng gate; reach to that ultimate-yīn’s source” — and saying “Zhuāng Zhōu was refined in the Yì, hence well-discussed yīnyáng; the earlier Confucians who expounded the Yì all do not match him” — this fails to escape the problem of being unscriptural.
Yet Shìqí broadly extreme of all books, his learning has root-and-foundation; the points of his refined research are in fact unwearable. He is by no means what those of the Míng-onward Yì-exposition houses, the nuǎn nuǎn shū shū guarding-one-master-saying types, can imitate. One or two minor flaws in fact do not burden his great body.
Respectfully collated, the third 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 Huì’s mature scholarship and his death in 1741; the bracket here adopts a conservative range from his post-jìnshì career through his death.
The work is the first major Qīng-period sustained Hàn-school Yì commentary, anticipating his son 惠棟 Huì Dòng’s (1697–1758) more thorough Yì Hàn xué 易漢學 and Yì lì 易例 by a generation. As such it is the foundational document of the eighteenth-century Wú pài 吳派 Hànxué recovery of Yìxué. Methodologically it stands distinct from both the 李光地 Lǐ Guāngdì school (which it implicitly criticizes for “empty-words exposition”) and the Yán-Lǐ school (which is more practical-applied than philological): Huì’s commitment is to the systematic citation-based recovery of pre-Wáng-Bì readings.
The Sìkù editors’ specific cited problems are largely accurate at the philological level (the Zhuāngzǐ Yīn-Yáng-master attribution is indeed eccentric); their endorsement of the work’s substantive contribution is also accurate. The work belongs to the same broad early-eighteenth-century kǎozhèng turn as 胡渭 Hú Wèi’s KR1a0138, 毛奇齡 Máo Qílíng’s KR1a0126 / KR1a0127 / KR1a0128, and 李塨 Lǐ Gōng’s KR1a0140; together they constitute the multi-school kǎozhèng foundation that the Qiánlóng-period high-kǎozhèng (Huì Dòng, 戴震 Dài Zhèn, 張惠言 Zhāng Huìyán) would build on.
Translations and research
Huì Shìqí’s Yì shuō is occasionally treated in studies of the Wú pài tradition (Zhāng Lìwén 張立文; Xú Fùhóng 許富宏; etc.). For the broader Wú pài see Benjamin Elman, From Philosophy to Philology (Harvard, 1984; rev. 2001), and ECCP under “Hui Tung” (his more famous son). No major Western-language monograph specifically on the Huì-shì Yì shuō located.
Other points of interest
The work is the principal Yōngzhèng-period preparation for the high-Qiánlóng-period Wú pài Hànxué recovery of Yìxué. The pairing with Huì Dòng’s Yì Hàn xué and Yì lì (separately preserved) makes the Huì-family Yì-corpus the most important single-family contribution to Qīng Yìxué. The Sìkù editors’ careful balancing of Huì’s strengths (root-and-foundation, broad citation) against his weaknesses (eccentric attributions, fondness for strange readings) is one of the more instructive Qiánlóng-period assessments of an active Hànxué scholar.