Wú Hàng 吳沆
Style name Déyuǎn 德遠; hào (sobriquet) Huánxī 環溪 (“Pool-Embraced”). Native of Línchuān 臨川 in Fǔzhōu 撫州 (modern Jiāngxī). Active Shàoxīng 16 (1146); precise lifedates not recoverable.
A commoner-scholar with no examination success and no recorded official position. In 1146, with his brother Wú Xiè 吳澥, he travelled to the imperial residence at Hángzhōu to present four writings to the court: Xiè presented Yǔnèi biàn 宇内辨 (a treatise on the inner/outer political-administrative distinction) and Lìdài jiāngyù zhì 厯代疆域志 (a historical-geographic treatise); Hàng presented Yì xuánjī 易璇璣 (KR1a0026) and Sān fén xùn yì 三墳訓義 (a commentary on the spurious Sānfén text). Of all four works, only Hàng’s Yì xuánjī survives — Xiè’s two works are lost; Hàng’s Sān fén xùn yì was refuted by the Tàixué bóshì Wáng Zhīwàng 王之望 and is also lost.
His other surviving work is the Huánxī shī huà 環溪詩話 (“Pool-Embracing Poetry-Talks”), preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn and registered in the Sìkù belles-lettres section. A further work, Yì lǐ tú shuō 易禮圖說 (with six huòwèn sections and twelve illustrative scrolls), is recorded by Hú Yīguì but is also lost.
The Yì xuánjī is methodologically the most distinctive Sòng-period topical Yì treatise — twenty-seven essays organized as a structured philosophical-political curriculum on the Yì, with the Tuàn zhuàn as the privileged access-point and the title taken from Wáng Bì’s Lüèlì.