I Ching (Book of Changes) |
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The I Ching, or Book of Changes, a common source for both Confucianist and Taoist philosophy, is one of the first efforts of the human mind to place itself within the universe. The oldest of the Chinese classics, it has exerted a living influence in China for 3,000 years, and is an influential text read throughout the world — providing inspiration to the worlds of religion, psychoanalysis, business, literature, and art.
Originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC), over the course of the Warring States period and early imperial period (500–200 BC) it was transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the "Ten Wings."
After becoming part of the Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the subject of scholarly commentary and the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East, and eventually took on an influential role in Western understanding of Eastern thought.
The I Ching has been translated into Western languages dozens of times. The most influential edition is the 1923 German translation of Richard Wilhelm (1950), later translated to English by Cary Baynes (1967), has been reprinted numerous times. This tabbed page version of the I Ching is from that translation.
Posted on 15 Oct 2017 |
The I Ching has served for thousands of years as a philosophical taxonomy of the universe, a guide to an ethical life, a manual for rulers, and an oracle of one’s personal future and the future of the state.
With its seeming infinitude of applications and interpretations, there has never been a book quite like it anywhere.
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The origin of the text is, as might be expected, obscure.
From these building blocks of the cosmos, Fu Xi devolved all aspects of civilization — kingship, marriage, writing, navigation, agriculture — all of which he taught to his human descendants.
Here mythology turns into legend.
The archaeological and historical version of this narrative is far murkier.
Sometime in the Zhou dynasty — the current guess is around 800 BCE — the 64 hexagrams were named, and a written text was established, based on the oral traditions.The book became known as the Zhou Yi(Zhou Changes).
![]() A diagram of ‘I Ching’ hexagrams sent to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz from Joachim Bouvet. The Arabic numerals were added by Leibniz. |
By the third century BCE, with the rise of Confucianism, the “Ten Wings” commentaries had been added, transforming the Zhou Yi from a strictly divinatory manual to a philosophical and ethical text.
For two millennia, the I Ching was the essential guide to the universe.
In the West, the I Ching was discovered in the late 17th century by Jesuit missionaries in China, who decoded the text to reveal its Christian universal truth:
Leibniz enthusiastically found the universality of his binary system in the solid and broken lines.
The first English translation was done by Canon Thomas McClatchie, an Anglican cleric in Hong Kong.
Professionally appalled by what he considered its idolatry and superstition, Legge nevertheless found himself “gradually brought under a powerful fascination,” and it led him to devise a novel theory of translation.
Herbert Giles, the next important English-language translator after Legge, thought the I Ching was “apparent gibberish”:
This is freely admitted by all learned Chinese, who nevertheless hold tenaciously to the belief that important lessons could be derived from its pages if only we had the wit to understand them.
Arthur Waley, in a 1933 study — he never translated the entire book — described it as a collection of “peasant interpretation” omens to which specific divinations had been added at a later date. Thus, taking a familiar Western example, he wrote that the omen
red sky in the morning, shepherds take warning” would become the divination “red sky in the morning: inauspicious; do not cross the river.
Waley proposed three categories of omens —
Inexplicable sensations and involuntary movements (‘feelings,’ twitchings, stumbling, belching and the like)
Those concerning plants, animals and birds…[and]
Those concerning natural phenomena (thunder, stars, rain etc.)
— and found examples of all of them in his decidedly unmetaphysical reading of the book.
Joseph Needham devoted many exasperated pages to the I Ching in Science and Civilization in China as a “pseudo-science” that had, for centuries, a deleterious effect on actual Chinese science, which attempted to fit exact observations of the natural and physical worlds into the “cosmic filing-system” of the vague categories of the hexagrams.
It was Richard Wilhelm’s 1924 German translation of the I Ching and especially the English translation of the German by the Jungian Cary F. Baynes in 1950 that transformed the text from Sinological arcana to international celebrity.
Wilhelm’s translation relied heavily on late, Song Dynasty Neo-Confucian interpretations of the text.
The book carried an introduction by Carl Jung, whom Wilhelm considered “in touch with the findings of the East [and] in accordance with the views of the oldest Chinese wisdom.”
The Wilhelm/Baynes Bollingen edition was a sensation in the 1950s and 1960s.
It is not difficult to recuperate how thrilling the arrival of the I Ching was both to the avant-gardists, who were emphasizing process over product in art, and to the anti-authoritarian counterculturalists.
The two latest translations of the I Ching couldn’t be more unalike; they are a complementary yin and yang of approaches.
David Hinton is, with Arthur Waley and Burton Watson, the rare example of a literary Sinologist — that is, a classical scholar thoroughly conversant with, and connected to, contemporary literature in English.
Hinton adheres to a Taoist or Ch’an (Zen) Buddhist reading of the book, unconcerned with the Confucian ethical and political interpretations.
To that end, Hinton occasionally translates according to a pictographic reading of the oldest characters, a technique first used by Ezra Pound in his idiosyncratic and wonderful version of the earliest Chinese poetry anthology, the Book of Songs, which he titled The Confucian Odes.
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The difference between the two translations — the differences among all translations — is apparent if we look at a single hexagram: number 52, called Gen.
Minford translates the name as “Mountain” for the hexagram is composed of the two Mountain trigrams, one on top of the other. His translation of the text throughout the book is minimalist, almost telegraphese, with each line centered, rather than flush left. He has also made the exceedingly strange decision to incorporate tags in Latin, taken from the early Jesuit translations, which he claims
can help us relate to this deeply ancient and foreign text, can help create a timeless mood of contemplation, and at the same time can evoke indirect connections between the Chinese traditions of Self-Knowledge and Self-Cultivation…and…the long European tradition of Gnosis and spiritual discipline.
In the “Book of Wisdom” section, he translates the “Judgment” for Hexagram 52 as:
The back
Is still
As a Mountain;
There is no body.
He walks
In the courtyard,
Unseen.
No Harm,
Nullum malum.
This is followed by a long and interesting exegesis on the spiritual role and poetic image of mountains in the Chinese tradition.
Hinton calls the hexagram “Stillness” and translates into prose: “Stillness in your back. Expect nothing from your life. Wander the courtyard where you see no one. How could you ever go astray?”
Wilhelm has “Keeping Still, Mountain” as the name of the hexagram. His “Judgment” reads:
KEEPING STILL. Keeping his back still
So that he no longer feels his body.
He goes into the courtyard
And does not see his people.
No blame.
He explains:
True quiet means keeping still when the time has come to keep still, and going forward when the time has come to go forward. In this way rest and movement are in agreement with the demands of the time, and thus there is light in life.
The hexagram signifies the end and beginning of all movement. The back is named because in the back are located all the nerve fibers that mediate movement. If the movement of these spinal nerves is brought to a standstill, the ego, with its restlessness, disappears as it were. When a man has thus become calm, he may turn to the outside world. He no longer sees in it the struggle and tumult of individual beings, and therefore he has that true peace of mind which is needed for understanding the great laws of the universe and for acting in harmony with them. Whoever acts from these deep levels makes no mistakes.
The Columbia University Press I Ching, translated by Richard John Lynn and billed as the “definitive version” “after decades of inaccurate translations,” has “Restraint” for Gen:
Restraint takes place with the back, so one does not obtain [sic] the other person. He goes into that one’s courtyard but does not see him there. There is no blame.
Lynn’s odd explanation, based on the Han dynasty commentator Wang Bi, is that if two people have their backs turned, “even though they are close, they do not see each other.” Therefore neither restrains the other and each exercises self-restraint.
The six judgments for the six individual lines of Hexagram 52 travel through the body, including the feet, calves, waist, trunk, and jaws.
Minford translates it as: “The calves are/Still as a Mountain./Others/Are not harnessed./The heart is heavy.” He explains: “There is a potential healing, a Stillness. But the Energy of Others…cannot be mastered and harnessed. No Retreat is possible, only a reluctant acceptance. One lacks the foresight for Retreat. Beware.”
Wilhelm’s version is: “Keeping his calves still./He cannot rescue him whom he follows./His heart is not glad.” This is glossed as:
The leg cannot move independently; it depends on the movement of the body. If a leg is suddenly stopped while the whole body is in vigorous motion, the continuing body movement will make one fall.
The same is true of a man who serves a master stronger than himself. He is swept along, and even though he himself may halt on the path of wrongdoing, he can no longer check the other in his powerful movement. When the master presses forward, the servant, no matter how good his intentions, cannot save him.
In the “Bronze Age Oracle” section — the original Zhou book without the later interpretations — Minford translates Gen as “Tending,” believing that it refers to traditional medicine and the need to tend the body.
Both Richard J. Smith, in a monograph on the I Ching for the Princeton Lives of Great Religious Books series, and Arthur Waley take the hexagram back to the prevalent practice in the Shang dynasty of human and animal sacrifice.
Waley thinks Gen means “gnawing,” and “evidently deals with omen-taking according to the way in which rats, mice or the like have deals with the body of the sacrificial victim when exposed as ‘bait’ to the ancestral spirit.”
What is certain is that Hexagram 52 is composed of two Mountain trigrams and has something to do with the back and something to do with a courtyard that is either empty or where the people in it are not seen. Otherwise, these few lines may be about:
■ Stillness ■ Having no expectations ■ Self-restraint ■ Peace of mind |
■ Knowing when not to follow a leader ■ The care of various aches and pains ■ Glaring at things and ■ The preparations for, and results of, human or animal sacrifices |
None of these are necessarily misinterpretations or mistranslations.
[LINK] to original article
This article was first published in the February 25, 2016 issue of The New York Review of Books.
Eliot Weinberger
Eliot Weinberger’s books of literary essays include Karmic Traces, An Elemental Thing, Oranges & Peanuts for Sale, and the forthcoming The Ghosts of Birds. His political articles are collected in What I Heard About Iraq and What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles. The author of a study of Chinese poetry translation, 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, he is the current translator of the poetry of Bei Dao, the editor of The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, and the general editor of a series, Calligrams: Writings from and on China, co-published by Chinese University of Hong Kong Press and New York Review Books. He is also the literary editor of the Murty Classical Library of India. Among his many translations of Latin American literature are The Poems of Octavio Paz and Jorge Luis Borges’ Selected Non-Fictions. His work has been translated into over 30 languages.
The Chinese classic called I Ching (sometimes written Yi Jing, as it should be pronounced) has been interpreted a number of ways by different scholars and devotees of the text. Is it, as many who consult it claim, a book of divination? Is it more fundamentally a book of wisdom, offering suggestions of what one might do in various situations? Is it a remarkable insight into the basic archetypal possibilities of the human psyche, as Carl Jung believed, and perhaps also related to his notion of synchronicity? Is it basically a resource book that gives us some insight into the social structure of ancient China, as some scholars claim? Is it an early example of a binary number system, anticipating by millennia the switching structure of the modern digital computer? Or is it somehow all of these at once?
The great German Sinologist Richard Wilhelm translated the I Ching in 1923 based on his years of familiarity with the text and his consultation with Chinese who used it. His German translation was then rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes at Jung's request; the revised edition was printed in a new format with a preface by Richard Wilhelm's son, Hellmut, also a Sinologist. Other translations exist, of course, including one published by the Sinologist John Blofeld in 1965. The Chinese scholar Wing-tsit Chan preferred James Legge's 1882 translation. But many of us who have become intrigued with the text and cannot read the Chinese original prefer the Wilhelm-Baynes translation, even though it is, as Chan points out, "interpretative to some extent" (795). Jung, in fact, states that Legge "has done little to make the work accessible to Western minds" (Wilhelm-Baynes, xxi).
Since the Chinese language lacks inflection, the title could be translated either "Book of Change" or "Book of Changes." I prefer the former, since constant change is a basic assumption of ancient Chinese philosophy. The basis of the text is the philosophy of yang and yin, the former being associated with light, strength, affirmation, and so on, and the latter with darkness, weakness, yielding, negation, and so on. Neither is considered superior, since in some situations a dominant and forthright attitude is appropriate, while in others a more submissive attitude is needed. The proper attitude depends on one's situation and the desired outcome.
The yang principle is indicated in the I Ching by an unbroken line and the yin by a broken or divided line, hence the binary aspect of the system. The various combinations of these two lines are made by two trigrams (combinations of three lines) placed one atop the other to create a hexagram (a combination of six lines), making a total of sixty-four possible combinations. The method of reading them is from the bottom upwards. Each trigram is given a Chinese name, as is the combination of the two trigrams in a hexagram. The first hexagram according to the usual system of organization, is called in the Wade-Giles transliteration system Ch'ien, The Creative (or in Gregory Winecup's translation using the pinyin system of transliteration Qian, Strong Action), and is composed of all yang lines. The second hexagram, composed of all yin lines, is K'un, The Receptive (or Kun, Acquiescence). The subsequent hexagrams are all composed of various mixtures of yang and yin lines.
The traditional way of consulting the book is by means of yarrow stalks. It is suggested that this is because the stalks originally come from living organisms and hence are appropriate instruments for consulting what is considered to be a dynamic or living system. It is also a slower method and allows — according to some, including myself — psychokinesis (PK) to influence the stalks at a subconscious level of the psyche. The assumption seems to be that some deeper aspect of ourselves already knows what would be best for us to do in any specific situation, even if our brain-dominated consciousness does not. And that aspect of ourselves somehow influences the way the stalks are divided and counted out. If this is correct, as I believe it is, it implies that one should never consult the I Ching flippantly, disrespectfully, or casually, nor for trivial questions or problems one could easily solve for oneself. It should be used infrequently and only when one has a serious dilemma. In other words, one must attempt to get in touch with one's deeper self and not with some more superficial aspect of one's psyche.
Another method of consulting the book is by tossing ancient Chinese coins. Although they do not have the metaphorical association with life that yarrow stalks do, they at least preserve the association with ancient China. Whether PK — and one's unconscious self — can influence the result as readily is difficult to determine, although PK experiments have been conducted by parapsychologists with such materials, often with statistically significant, although not usually very exuberant, results. Some Americans use ordinary modern currency such as copper pennies, considering that they are comparable to ancient Chinese copper coins. Still more recently, a computer program has been developed that chooses one's hexagram electronically. With all such modern methods, the element of ritual involved in the use of yarrow stalks is bypassed. The few times I have witnessed these modern methods, I felt that the resulting hexagram was somehow inappropriate to the question being asked, often completely unintelligible. That is why I prefer the slower, ancient method using yarrow stalks as is described in Wilhelm-Baynes text (721-24).
Because there are obviously more than just sixty-four different situations one might find oneself in, the text offers a variety of alternatives. There are actually four possible outcomes for each of the six lines when consulting the yarrow stalks. These lines are identified either as "young yang," "young yin," "old yang," or "old yin." The young lines are fixed; that is, they remain unchanged. The old lines are moving; that is, they change into their counterparts: An old yang changes into a young yin and an old yin into a young yang. It is unusual to arrive at a hexagram containing only fixed lines, which suggests a situation that one cannot change and simply has to accept. Equally uncommon would be to arrive at a hexagram with six moving lines, indicating an extremely fluid situation. More common is a hexagram with at least one or two moving lines. In that case, one gets two hexagrams: the starting one and the one it changes into. That suggests possibilities for solving (or resolving) one's present situation creatively instead of reactively, which often happens when one deals with life's problems based on past habit patterns.
Another important aspect of the I Ching is that each hexagram has both a judgment and an image associated with it (collectively called the kua-tz'u), both of which are expressed in metaphors. The text describing each of the possible moving lines (known as the yao-tz'u) is also expressed metaphorically. The vagueness involved in both is important, since it allows one's subconscious — perhaps even one's higher self — to interpret the hexagram in a way that is appropriate to oneself. Two people with two different problems arriving at the same hexagram might appropriately interpret it in different ways according to the nature of their question. In other words, the I Ching is a remarkable book with an almost infinite range of possible answers to life's dilemmas.
In addition to the kua-tz'u and yao-tz'u, there are several commentaries, probably appended to the basic text over several centuries. The most interesting from a theosophical point of view is the wen yen, which stresses the philosophical and ethical implications of the hexagrams. As Wing-tsit Chan observes, it is upon that commentary and some appended remarks (hsi-tz'u), as well as comments on some of the trigrams, "that much of Chinese philosophical speculation has been based" (262).
Just when the I Ching was compiled is difficult to determine. Tradition ascribes the eight trigrams to the legendary hero Fu-hsi (traditionally dated prior to the twenty-third century BCE) and their development into the hexagrams to King Wen (reigned 1171-1122 BCE), although modern scholars dispute this. Hellmut Wilhelm points out only that it is generally agreed that there are several layers of the text, the present form having been reached "in the century before Confucius" (Wilhelm-Baynes xiv). It is known that Confucius (551-479 BCE) included it among the classics (ching) he required his students to study, and it is believed that he wrote a commentary on it (called "The Ten Wings"), although this also has been disputed by some scholars (Chan 262). One assumes that Confucius considered it a book of wisdom rather than of divination, perhaps relating to earlier times before China began to degenerate into interstate warfare (which started during his lifetime but became endemic during 403-222 BCE, called the Warring States period). Confucius looked to the past as a model for restoring political order. In any event, the I Ching assumed great importance in later centuries in China, especially when the examination system required aspirants for government positions to write essays on the Confucian classics.
Theosophical references to China are scarce and to the I Ching even scarcer. H. P. Blavatsky makes several references to Confucius in The Secret Doctrine, but most of them make little sense and none relates in any obvious way to the I Ching. It is a shame, because this Chinese classic, however it is construed, is most interesting. And when it is used as a book of divination — or, if one prefers, of wisdom — it can be extremely illuminating. I have known several theosophists, including both my wife and myself, who consult it when confronted with a difficult situation that we cannot solve with either reason or intuition. It has always proven useful. In one case, which occurred at a theosophical planning seminar I attended, the hexagram, Splitting Apart (po or bo), was a literal description of our situation. It also gave us sensible advice for resolving our impasse, which we did. However, in many cases, the really difficult thing is not interpreting its recommendations but putting them into practice!
by Richard Brooks [LINK] to original
Chan, Wing-tsit. A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963.
Wilhelm, Richard, trans. The I Ching or Book of Changes. Rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes. Bolllinger Series XIX. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971
Richard Brooks is a retired professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan. As a Theosophist of more than fifty years, he served on the national board for many years. His specialties are logic, Indic and Chinese philosophy, and parapsychology.
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I left the US with only a handfull of books, the most important of which is the I Ching. It's been with me since 1970, and read more often than any other.
I'm happy to be able to give back in this small way, for all I've received from this Great Work.
Pictured at right is an image of the copyright page with the publication date from my copy of the I Ching — a constant companion for 47 years.
@ Google Drive |
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Download this tabbed-page version of the I Ching
from my Google Drive @: https://goo.gl/62KwjK
Once there, click on "DOWNLOAD ALL" as pictured.
Click on either folder to inspect the files.
All the files, located in their respective folders, are necessary to view the book "offline".
The entire package is approximately 2.5MB.
The Book of Changes – I Ching in Chinese – is unquestionably one of the most important books in the world's literature.
Indeed, not only the philosophy of China but its science and statecraft as well have never ceased to draw from the spring of wisdom in the I Ching, and it is not surprising that this alone, among all the Confucian classics, escaped the great burning of the books under Ch'in Shih Huang Ti.[1]
In the course of time, owing to the great repute for wisdom attaching to the Book of Changes, a large body of occult doctrines extraneous to it – some of them possibly not even Chinese in origin – have come to be connected with its teachings.
Yet we must not overlook the fact that apart from this mechanistic number mysticism, a living stream of deep human wisdom was constantly flowing through the channel of this book into everyday life, giving to China's great civilization that ripeness of wisdom, distilled through the ages, which we wistfully admire in the remnants of this last truly autochthonous culture.
What is the Book of Changes actually? In order to arrive at an understanding of the book and its teachings, we must first of all boldly strip away the dense overgrowth of interpretations that have read into it all sorts of extraneous ideas.
Footnotes
[1] 213 B.C. [2] Beginning in the last half of the third century B.C. and ending about A.D. 220. [3] Sho Ching, the oldest of the Chinese classics. Modern scholarship has placed most of the records contained in the Shu Ching near the first millennium B.C., though formerly a much greater age was ascribed to the earliest of them. [4] Fifth and fourth centuries B.C. [5] We might mention here, because of its oddity, the grotesque and amateurish attempt on the part of Rev. Canon McClatchie, M.A., to apply the key of "comparative mythology" to the I Ching. His book was published in 1876 under the title, A Translation of the Confucian Yi King or the Clossic of Changes, with Notes and Appendix. |
The Book of Oracles
At the outset, the Book of Changes was a collection of linear signs to be used as oracles.[6]
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To each of these combinations a third line was then added. In this way the eight trigrams[7] came into being.
[6] From the discussion here presented, it will become self-evident that the Book of Changes was not a lexicon, as has been assumed in many quarters.
[7] Zeichen, meaning sign, is used by Wilhelm to denote the linear figures in the I Ching, those of three lines as well as those of six lines. The Chinese word for both types of signs is kua. To avoid ambiguity, the precedent established by Legge (The Sacred Books of the East, XVI: The Yi King) has been adopted througout: the term "trigram" is used for the sign consisting of three lines, and "hexagram" for the sign consisting of six lines.
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These eight images came to have manifold meanings.
A brief survey of these eight symbols that form the basis of the Book of Changes yields the following classification:
In order to achieve a still greater multiplicity, these eight images were combined with one another at a very early date, whereby a total of sixty-four signs was obtained.
![]() K'un, THE RECEPTIVE |
![]() Fu, RETURN |
Let us take for example the hexagram K'un, THE RECEPTIVE, earth:
If the lowest line changes, we have the hexagram Fu, RETURN:
As this example shows, all of the lines of a hexagram do not necessarily change; it depends entirely on the character of a given line.
More definite information about those lines which are to be considered so strongly charged with positive or negative energy that they move, is given in book II[*] in the Great Commentary (pt. I, chap. IX), and in the special section on the use of the oracle at the end of book III[*].Suffice it to say here that:
8 at the top | ![]() |
8 in the fifth place | ![]() |
8 in the fourth place | ![]() |
8 in the third place | ![]() |
8 in the second place | ![]() |
6 at the beginning | ![]() |
Thus, when the text reads, "Nine at the beginning means..." this is the equivalent of saying:
"When the positive line in the first place is represented by the number 9, it has the following meaning..."
If, on the other hand, the line is represented by the number 7, it is disregarded in interpreting the oracle.
The same principle holds for lines represented by the numbers 6 and 8[8]respectively.
We may obtain the hexagram named in the example above – K'un, THE RECEPTIVE – in the form displayed at right:
![]() K'un, THE RECEPTIVE |
![]() Fu, RETURN |
Hence the five upper lines are not taken into account; only the 6 at the beginning has an independent meaning, and by its transformation into its opposite, the situation K'un, THE RECEPTIVE, becomes the situation Fu, RETURN:
In this way we have a series of situations symbolically expressed by lines,
On the other hand, such change does not necessarily occur,
[*] Richard Wilhelm's translation of the I Ching includes three books: Book I – The Text, Book II – The Material, and Book III – The Commentaries. This tabbed-pages version includes (currently) only The Text.
[8] For this reason, the numbers 7 and 8 ,never appear in the portion of the text dealing with the meanings of the individual lines.
In addition to the law of change and to the images of the states of change as given in the sixty-four hexagrams, another factor to be considered is the course of action.
Which, then, is the right course in any given case? This question was the decisive factor.
It was reserved for King Wên, who lived about 1150 B.C., and his son, the Duke of Chou, to bring about this change.
The only thing about all this that seems strange to our modern sense is the method of learning the nature of a situation through the manipulation of yarrow stalks.
[9] The stalks come from the plant known to us as common yarrow, or milfoil (Achillea millefelium).
Of far greater significance than the use of the Book of Changes as an oracle is its other use, namely, as a book of wisdom.
If we inquire as to the philosophy that pervades the book, we can confine ourselves to a few basically important concepts.
This symbol has also played a significant part in India and Europe.
These opposites became known under the names yin and yang and created a great stir, especially in the transition period between the Ch'in and Han dynasties, in the centuries just before our era, when there was an entire school of yin-yang doctrine.
To the disappointment of such discoverers it must be said that there is nothing to indicate this in the original meaning of the words yin and yang.
Footnotes
[10] Second half of fifth century B.C. [11] 551-479 B.C. [12] Lun Yü, IX, 16. This book comprises conversations of Confucius and his disciples. [13] Here, as throughout the book, Wilhelm uses the German word Sinn ("meaning") in capitals (SINN) for the Chinese word tao (see p.297 and n. 1). The reasons that led Wilhelm to choose SINN to represent tao (see p. XIV of the introduction to his translation of Lao-tse: Tao Te King: Das Buch des Alten von Sinn und Leben, 3rd edn., Düsseldorf and Cologne, 1952) have no relation to the English word "meaning." Therefore in the English rendering, "tao" has been used wherever SINN occurs. [14] Known as t'ai chi t'u, "the supreme ultimate." See R. Wilhelm, A Short History of Chinese Civilization, tr. by J. Joshua (London, 1929), p.249. [15] Cf. the noteworthy discussions of Liang Ch'i-ch'ao in the Chinese journal The Endeavor, July 15 and 22, 1923, also the English essay by B. Schindler, "The Development of the Chinese Conceptions of Supreme Beings," Asia Major, Hirth Anniversary Volume (London: Probsthain, n.d.), pp. 298-366. |
However, no matter what names are applied to these forces, it is certain that the world of being arises out of their change and interplay.
The second theme fundamental to the Book of Changes is its theory of ideas.
This theory of ideas is applied in a twofold sense.
The third element fundamental to the Book of Changes are the judgments.
[16] Cf. the extremely important discussions of Hu Shih in The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China (2nd edn., New York: Paragon, 1963), and the even more detailed discussion in the first volume of his history of philosophy [Chung-kuo chê-hsüeh-shih ta-kang; not available in translation].
In Chinese literature four holy men are cited as the authors of the Book of Changes, namely, Fu Hsi, King Wên, the Duke of Chou, and Confucius.
The eight trigrams are found occurring in various combinations at a very early date. Two collections belonging to antiquity are mentioned:
According to general tradition, which we have no reason to challenge, the present collection of sixty-four hexagrams originated with King Wên,[20] progenitor of the Chou dynasty.
This was the status of the book at the time Confucius came upon it.
Among the followers of Confucius, it would appear, it was principally Pu Shang (Tzú Hsia) who spread the knowledge of the Book of Changes.
The Book of Changes escaped the fate of the other classics at the time of the famous burning of the books under the tyrant Ch'in Shih Huang Ti.
After the Book of Changes had become firmly established as a book of divination and magic in the time of Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, the entire school of magicians (fang shih) of the Ch'in and Han dynasties made it their prey.
The task of clearing away all this rubbish was reserved for a great and wise scholar, Wang Pi,[25] who wrote about the meaning of the Book of Changes as a book of wisdom, not as a book of divination.
The critical-historical school of the last dynasty also took the Book of Changes in hand.
Footnotes
[17] Question has centered especially upon the trigram K'an ( [18] According to tradition, 2205-1766 B.C. [19] According to tradition, 1766-1150 B.C. [20] King Wên was the head of a western state that suffered oppression from the house of Shang (Yin). He was given the title of king posthumously by his son Wu, who overthrew Chou Hsin, took possession of the Shang realm, and became the first ruler of the Chou dynasty, which in traditional chronology is dated 1150-249 B.C. [21] Some are in the section known as the Wên Yen (Commentary on the Words of the Text), some in the Ta Chuan (Great Commentary). [Cf. p. xix.] [22] The Great Learning presents the Confucian principles concerning the education of the "superior man," based on the view that innate within man are the qualities that when developed guide him to a personal and a social ethic. The Doctrine of the Mean shows that the "way of the superior man" leads to harmony between heaven, man, and earth. Both of these works belong to the school of thought led by Tzú-ssú, grandson of Confucius. They originally formed part of the Li Chi, the Book of Rites. Under the titles Ta Hsio and Kung Yung they can be found as bks. 39 and 28 in Legge's translation of the Book of Rites (The Sacred Books of the East, XXVII: The Li Ki, Oxford, 1885). [23] Fourth century B.C. [24] All three are Han scholars. [25] A.D. 226-249. [26] A.D. 960-1279. [27] Ch'êng Hao, A.D. 1032-1085. [28] A.D. 1130-1200. [29] A.D. 1662-1722. |
An exposition of the principles that have been followed in the translation of the Book of Changes should be of essential help to the reader.
The translation of the text has been given as brief and concise a form as possible, in order to preserve the archaic impression that prevails in the Chinese.
In order to make it as easy as possible for the layman to understand the I Ching, the texts of the sixty-four hexagrams, together with pertinent interpretations, are presented in book 1.
The second and third books explain why all these things are as they are.
R.W.
[30] A number of footnote quotations from German poetry, chiefly passages from Goethe, have been omitted in the English rendering because their poetic suggestiveness disappears in translation.
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37. Chia Jên / The Family [The Clan] | Presented without comment |
THE FAMILY shows the laws operative within the household that, transferred to outside life, keep the state and the world in order.
The family is society in embryo; it is the native soil on which performance of moral duty is made easy through natural affection, so that within a small circle a basis of moral practice is created, and this is later widened to include human relationships in general.
For there is nothing more easily avoided and more
difficult to carry through than "breaking a child's will." |
Nine at the beginning means:
Firm seclusion within the family.
Remorse disappears.
The family must form a well-defined unit within which each member knows his place.