Jiāoshì Yìlín 焦氏易林
Mr. Jiāo’s Forest of the Yì (Hàn-period divinatory-verse compendium of 4,096 oracular statements) by 焦延壽 (Jiāo Yánshòu, Western Hàn, mid-1st century BCE, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
Jiāo Yánshòu’s monumental Yì-divinatory compendium in 16 juàn (the catalog meta records 4 juàn — a different juan-division), containing 4,096 (= 64 × 64) four-character oracular verses (yáocí 繇辭): one for each combination of an “original” hexagram and a “transformed” hexagram. The work is the principal Hàn-period source for the guàqì zhírì (hexagram-pneuma duty-day) divinatory tradition that Jiāo Yánshòu established.
Each entry consists of a four-character (sìyán) verse, often four-to-eight lines long, in classical Hàn-period composition style. The verses are simultaneously: (a) divinatory oracles (each is interpreted as the prognostication for divination falling on the corresponding hexagram-pair); (b) compact ethical-cum-cosmological statements; (c) substantive examples of Hàn-period verse-craft. The compositional accomplishment of producing 4,096 distinct, semantically-coherent four-character-line poems is exceptional even by the standards of any era’s verse-composition.
The Sìkù 提要 articulates a careful textual-historical analysis:
(a) Authorship: Jiāo Yánshòu’s identity as the author is documented in the Hànshū Rúlín zhuàn (where his student Jīng Fáng’s biography records the Jiāo Yánshòu transmission). The Suí Jīngjí zhì lists both the Yìlín 16 juàn and the Yìlín biànzhàn 16 juàn; the latter is lost.
(b) Suspected later interpolations: the Sìkù 提要 records that some of the verses contain references to events post-dating Jiāo Yánshòu — notably the Chángchéng jì lì, sìyí bīnfú, jiāohé jiéhǎo, Zhāojūn shì fú (Long-Wall established, Four-Barbarians submitted, friendly-relations concluded, Zhāojūn is fortunate) entry, which clearly references the Wáng Zhāojūn event of Yuándì Jìngníng 1 (33 BCE) — post-dating Jiāo Yánshòu by some two decades. The 提要 considers this an instance of post-Jiāo-Yánshòu interpolation by “the divination-school passing-around-and-adding to the original text”, not invalidating the substantial JiāoYánshòu authorship.
(c) Calendar-divinatory method: the work was used by means of the zhírì (duty-day) calendar method — each calendar day being assigned a hexagram, and a divination-on-day-X yielding the corresponding yáocí. The exact methodology is debated: Huáng Bóxī 黃伯思 held it was the biànzhàn (transformation-divination) method (now lost); Xuē Jìxuān 薛季宣 held it was the zhírì method. The Sìkù 提要 records both views.
(d) Textual transmission: the text is preserved in continuous transmission from the Sòng period; the Sìkù recension follows the Sòng-period text with minor editorial corrections.
The work’s yáocí are also rich evidence for Hàn-period folk-cosmology. The 提要’s specific case-study: the Zhèn zhī Jiǎn (the Zhèn hexagram transformed to Jiǎn) verse “ant-mounds opening their doors, great rain about to gather” — recorded in the Dōngguān Hànjì as having been used by the Pèixiànwáng Liú Fǔ in a Yǒngpíng 5 (62 CE) consultation with the Eastern Hàn Míngdì on whether the drought would break. The Pèixiànwáng’s interpretation of the verse — “Jiǎn is Gèn-below-Kǎn-above; Gèn is mountain; Kǎn is water; outflowing-clouds make rain; ants live in burrows and know rain; impending cloud-and-rain ants close their burrows; therefore [the verse] takes ants as its imagery*” — exemplifies the work’s substantial influence on Hàn-period imperial-court divinatory practice.
For Jiāo Yánshòu’s biography, see 焦延壽. For his student’s Yìjīng tradition, see KR3g0030 Jīngshì Yìzhuàn by Jīng Fáng.
Tiyao
[Full text in source file. Dated Qiánlóng 46 (1781).]
Translations and research
- Lewis, Mark Edward. Writing and Authority in Early China, Albany: SUNY Press, 1999 (background on Hàn-period divinatory texts).
- Goodman, Howard L. Xun Xu and the Politics of Precision in Third-Century AD China, Leiden: Brill, 2010.
- Smith, Richard J. Fortune-tellers and Philosophers: Divination in Traditional Chinese Society, Boulder: Westview Press, 1991.
Other points of interest
The work’s monumental compositional achievement — 4,096 distinct semantically-coherent four-character verses — has prompted occasional comparison with Western works of similar scope (e.g., the Provençal trobar clus tradition’s permutational verse-craft). The Yìlín is, by total verse-count, one of the most prolific single-author verse compendia in any tradition.