Yì tōngbiàn 易通變
Penetrating-the-Changes of the Yì (on Shào Yōng’s fourteen pre-Heaven diagrams) by 張行成 (Zhāng Xíngchéng, fl. 1132–1166, 宋, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
The third of 張行成’s Yìshuō qīzhǒng 易說七種 (Seven Yì-Studies) preserved in the Sìkù, in 40 juàn, and the longest of the seven. It is the systematic elaboration of fourteen pre-Heaven (xiāntiān 先天) hexagram-number diagrams transmitted within the Chén-Tuán-to-Shào-Yōng lineage, with Zhāng Xíngchéng deploying cānwǔ cuòzōng 參伍錯綜 (cross-checking and intertwining) calculations to “penetrate the changes” — hence the title.
The text’s diagram-set originates from a specific philological recovery: while serving as a prefect (shǒu 守) in Shǔ (Sìchuān), Zhāng Xíngchéng confiscated the household library of a clerical official and obtained the fourteen diagrams transmitted from Shào Yōng. The book is the resulting expanded commentary, anchored on what Zhāng Xíngchéng’s own preface identifies as the two foundational figures in Shào Yōng’s apparatus — jiāotài 交泰 (Penetrating-Peace) and jìjì 既濟 (Already-Crossing-Over) — both grounded in guàqì 卦氣 (hexagram-pneuma) doctrine. From this base Zhāng Xíngchéng works outward to derive the yùnshì zhī pǐtài 運世之否泰 (rise-and-fall of cosmic eras) and the rénwù zhī shèngshuāi 人物之盛衰 (flourishing-and-decay of persons-and-things).
The Sìkù editors’ assessment is mixed-positive. They acknowledge that Zhāng Xíngchéng is the principal Southern-Sòng channel through which the ChénTuán → Mù Xiū → Shào Yōng numerological tradition reached the Lǐxué mainstream — after Chén Tuán’s Daoist origin had embarrassed Confucian receivers, Shào Yōng’s name became the orthodox label and Chén’s was suppressed — and that the Yìtōngbiàn is an internally coherent system (亦自成理). They are at the same time openly critical of the more strained calculations: for example, the book derives the weights (in catties and ounces) of each of the five viscera of the human body from Yì-numbers, which is “particularly forced” (殊為穿鑿). Lǐ Xīnchuán 李心傳 attacked it for qiānhé 牽合 (forced harmonization); the slightly-later Sòng commentator 祝泌 (author of KR3g0009 Guānwù piān jiě) judged it more even-handedly as “having many places of brilliant illumination but also many places of branching tangents” (發明處甚多。而支蔓處亦甚多). From Yuán Shū 袁樞 and Xuē Jìxuān 薛季宣 onwards, Sòng critics of xiàngshù repeatedly attacked the work, yet “could not stop it from being transmitted”.
The Sìkù-recension is recovered from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典, collated against a single surviving Sòng print and a Míng Fèi Hóng 費宏 family manuscript. The work’s title varies across these three sources — the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn calls it Yì tōngbiàn; the Fèi Hóng manuscript calls it Huángjí jīngshì tōngbiàn; the Sòng print, having printed all seven works together with sub-headings only, gives only the bare Tōngbiàn. The Sìkù editors adopt the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn title as the older of the three.
For the parent text of Shào Yōng’s system, see KR3g0005 Huángjí jīngshì shū. For the other works of Zhāng Xíngchéng preserved in the Sìkù, see KR3g0006 Huángjí jīngshì suǒyǐn and KR3g0007 Huángjí jīngshì guānwù wàipiān yǎnyì. For Zhāng Xíngchéng’s biography, see 張行成.
Tiyao
The source directory /home/Shared/krp/KR3g/[[KR3g0008]]/ is not present in the local KRP mirror; the 提要 below is taken from the Kyoto University Zinbun digital Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào at http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/db-machine/ShikoTeiyo/0223302.html.
Compiled by Zhāng Xíngchéng of the Sòng. It is also one of the Yìshuō qīzhǒng 易說七種 he had presented [to the throne]. His exposition takes the fourteen diagrams of xiāntiān guàshù (Pre-Heaven hexagram-numbers) and the rest, as transmitted from Chén Tuán down to Shào Yōng, and amplifies and explicates them in order to penetrate their changes — hence the title Tōngbiàn.
To take number as the medium for speaking of the Yì derives from the Hàn Confucians. Yet Mèng Xǐ’s Yì speaks only of liùrì qīfēn (six-days-and-seven-parts). Up to Jīng Fáng’s Yì, it speaks only of fēifú nàjiǎ (flying-and-hidden, stem-natalty). Fèi Zhí’s Yì speaks only of chéngchéng bǐyìng (riding-and-supporting, adjacency-and-correspondence). Up to Wèi Bóyáng’s writing of the Cāntóngqì, [the Yì] was borrowed to elucidate alchemical formulas, and only then does one begin to speak of jiǎrén yǐguǐ (stem) positional arrangements. The Yìwěi shìlèi móu says: at winter solstice the sun is in Kǎn; spring equinox in Zhèn; summer solstice in Lí; autumn equinox in Duì. The Yì tōng guàyàn further says: Qián, northwest, presides over the establishment of winter; Kǎn, north, presides over the winter solstice; Gěn, northeast, presides over the establishment of spring; Zhèn, east, presides over spring equinox; Xùn, southeast, presides over the establishment of summer; Lí, south, presides over summer solstice; Kūn, southwest, presides over the establishment of autumn; Duì, west, presides over autumn equinox. Such are the tributaries of the Yì, [in which] this elaborative theorem exists.
By the time of the Sòng, Chén Tuán made [the relevant] diagrams; from Mù Xiū they were in turn transmitted down to Shào Yōng, beginning to circulate widely on the strength of Confucian-scholarly authority. Hence after the Southern Sòng, all who speak of the Yì by number take Chén and Shào as orthodox. Yet because Chén [Tuán] was originally a Daoist, they avoid saying Chén and speak only of Shào. Zhāng Xíngchéng, while serving as prefect within Shǔ, confiscated the household library of [a member of] the clerical class, and obtained the fourteen diagrams that Shào Yōng had transmitted; he therefore wrote this book.
His own preface says: Kāngjié’s learning is grounded in the two figures jiāotài and jìjì; and these two figures further take guàqì (hexagram-pneuma) as their root. Through cānwǔ cuòzōng (cross-checking and intertwining) one seeks them out, and the rise-and-fall of cosmic eras and the flourishing-and-decay of persons-and-things — none can escape it. His self-evaluation is very high.
Within [the book], items such as deriving the weights (in catties and ounces) of each of the five viscera of a human body from Yì-numbers are particularly forced. Lǐ Xīnchuán criticized it for forced harmonization. 祝泌 said that “its places of brilliant illumination are many, and its branching-tangent places are also many”. Yet his exposition is itself coherent. From Yuán Shū and Xuē Jìxuān onwards, [the work] has been frequently attacked; but in the end it has not been possible to suppress its transmission.
This recension is in very thin transmission: outside [the imperial collection] there is only the Sòng print and the Míng-period Fèi Hóng household manuscript. We have now taken [the text] as preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, collated [the three sources] across one another, recorded and preserved it, so as to fill out one school of shùshù (numerological-divinatory) [learning].
As to the book’s name: the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn gives it as Yì tōngbiàn; the Fèi [Hóng] copy gives it as Huángjí jīngshì tōngbiàn; the Sòng print is titled only Tōngbiàn, with no Yì and no Huángjí jīngshì. The reason is that the original printing was of the complete book in seven kinds: this is one of the seven; so it has a sub-heading but no master-name. We cannot rely upon [the sub-heading] to decide between the two [other] copies. Since the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn’s title precedes Fèi’s manuscript, it ought to be the older recension; we therefore for the time being follow it for the catalog record.
Abstract
Composition window: c. 1132–1166. The Yìshuō qīzhǒng of which the present work is one part was presented to the throne in Qiándào 2 (1166), and accepted as kěcǎi (worthy of selection), with Zhāng Xíngchéng appointed Zhí Huīyóu Gé 直徽猷閣 — see the discussion in 張行成. The composition presumably extends back into the preceding decades of his Sìchuān service; the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recension preserves the latest authorial state.
The work’s significance is twofold. (i) Diagram-philological: it preserves a non-trivially distinct version of the fourteen ChénTuán → Mù Xiū → Shào Yōng pre-Heaven diagrams as Zhāng Xíngchéng recovered them in Sìchuān, separately from the version that descends through Shào Bótāo 邵伯溫 and the Huángjí jīngshì shū proper. (ii) Doctrinal: it canonizes Shào Yōng’s jiāotài and jìjì diagrams as the apex of the system and the guàqì doctrine as their underlying mechanism — a particular interpretation that subsequent SòngYuánMíng Huángjí-related literature would either adopt (Zhāng Lǐ 張理, Bào Yúnlóng 鮑雲龍 etc.) or refute (Yuán Shū, Xuē Jìxuān).
The Sòng print, the Míng Fèi Hóng manuscript, and the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn version all preserve different sub-states of the book; the Sìkù recension is itself a critical edition based on collation of all three, with the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn title and base-text retained. The dating bracket above is for the work as a whole; the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn compilation (1408) provides a much later terminus on the recension as preserved, but not on the underlying composition.
Translations and research
- Smith, Kidder Jr., Peter K. Bol, Joseph A. Adler, and Don J. Wyatt. Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Treats the broader Shào-shì transmission line of which Zhāng Xíngchéng is a key Southern-Sòng node.
- Wyatt, Don J. The Recluse of Loyang: Shao Yung and the Moral Evolution of Early Sung Thought. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1996. Background on the Shào Yōng system that the Tōng-biàn elaborates.
No dedicated monographic study of the Yì tōng-biàn located in Western languages.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ explicit acknowledgement that the work’s currency under the Sòng required the suppression of Chén Tuán’s Daoist name in favour of Shào Yōng’s Confucian name — 因陳本道家。遂諱言陳而惟稱邵 — is a rare frank registration in the tíyào of a doctrinal-political concealment within the xiàngshù tradition.