I Ching

Lore & Background

The core of the I Ching is a divination text from the Western Zhou dynasty called the Changes of Zhou (Zhou yi). Modern scholars suggest dates ranging between the 10th and 4th centuries BC for the assembly of the text in approximately its current form. Based on a comparison of the language of the Zhou yi with dated bronze inscriptions, the American sinologist Edward Shaughnessy dated its compilation in its current form to the last quarter of the 9th century BC, during the early decades of the reign of King Xuan of Zhou (r. c. 827 – 782 BC). A copy of the text in the Shanghai Museum corpus of bamboo and wooden slips discovered in 1994 shows that the Zhou yi was used throughout all levels of Chinese society in its current form by 300 BC, but still contained small variations as late as the Warring States period (c. 475 – 221 BC). The Zhou yi was traditionally ascribed to the Zhou cultural heroes King Wen of Zhou and the Duke of Zhou, and was also associated with the legendary world ruler Fuxi. Another tradition about the I Ching was that most of it was written by Tang of Shang. The Zhou yi itself does not contain this legend and indeed says nothing about its own origins. During the Han dynasty a consensus formed around 2nd-century AD scholar Ma Rong's attribution of the text to the joint work of Fuxi, King Wen of Zhou, the Duke of Zhou, and Confucius, but this traditional attribution is no longer generally accepted.

Reader's Guide

As a divination text, the I Ching is used for a Chinese form of cleromancy known as I Ching divination in which bundles of yarrow stalks are manipulated to produce sets of six apparently random numbers ranging from 6 to 9. Each of the 64 possible sets corresponds to a hexagram, which can be looked up in the I Ching. The hexagrams are arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence. The interpretation of the readings found in the I Ching has been discussed and debated over the centuries. Many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision-making, as informed by Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and been paralleled with many other traditional names for the processes of change such as yin and yang and Wuxing. The basic unit of the Zhou yi is the hexagram, a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines. Each line is either broken or unbroken. The received text of the Zhou yi contains all 64 possible hexagrams, along with the hexagram's name, a short hexagram statement, and six line statements. The book opens with the first hexagram statement, yuán hēng lì zhēn (元亨利貞). These four words are often repeated in the hexagram statements and were already considered an important part of I Ching interpretation in the 6th century BC. Edward Shaughnessy describes this statement as affirming an 'initial receipt' of an offering, 'beneficial' for further 'divining'. The most common form of divination with the I Ching in use today is a reconstruction of the method described in the 300 BC Great Commentary, and later in the Huainanzi and the Lunheng. From the Great Commentary's description, the Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi reconstructed a method of yarrow stalk divination that is still used throughout the Far East. Another divination method, employing coins, became widely used in the Tang dynasty and is still used today.

Did You Know?

• The name Zhou yi literally means the 'changes' of the Zhou dynasty.
• The word zhēn (貞) was used for the verb 'to divine' in the oracle bones of the late Shang dynasty.
• The ancient narratives Zuo Zhuan and Guoyu contain the oldest descriptions of divination using the Zhou yi, describing more than twenty successful divinations between 671 and 487 BC.
• In 136 BC, Emperor Wu of Han named the Zhou yi 'the first among the classics', dubbing it the Classic of Changes or I Ching.
• The hexagram names are usually words that appear in their respective line statements, but in five cases (2, 9, 26, 61, and 63) an unrelated character of unclear purpose appears.