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易洞林

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Text ID
KR1c0067
Date
310–324
Dynasty
晉

Yì dòng lín 易洞林

Forest of Insights into the Changes by 郭璞 (撰)

About the work

A short Eastern-Jìn divinatory miscellany by 郭璞 Guō Pú (276–324), the leading Yì-and-Ěryǎ exegete of his generation. Although the work is bibliographically a 術數 / shù shù compilation belonging to the Yì tradition rather than to the Shī canon, the Kanripo file system catalogues this fragment under KR1c (Máo Shī); the placement is anomalous and likely reflects an internal mis-sort — the CHANT classification it derives from (CH2a1544 = 哲學思想 / 術數) and every received bibliographical listing place the Yì dòng lín in the Yì / shùshù divisions. Catalogued here according to the Kanripo placement, with the misclassification flagged.

The work survives only in a reconstructed form. The text is a collection of Guō Pú’s first-person divinatory case-records (zhànlì 占例) — concrete Yì-divinations he carried out for himself, his kin, and his clients during the upheavals of the Yǒngjiā 永嘉 disturbance and the early Eastern-Jìn period, each presenting a casus, the hexagram cast (often as image-and-line pair, e.g. 明夷 ☷☶, 同人 ☰☲ → 革), and the línguǎ 林辭 (a short formulaic verse-judgement) with Guō’s prose explanation. The genre — Yì-lín (Yì-forest) — derives from Jiāo Gàn’s 焦贛 Yì lín 易林 of the Western Hàn and is the immediate predecessor of the medieval and later 占書 genre. The case-records preserve invaluable autobiographical material on Guō Pú’s wartime migration from Héběi to the lower Yangtze.

Abstract

The Yì dòng lín is recorded in the Suí shū jīngjí zhì (《隋書‧經籍志》) as a work in 3 juǎn under Guō Pú’s name; the Jiù Táng shū and Xīn Táng shū yìwén zhì both also list it. The work was lost as an integral text by the Northern Sòng; the Chóngwén zǒngmù 崇文總目 already does not list it. The substantial fragments preserved in the Yìwén lèijù 藝文類聚, Chūxué jì 初學記, Bāishì liùtiē 白氏六帖, and especially Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 and Tàipíng guǎngjì 太平廣記 were collected and reconstructed by Qīng-dynasty scholars; the standard reconstruction is Mǎ Guóhàn’s 馬國翰 Yùhán shānfáng jíyì shū 玉函山房輯佚書 in 3 juǎn with a bǔyí 補遺 supplement of 1 juǎn — which is the form catalogued here.

Composition is anchored to Guō Pú’s lifetime (276–324): the divinatory cases internal to the work include explicit reference to his flight from Héběi during the Yǒngjiā disturbance (始亂 c. 311) and from the Yìshì-xiàn 猗氏縣 ambush, placing the bulk of the casus-collection in the second-and-third decade of the fourth century. The conventional bracket of c. 310–324 (= until Guō’s execution by Wáng Dūn 王敦) is given here. The work is one of the most concrete records of Eastern-Jìn divinatory practice and is heavily cited in later Yì-numerological literature.

Translations and research

  • Richard J. Smith, Fortune-tellers and Philosophers: Divination in Traditional Chinese Society (Westview Press, 1991) — treats Guō Pú as a foundational figure in the medieval Chinese divinatory tradition.
  • Zhāng Jūwén 張珏文, A Translation of the Ancient Chinese ‘The Book of Burial’ (Zang shu) by Guo Pu (276–324) (Mellen, 2004) — translates the related Zàng shū attributed to Guō Pú and surveys his other works.
  • Wáng Yúqìng 王宇清 and others have published modern Chinese-language critical editions and commentaries on Mǎ Guóhàn’s reconstruction; for the Eastern-Jìn divinatory milieu more broadly see Yú Xīnyǔ 余新宇, Liù-Cháo zhànbǔ wénxiàn yánjiū (modern monograph).
  • Guō Pú’s broader corpus (Ěr yǎ zhù, Fāng yán zhù, Shān hǎi jīng zhù KR5d0054, Chǔ cí zhù) has a very substantial modern philological literature; the Yì dòng lín specifically is treated as part of his divinatory œuvre (Zàng shū, Yùpái zhū yīng yīng, etc.).

Other points of interest

The opening case — Guō Pú’s flight from his native Héběi at the height of the Yǒngjiā disturbance, divining among his kin-and-friends in groups of ten households where to flee, casting Míng yí ䷣ (the Hexagram of Brightness Wounded) and lamenting “qíwéi yú hū?” (Shall we become fishes?) — is one of the most vivid first-person records of the Western-Jìn collapse to survive. It is widely cited in modern accounts of the Sī-Mǎ exodus.

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