BAZI KNOWLEDGE BASE
Sanming Tonghui: Navigating Twelve Volumes and Differing Rules
Sanming Tonghui is Wan Minying’s Ming-period compendium, arranged in twelve volumes in the Siku edition. It collects material on stems and branches, Ten Gods (traditional labels for relationships to the birth-day element), Nayin (a separate named element classification for a complete pair of chart symbols), stars, patterns and reading methods. Its breadth helps trace names and compare traditions, while also requiring each passage to be read in its own context.
How do I find a useful passage in twelve volumes?
Find a relevant heading, then read its surrounding text. These three entry points illustrate different uses rather than summarize every volume.
| Location | What to examine | What to preserve |
|---|---|---|
| Volume 5: Eating God | Jia producing Bing and Bing producing Wu | Self/Output conditions and Resource interference |
| Volume 6: Metal and other forms | Concentrated elements and special names | Differences between prose, appended verses and cases |
| Volume 10: reading-order passages | How self, month command and other pillars participate | The passage’s month priority and its scope |
What does Jia–Bing–Wu explain?
Jia Wood generates Bing Fire, which generates Wu Earth. Bing is Jia’s Eating God and Wu Indirect Wealth (a traditional role associated with opportunities, exchange and wider connections). This supplies the elemental route behind Eating God generating Wealth (the role family controlled by the birth-day element, often interpreted through resources and practical demands). Volume 5 also discusses Ren Resource restraining Bing.
Those conditions explain more than memorizing the label. The route does not establish that talent guarantees income or turn historical fortune language into a modern result.
Why distinguish prose from an appended verse?
The Siku Metal-form passage begins with Geng and Xin days. Later Xin-Si, Xin-You and Xin-Chou examples cannot remove Geng from that opening. Examples need not exhaust the stated scope.
An entry may quote another text, append a verse or present a historical case. Where those layers differ, identify the adopted passage and retain the alternative instead of constructing a new rule from selected lines.
Does the Siku editorial synopsis raise questions too?
Yes. Alongside attribution and the twelve-volume arrangement, it notes later case additions in printed editions and criticizes some of the work’s preferences. Edition history is part of understanding the collection.
That synopsis is the Siku editors’ assessment, not Wan Minying’s own preface. Retain its speaker as well. Critical observations need not force either unquestioning acceptance or rejection of the entire book.
What is its most useful role?
Use it to trace an unfamiliar name or investigate the conditions behind a lookup. Recording volume and heading, then checking symbols, positions and counterexamples, offers more than collecting isolated formulas.
A text can establish that a view was recorded. Its title alone cannot establish universal applicability or the accuracy of health, wealth or lifespan predictions.
Continue reading
- Read a pattern step by step
Connect the source concepts with a concrete chart.
- Return to Yuanhai Ziping’s foundational vocabulary
Check symbols and roles before comparing special rules.
- How the Five Elements interact
Review the element relationships behind the name.