| Chapter 1: | The Transnational Travels of the Yijing 易經 or Classic of Changes |
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throughout the Lê and Nguyễn dynasties, as in Tokugawa Japan and Chosŏn Korea, ideas derived from the Yijing influenced many realms of Vietnamese culture, from politics, music, art, literature, and mathematics to medicine, agriculture, calendrical studies, geography, religion, popular lore, and a wide range of divinatory theories and practices.50
Moreover, several Lê-dynasty scholars became quite famous for their writings on the Changes, notably Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm 阮秉謙 (1491–1585), the preeminent nôm poet of his age. Philosophically, Nguyễn used the Yijing to unite Neo-Confucian metaphysics with Daoism and Buddhism. He also gained fame as an able and insightful exponent of Shao Yong’s numerological approach to divination and of the time-honored, Chinese fortune-telling technique called the Great One (太乙).51 Known in some circles as “the Vietnamese Nostradamus,” Nguyễn’s writings are still studied today in Vietnam for their predictions of modern events.52
As with Japan and Korea, scholars of the Changes in late Lê dynasty and early Nguyễn dynasty Vietnam had at least some access to standard Chinese reference works, including a Ming-dynasty publication known as the Yijing daquan 易經大全 (Vietnamese: Dịch kinh đại toàn; Great comprehensive compilation of the Zhou Changes) (1415; reprinted in 1715), which was later condensed by a famous Vietnamese Yijing scholar by the name of Phạm Quý Thích 范貴適 (1760–1825).53 The successor to the Zhouyi daquan, a massive Qing-dynasty collection known as the Zhouyi zhezhong 周易折中 (Vietnamese: Chu dịch triết trung; A balanced compendium on the Zhou Changes) (1715) seems to have found its way to Vietnam sometime in the late eighteenth century but, as far as I know, was not condensed in a systematic way by Phạm or any other Vietnamese scholars.
Edited by Chŏng Yagyong’s nemesis, Li Guangdi, the Zhouyi zhezhong was intended as the definitive statement of the Qing state’s approach to the Yijing. It provided four main categories of commentary for each of the two main sections of the Zhouyi zhezhong—the basic text and the Ten Wings. The first category was reserved for Zhu Xi, the second