Zhù Bì 祝泌
Zì Zǐjīng 子涇, self-styled Guānwù lǎorén 觀物老人 (“Old Man of Observing Things”). Native of Póyáng 鄱陽 (in modern Jiāngxī). Active in the Duānpíng and Chúnyòu reigns of Sòng Lǐzōng: his self-preface to KR3g0009 Guānwù piān jiě is dated 1235; the appended Qǐshù jué carries an inner preface of 1241. CBDB person id 44260 gives fl. 1274–1276; this is at variance with the dated prefaces and is followed here in the corrected form fl. 1235–1241. (The CBDB date may have arisen from a confusion with his nephew Fù Lì’s Yuán-court divinations under Khubilai in the 1270s.)
Zhù Bì held office as Chéngzhíláng 承直郞 charged with the Dūdà tídiǎn kēngyě zhùqián sī 都大提點坑冶鑄錢司 (Provincial Coinage Bureau) for the Jiānghuái, JīngZhè, Fújiàn, and Guǎngnán circuits; the same title is repeated inside his Qǐshù jué. His terminal office is not recorded.
His scholarly identity is as a Southern-Sòng practitioner of Shào Yōng’s Huángjí jīngshì numerology, specializing in the practical divinatory side (as against 張行成’s cosmographic side). His principal extant work is KR3g0009 Guānwù piān jiě in 5 juàn (with appendix Huángjí jīngshì jiě qǐshù jué 皇極經世解起數訣 in 1 juàn). Zhū Yízūn’s 朱彝尊 Jīngyì kǎo additionally lists a Huángjí jīngshì qián 皇極經世鈐 in 12 juàn under his name — possibly the same work under a different title and arrangement, possibly a separate book now lost. He is named by the Sìkù editors as a contemporary critic of KR3g0008 Yì tōngbiàn (judging it as having “many places of brilliant illumination but also many places of branching tangents”), and his system contains several visible innovations beyond Shào Yōng’s apparatus — the doctrine of èrshíwǔ biàn (twenty-five transformations), the use of Tóngrén as origin point, the use of the sānshíliù zìmǔ to start prognostic number — that the Sìkù editors regard as eccentric but technically effective.
Through his nephew Fù Lì 傅立, Zhù Bì’s Huángjí-divination technique entered Yuán-court use: Táo Zōngyí’s Chuògēng lù records that Fù Lì divined for Yuán Shìzǔ (Khubilai). The Sìkù Guānwù piān jiě tíyào relies on this empirical track record (corroborated by the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn’s separately-preserved Zhùshì zhànlì) as the principal ground for preserving the work.