Máo Qílíng 毛奇齡 (1623–1716; alternate name Máo Shēn 毛甡), zì Dàkě 大可, hào Qiūqíng 秋晴 (also Chūqíng 初晴) — also called Xīhé 西河 from his ancestral place — was a major early-Qīng polymath, prolific writer, and one of the leading lights of the Hángzhōu-region Confucian scholarly circle. Native of Xiāoshān 蕭山 (Shàoxīng 紹興, Zhèjiāng 浙江). After the MíngQīng transition he refused regular Qīng service for years; in Kāngxī jǐwèi 康熙己未 = 1679 he was nominated for the special Bóxué hóngcí 博學鴻詞 examination and accepted, being appointed Hànlín Examination Editor (Hànlín yuàn jiǎntǎo 翰林院檢討).
Máo’s output is enormous — over a hundred works on classical exegesis, philology, music, history, philosophy, and poetry. He is famous for an aggressively polemical style and for systematic opposition to Sòng Lǐxué orthodoxy, particularly Zhū Xī 朱熹 and the Yángmíng 王陽明 xīnxué. His major Yì writings include the Zhòngshì Yì 仲氏易 (KR1a0126) — the Sìkù-included version, in 30 juàn — together with Tài jí tú shuō yí yì 太極圖說遺議, Hé tú Luò shū yuán shùn biàn 河圖洛書原舛編, Tuī yì shǐ 推易始末, Chūnqiū zhàn shì shū 春秋占筮書, and various smaller treatises. The Zhòngshì Yì is presented as recovering the Yì-teachings of his elder brother Máo Xīlíng 毛錫齡 (a competent Yì scholar who had taught his son Máo Wénhuī 毛文輝 the doctrine orally without writing it down) — though the Sìkù editors candidly suspect the work is in fact Máo Qílíng’s own, attributed to his brother as a literary device.
The work’s distinctive Yìxué contribution is the wǔ yì 五義 (Five Meanings) doctrine: biàn yì 變易, jiāo yì 交易 (the two known to predecessors as Fú Xī’s Yì); fǎn yì 反易 (rotational reversal), duì yì 對易 (yīnyáng pairing), yí yì 移易 (line-redistribution) — these last three Máo claims as the actual Yì of King Wén and the Duke of Zhōu, unrecovered since the HànJìn period.