| Chapter 1: | The Transnational Travels of the Yijing 易經 or Classic of Changes |
|
|
work are Hà Lạc đồ thuyết lược vấn 河洛圖説略問 (Summary questions about the Illustrated Discussion of the Yellow River Chart and the Luo River Writing) and Hà đồ lạc thư lược vấn đáp 河圖洛書問答 (Questions and answers about the Yellow River Chart and the Luo River Writing).
Careful research by Deng Deliang 鄧德良, Pei Bojun 裴伯鈞, and others has established that the earliest datable version of the Dịch phu tùng thuyết, titled Dịch kinh phu thuyết 易經膚說 (A superficial discussion of the Yijing), was almost certainly written by the famous Vietnamese scholar Lê Quý Đôn 黎貴惇 (1726–1784) in 1752.60 Lê, a prolific and wide-ranging intellectual in the tradition of Chŏng Yagyong (a.k.a. Tasan) in Korea, has been credited with a great many books on Yijing-related divination, including the Dịch kinh phu thuyết, the Bốc Dịch lược biên卜易略編 (A brief compilation on divination with the Changes), the Thái ất dị giản lục in 太乙易簡錄 (A brief record [concerning] the Taiyi Changes) (1776), and at least three other Taiyi-related texts, including the now-lost Thái ất quái vận 太乙卦運 (The movement of Taiyi [among] the trigrams [of the Changes]). At least two books related to Liuren 六壬 calculations—the Lục nhâm hội thông 六壬會通 (A comprehensive account of Liuren) and the Lục nhâm tuyển túy 六壬選粹 (The selected essence of Liuren)—have also been attributed to him.61
Like his prolific Korean counterpart, Tasan, Lê Quý Dôn was influenced by Buddhist and Western ideas, and he produced hundreds of volumes of prose and poetry. These works, also like Tasan’s, displayed a broad range of political, social, economic, historical, literary, scientific, medical, and divinatory interests.62 Drawing upon Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean traditions of practical statecraft, Lê used a number of classical texts, including the Yijing, to frame Vietnamese history and culture and to advocate reforms in Vietnamese society.63
One of the many distinctive features of Lê Quý Dôn’s approach to the Changes was his fascination with exponents of the School of Images and Numbers that went all the way back to early “Han Confucians” (漢儒), such as Jiao Yanshou 焦延壽 (ca. 70–10 BCE) and Jing Fang.64 Another