| Chapter 1: | The Transnational Travels of the Yijing 易經 or Classic of Changes |
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in Korea, as in Japan, used the images and numbers of the Changes in creative new ways. Kim Sŏkmun 金錫文 (1658–1735), for example, tried to employ the Yijing to explain newly introduced Western scientific concepts, including the rotation of the earth and Ptolemaic astronomy. Significantly, he argued, in the fashion of Chinese scholars such as Fang Yizhi 方以智 (1611–1671) and Jiang Yong 江永 (1681–1762), that all-natural phenomena can be represented by the symbolism of the Yijing.39
Chŏng Yagyong 丁若鏞 (1762–1836), or Tasan 茶山 as he is popularly known, was another powerful advocate of Western science and Solid Learning in Chosŏn Korea, but no single label does him justice. Indeed, on the basis of my own research into his voluminous writings (to be discussed), I would argue that Tasan was as wide-ranging and eclectic a scholar-philosopher as any of his contemporaries in East Asia and more wide-ranging and eclectic than most. He was a wildly independent “Confucian” thinker who also gravitated at various times to Christianity and Buddhism and was broadly acquainted not only with the work of a wide variety of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese scholars but also with at least some of the writings of Western missionaries.40
Tasan’s opinions on the Yijing are scattered throughout the several hundred volumes of his collected works, all of which were written in literary Sinitic, at times with the addition of some Korean vernacular elements. The two main collections of his works are Yŏyudang chŏnsŏ 與猶堂全書 (Complete works from the Yŏyu Hall) and Yŏyudang chŏnsŏ poyu 與猶堂全書補遺 (Supplement to the Complete Works from the Yŏyu Hall). Although I am still slowly ploughing through this vast body of material,41 I have read enough of it already to have gained enormous respect for Tasan’s erudition and his intellectual integrity.
Tasan’s most famous works on the Yijing were the Chuyŏk sajŏn 周易四箋 (Four writings on the Zhou Changes) and the Yŏkhak sŏŏn 易學緖言 (Preliminary words on the Changes), both of which are reproduced in the Yŏyudang chŏnsŏ. Of the two, Tasan had a special affection for the Chuyŏk sajŏn, which he revised four times after completing the