XuéYì jí 學易集
The Studying-Yì Collection by 劉跂 (撰)
About the work
XuéYì jí 學易集 in 8 juǎn preserves the writings of Liú Qí 劉跂 (fl. c. 1075–1117), eldest son of the Yuányòu chief councillor Liú Zhì 劉摯, and a Yuánfēng 2 / 1079 jìnshì. The title takes Liú Qí’s hào XuéYì xiānshēng 學易先生 — reflecting his deep engagement with the Yìjīng. The collection includes Yì-image essays, classical-philological notes, jì on antiquities, and substantial epigraphic prose — Liú Qí is best known to modern scholarship as a Northern-Sòng jīnshí (epigraphy) connoisseur whose colophons on stone inscriptions are preserved here.
Tiyao
Abstract
XuéYì jí documents the second-generation Yuányòu literary network. Liú Qí’s jìnshì date (1079) places him in the same Yuánfēng cohort as Liú Yǎn KR4d0107 and many other Sū-mén-adjacent figures; his political fate followed his father Liú Zhì’s, who was demoted in Shàoshèng (1094) and died in exile (1097). Liú Qí spent the Chóngníng / Dàguān period in retirement, devoting himself to Yì-learning and to jīnshí (epigraphic) connoisseurship.
The jīnshí prose preserved here — colophons on stone-inscriptions, bá (postscripts) on bronze-vessel rubbings, and antiquarian jì — is one of the principal Northern-Sòng biéjí sources for the early jīnshí tradition that would crystallise in Ouyáng Xiū’s Jígǔlù and Zhào Míngchéng’s Jīnshílù. Liú Qí’s connoisseurial work is appreciated by Hóng Mài and Zhào Xībiàn 趙希弁 in their respective records.
The dating bracket runs from jìnshì (1079) to his death (uncertain, c. 1117). The Yì-essays are largely from the Chóngníng / Dàguān retirement period; the jīnshí colophons are scattered across the career.
Translations and research
- Sòng-shǐ j. 340 — biographical notice (附 to Liú Zhì’s biography).
- Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Accumulating Culture: The Collections of Emperor Huizong (Washington 2008). Background on Northern-Sòng jīn-shí connoisseurship.
- Sēna, Yoshiko. Bronzes and Their Connoisseurs in Song China. (forthcoming / various articles).
- No dedicated monographic study of Liú Qí located.
Other points of interest
- Liú Qí’s epigraphic colophons — particularly on qínHàn bronze-vessels and stone inscriptions — are early examples of the jīnshí connoisseur’s technical vocabulary that was being formalised across the late Yuánfú / Chóngníng period.
- The XuéYì program — articulated through the collection’s Yì-essays — represents one of the alternative approaches to Yì-learning in the Northern Sòng, distinct from both the imagistic-mathematical (Shào Yōng) and the moral-philosophical (Chéng Yí) lines.