Explaining Yi Images with Diagrams 易象图说

Authored by Zhang Li, a Confucian scholar of the Yuan Dynasty.

The book was completed in the twenty-fourth year of the Zhizheng reign period (1364).

Comprising six volumes, it is included in the Spiritual Diagrams category of the Dongzhen Section of The Daozang.

Explaining Yi Images with Diagrams

There is also a version incorporated in the Siku Quanshu (Complete Library of the Four Treasuries).

The original work is divided into inner and outer chapters. The inner chapters consist of four parts: Origin of Diagrams and Writings, Ancestry of Hexagram Drawings, Elucidating Milfoil-Stalk Divination, and Examining Changes and Divination. The outer chapters include three parts: Image-Number Studies, Hexagrams and Lines, and Measurements and Degrees. This book compiles various diagrams created by scholars of diagram-based Zhouyi studies in the Song and Yuan dynasties, aiming to prove that the study of diagrams and writings originated from Taoism. Its theoretical system is closely rooted in the five elements theory. Annotated Bibliography of the Siku Quanshu comments: "It traces the rise and fall of the cosmic cycles, the advance and retreat of seasons and cold-heat changes, the waxing and waning of the sun and moon’s orbits, as well as the underlying causes of order and chaos, the waxing and waning of principles and desires, and the ancient kings’ institution of rituals, composition of music, demarcation of fields and establishment of borders—all back to the origin of diagrams and writings. In essence, it is similar to Zhang Xingcheng’s Yitong Bian (Comprehensive Changes of the Zhouyi), and both are tributaries of Huangji Jingshi Shu (The Book of Supreme World Order)."