The Yijing and Chinese Politics: Classical Commentary and Literati Activism in the Northern Song Period, 960-1127

Conclusion

4 Shortly after the Song imperial court was relocated to Hangzhou in 38, efforts were made to compile, edit, and categorize the Northern Song Yijing commentaries. Among the first to do so was Chao Gongwu (ca. 02–87), who offered thoughtful and comprehensive comments on the Northern Song commentaries.¹ Especially valuable are his notes on the commentaries of Shi Jie and Wang Anshi because they are the only information about them available to us. At the same time, Chao’s notes set the tone for later discussion of the Northern Song Yijing commentaries. Reflecting the view of his times, he regarded the Northern Song Yijing commentaries as an extension of the Wang Bi style of moral and philosophical reading of the classic. To show his preference, he reversed the chronological order of his comments. He began his notes with comments on the Zhouyi zhu and the Zhouyi zhengyi of the Wei and Tang periods, followed by those on the Western and Eastern Han commentaries.² To drive home his point, he mentioned repeatedly how greatly the Northern Song exegetes had been influenced by Wang Bi’s interpretation of the classic.³ However, Chao Gongwu’s view was not universally accepted in the Southern Song. Zhu Zhen (072–38), for instance, believed that the Northern Song Yijing commentaries were derived from the diagram school established by Chen Tuan during the Five Dynasties Period Conclusion 42 The Yijing and Chinese Politics and the early Northern Song. In his memorial to Emperor Gaozong, Zhu listed three genealogies of transmission that covered most of the major Northern Song Yijing exegetes including Shao Yong, Liu Mu, Zhou Dunyi, Zhang Zai, and Cheng Yi. ⁴ Each genealogy was based on one particular diagram or set of diagrams: Chen Tuan’s “Before Birth Diagram” (Xiantian tu), Zhong Fang’s “River Diagram” (He tu) and “Book from Luo River” (Luo shu), and Mu Xiu’s (979–032) “Diagram of the Great Ultimate” (Taiji tu).⁵ Half way between Chao Gongwu and Zhu Zhen was Zhu Xi, who regarded the Northern Song Yijing commentaries as a mixture of the Wang Bi and the diagram commentarial schools.⁶ To underscore the relation between the two commentarial schools, he traced the diagram school to the original Yijing text of the Zhou dynasty, which he claimed was a manual for divination. And then, he linked the Wang Bi commentarial school to the Ten Wings, which he thought were written by Confucius to transform the Yijing into a moral and philosophical text. Finally, he argued that despite their apparent differences, the two commentarial schools actually carried the same message of the Yijing because of “the same origin of substance and function, and the inseparability between what is manifested and what is implied.”⁷ For Zhu Xi, the goal of examining the Northern Song Yijing commentaries was not to find out which commentarial school was dominant; rather, it was to distinguish the genuine “Confucian” commentaries (e.g., Cheng Yi’s) from the misguided ones (e.g., Su Shi’s).⁸ Throughout the Yuan, Ming, and Qing periods, as Zhu Xi’s commentary (combined with Cheng Yi’s) was enshrined as the official Yijing commentary tested in the civil service examinations, his view became the standard interpretation of Northern Song Yijing commentaries. In the eighteenth century, to reiterate what had already been an accepted view of the Northern Song Yijing studies, the editors of Siku quanshu wrote: Not being far removed from the ancient times, the Han scholars continued to discuss [the Yijing] based on images and numbers. On their basis, Jing [Fang, 77–37 B.C.E.] and Jiao [Yanshou] used the Yijing to seek blessings from the deities, and then, Chen [Tuan] and Shao [Yong] attempted to comprehend the transformation of the universe. As a result, the Yijing was no longer applied to people’s daily life. [In interpreting the Yijing,] Wang Bi totally abandoned images and numbers, and adopted the perspectives of Laozi and Conclusion 43 Zhuangzi. Building on his view, Hu Yuan and Master Cheng [Yi] began to [use the Yijing] to elucidate the Confucian principles, and then, Li Guang [076–59] and Yang Wanli [2–204] employed historical events to support [their interpretations of the Yijing]. Thus, debates and discussions on how to read the Yijing abound, and supporters of the two [commentarial] schools and the six sub-schools attacked one another.⁹ Like Zhu Xi, the Siku quanshu editors...