Abstract
Shao Yong 邵雍 (1011–1077) was born into a family of humble scholars that had resided in Fanyang 范陽 (less than 65 kilometers southwest of modern Beijing) for many generations. By the time of his adolescence, however, the northern upheaval caused by the incursions of the Qidan 契丹 Liao dynasty (947–1125) uprooted Shao Yong and his kinsmen, forcing them into several southerly peregrinations until his father Shao Gu 邵古 (986–1064) eventually settled with his family in relative safety at Gongcheng 共城 in Weizhou 衛州 (in modern Hui 輝 county, Henan 河南). As a youth, Shao Yong followed in the footsteps of his father Gu and his grandfather Shao Dexin 邵德新 (d. 996), both of whom led learned but reclusive lives. Thus, like his contemporary Zhou Dunyi 周敦頤 (1017–1073)—with whom he is often linked intellectually—Shao Yong never sat for the imperial civil service examinations. Unlike Zhou—who availed himself of the hereditary “shadow” (yin 蔭) privilege of entering government service to pursue a successful bureaucratic career—Shao refused to serve in office, despite receiving imperial summonses in 1061 and in 1069 appointing him to do so.
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Notes
- 1.
This was the canonization name honorifically conferred upon Shao Yong posthumously. As Shao Bowen recounts, “It seems that the Henan [Luoyang] prefectural government, relying on his obituary notice, bestowed on my late father the posthumous title of gentleman (lang 郎) and canonized him as Kangjie, meaning ‘health’ and ‘integrity’ ” (Shao 1970: 20.4).
- 2.
The locus classicus of the fish-trap and rabbit-snare allegory is Zhuangzi, Chapter 26.
- 3.
The substantial value of this work derives in part from the fact that it both predates and postdates Shao Yong’s authorship of Book of Supreme World-ordering Principles, having been commenced in 1049 and continued until his death. By contrast, Shao Yong wrote Supreme World-ordering Principles—or, more properly, the limited section of the work that we can directly ascribe to him (discussed below)—between 1063 and 1070. Consequently, there is considerable parallelism evinced between these two texts, a situation that permits each to serve as a gloss on the other, aided by the fact that the year of composition for each of the poems in Striking the Earth at Yi River—with one notable exception—is datable (Wyatt 1996: 9, 177, 180–182, 238–239).
- 4.
The precise sequence of cosmogonic evolution for Shao Yong involved the Great Ultimate producing spirit, spirit giving rise to number, number generating image, and image finally resulting in utility (qi 器). Thereafter, he contended, “upon a change, all of these revert to spirit” (Shao 1934: 7B.23b; 8B.23). In advancing number before image, Shao’s sequencing certainly represents an eccentric inversion of what was customary. Among those intellectual successors advancing image over number who nonetheless attempted to reconcile this peculiar modification of Shao Yong’s with past practice was Zhu Zhen 朱震 (1072–1138) (Nielsen 2003: 344–345).
- 5.
The conventional characterization of Shao Yong’s thought as predominantly numerological has not gone unchallenged (Birdwhistell 1989: 4).
- 6.
- 7.
Apart from his temporal theory of world-cycles, this concept of fanguan does appear to be the one among Shao’s collection of concepts that was most profoundly influenced by Buddhist ideas, with the result being that contemporary scholars have frequently felt compelled to analyze it from that perspective (see Birdwhistell 1989: 183–186; Smith and Wyatt 1990: 104–105).
- 8.
Fittingly, the quoted clause in conclusion is from the important “Appended Statements” (“Xici” 繋辭) commentary—also known as the “Great Commentary” (“Dazhuan” 大傳)—of the Book of Change, with the full text reading, “In exceeding beyond this, there has yet to be any other knowledge. By exhausting the spirits, one realizes the victory that comes through the transformation of virtue” (“Appended Statements” 1927: 8B.6b; Smith and Wyatt 1990:104).
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Wyatt, D.J. (2010). Shao Yong’s Numerological-Cosmological System. In: Makeham, J. (eds) Dao Companion to Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2930-0_2
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