Huáng Zōngxī 黃宗羲 (1610–1695), zì Tàichōng 太沖, hào Líchuāng 梨洲 (also Nánléi 南雷), was one of the “Three Great Confucians of the Early Qīng” (along with Wáng Fūzhī 王夫之 and Gù Yánwǔ 顧炎武), and a leading early-Qīng historian, philosopher, Yìjīng and Lǐxué scholar from Yúyáo 餘姚 (Shàoxīng 紹興, modern Zhèjiāng 浙江). He was the eldest son of the Dōnglín martyr Huáng Zūnsù 黃尊素 (executed by the eunuch faction in 1626).
Under the Míng he served briefly under the Lóngwǔ and Lǔ Wáng Southern Míng courts before withdrawing into permanent retreat after the Manchu consolidation; he refused all Qīng appointments. His massive corpus includes the Míng yí dài fǎng lù 明夷待訪錄 (his great political treatise drawing the famous Míng yí 明夷 hexagram trope from the Yì); the SòngYuán xué àn 宋元學案 and Míng rú xué àn 明儒學案 (the foundational histories of SòngYuán and Míng Confucianism); the Yì xué xiàng shù lùn 易學象數論 (KR1a0123) treated here; and the Mèngzǐ shī shuō 孟子師說 (Mencius lectures of his teacher Liú Zōngzhōu 劉宗周).
The Yì xué xiàng shù lùn in six juàn is one of the foundational early-Qīng kǎozhèng treatises on the Yì chart-and-numerology tradition: it systematically inventories the major xiàng and shù doctrines (HétúLuòshū, xiāntiān positions, nà jiǎ 納甲, nà yīn 納音, yuè jiàn 月建, guà qì 卦氣, guà biàn, hùtǐ, milfoil-divination etc.), documents their historical filiations, and distinguishes the “seven proper symbols” of the canonical Yì from the “four false symbols” introduced by post-canonical (especially Sòng) adventitious reading. Together with Hú Wèi’s 胡渭 Yìtú míng biàn 易圖明辨 of 1706 it is the principal early-Qīng demolition of the Sòng chart-tradition.