Yì yīn 易音
The Phonology of the Yì by 顧炎武 (Gù Yánwǔ, 1613–1682), the third of his Yīnxué wǔshū
About the work
Gù Yánwǔ’s application of Old phonology to the Yì jīng, in 3 juàn: upper juàn on tuàncí and yáocí (the original layer); middle juàn on tuànzhuàn and xiàngzhuàn (the Confucian commentary layer); lower juàn on xìcí, wényán, shuōguà, záguà (the rest of the Ten Wings). Where the Yì phonology agrees with the Shī phonology, Gù gives the same Old reading; where it disagrees but is not in the regular Yì-rhyme-set, Gù assumes “ǒu yòng fāngyīn” (occasional dialect-use); where it disagrees and is not consistently rhymed at all, he leaves the entry blank. The Sìkù tíyào judges the methodology more strained than in Shī běnyīn: the Yì — being principally a divinatory text — is by genre more variable in its rhyming than the Shī; some of Gù’s “rhymes” are forced (e.g., Qián jiǔèr / jiǔsì with one yáo between them, treated as cross-yáo rhyme on the principle that “where the meanings cohere the rhymes cohere”) — but the work overall makes a real contribution to Old phonology and serves as a useful complement to Shī běnyīn.
Tiyao
The Yì yīn in 3 juàn. Composed by Gù Yánwǔ of the present dynasty — the third of his Yīnxué wǔshū. The book takes the Zhōu Yì itself as the source of Old phonology: upper juàn the tuàncí and yáocí; middle juàn the tuànzhuàn and xiàngzhuàn; lower juàn the xìcí, wényán, shuōguà, záguà. The phonology of the Yì often differs from that of the Shī; sometimes does not rhyme at all. Hence Gù’s gloss: where it differs from the Shī, he marks “ǒu yòng fāngyīn” (occasional dialect-use); where it does not rhyme, he leaves the gloss blank. — On examination: the Chūnqiūzhuàn’s recorded yáocí are all rhymed; some interpreters take these to be the Liánshān and Guīcáng texts (the lost two of the Three Yì), but Hànrú only had the Zhōu Yì — the Shǐjì’s Dàhéng zhī zhào, with yáo rhymed, is similar; presumably the diviners had separate works (e.g. Jiāo Gàn’s Yìlín) that were not the Yì root-text — and the Yì root-text, like the various pre-Qín philosophical works, is sometimes rhymed and sometimes not, with no fixed pattern; its rhymes occasionally use dialect; the readings cannot all be recovered. So the tuàncí and yáocí are mostly unrhymed, only some passages rhymed; the Ten Wings are mostly rhymed, but unrhymed passages mix in — not like the Shī sānbǎi piān, set to song with the strings, where rhyme is necessary. Gù’s treatment of the unrhymed cases — e.g., Qián jiǔèr / jiǔsì with one yáo between, treated as “where the meanings cohere the rhymes cohere” — is somewhat forced. Likewise of the 64 guà tuàncí, only four are actually rhymed, perhaps coincidence; setting these as a “rule” is somewhat speculative. Yet his careful examinations contain much of value for Old phonology, and the work serves as useful supplementary evidence. Presented Qiánlóng 46 / 4 (1781). General Editors Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Yì yīn (1643–1667) is Gù Yánwǔ’s application of Old phonology to the Yì jīng corpus, in 3 juàn covering the original divinatory layer, the Confucian zhuàn commentaries, and the rest of the Ten Wings. Methodologically more strained than Shī běnyīn KR1j0079 — the Yì is by genre less consistently metrical than the Shī — but a real contribution to Old phonology and a primary witness for Gù’s methodological commitment that pre-Qín texts encode a coherent phonological system distinct from the Guǎngyùn. The Sìkù tíyào notes the methodological strain (forced cross-yáo rhyming, treating sparse rhyme-coincidence as rule) but acknowledges the work’s value. notBefore = 1643; notAfter = 1667.
Translations and research
- Wáng Lì 王力. 1985. Hàn-yǔ yǔ-yīn shǐ. — Treats Gù’s Yì yīn alongside Shī běn-yīn as the corpus-applied work of his Old phonological project.
- Pulleyblank, Edwin G. 1962. The Consonantal System of Old Chinese. — Surveys Gù’s reconstruction of Old phonology in the Yì.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù tíyào’s recognition of the Yì’s genre-difference from the Shī — that divinatory texts are by nature less consistently rhymed — is a sophisticated philological observation. Gù’s attempt to treat the Yì as a single rhyming corpus is one of the few places in the Yīnxué wǔshū where the Sìkù compilers find a methodological over-reach.