Yì yì shuō 易翼說
Discourse on the Wings of the Yì by 晏斯盛
About the work
The Wing-commentary member of 晏斯盛 Yàn Sīshèng’s three-part Yì-corpus, in eight juàn — the third volume after KR1a0147 (the Xué Yì chū jīn methodological framework) and KR1a0148 (the Yì yì zōng canonical commentary). The work fully glosses all Ten Wings of the Zhōuyì, but in an unusual order: Xìcí — Shuōguà — Xùguà — Záguà — Tuàn — Wényán — Xiàng. This is neither the canonical gǔ Yì sequence (Tuàn shàng — Tuàn xià — Xiàng shàng — Xiàng xià — Xìcí shàng — Xìcí xià — Wényán — Shuōguà — Xùguà — Záguà) nor the jīn Yì arrangement; the Sìkù editors note “non-ancient, non-modern; one does not know what edition is the basis.”
The Sìkù editors’ joint assessment of all three works (in the Xué Yì chū jīn tíyào, KR1a0147) applies: methodologically distinctive but well-grounded in canonical text; substantively avoiding both the technical-numerology and the metaphysical-talk extremes; “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. The Yì yì shuō is the Wing-commentary final member of Yàn’s three-part Yì-corpus.
The work’s distinctive feature is the unusual sequence of Wing-glossing. Beginning with the Xìcí (rather than the Tuàn) suggests Yàn took the Xìcí’s methodological reflections as the conceptual foundation for understanding the rest; ending with the Xiàng makes the symbol-and-image readings the application of the conceptual foundation. This is a non-standard but coherent methodological architecture.
Translations and research
See KR1a0147 for the integrated treatment.
Other points of interest
The unusual Wing-glossing sequence — beginning with the most theoretical Wing (Xìcí) and ending with the most applied (Xiàng) — is one of the more methodologically interesting Qing-period reorderings of the canonical Wings. It deserves separate study as a small case in the philosophy of canonical sequencing.