Zhu Xi, courtesy name Yuanhui (元晦) and sobriquet Hui’an (晦庵), was a native of Wuyuan in Huizhou in present day Jiangxi province. Zhu was an important proponent of Lixue (also known as neo-Confucianism) who left behind an enormous corpus of written works, including the Collected Commentaries on the Four Books (四書集注), which exerted a heavy influence on the generations that followed him. This volume, which comprises excerpts from the Commentaries on the Book of Changes (Yizhuan, 易傳), is the only extant example of large calligraphic characters written in Zhu Xi’s hand. Each line contains only two characters, written with a fast-moving brush and composed so that they appear to have top-heavy structures. The characters’ lines are heavy and dark, with occasional glimpses of “flying white,” or places where the brush’s bristles separated to reveal empty space. This outstanding piece of ancient large-character calligraphy was donated to the National Palace Museum by Mr. Lin Zongyi (林宗毅, 1923–2006) in 1983.

釋文：易有太極。是生兩儀。生四象。四象生八卦。八卦定吉凶。吉凶生大業。古者伏羲氏之王天下也。仰則觀象於天。俯則觀法於地。觀鳥獸之文。與地之宜。於是始作八卦以通神明之德。以類萬物之情。天地定位。山澤通氣。雷風相薄。水火不相射。八卦數相錯往者順。知來者逆。是故易逆數也。朱熹書。

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