Zhōuyì hán shū yuē cún 周易函書約存
The Surviving Distillation of the Containing-Book on the Zhōuyì by 胡煦
About the work
A late-Kāngxī / Yōngzhèng Yìjīng commentary in eighteen juàn by 胡煦 Hú Xù (1655–1736), the surviving distillation of his great unfinished project the Zhōuyì hán shū 周易函書. The original work — devoted to all four sage-strata of the Yì (伏羲 Fú Xī’s diagrams Yuán tú, King Wén’s hexagrams Yuán guà, the Duke of Zhōu’s lines Yuán yáo, and earlier-Confucian discussion Yuán gǔ, plus 49 juàn of canonical commentary, in 99 juàn total) — was never printed; the manuscript was lost when Hú’s pupil 李學裕 Lǐ Xuéyù took it for editing and then died. Hú’s son 胡季堂 Hú Jìtáng reconstructed surviving material into three works: the present Yuē cún (extracted essence of the foundational essays); the Yuē zhù (extracted essence of the canonical commentary); and the Bié jí (the supplementary works) — together preserving in 52 juàn what survives of the originally vast 118-juàn project.
The work is doctrinally distinctive within the Yōngzhèng-period Yì-corpus: Hú reformulates 邵雍 Shào Yōng’s prior-heaven round diagram as a xún huán Tài jí tú 循環太極圖 (circulating-and-cycling Tài jí diagram), integrating the Hétú odd-and-even numbers; he holds that Kǎn and Lí are the result of Qián-and-Kūn’s mating, with the other six trigrams (Gèn, Xùn, Zhèn, Duì) derived from Kǎn-Lí’s further mating; and he reads Tún (the third hexagram, with the formula gāng róu shǐ jiāo 剛柔始交) as paradigmatic for the entire canonical hexagram sequence. The Sìkù editors describe the work as standing “between Hàn and Sòng learning” (酌於漢學宋學之間) and quote a 朱熹 Zhū Xī passage from the Yǔlèi admitting that the Běnyì needed further revision — the editors take this as warrant for Hú’s variations from Zhū Xī as not unfaithful to Zhū’s own intentions. They also cite 陸游 Lù Yóu’s colophon to Zhū Xī’s Yì zhuàn: “the Yì way is broad-and-great; not what one person can exhaust; firmly guarding one school’s doctrine is not yet the gain” — as supporting the legitimacy of post-Zhū-Xī Yì-development.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated, condensed): The Zhōuyì hán shū yuē cún in eighteen juàn, Yuē zhù in eighteen juàn, Bié jí in sixteen juàn — composed by Hú Xù of our [Qīng] dynasty. Xù, zì Cāngxiǎo, was a man of Guāngshān; Kāngxī rénchén jìnshì; office reached Vice-Minister of Rites. The original book was 118 juàn — its glossing of canonical text 49 juàn, prefixed by Yuán tú 8 juàn, used to explain Fú Xī’s Yì; Yuán guà 3 juàn, used to explain King Wén’s Yì; Yuán yáo 3 juàn, used to explain the Duke of Zhōu’s Yì; further taking the earlier Confucians’ discussions and gathering them as Yuán gǔ in 36 juàn — calling these the shǒu zhuàn — together 99 juàn — the zhèng jí (main collection) of the Hán shū. Outside there were Hán shū yuē 3 juàn, Yì xué xū zhī 3 juàn, Yì jiě biàn yì 3 juàn, Gōu dēng yuē zhǐ 10 juàn — together 19 juàn — the bié jí. The bié jí had already been cut to blocks; the zhèng jí by reason of vast volume was difficult to engrave, so he took the 49 juàn of canonical-text glossing and condensed them to 18 juàn, naming this Hán shū yuē zhù; he also took the 50 juàn of shǒu zhuàn and condensed them to 16 juàn, with appended Xù yuē zhǐ 2 juàn, together 18 juàn, cutting them — naming this xù jí. All were Hú’s own hand-revisions.
The zhèng jí original recension: Xù’s pupil Lǐ Xuéyù wished to collate-and-cut for him, took the manuscript away — but Xuéyù met illness and died, so it was scattered-and-lost. Later the bié jí and xù jí blocks were both worn-and-effaced. His son Jìtáng re-collated and revised. Because the zhèng jí had not been cut, the name xù jí had no source from which to arise. Moreover the xù jí’s Yuán tú, Yuán guà, Yuán yáo, Yuán gǔ are precisely deletion-extractions of the zhèng jí’s essential words, not separately added — they cannot be eyed as xù. Within the bié jí, the Hán shū yuē in 3 juàn is also precisely the zhèng jí’s Yuán tú, Yuán guà, Yuán yáo with their great meanings extracted — even less can it be appended to the bié jí. He therefore edited the xù jí into 15 juàn, took Hán shū yuē 3 juàn as crown-of-head, together 18 juàn, naming it Yuē cún — apparently because the zhèng jí having been lost, its great meaning only survives in this. He also took Xù yuē zhǐ 2 juàn and following the Gōu dēng yuē zhǐ original sections, scattered them in each chapter; combined with Yì xué xū zhī 3 juàn, Yì jiě biàn yì 3 juàn, still as bié jí; with the canonical-text-glossing 18 juàn still named Yuē zhù — together 52 juàn. This is the present recension.
Xù researched and pondered the Yì-principles; lifelong refined-effort lay all in this book. His position-takings are weighed-and-balanced between the Hàn-learning and Sòng-learning, and he has notable variance from Master Zhū. Yet examining Master Zhū’s yǔlù there is one saying: “I composed the Yì běnyì wishing to take King Wén’s hexagram-statements broadly explained, and at their suǒ yǐ rán (the why-of-being-so) bring it out in Confucius’s Tuàn statement — like this. But I have not had leisure to settle them” — and so on. So Master Zhū with the Běnyì in fact wished to make alterations-and-fixings but was unable; later men’s discriminating-and-correcting is also not without being Master Zhū’s intent.
Lù Yóu’s Wèinán jí has a colophon to Mr Zhū’s Yì zhuàn saying: “The Yì way is broad-and-great, not what one person can exhaust. Firmly guarding one house’s doctrine is not yet the gain. Yuánhuì revered Master Chéng to the utmost, yet his discussion is also already greatly different. Readers should know this for themselves.” This may be called a comprehensive verdict for the world.
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 bracketed by Hú’s mature scholarship through his death in 1736; the bracket here adopts a span from his early-Kāngxī engagement with the Yì through his late-life condensations. The work is undated internally; the reconstructive editorial work was carried out by his son Hú Jìtáng after his death.
The work is among the most ambitious eighteenth-century private Yì-corpora — the original project of 118 juàn would have been one of the largest single-author Yì commentaries in Chinese history. Even in its surviving condensed form (52 juàn across three works), it represents a substantively original synthesis: combining the chart-tradition (a reformed xún huán Tài jí tú), the Hàn-school xiàngshù (selective citation), and the Sòng yìli (Chéng-Zhū as base authority) into a single integrated reading.
Doctrinally distinctive features include the Kǎn-Lí derivation theory (Qián-Kūn’s mating produces Kǎn-Lí; Kǎn-Lí’s mating produces the other six trigrams); the Tún paradigm reading (the third hexagram’s gāng róu shǐ jiāo formula as paradigmatic for the entire canonical sequence); the integration of Lǎo-Zhuāng “void-keeping, stillness-guarding” with Confucian “preserving sincerity, principal-respect” (the work continues into territory normally outside Confucian Yìxué).
The Sìkù editors’ framing — citing Zhū Xī’s own admission that the Běnyì needed revision and Lù Yóu’s claim that no single school can exhaust the Yì — is unusually generous in providing a Zhū-Xī-school warrant for Hú’s substantial divergences from Zhū Xī. This reflects the Qiánlóng-court editorial willingness to accept methodologically diverse high-Qīng Yìxué under a shared Sìkù canonization.
The reconstructive editorial history (Hú’s pupil losing the manuscript, his son reassembling and renaming the surviving fragments) is unusually transparent and is one of the more substantively documented editorial recovery cases in the Yì-corpus.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. The work is treated in Chinese surveys of Yōngzhèng-period Yìxué (Zhū Bóhūi, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ vol. 4) and in studies of the Hú family of Guāngshān.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the cleaner cases in the Yì-corpus of a multi-stratum-canonical-author project (covering Fú Xī, King Wén, the Duke of Zhōu, Confucius, and earlier Confucians as a single integrated whole) — paralleling 王夫之 Wáng Fūzhī’s KR1a0120 / Wài zhuàn / Nèi zhuàn tripartite scheme and 黃道周 Huáng Dàozhōu’s KR1a0110 Sān Yì dòng jī parallel project. The reconstructive transmission profile (large lost original; extracted survivors) is itself instructive for the philological history of late-imperial Chinese scholarly canonization.