Yijing 易經 or Zhouyi 周易

Zhouyi 周易 "Changes of the Zhou", also called Yijing 易經 "Classic of Changes", or, shortly, Yi 易 "The Changes", is one of the most important Confucian classics. It has not only influenced Confucian and especially Neo-Confucian thinking but is also deeply rooted in the Daoist tradition. It is so important that the discipline of yixue 易學 "Yijing studies" came into being.

Types of Divination

The two most common ancient methods of divination were to produce cracks on the surface of turtle shells (guibu 龜卜, see oracle bones), and to count out milfoil (shi 蓍) stalks (zhanshi 占筮). Using a complex calculation method numbers were produced and transformed into two different types of lines (guaxiang 卦象), of which trigrams, and then hexagrams were composed. The Classic Zhouli 周禮, which describes the various state offices, speaks of three different types to handle the "changes" of auspicious and inauspicious aspects, namely the methods lianshan 連山 "connecting mountains" of the Xia people 夏 (21th-17th cent. BCE), guicang 歸藏 "storehouse" of the Shang 商 (17th-11th cent. BCE), and the "changes" method of the Zhou people. The first two methods are unknown, except for a few surviving fragments recorded in Ma Guohan's 馬國翰 (1794-1857) series Yuhanshanfang jiyi shu 玉函山房輯佚書. Some interpreters put forward the argument that the word zhou 周 in the title Zhouyi does not refer to the Zhou dynasty, but to a kind of "circle" that encompassed all sixty-four hexagrams.

Structure of the Text

The Yijing, as it is received, consists of two parts, the classic Zhouyi and a series of comments. The classic (the actual Yijing) was originally a divination book using a prognostication method by which 64 signs or symbols (gua 卦) were generated and interpreted. The 64 so-called hexagrams are each composed of two trigrams (see Table 2). There are eight trigrams in total, the famous bagua 八卦, that are also used in geomancy and other methods of divination. The trigrams consist of three lines that are either solid (the yang 陽, male or strong lines ⚊, yangyao 陽爻, represented by the number nine, jiu 九) or divided (the yin 陰, female or weak lines ⚋, yinyao 陰爻, represented by the number six, liu 六). The hexagrams are constructed from bottom to top. The hexagram Heng 恒 ䷟, for instance, is described as

Concerning the arrangement of the hexagrams, there are two traditions. The first is known from the received text, in which they are divided into two series beginning with Qian 乾 and Kun 坤. The second arrangement was found in the Zhouyi text discovered in the early Han-period 漢 (206 BCE-220 CE) tomb of Mawangdui 馬王堆 near Changsha 長沙, Hunan, where the series also begins with Qian, but then continues with Pi 否 and ends with Yi 益. There are also other arrangements in various interpretive texts of the Han period, like Jiao Gan's 焦贛 Jiaoshi yilin 焦氏易林 or Jing Fang's 京房 (77-37 BCE) Jingshi yizhuan 京氏易傳. The change of the particular lines (from 9 to 6 and vice versa; some lines being defined as unchanging), and with these, that of the whole hexagram, was believed to be subject to three factors, namely a natural conversion, human influence, and the supernatural influence of luck or misfortune.

The Zhouyi, as the heart of the book, is divided into two parts, the first of which including the first 30 hexagrams, the second one the 34 others. The text on each hexagram is described in four parts: an illustration of the hexagram (guaxiang 卦象, i.e. the six-line diagram), its name (guaming 卦名), the corresponding dictum with an explanation of its meaning (guaci 卦辭), and an explanation of each of its particular lines (yaoci 爻辭). The dictum (guaci) includes direct statement about the auspicious (ji 吉), profitable (li 利), unlucky (jiu 咎) or non-auspicious (xiong 凶) character of a divination result. The guaci of the hexagram Qian and the yaoci of its first (lower) line are, for instance,

A small part of line explanations (yaoci) is not related to divination, but includes philosophical reflections.

The commenting part, the Yizhuan 易傳, is also called the "Great commentary" Yi dazhuan 易大傳 to discern it from later commentaries by students of the Zhouyi. It consists of seven parts, the first three of which being divided into two parts, so that they are called the "ten wings" (shiyi 十翼). These were in ancient times believed to have been written by Confucius 孔子, an assumption that was first doubted by the Song-period 宋 (960-1279) scholar Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 (1007-1072). The ten wings are:

The Tuan commentary was written as an explanation of each hexagram and its lines. It includes Confucian interpretations of politics, social relations and personal cultivation. The xiang, divided into the "lesser" (xiaoxiang 小象) and the "greater appearance" (daxiang 大象) explains the wordings of this Classic, with a focus on the position of the ruler. The Xici commentary gives an overview of the position and the meaning of the Yijing in the world order and human life, and the meaning of Yin and Yang as factors creating a changing yet eternal universe. Because of its general meaning it is also called dazhuan 大傳 "Great commentary". The Wenyan commentary explains the general meaning of the first two hexagrams, Qian and Kun, which represent Heaven and Earth. The Shuogua explains how each hexagram could turn into another and how this change was related to the realms of Heaven, Earth and Man. It also explains which objects the hexagrams could be identified with. The Xugua is a mnemonic aid to the sequence of the hexagrams. The last commentary, Zagua, identifies similar or opposite hexagrams and highlights their relationship to each other. The tuan, xiang and wenyan commentaries are embedded in the texts about the individual hexagrams, and the xici, shuogua, xugua and zagua commentaries constitute individidual chapters in the second part of the book.

History of the Text

The origin of the book is uncertain. Traditionally the invention of the trigrams is acribed to the mythological ruler Fu Xi 伏羲. King Wen 周文王 (r. beginning 11th cent. BCE) of the Zhou is said to have permuted the trigrams into hexagrams and was the first to arrange them in a certain pattern or sequence. A different sequence of the hexagrams was later ascribed to Fu Xi. The ten commentaries are ascribed to Confucius. The Han-period scholar Ma Rong 馬融 (79–176) and the Tang-period 唐 (618-907) commentator Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (574-648) thought the guaci had been compiled or at least developed by King Wen, the yaoci by his son, the Duke of Zhou 周公. All these statements are unbelievable, but what is sure is that different parts of the book were compiled over a long period of time by different groups of persons. Early parts must have been compiled in the late Western Zhou period 西周 (11th cent. - 770 BCE), and the final shape evolved during the Warring States 戰國 (5th cent. - 221 BCE).

Han-period scholars divided up the Xiang and Wenyan commentaries and directly attached them to the corresponding hexagrams. This is the case in the commentaries by Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127-200) and Wang Bi 王弼 (226-249), the latter from the Three Empires period 三國 (220-280).

During the Former Han period 前漢 (206 BCE-8 CE) there were four different traditions of the Zhouyi for which "professorships" (held by boshi 博士 "erudites") were created at the National University (taixue 太學): the lines of Shi Chou 施讎, Meng Xi 孟喜, Liangqiu He 梁丘賀, and Jing Fang (all living during the 1st cent. BCE). There was also a fifth tradition not taught at the National University, namely that of Fei Zhangweng 費長翁. The versions of Meng and Jing soon dominated over the others but were themselves overshadowed at the end of the Han period by those commented by Zheng Xuan and Wang Bi. The version of Shi Chou and Liangqiu He were lost during the Jin period 晉 (265-420).

Philosophical and Literary Meaning

Confucian influence plays a considerable role, but traits of Daoist philosophy, of correlative thinking and Yin-Yang theory can also be found. The sequence of the commentaries largely reflect its date of composition, the Tuan being the oldest part, the Xugua and Zagua the youngest.

The aristocracy of the Zhou period—and also that of their predecessors, the Shang dynasty—used to forecast a plethora of important political and social activities, like sacrifices, war, birth, voyages, marriages, or about natural disasters that threatened the harvest. Statements about such events or about internal quarrels at the court and among the nobility can also be found in the Zhouyi. Yet all these statements are expressed in a very concise way which is far from easy to understand and has therefore to be explained with the help of commentaries. The hexagram Kui 睽, for example, speaks about travelling, the hexagram Bi 賁 about marriage, and the hexagram Jing 井 about the problems governing a village. The world view of the Yijing is a bipolar one, in which Yin and Yang, the "great man" (daren 大人) and the "small man" (xiaoren 小人), fortune and misfortune, obtaining and loosing, increase and decrease, peace and stagnation, completion and lack, are opposed to each other and may in the course of time and under certain conditions transform into each other. This can also be seen in the statements about pairs hexagrams that are opposed to each other like Tai 泰 and Pi. In Tai it is said Xiao wang da lai 小往大來。 "The little gone and the great coming." (Legge 1882: 81), and in Pi: Da wang xiao lai 大往小來。 "The great gone and the little coming." (Legge 1882: 84.) Such a world view is not very far from the philosophy of the Daoist Zhuangzi 莊子 who stressed that a constant change and uncertainty befalls human life.

The text of the Zhouyi is written in very short lines or verses that often rhyme. A third of the old text can therefore be called a type of poetry. The rhyme patterns are not regular but often more composed according to need, like in the hexagram Guimei 歸妹, where it is said

or in the hexagram Dazhuang 大壯, which says that

The hexagram Tun 屯 includes the verse

The first two examples refer to the life of shepherds, the third one to the preparation of a wedding. They can easily be compared with the "folk songs" in the Classic Shijing 詩經 "Book of Songs". Some paragraphs in the Zhouyi are comparable to the literary genre of fu 賦 "rhapsody" that found its early forerunners in descriptive texts, often of travels, as in the text to the hexagram Kui. The poetic genre of xing 興 "introducing atmosphere" (referring to the first verse of a poem) is represented by verses of the hexagram Jian 漸, like

or such of the hexagram Mingyi 明夷:

The genre of bi 比 "Comparison" or "Parable" is to be found in the verses of the hexagram Lü 履:

From the viewpoint of linguistics, the text of the Zhouyi is very interesting for its wide use of grammatical particles, synonyms and rhyme binomes.

Commentaries

There are countless commentaries on and interpretations of the "Book of Changes". They can be divided into two great schools. The first one used the as a book for divination, in combination with phenomena of universe and nature. This tradition lived on in the Neo-Confucian interpretation of the Yijing by Liu Mu 劉牧 (1011-1064) and Shao Yong 邵雍 (1011-1077). Many Daoist masters were interested in the Yijing, like Chen Tuan 陳摶 (trad. 872-989) from the Tang period. Other Neo-Confucian scholars studying the Yijing were Hu Yuan 胡瑗 (993-1059), Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033-1107), Li Guang 李光 (1078-1159) and Yang Wanli 楊萬里 (1127-1206). From the Han period two such books are preserved, namely fragments of apocryphal texts subsumed under the name Yiwei 易緯 and Jing Fang's Jingshi yizhuan 京氏易傳. Many Qing-period 清 (1644-1911) scholars interpreted these two writings, for example Hui Dong 惠棟 (1697-1758; Yi Han xue 易漢學, Zhouyi shu 周易述), Jiang Fan 江藩 (1761-1831; Zhouyi shubu 周易述補) or Zhang Huiyan 張惠言 (1761-1802; Zhouyi Yushi yi 周易虞氏義, Yiyi bielu 易義別錄).

The second school interpreted the Yijing on a philosophical background, making it part of the tradition of Confucian thought. This interpretation was introduced by Zheng Xuan and Wang Bi and continued by the Jin-period scholar Han Kangbo 韓康伯 (332-380) and the Song-period Neo-Confucians, in first place Cheng Yi (Chengshi yizhuan 程氏易傳). There were also commentators who are not easily classified as members of the one or the other of the two schools, like the Tang-period scholars Kong Yingda (Zhouyi zhengyi 周易正義) and Li Dingzuo 李鼎祚 (8./9. cent.; Zhouyi jijie 周易集解), as well as the Great Southern Song-period Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200; Zhouyi benyi 周易本義). Modern scholars have contributed new approaches to the study and interpretation of the , especially the connection between the book and conditions prevailing in history, like Guo Moruo 郭莫若 (1892-1978), Wen Yiduo 聞一多 (1899-1946), or Hu Pu'an 胡樸安 (1878-1947). The most important modern commentaries to the Yijing are Gao Heng's 高亨 (1900-1986) Zhouyi gujing jinzhu 周易古經今注, Li Jingchi's 李鏡池 (1902-1975) Zhouyi tongyi 周易通義 and Wen Yiduo's Zhouyi yizheng leizuan 周易義證類纂.