Assimilation of the Image-numerology in Han Kangbo’s Yi Learning and Its Significance 1

Abstract As the founder of the school of “meanings and principles,” Wang Bi (226–249) was famous for his vociferous objection to image-numerology. A significant development to Wang Bi’s scholarship on the Changes made by Han Kangbo (332–380) lies in that he set forth his distinctive theories of daxu (Great Void), ji (incipience) and li (principle), which established his new ontological philosophy and helped him systematically interpret images and numbers involved in the “Ten Wings”, eliminate the theoretic contradiction between “meanings-and-principles” and mantic arts based on image-numerology, and rationally bring numinous phenomena into “natural philosophy” based on “abstruse learning” ( xuan xue ). He effectively adopted the rational aspects in the image-numerology popular in the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.), which established his own hermeneutic system. Not only did this turn adapt to the changes of ideological and cultural atmosphere in the Eastern Jin (317–420), but also made up for limitations of Wang Bi’s scholarship on the Changes , broadened the interpretive space for the meanings-and-principles school, and established the dominant position of Wang Bi and Han Kangbo’s annotations in the history of Yijing studies in China.