The silk manuscript texts of the Yijing and Comtnentatires — “Xici” “Yi-zhiyi,” “Yao,” and “Ersanzi Wen” — though excavated more than twenty years ago were published, albeit incompletely, for the first time in 1993. The physical state and the organization of these versions of the classic and commentaries were described by Edward Shaughnessy in Early China 19 (“A First Reading of the Mawangdui Yijing Manuscript”), and it is my intention in this article to begin to explore in some depth the differences between the silk manuscript Commentaries and the received text of the Xici to determine what they tell us about our understanding of the Zhou yi tradition. Even with our partial scholarly understanding of these texts it is possible to venture some preliminary judgments on the structure of the Commentaries, on the differing content of the silk manuscript version, on the enigma of the recurring phase “Zi yue” and on the date of its composition. Three main differences can be identified: discrepancies in characters, in sentences, and in chapter sequence. Nevertheless, the structure of the silk manuscript Xici and that of the received Commentaries are largely in agreement and what differences are in evidence, such as the scattering of certain parts of the received Xici in the heretofore unknown Yizhi Yi and Yao commentaries, may be explained by Qin discrimination against ru tradition following the conquest of Chu in 278 B.C. One of the principal discoveries resulting from comparison of the excavated and received texts is the presence of numerous loan graphs in the silk manuscript text, and it is through a better understanding of the function of such loans that a satisfactory explanation of the age-old enigma of “Zi yue” that occurs frequently and in the same places in both texts may be obtained.

三年以前, 學界企盼已久的帛書《周易》以及《繋詞》, 《易之義》, 《要》, 《二三子問》等四篇易傳終於發表了.盡管已發表之文字尙非出土帛書《周易》的全貌,郤還是能使我們對這部經典有不少新的認識.在《早期中國》19期中, 夏含夷敎授已對墓本帛書《周帛》經傳的狀況及組織等作了一番介紹, 本文擬對帛書《易傳》與傳本《繋詞》進行比較,看看我們對《周易》所作的傳統之解釋究竟有何得失.雖然對帛書《周易》的硏究還有一段漫長的路 要走,筆者認爲根據本人最近的研究分析,至少應能對以下幾個方面得出一些初歩的結論; (一) 《易傳》的結構; (二) 帛書本所包含之不同的內容 (三) 傳本與帛書《易傳》中的子曰״究竟何所指: (四) 成書的年代.帛書與傳本的主要差別在於用字, 語句, 以及章次的安排等三方面.不過帛書《繋詞》與傳本的易傳大體是吻合的.其不同之處諸如傳本《繋詞》中的部分文字散亂在前後的段落之中: 以及向 所未曾聞見的《易之義》, 《要》皆可從紀元前278年秦破楚之後對儒家學說採取排斥的態度中得到解釋.帛書中用了爲數衆多的不同於今本的通假字,正是通過對通假字的分析與研究,筆者能對傳本中(亦見於帛書本) 歷來使人感到困惑的״子曰״作出較爲滿意的解釋.