Yì yì zōng 易翼宗
Revering the Wings of the Yì by 晏斯盛
About the work
The canonical-commentary member of 晏斯盛 Yàn Sīshèng’s three-part Yì-corpus, in six juàn. The work treats the canonical Zhōuyì scripture (sixty-four hexagrams’ Tuàn and line statements), embedding Wing material under each canonical verse on a “scripture-explains-scripture” model — taking the Wings as the canonical authority for the Yì rather than as appendix to it. Each line is accompanied by a complete-hexagram diagram with one moving-line marked (odd as ○, even as a vertical mark) — Yàn’s own typographic invention for marking the active line. Together with the Xué Yì chū jīn (KR1a0147, the methodological framework) and the Yì yì shuō (KR1a0149, the Wing-commentary), this forms the integrated middle volume of Yàn’s Yìxué program.
The Sìkù editors’ assessment is recorded in the joint tíyào at the head of KR1a0147 (where the three-work corpus is treated together): the Yì yì zōng is methodologically distinctive but somewhat fragmenting; the typographic conventions are the author’s “self-making-of-antiquity” but do not lapse into either the fāngjì shùshù technical-numerology or the empty xīnxìng metaphysical talk. The work is “still substantive-and-near-reason among recent Yì-houses.”
Tiyao
See KR1a0147 tíyào — the joint notice covers all three of Yàn Sīshèng’s interrelated works.
Abstract
Composition is bracketed by Yàn’s mid-Qiánlóng career; see KR1a0147 for biographical details and the broader contextualization of the three-work Yì-corpus. The Yì yì zōng is the canonical-commentary middle member of the corpus, with the Xué Yì chū jīn (methodological framework) preceding and the Yì yì shuō (Wing commentary) following.
The work’s principal methodological choice — embedding Wing material under each canonical verse — is one of several mid-Qīng experiments with the gǔ Yì / jīn Yì tension (cf. KR1a0113 for an earlier hybrid approach; KR1a0117 李光地 Lǐ Guāngdì for the imperial Zhé zhōng’s gǔ Yì recovery). Yàn’s solution differs from both: rather than separating the Wings as in gǔ Yì or interleaving them as in jīn Yì, he reads them downward into the canon at the level of each individual verse.
Translations and research
See KR1a0147 for the integrated treatment.
Other points of interest
The typographic convention for marking the moving-line in each per-line hexagram diagram (odd ○, even vertical mark) is an instructive small case of Qiánlóng-period editorial inventiveness. The three-work integrated corpus structure (framework + canonical commentary + Wing commentary) is a sustained methodological program that anticipates the more elaborate late-Qīng / Republican-period Yìxué synthesis projects.