Zhōu Yì xìcí Míng shì zhù 周易繫辭明氏注
Mr Míng’s Notes on the Xìcí of the Zhōu Yì fragmentary commentary by 明僧紹 Míng Sēngshào (撰); reconstructed from quotations by 馬國翰 Mǎ Guóhàn (輯)
About the work
A short fascicle of reconstructed fragments of 明僧紹 Míng Sēngshào’s (d. 483) commentary on the Xìcí 繫辭 (“Great Treatise”) of the Zhōu Yì. The original commentary is lost; the surviving fragments are entirely drawn from quotations preserved in 陸德明 Lù Démíng’s Jīng diǎn shì wén 經典釋文, where Míng’s variant readings are cited alongside those of 荀爽 Xún Shuǎng, 荀柔之 Xún Róuzhī, 王肅 Wáng Sù, 卞伯玉 Biàn Bóyù, and 桓玄 Huán Xuán. 馬國翰 Mǎ Guóhàn (1794–1857) compiled the surviving fragments under the present title in his Yùhán shānfáng jíyì shū 玉函山房輯佚書 (printed 1883), in 1 juàn. The reconstructed text is grouped in the Yì-class of the jíyì shū’s jīng 經 section, between 桓玄 Huán Xuán’s and 沈驎士 Shěn Línshì’s reconstructed Xìcí commentaries.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source. The work is not transmitted in the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū — it is exclusively a 19th-century reconstruction.
Abstract
The reconstructed text falls into two sections: Xìcí shàng zhuàn 繫辭上傳 and Xìcí xià zhuàn 繫辭下傳. The surviving fragments are very few — three or four citations total — and each consists of a Lù Démíng Shì wén lemma followed by Míng Sēngshào’s variant reading. The most-cited fragment is the Xìcí shàng line Tōng hū zhòu yè zhī dào ér zhī 通乎晝夜之道而知 (“It comprehends the way of day and night and knows”), where the Shì wén records that “zhī” 知 is read with the zhì 智 pronunciation (i.e., “wisdom”), citing Xún Shuǎng, Xún Róuzhī, and Míng Sēngshào jointly. Another fragment concerns the well-known Xìcí xià phrase hé yǐ shǒu wèi yuē rén 何以守位曰人 (“How is the position maintained? — by people”), where the Shì wén notes that 王肅 Wáng Sù, 卞伯玉 Biàn Bóyù, 桓玄 Huán Xuán, and Míng Sēngshào all read 人 rén (“people”) as 仁 rén (“benevolence”) — yielding “by benevolence” instead. This second reading became the standard Sòng Neo-Confucian text.
明僧紹 Míng Sēngshào — the Liú Sòng / Southern Qí lay Buddhist retired gentleman associated with the founding of Qī xiá Sì 棲霞寺 on Shè Shān 攝山 — was an active Yì jīng scholar despite his Buddhist commitments; the Nán Qí shū 南齊書 54 Gāo yì zhuàn 高逸傳 records that the Qí court repeatedly invited him to lecture on the Yì and that he composed both a Yì jīng yì shū 易經義疏 and an independent Xìcí zhù 繫辭注. The Suí shū·Jīng jí zhì 隋書經籍志 registered both of these works, but they had already vanished by the Sòng. The present reconstruction is therefore a typical case of a substantial early-mediaeval Yì commentary surviving only through later yīn yì 音義 (“sound-and-meaning”) citation literature.
The dating fields above (notBefore 460 / notAfter 483) reflect the assumed original date of composition (during Míng Sēngshào’s mature life, before his death in 483). The received recension — Mǎ Guóhàn’s reconstruction — is mid-19th-century, but the substantive content is genuinely 5th-century: it is preserved citation, not pseudepigraphy.
Translations and research
- MǍ Guóhàn 馬國翰 (comp.). Yùhán shānfáng jíyì shū 玉函山房輯佚書. The reconstruction itself, in the standard 1883 Chángshā Lánghuán guǎn 長沙瑯嬛館 woodblock edition (continued in the 1884 Zhāngqiū Lǐ shì 章邱李氏 reprint and the 1884 Chǔnán shū jú 楚南書局 issue). Modern photographic reprints in the Jíyì cóng shū 輯佚叢書 series.
- WANG Tieh-han 王鐵漢, comp. Yì xué zhe shū kǎo 易學著述考. Multi-volume bibliographic survey of Yì-jīng commentaries lost and recovered; the Xìcí Míng shì zhù is registered in vol. 1 under Southern-Qí Yì works.
- WILKINSON, Endymion. Chinese History: A New Manual, §32.1 Yì jīng, and §47.2.4 on the Qīng jíyì 輯佚 movement, for general context.
- No translation has been made of this fragment-set into European languages.
Other points of interest
The 何以守位曰人/仁 variant — preserved here in Míng Sēngshào’s reading — has long been recognised as a Han-or-earlier graphic ambiguity in the Xìcí; Sòng Neo-Confucian readings overwhelmingly favoured 仁 (“benevolence”) over the older 人 (“people”), and Míng Sēngshào is one of the earliest named witnesses to the 仁-reading. It is therefore one of the small set of Xìcí variants where a single 5th-century Buddhist gentleman has had outsized influence on later interpretive doxography.