Zhōu Yì guà xù lùn 周易卦序論
Discussion of the Hexagram Sequence of the Zhōu Yì fragmentary treatise by 楊乂 Yáng Yì (撰); reconstructed by 馬國翰 Mǎ Guóhàn (輯)
About the work
A single juàn of 馬國翰 Mǎ Guóhàn’s reconstruction, in Yùhán shānfáng jíyì shū 玉函山房輯佚書, of a now-lost Jìn-period treatise on the sequence of the Zhōu Yì hexagrams attributed to one 楊乂 Yáng Yì. The reconstructed text consists of one short hexagram-discussion fragment under the heading 〈蒙〉, drawn from the Chū xué jì 初學記 (juàn 5) and the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 (juàn 38), where Yáng Yì’s discussion of the Méng hexagram in trigram-positional terms is explicitly cited.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source. The work is not transmitted in the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū — it is exclusively a 19th-century reconstruction from earlier lèishū 類書 quotations.
Abstract
The surviving fragment glosses the Méng 蒙 hexagram (☶☵, gèn over kǎn) by elucidating the trigrammatic structure: xiǎn ér zhǐ, shān yě; xiǎn ér dòng, quán yě; dòng jìng jiē méng xiǎn, gù yuē “shān” 險而止，山也。險而動，泉也。動靜皆蒙險，故曰「山」 — “Where danger ceases [in motion], it is a mountain. Where danger moves, it is a spring. Whether at rest or in motion, both are veiled in (méng 蒙 lit. ‘enshrouded by’) danger, hence it is called ‘mountain’“. The editorial gloss appended in 馬國翰 Mǎ’s reconstruction notes: “xià quē, yī wén yì dāng yǒu ‘shuǐ méng’ èr zì” 下缺，依文義當有「水蒙」二字 (“the following [text] is missing; on the basis of the prose-sense, the two characters ‘water Méng’ (shuǐ méng 水蒙) should follow”). The citation is in 徐堅 Xú Jiān’s Chū xué jì 初學記 5 and the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 38.
The fragment exemplifies the post-Wáng-Bì Xuánxué-inflected style of Yì-trigrammatic exegesis: dynamic-positional analysis of the constituent trigrams (xiǎn 險 = kǎn 坎; zhǐ 止 = gèn 艮) rather than the older Hàn cosmological-correlative yáo-reading. The dating bracket above (notBefore 280 / notAfter 420) reflects the conventional dating window for “Jìn-period” authorship — neither the Suí shū·Jīng jí zhì 隋書經籍志 nor later bibliographies supply Yáng Yì’s lifedates, but he is consistently classified among Jìn (Western and Eastern) commentators in 馬國翰 Mǎ Guóhàn’s chronological ordering of the Yì-class reconstructions.
馬國翰 Mǎ Guóhàn (1794–1857) compiled the work in his monumental Yùhán shānfáng jíyì shū 玉函山房輯佚書 (printed 1883 at Chángshā Lánghuán guǎn 長沙瑯嬛館), 1 juàn. The reconstruction is sometimes also listed (in the Yùhán shānfáng jíyì shū’s 易類 table of contents) immediately following the reconstructions of 向秀 Xiàng Xiù’s Zhōu Yì xiàng shì yì 周易向氏義 and 鄒湛 Zōu Zhàn’s Zhōu Yì tǒng lüè 周易統略.
Translations and research
- MǍ Guóhàn 馬國翰 (comp.). Yùhán shānfáng jíyì shū 玉函山房輯佚書, 1883 / 1884 editions and modern photographic reprints.
- WILKINSON, Endymion. Chinese History: A New Manual, §32.1 Yì jīng and §47.2.4 on the Qīng jíyì movement.
- NIELSEN, Bent. A Companion to Yi Jing Numerology and Cosmology. London / New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. The most accessible English-language reference for Hàn-Jìn Yì exegetes; brief entry for Yáng Yì.
- No translation has been made of this fragment into European languages.
Other points of interest
The fragment is one of the small set of Jìn-period guà xù 卦序 (“hexagram-sequence”) treatises that survives at all; most such works — Zōu Zhàn’s Tǒng lüè, Xiàng Xiù’s Yì shì yì, Yáng Yì’s Guà xù lùn, and others — were already lost by the Sòng and survive only in fragments through lèishū citation. The hermeneutic move of analyzing hexagrams by glossing the image-meanings of their constituent trigrams in a single epigrammatic line (xiǎn ér zhǐ, shān yě) is characteristic of Xuánxué-period Yì exegesis as it came to be standardised in Wáng Bì’s school.
Links
- Wikisource: 太平御覽 卷38 (cites the present fragment under 山三)
- ctext: 玉函山房輯佚書
- eee-learning: 玉函山房輯佚書〔易類〕