شش خطی 6
کشمکش، اختلاف نظر، مشاجره (سونگ Sòng)

NOTES
1. This and all subsequent text set off in this manner is commentary by Wang Bi. The text of Wang’s comment reads jie ti ranhou (only after one in all cases exercises prudence). However, Lou Yulie cites critical editions of the Changes with Wang’s commentary prepared by Sun Xingyan (1753–1818) and Jiao Xun (1763–1820) in which jie (in all cases) is replaced by neng (is able). As the characters jie and neng resemble each other, it is assumed that these editors thought that jie was a mistake and that neng was correct. Kong Yingda also reads Wang’s text as if it contained neng rather than jie. See Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 1: 251 n. 1, and Zhouyi zhengyi, 2: 4a.
2. “Is he not located at Second Yang?” translates qi zai er hu. As the ruler of the Song hexagram is Fifth Yang, there has been speculation that this phrase contains a copyist’s error and should read qi zai wu hu: “Is he not located at Fifth Yang?” If this is so, the error must have occurred before the Tang era and Kong Yingda, for Kong accepts er as correct and has much to say about it in his subcommentary to Fifth Yang:
Wang’s commentary above says: “Someone in charge who is good at listening, and is he not located at Second Yang?” This means that Second Yang is a ruler, but his commentary here also says: “[Fifth Yang] becomes the ruler of Song. [It] by its adherence to the Mean and its rectitude judges what is crooked and what is straight.” So this means that Fifth Yang is also a ruler. For one hexagram to have two rulers like this often occurs throughout the hexagrams as a whole. Fifth Yang is this hexagram’s ruler by virtue of its noble position, but any of the other lines might be a ruler because of the way it represents the hexagram’s meaning.
Kong then goes on to say that the same kind of thing happens, for instance, in Fu (Return), Hexagram 24. See Zhouyi zhengyi, 2:7a–7b. Still, although the “meaning” of Song—its “moral” or general advice—does seem to be expressed in Second Yang, I am not entirely convinced and continue to think that “is he not located at Fifth Yang” is the more likely reading: it makes good sense for the passage as a whole and is, of course, a much simpler explanation. By the same token, “the great man” probably refers to Fifth Yang and not Second Yang.
3. Kong Yingda comments: “The Dao of Heaven is to rotate to the west, but the flow of water is such that it goes east…. This is an image of two people mutually acting at odds.” See Zhouyi zhengyi, 2: 5a. All celestial bodies seem to rotate from east to west, and the waters of Chinese lakes and rivers all eventually flow east to the sea.
4. Lunyu (Analects) 12:13.
5. This paraphrases Laozi, section 79, p. 79.
6. Wang says the same thing in his commentary to Laozi, section 10, p. 23.
7. Kong Yingda comments: “First Yin should be the one to respond to Fourth Yang, but Fourth Yang is so filled with strong yang-ness that it comes first to First Yin. This is in violation of principle and a transgression against this one. First Yin, a weak yin entity that finds itself transgressed against, now enters into Contention.” See Zhouyi zhengyi, 2: 5a–5b.
8. Kong Yingda comments:
Zheng’s [Zheng Xuan, 127–200] commentary on the Liji [Book of rites] says: “A small state involves the rule of a junior grand master [xiadaifu].” This location [in Song] is an expression of the meager and the weak, and this is why Second Yang can escape by returning home and hiding away there. But if this involves a city that surpasses three hundred households in population, it would be a strong, large state that one cannot use as a hideout.
See Zhouyi zhengyi, 2: 5b.
9. Kong Yingda glosses “subsist on old virtue” (shi jiude) as “subsist on the salary and rank of the virtuous of former days”—i.e., be content with the position inherited from one’s virtuous forebears. See Zhouyi zhengyi, 2: 6a.
10. This is how Kong Yingda interprets the passage; see Zhouyi zhengyi, 2: 6b.
11. Lunyu (Analects) 12:1.
12. Both Wang Bi and Kong Yingda seem to invest ming (literally, “order” or “command”) with a double meaning here: it refers both to “Heaven’s command” (i.e., fundamental [moral] principle[s]) and to the specific command that Fourth Yang had given to First Yin that gave rise to the Contention between them. Kong, in fact, moves back and forth between these two positions throughout his remarks. See Zhouyi zhengyi, 2: 6b–7a. However, both Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi gloss ming as zhenli (true moral principles) and understand the “change of course” not in terms of the course of action (orders given) undertaken by Fourth Yang but as a “fundamental change of the heart and mind” in the person so represented. See Zhouyi zhezhong, 1: 40b–41a.