I Ching
Ancient Chinese divination text and classic of changes.
Last updated
via Wikipedia: I Ching · see source
It originated as a Western Zhou dynasty divination manual and later became a cosmological text with philosophical commentaries.[1] The work has served for millennia as a philosophical taxonomy, ethical guide, ruler's manual, and oracle.[2] Among the oldest Chinese classics is an ancient divination text known in Standard Chinese as the I Ching or Yijing, which is usually translated as the Book of Changes or Classic of Changes.[1]
What happened
American sinologist Edward Shaughnessy dated its compilation in its current form to the last quarter of the 9th century BC.[3] The Ten Wings include the Great Commentary, which dates to roughly 300 BC and describes the I Ching as a microcosm of the universe.[4] The 12th-century Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi developed a synthesis of earlier commentary lines and reconstructed yarrow stalk divination.[5] A divination text from the Western Zhou period, called the Changes of Zhou, forms the core of the I Ching.[3]
By the 11th century, the I Ching was regarded as a complex philosophical work and a manual for achieving moral perfection.[6]
What the cited sources add
Weinberger noted that Confucius almost certainly had nothing to do with making the I Ching, but supposedly said he would devote fifty years to studying it.[2] Jesuit missionaries in the late seventeenth century decoded the text to reveal Christian universal truth.[2] James Legge produced the first somewhat reliable English translation in 1882, first applying the word "hexagram" to the Chinese block of lines.[2] Arthur Waley described the I Ching as a collection of peasant interpretation omens with later divinations added.[2]
Joseph Needham considered the I Ching a pseudo-science that had a deleterious effect on Chinese science.[2] Richard Wilhelm's 1924 German translation, with an introduction by Carl Jung, transformed the text from Sinological arcana to international celebrity.[2]
References
- Wikipedia, "I Ching" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Kern 2010, p. 17 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Weinberger, "What Is the I Ching?", February 25, 2016. facts only, no text reused. nybooks.com
- Wikipedia, "I Ching" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Nylan 2001, p. 218 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "I Ching" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Smith 2008, p. 27; Nielsen 2003, p. 7; Smith 2008, p. 27; Knechtges 2014, p. 1877; Redmond Hon 2014, p. 54–55; Nylan 2001, p. 218 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "I Ching" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Alex Bugeja, "A Short History of China", 2026, p. 117 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "I Ching" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hon 2005, p. 144 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article I Ching (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: I Ching (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Word definitions: the Codexery glossary, each quoted from its Wikipedia article.
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