Yìshù gōuyǐn tú 易數鉤隱圖
Charts for Probing the Hidden Meaning of the Figures of the Book of Changes
by 劉牧 (撰)
About the work
A three-juan Yìjīng 易經 chart-compilation by the Northern-Sòng numerologist Liú Mù 劉牧 (1011–1064) of Sānqú 三衢, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0159 / CT 159 = TC 159), 洞真部 靈圖類. The work contains 55 numbered charts, each (with the exception of the closing section at 3.4a–9b) accompanied by a brief explanatory commentary. The first two juan present the cosmogonic and hexagrammatic charts proper to the Yìjīng — tàijí 太極 (chart 1) → tàijí shēng liǎngyí 太極生兩儀 (chart 2) → tiānwǔ 天五 (chart 3) → tiāndì shù 天地數 → the directional generation of the five phases — while the third juan presents the Hétú 河圖 and Luòshū 洛書. With Shào Yōng’s 邵雍 work, this is the most important surviving source on the early-Sòng “School of Charts” (túshū 圖書) of Yìjīng exegesis, which flourished under Sòng Rénzōng 宋仁宗 (r. 1023–1064). The text is mentioned in the Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì 郡齋讀書志 1.33–34 and abstracted in the Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要 2.1a–b. Old editions had a preface by Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修 (1007–1072) that was later deleted because considered likely to be spurious.
Prefaces
The volume opens with Liú Mù’s own short preface (1a). He defines the Yì 易 as “the intersecting interaction of the qì of yīn and yáng”: when yīn and yáng have not yet interacted, the four images (sìxiàng 四象) have not been established and the eight trigrams (bāguà 八卦) have not yet differentiated, so how could the ten thousand things come into being? The two forms (liǎngyí 兩儀) transform to generate the four images, and the four images transform to generate the eight trigrams; the doubling of the trigrams to the sixty-four hexagrams completes the work of the Yì. The trigrams are what the sages set out for observing patterns; pattern is the application of what is above form. Tracing the source, form arises from pattern, pattern arises from number — and without number the four images cannot be understood. Hence Confucius in his praise of the Yì always invokes the extreme numbers of Heaven and Earth as the means of completing transformation and circulating the spirits. The commentaries of past masters, however, while penetrating in matters of textual division and meaning, treat the cosmic interlacing of the numbers only summarily, so that students cannot grasp the message. The present work therefore collects the odd and even numbers of Heaven and Earth, from tàijí shēng liǎngyí down to the hexagram Fù 復, in fifty-five positions, charting them and explaining each beneath the corresponding diagram. The author closes by acknowledging the difficulty of his subject — “the principles of the Yì are deep and remote, things which even past sages could only glimpse” — and submits the work for the consideration of “the broadly learned gentlemen.”
Abstract
Marc Kalinowski, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:748 (§3.A.2, Divination and Numerology), describes the work as “an important source on the school of Yìjīng exegesis (the School of Figures).” He notes the inclusion of the present edition in the Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě 通志堂經解, whose editor’s preface describes the text’s Sòng transmission. The frontmatter brackets composition within the reign of Sòng Rénzōng 宋仁宗, notBefore 1023 / notAfter 1064.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Marc Kalinowski, “Yishu gouyin tu,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.2, 748. On the early-Sòng Yì-numerology school see Kidder Smith Jr. et al., Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Tze-ki Hon, The Yijing and Chinese Politics: Classical Commentary and Literati Activism in the Northern Song Period (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0160
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.2, 748.