The Seal of the Unity of the Three — Vol. 2 - The Golden Elixir

140 II. Commentaries, Essays, and Related Works
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emendations that are ignored in the Kaoyi. 16 The limited number of
critical notes in the Kaoyi did not fail to draw the attention of the
Siku quanshu editors, whose descriptive note on Zhu Xi’s work
contains this passage:
Zhu Xi’s postface states: “I have retained all agreements and variants
(tongyi 同 異 ) [among different redactions and editions] and have
provided textual investigations and verifications (kaozheng 考 證 ).”
Therefore his work is entitled Investigation of Discrepancies. It
should be noted, however, that the only explications of “agreements
and variants” in the whole book are those concerning the graph zhi 治
in the verse 「 天 下 然 後 治 」 (“only [when the function of Qian and
Kun is at work] can the world be governed”, 14:18), which “some
write li 理 ”, and the graph xi in the verse 「 威 光 鼎 乃 」 (“the
tripod glows with awesome radiance”, 31:8), which “is originally
written xi 喜 and some write xi 僖 .” These are the two only instances
in which Zhu Xi collates different editions. The instances in which
Zhu Xi supplies textual notes are no more than six or seven. These
concern, for example, the graph xiu 修 , which Zhu Xi suspects
should read xun 循 (40:7); the graphs wuliu 六 五 , which he suspects
should read nianliu 廿 六 (49:33); the graph qian 鉛 , which he
suspects should read qian 飴 (56:10); and the graph yu 與 , which he
suspects should read wei 為 (63:5). In all other instances, the notes
found after each section are in the format of a commentary, and do
not contain exhaustive textual emendations (dingzheng wenzi 訂 正 文
字 ). For the above reasons, one cannot make sense of the title Investigation
of Discrepancies. 17
The case is strong enough to assume that a number of critical notes
were expunged by Huang Ruijie, or possibly by someone before him. 18
A confirmation in this regard is provided by Yu Yan, who, writing fifty
years before Huang Ruijie, states that he found it superfluous to
16
See Azuma, “Shu Ki Shūeki sandōkei kōi ni tsuite,” pp. 178–79 and note
10, p. 189. Azuma does not mention Huang Ruijie and his editorial work, and
suggest that Zhu Xi’s postface may not be authentic.
17
Siku quanshu zongmu, 146.1294
18
It may be significant, under this light, that Huang Ruijie reentitled Zhu
Xi’s commentary Zhouyi cantong qi jie 周 易 參 同 契 解 (Explication of the
Zhouyi cantong qi), since his edition retains the explanations (jie 解 ) but
dismisses most of the philological notes (the kaoyi 考 異 proper) found the
original text.
© Fabrizio Pregadio and Golden Elixir Press 2012