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SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST
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HENRY FEOWDE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE 7 PATERNOSTER ROW
THE
/
SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST
TRANSLATED
BY VARIOUS ORIENTAL SCHOLARS
AND EDITED BY
F. MAX MULLER
VOL. XVI
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1882
[All rights reserved ']
THE
/
SACRED BOOKS OF CHINA
THE TEXTS OF CONFUCIANISM
TRANSLATED BY
JAMES LEGGE
PART II
THE Yt KING
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1882
[ All rights reserved ]
CONTENTS.
PREFACE
xiii
INTRODUCTION.
CHAP.
I. The Yi King from the Twelfth Century b. c. to
the Commencement of the Christian Era .
There was a Yi in the time of Confucius. The Yi is now made up of the Text which Confucius saw, and the Appen- dixes ascribed to him. The Yi escaped the fires of Shin. The Yi before Confucius, and when it was made :— mentioned in the Official Book of Kzu ; in the 3o A7wan ; testimony of the Appendixes. Not the most ancient of the Chinese books. The Text much older than the Appendixes. Labours of native scholars on the Yi imperfectly described. Erroneous account of the labours of sinologists.
II. The Subject-matter of the Text. The Lineal
Figures and the explanation of them ... 9 The Yi consists of essays based on lineal figures. Origin of the lineal figures. Who first multiplied them to sixty-four? Why they were not continued after sixty-four. The form of the River Map. State of the country in the time of king Wan. Character of the last king of Shang. The lords of A'au ; and especially king Wan. Wan in prison occupied with the lineal figures. The seventh hexagram.
III. The Appendixes 26
Subjects of the chapter. Number and nature of the Appen- dixes. Their authorship. No superscription of Confucius
on any of them. The third and fourth evidently not from him. Bearing of this conclusion on the others. The first Appendix. Fu-hsi's trigrams. King Wan's. The name Kwei-shan. The second Appendix. The Great Symbolism. The third Appendix. Harmony between the lines of the figures ever changing, and the changes in external pheno- mena. Divination ; ancient, and its object. Formation of
Vlll
CONTENTS.
the lineal figures by the divining stalks. The names Yin and Yang. The name Kwei-shan. Shan alone. The fourth Appendix. The fifth. First paragraph. Mythology of the Yi. Operation of God in nature throughout the year. Con- cluding paragraphs. The sixth Appendix. The seventh.
Plates I, II, III, exhibiting the hexagrams and trigrams.
THE TEXT.
Section I.
HEXAGRAM PAGE
I. A7/ien 57
II. Khwan ......... 59
III. A"un 62
IV. Mang . 64
V. Hsu 67
VI. Sung 69
VII. Sze 71
VIII. Pi 73
IX. Hsiao Kku 76
X. Li 78
XI. Thai 81
XII. Phi 83
XIII. ThungZan 86
XIV. TaYu 88
XV. AVzien 89
XVI. Yii 91
XVII. Sui 93
XVIII. Ku 95
XIX. Lin 97
XX. Kwan 99
XXI. Shih Ho 101
XXII. Pi 103
XXIII. Po 105
XXIV. Fu 107
XXV. Wu Wang 109
XXVI. TaAKi . 112
XXVII. 1 n4
XXVIII. Ta Kwo u6
CONTEXTS.
1X
HEXAGRAM PAGE
XXIX. Khan 118
XXX. Li 120
Section II.
XXXI. Hsien 123
XXXII. Hang 125
XXXIII. Thun 127
XXXIV. TaAwang 129
XXXV. Bin 131
XXXVI. Ming t 134
XXXVII. ATaZan 136
XXXVIII. Khwei 139
XXXIX. A'ien 141
XL. Kieh 144
XLI. Sun 146
XLII. Yi - . .149
XLIII. Kwai i5i
XLIV. Kau 154
XLV. Shui 156
XLVI. Shang .159
XLVII. Khwan 161
XLVIII. Sing 164
XLIX. Ko 167
L. Ting 169
LI. A'an 172
LII. Kan 175
LIII. ATen 178
LIV. Kwei Mei 180
LV. Fang 183
LVI. Lii 187
LVII. Sun 189
LVIII. Tui 192
LIX. Hwan 194
LX. ATeh 197
LXI. Aung Fu 199
LXII. Hsiao Kwo 201
LXIII. Kitf. 204
LXIV. Wei3i 2°7
CONTENTS.
THE APPENDIXES.
I. Treatise on the Thwan, that is, on king Wan's Explanations of the entire Hexagrams.
PAGE
Section I. jOien to Li 213-237
Section II. Hsien to Wei £i 238-266
II. Treatise on the Symbolism of the Hexagrams,
and of the duke of ATau's Explanations of the several Lines.
Section I. KJivtn to Li 267-305
Section II. Hsien to Wei 31 3°5~347
III. The Great Appendix.
Section I. Chapters I-XII 343
Section II. Chapters I-XII 379
IV. Supplementary to the Thwan and Yao on the
FIRST AND SECOND HEXAGRAMS, AND SHOWING HOW THEY MAY BE INTERPRETED OF MAN'S NA- TURE AND DOINGS.
Section I. On KKvea. 4°8
Section II. On Khwan 4'8
V. Treatise of Remarks on the Trigrams.
Chapters I-XI 422
CONTENTS. XI
VI. The Orderly Sequence of the Hexagrams.
PAGE
Section I. Kh\zn to Li 433
Section II. Hsien to Wei 3i 435
VII. Treatise on the Hexagrams taken promis-
cuously, ACCORDING TO THE OPPOSITION OR DIVERSITY OF THEIR MEANING .... 441
Transliteration of Oriental Alphabets adopted for the Trans- lations of the Sacred Books of the East . . . 445
PREFACE.
I wrote out a translation of the Yi King, embracing both the Text and the Appendixes, in 1854 and 1855 ; and have to acknowledge that when the manuscript was completed, I knew very little about the scope and method of the book. I laid the volumes containing the result of my labour aside, and hoped, believed indeed, that the light would by and by dawn, and that I should one day get hold of a clue that would guide me to a knowledge of the mysterious classic.
Before that day came, the translation was soaked, in 1870, for more than a month in water of the Red Sea. By dint of careful manipulation it was recovered so as to be still legible ; but it was not till 1874 that I began to be able to give to the book the prolonged attention necessary to make it reveal its secrets. Then for the first time I got hold, as I believe, of the clue, and found that my toil of twenty years before was of no service at all.
What had tended more than anything else to hide the nature of the book from my earlier studies was the way in which, with the Text, ordinarily and, as I think, correctly ascribed to king Wan and his son Tan, there are inter- spersed, under each hexagram, the portions of the Appen- dixes I, II, and IV relating to it. The student at first thinks this an advantage. He believes that all the Appen- dixes were written by Confucius, and combine with the text to form one harmonious work ; and he is glad to have the sentiments of ' the three sages ' brought together. But I now perceived that the composition of the Text and of the Appendixes, allowing the Confucian authorship of the latter, was separated by about 700 years, and that their subject-matter was often incongruous. My first step towards a right understanding of the Yi was to study the Text by itself and as complete in itself. It was easy to
XIV PREFACE.
do this because the imperial edition of 17 15, with all its critical apparatus, keeps the Text and the Appendixes separate.
The wisdom of the course thus adopted became more apparent by the formation of eight different concordances, one for the Text, and one for each of the Appendixes. They showed that many characters in the Appendixes, and those especially which most readily occur to sino- logists as characteristic of the Yi, are not to be found in the Text at all. A fuller acquaintance, moreover, with the tone and style of the Appendixes satisfied me that while we had sufficient evidence that the greater part of them was not from Confucius, we had no evidence that any part was his, unless it might be the paragraphs intro- duced by the compiler or compilers as sayings of 'the Master.'
Studying the Text in the manner thus described, I soon arrived at the view of the meaning and object of the Yt, which I have described in the second chapter of the Intro- duction ; and I was delighted to find that there was a substantial agreement between my interpretations of the hexagrams and their several lines and those given by the most noted commentators from the Han dynasty down to the present. They have not formulated the scheme so con- cisely as I have done, and they were fettered by their belief in the Confucian authorship of the Appendixes ; but they held the same general opinion, and were similarly controlled by it in construing the Text. Any sinologist who will examine the Yu Kih Zah iHang Yi King Kieh. 1, prepared by one of the departments of the Han Lin college, and published in 1682, and which I have called the ' Daily Lessons,' or ' Lectures,' will see the agreement between my views and those underlying its paraphrase.
After the clue to the meaning of the Yi was discovered, there remained the difficulty of translating. The pecu- liarity of its style makes it the most difficult of all the Confucian classics to present in an intelligible version. I suppose that there are sinologists who will continue, for a time at least, to maintain that it was intended by its
PREFACE. XV
author or authors, whoever they were, merely as a book of divination ; and of course the oracles of divination were designedly wrapped up in mysterious phraseology. But notwithstanding the account of the origin of the book and its composition by king Wan and his son, which I have seen reason to adopt, they, its authors, had to write after the manner of diviners. There is hardly another work in the ancient literature of China that presents the same difficulties to the translator.
When I made my first translation of it in 1854, I endea- voured to be as concise in my English as the original Chinese was. Much of what I wrote was made up, in consequence, of so many English words, with little or no mark of syntactical connexion. I followed in this the example of P. Regis and his coadjutors (Introduction, page 9) in their Latin version. But their version is all but unintelligible, and mine was not less so. How to surmount this difficulty occurred to me after I had found the clue to the interpretation ; — in a fact which I had unconsciously acted on in all my translations of other classics, namely, that the written characters of the Chinese are not repre- sentations of words, but symbols of ideas, and that the combination of them in composition is not a representation of what the writer would say, but of what he thinks. It is vain therefore for a translator to attempt a literal version. When the symbolic characters have brought his mind en rapport with that of his author, he is free to render the ideas in his own or any other speech in the best manner that he can attain to. This is the rule which Mencius followed in interpreting the old poems of his country : — ' We must try with our thoughts to meet the scope of a sentence, and then we shall apprehend it.' In the study of a Chinese classical book there is not so much an inter- pretation of the characters employed by the writer as a participation of his thoughts ; — there is the seeing of mind to mind. The canon hence derived for a translator is not one of license. It will be his object to express the meaning of the original as exactly and concisely as possible. But it will be necessary for him to introduce a word or two
XVI PREFACE.
now and then to indicate what the mind of the writer supplied for itself. What I have done in this way will generally be seen enclosed in parentheses, though I queried whether I might not dispense with them, as there is nothing in the English version which was not, I believe, present in the writer's thought. I hope, however, that I have been able in this way to make the translation intel- ligible to readers. If, after all, they shall conclude that in what is said on the hexagrams there is often ' much ado about nothing,' it is not the translator who should be deemed accountable for that, but his original.
I had intended to append to the volume translations of certain chapters from Ku Hsi and other writers of the Sung dynasty ; but this purpose could not be carried into effect for want of space. It was found necessary to accompany the version with a running commentary, illustrating the way in which the teachings of king Wan and his son are supposed to be drawn from the figures and their several lines ; and my difficulty was to keep the single Yi within the limits of one volume. Those intended translations therefore are reserved for another opportunity ; and indeed, the Sung philosophy did not grow out of the Yi proper, but from the Appendixes to it, and especially from the third of them. It is more Taoistic than Confucian.
When I first took the Yi in hand, there existed no trans- lation of it in any western language but that of P. Regis and his coadjutors, which I have mentioned above and in various places of the Introduction. The authors were all sinologists of great attainments ; and their view of the Text as relating to the transactions between the founders of the Kku dynasty and the last sovereign of the Shang or Yin, and capable of being illustrated historically, though too narrow, was an approximation to the truth. The late M. Mohl, who had edited the work in 1834, said to me once, ' I like it ; for I come to it out of a sea of mist, and find solid ground.' No sufficient distinction was made in it, however, between the Text and the Appendixes ; and in dis- cussing the third and following Appendixes the translators
PREFACE. XV11
were haunted by the name and shade of Confucius. To the excessive literalness of the version I have referred above.
In 1876 the Rev. Canon McClatchie, M. A., published a version at Shanghai with the title, ' A Translation of the Confucian Yi King, or the " Classic of Changes," with Notes and Appendix.' This embraces both the Text and the Appendixes, the first, second, and fourth of the - latter being interspersed along with the Text, as in the ordinary school editions of the classic. So far as I can judge from his language, he does not appear to be aware that the first and second Appendixes were not the work of king Wan and the duke of i^au, but of a subsequent writer — he would say of Confucius — explaining their expla- nations of the entire hexagrams and their several lines. His own special object was 'to open the mysteries of the Yi by applying to it the key of Comparative Mythology.' Such a key was not necessary ; and the author, by the application of it, has found sundry things to which I have occasionally referred in my notes. They are not pleasant to look at or dwell upon ; and happily it has never entered into the minds of Chinese scholars to conceive of them. I have followed Canon McClatchie's translation from para- graph to paragraph and from sentence to sentence, but found nothing which I could employ with advantage in my own.
Long after my translation had been completed, and that of the Text indeed was printed, I received from Shanghai the third volume of P. Angelo Zottoli's 'Cursus Littera- turae Sinicae/ which had appeared in 1880. About 100 pages of it are occupied with the Yi. The Latin version is a great improvement on that in the work of Regis ; but P. Zottoli translates only the Text of the first two hexagrams, with the portions of the first, second, and fourth Appendixes relating to them ; and other six hexagrams with the expla- nations of king Wan's Thwan and of the Great Symbolism. Of the remaining fifty-six hexagrams only the briefest summary is given ; and then follow the Appendixes III, V, VI, and VII at length. The author has done his work well. [16] b
XV111 PREFACE.
His general view of the Yi is stated in the following sen- tences : — ' Ex Fu-hsi figuris, Wan regis definitionibus, ^fau ducis symbolis, et Confucii commentariis, Liber conficitur, qui a mutationibus, quas duo elementa in hexagrammatum compositione inducunt, Yi (Mutator) vel Yi King (Muta- tionum Liber) appellatur. Quid igitur tandem famosus iste Yi King? Paucis accipe : ex linearum qualitate continua vel intercisa ; earumque situ, imo, medio, vel supremo; mutuaque ipsarum relatione, occursu, dissidio, convenientia ; ex ipso scilicet trigrammatum corpore seu forma, turn ex trigrammatum symbolo seu imagine, turn ex trigrammatum proprietate seu virtute, turn etiam aliquando ex unius ad alterum hexagramma varietate, eruitur aliqua imago, deducitur aliqua sententia, quoddam veluti ora- culum continens, quod sorte etiam consulere possis ad documentum obtinendum, moderandae vitae solvendove dubio consentaneum. Ita liber juxta Confucii explica- tionem in scholis tradi solitam. Nil igitur sublime aut mysteriosum, nil foedum aut vile hie quaeras; argutulum potius lusum ibi video ad instructiones morales politicas- que eliciendas, ut ad satietatem usque in Sinicis passim classicis, obvias, planas, naturales ; tantum, cum liber iste, ut integrum legenti textum facile patebit, ad sortilegii usum deductus fuerit, per ipsum jam summum homo obtinebit vitae beneficium, arcanam cum spiritibus communicationem secretamque futurorum eventuum cognitionem ; theurgus igitur visus est iste liber, totus lux, totus spiritus, hominis- que vitae accommodatissimus ; indeque laudes a Confucio ei tributas, prorsus exaggeratas, in hujus libri praesertim appendice videre erit, si vere tamen, ut communis fert opinio, ipse sit hujus appendicis auctor.'
There has been a report for two or three years of a new translation of the Yi, or at least of a part of it, as being in preparation by M. Terrien de Lacouperie, and Professor R. K. Douglas of the British Museum and King's College, London. I have alluded on pages 8, 9 of the Introduction to some inaccurate statements about native commentaries on the Yi and translations of it by foreigners, made in con- nexion with this contemplated version. But I did not know
PREFACE. XIX
what the projected undertaking really was, till I read a letter from M.Terrien in the 'Athenaeum' of the 2ist January of this year. He there says that the joint translation ' deals only with the oldest part of the book, the short lists of characters which follow each of the sixty-four headings, and leaves entirely aside the explanations and commen- taries attributed to Wen Wang, Kau Kung, Confucius, and others, from 1200 B. C. downwards, which are commonly embodied as an integral part of the classic ; ' adding, ' The proportion of the primitive text to these additions is about one-sixth of the whole.' But if we take away these expla- nations and commentaries attributed to king Wan, the duke of Ka.u, and Confucius, we take away the whole Yi. There remain only the linear figures attributed to Fu-hsi, without any lists of characters, long or short, without a single written character of any kind whatever. The projectors have been misled somehow about the contents of the Yi ; and unless they can overthrow all the traditions and beliefs about them, whether Chinese or foreign, their undertaking is more hopeless than the task laid on the children of Israel by Pharaoh, that they should make bricks without straw.
I do not express myself thus in any spirit of hostility. If, by discoveries in Accadian or any other long-buried and forgotten language, M. Terrien de Lacouperie can throw new light on the written characters of China or on its speech, no one will rejoice more than myself ; but his ignorance of how the contents of the classic are made up does not give much prospect of success in his promised translation.
In the preface to the third volume of these ' Sacred Books of the East,' containing the Shu King, Shih King, and Hsiao King, I have spoken of the Chinese terms Tt and Shang Ti, and shown how I felt it necessary to con- tinue to render them by our word God, as I had done in all my translations of the Chinese classics since 1861. My doing so gave offence to some of the missionaries in China and others ; and in June, 1880, twenty-three gentlemen addressed a letter to Professor F. Max Miiller, complaining
b 2
XX PREFACE.
that, in such a work edited by him, he should allow me to give my own private interpretation of the name or names in question instead of translating them or transferring them. Professor Muller published the letter which he had received, with his reply to it, in the 'Times' newspaper of Dec. 30, 1880. Since then the matter has rested, and I introduce it again here in this preface, because, though we do not meet with the name in the Yi so frequently as in the Shu and Shih, I have, as before, wherever it does occur, translated it by God. Those who object to that term say that Shang Ti might be rendered by 'Supreme Ruler' or 'Supreme Emperor/ or by 'Ruler (or Emperor) on high ;' but when I examined the question, more than thirty years ago, with all possible interest and all the resources at my command, I came to the conclusions that Ti, on its first employment by the Chinese fathers, was intended to ex- press the same concept which our fathers expressed by God, and that such has been its highest and proper application ever since. There would be little if any difference in the meaning conveyed to readers by 'Supreme Ruler' and ' God ;' but when I render Ti by God and Shang Ti by the Supreme God, or, for the sake of brevity, simply by God, I am translating, and not giving a private inter- pretation of my own. I do it not in the interests of con- troversy, but as the simple expression of what to me is truth ; and I am glad to know that a great majority of the Protestant missionaries in China use Ti and Shang Ti as the nearest analogue for God.
It would be tedious to mention the many critical editions and commentaries that I have used in preparing the trans- lation. I have not had the help of able native scholars, which saved time and was otherwise valuable when I was working in the East on other classics. The want of this, however, has been more than compensated in some respects by my copy of the ' Daily Lectures on the Yi,' the full title of which is given on page xiv. The friend who purchased it for me five years ago in Canton was obliged to content himself with a second-hand copy ; but I found that the
PREFACE. XXI
previous owner had been a ripe scholar who freely used his pencil in pursuing his studies. It was possible, from his punctuation, interlineations, and many marginal notes, to follow the exercises of his mind, patiently pursuing his search for the meaning of the most difficult passages. I am under great obligations to him; and also to the A'au Yi K eh Kung, the great imperial edition of the present dynasty, first published in 17 15. I have generally spoken of its authors as the Khang-hsi editors. Their numerous discussions of the meaning, and ingenious decisions, go far to raise the interpretation of the Yi to a science.
J. L.
Oxford, 1 6th March, 1882.
THE Yl KING
OR
BOOK OF CHANGES.
THE Yl KING
OR
BOOK OF CHANGES.
INTRODUCTION.
Chapter I.
The Yi King from the Twelfth Century b. c. to the Commencement of the Christian Era.
i. Confucius is reported to have said on one occasion, ' If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and might then escape falling Yi in the time into great errors1.' The utterance is re- of Confucius. ferrecj by the best critics to the closing period of Confucius' life, when he had returned from his long and painful wanderings among the States, and was settled again in his native Lu. By this time he was nearly seventy, and it seems strange, if he spoke seriously, that he should have thought it possible for his life to be prolonged other fifty years. So far as that specification is concerned, a corruption of the text is generally admitted. My reason for adducing the passage has simply been to prove from it the existence of a Yi King in the time of Confucius. In the history of him by Sze-ma A7/ien it is stated that, in the closing years of his life, he became fond of the Yi, and wrote various appendixes to it, that he read his copy of it so much that the leathern thongs (by which the tablets containing it were bound together) were thrice worn out, and that he said, 'Give me several years (more), and I should be master of the Yi -.' The ancient books on which Confucius had delighted
1 Confucian Analects, VII, xvi. a The Historical Records; Life of Confucius, p. 12. [16] B
2 THE Yi KING. CH. I.
to discourse with his disciples were those of History, Poetry, and Rites and Ceremonies 1 ; but ere he passed away from among them, his attention was much occupied also by the Yi as a monument of antiquity, which in the prime of his days he had too much neglected.
2. K/iien says that Confucius wrote various appendixes to the Yi, specifying all but two of the treatises, which go
^, T„ . by the name of ' the Ten Appendixes,' and
I he Yi is now .
made up of are, with hardly a dissentient voice, attributed
'conTuduTsaw to the saSe- They are published along with and the Ap- the older Text, which is based on still older
pendixes as- v i r j • j i_ . r^\ •
cribed to him. hneal figures, and are received by most Chinese
readers, as well as by foreign Chinese scholars,
as an integral portion of the Yi King. The two portions
should, however, be carefully distinguished. I will speak of
them as the Text and the Appendixes.
3. The Yi happily escaped the fires of 3nm5 which proved so disastrous to most of the ancient literature of China in
Th yA B.C. 213. In the memorial which the premier
caped the fires Li Sze addressed to his sovereign, advising
0 ^ in' that the old books should be consigned to
the flames, an exception was made of those which treated
of c medicine, divination, and husbandry2.' The Yi was
held to be a book of divination, and so was preserved.
In the catalogue of works in the imperial library, pre- pared by Liu Hin about the beginning of our era, there is an enumeration of those on the Yi and its Appendixes, — the books of thirteen different authors or schools, com- prehended in 294 portions of larger or smaller dimensions3. I need not follow the history and study of the Yi into the line of the centuries since the time of Liu Hin. The imperial Khang-hsi edition of it, which appeared in 1715, contains quotations from the commentaries of 218 scholars, covering, more or less closely, the time from the second century B.C. to our seventeenth century. I may venture to say that
1 Analects, VII, xvii.
2 Legge's Chinese Classics, I, prolegomena, pp. 6-9.
8 Books of the Earlier Han; History of Literature, pp. 1. 2.
CH. 1. INTRODUCTION. 3
those 218 are hardly a tenth of the men who have tried to interpret the remarkable book, and solve the many- problems to which it gives rise.
4. It may be assumed then that the Yi King, properly
so called, existed before Confucius, and has The Yi before , , ,
Confucius, come down to us as correctly as any other and when it Qf tjle ancjent books of China : and it might
was made. m °
also be said, as correctly as any of the old monuments of Hebrew, Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin literature. The question arises of how far before Confucius we can trace its existence. Of course an inquiry into this point will not include the portions or appendixes attributed to the sage himself. Attention will be called to them by and by, when I shall consider how far we are entitled, or whether we are at all entitled, to ascribe them to him. I do not doubt, however, that they belong to what may be called the Confucian period, and were produced some time after his death, probably between B.C. 450 and 350. By whom- soever they were written, they may be legitimately em- ployed in illustration of what were the prevailing views in that age on various points connected with the Yi. Indeed, but for the guidance and hints derived from them as to the meaning of the text, and the relation between its statements and the linear figures, there would be great difficulty in making out any consistent interpretation of it.
(i) The earliest mention of the classic is found in the The Yi men- Official Book of the Kau dynasty, where it
Offidal'Book is said that' among the duties of £ the Grand of A'au. Diviner,' 'he had charge of the rules for the three Yi (systems of Changes), called the Lien-shan, the Kwei-jhang, and the Yi of Ka.u ; that in each of them the regular (or primary) lineal figures were 8, which were mul- tiplied, in each, till they amounted to 64.' The date of the Official Book has not been exactly ascertained. The above passage can hardly be reconciled with the opinion of the majority of Chinese critics that it was the work of the duke of A'au, the consolidatorand legislator of the dynasty so called ; but I think there must have been the groundwork of it at a very early date. When that was composed or compiled, there
B 2
THE YI KING. CH. i.
was existing, among the archives of the kingdom, under the charge of a high officer, 'the Yi of iTau,' — what constitutes the Text of the present Yi; the Text, that is, as distinguished from the Appendixes. There were two other Yi, known as the Lien-shan and the Kwei-jhang. It would be a waste of time to try to discover the meaning of these designations. They are found in this and another passage of the Official Book ; and nowhere else. Not a single trace of what they denoted remains, while we possess 'the Yt of Ka.u ' complete 1.
(ii) In the Supplement of 3o K/riu-mlng to 'the Spring The Yi men- an^ Autumn,' there is abundant evidence that tioned in the divination by the Yi was frequent, throughout the states of China, before the time of Con- fucius. There are at least eight narratives of such a practice, between the years B.C. 6j2 and 564, before he was born ; and five times during his life-time the divining stalks and the book were had recourse to on occasions with which he had nothing to do. In all these cases the text of the Yi, as we have it now, is freely quoted. The 'Spring and Autumn' commences in B.C. 722. If it extended back to the rise of the iifau dynasty, we should, no doubt, find
1 See the Kslu Kwan (or Li), Book XXIV, parr. 3, 4, and 27. Biot (Le Tcheou Li, vol. ii, pp. 70, 71) translates the former two paragraphs thus: — ' II (Le Grand Augure) est prepose aux trois methodes pour les changements (des lignes divinatoires). La premiere est appelee Liaison des montagnes (Lien-shan) ; la seconde, Retour et Conservation (Kwei-$hang) ; la troisieme, Changements des Kku. Pour toutes il y a huit lignes symboliques sacrees, et soixante-quatre combinaisons de ces lignes.'
Some tell us that by Lien-shan was intended Fu-hsi, and by Kwei-jhang Hwang Ti ; others, that the former was the Y i of the Hsia dynasty, and the latter that of Shang or Yin. A third set will have it that Lien-shan was a designation of Shan Nang, between Fu-hsi and Hwang Ti. I should say myself, as many Chinese critics do say, that Lien-shan was an arrangement of the lineal
symbols in which the first figure was the present 52nd hexagram, Kan
consisting of the trigram representing mountains doubled ; and that Kwei- jhang was an arrangement where the first figure was the present 2nd hexagram,
Kb. wan , consisting of the trigram representing the earth doubled, —
with reference to the disappearance and safe keeping of plants in the bosom of the earth in winter. All this, however, is only conjecture.
CH. I.
INTRODUCTION.
accounts of divination by the Yi interspersed over the long intervening period. For centuries before Confucius appeared on the stage of his country, the Yi was well known among the various feudal states, which then constituted the Middle Kingdom l.
(iii) We may now look into one of the Appendixes for its testimony to the age and authorship of the Text. The third Appendix is the longest, and the most important2. In the 49th paragraph of the second Section of it it is said :—
« Was it not in the middle period of antiquity that the Yi began to nourish ? Was not he who made it (or were not they who made it) familiar with anxiety and calamity?'
The highest antiquity commences, according to Chinese writers, with Fu-hsi, B.C. 3322; and the lowest with Con- fucius in the middle of the sixth century B.C. Between these is the period of middle antiquity, extending a com- paratively short time, from the rise of the ATau dynasty, towards the close of the twelfth century B.C., to the Con- fucian era. According to this paragraph it was in this period that our Yi was made.
The 69th paragraph is still more definite in its testimony : — < Was it not in the last age of the Yin (dynasty), when the virtue of K&Vl had reached its highest point, and during the troubles be- tween king Wan and (the tyrant) £&u, that (the study of) the Yi began to flourish ? On this account the explanations (in the book) express (a feeling of) anxious apprehension, (and teach) how peril may be turned into security, and easy carelessness is sure to meet with overthrow.'
The dynasty of Yin was superseded by that of Kku in B.C. 1 122. The founder of Kan was he whom we call king Wan, though he himself never occupied the throne. The
* See in the 3o Khvran, under the 22nd year of duke A'wang (b.c. 672) ; the 1st year of Min (661); and in his 2nd year (660); twice in the 15th year of Hst (645) ; his 25th year (635) ; the 12th year of Hsiian (597) ; the 16th year of Slang (S75) ; the 9th year of Hsiang (564) ; his 25th year (548); the 5th year of Kh&o (537) ; his 7th year (535) i his 12th year (530) ; and the 9th year of Ai (486). . .
2 That is, the third as it appears farther on in this volume in two Sections. With the Chinese critics it forms the fifth and sixth Appendixes, or ' Wings,' as they are termed.
6 THE YI KING. CH. I.
troubles between him and the last sovereign of Yin reached their height in B. C. 1 143, when the tyrant threw him into prison in a place called Yu-li, identified as having been in the present district of Thang-yin, department of Kang-teh, province of Ho-nan. Wan was not kept long in confinement. His friends succeeded in appeasing the jealousy of his enemy, and securing his liberation in the following year. It follows that the Yi, so far as we owe it to king Wan, was made in the year B.C. 1143 or 1142, or perhaps that it was begun in the former year and finished in the latter1.
But the part which is thus ascribed to king Wan is only a small portion of the Yi. A larger share is attributed to his son Tan, known as the duke of Kku, and in it we have allusions to king Wu, who succeeded his father Wan, and was really the first sovereign of the dynasty of Ka.u2. There are passages, moreover, which must be understood of events in the early years of the next reign. But the duke of Kan died in the year B. C. 1105, the nth of king AT/zang. A few years then before that time, in the last decade of the twelfth century B.C., the Yi King, as it has come down to us, was complete 3.
5. We have thus traced the text of the Yi to its authors, the famous king Wan in the year 1143 B. c, and his equally famous son, the duke of Kau, in between thirty and The Yi is not f°rty years later. It can thus boast of a S^ the most great antiquity; but a general opinion has
the Chinese prevailed that it belonged to a period still books. more distant. Only two translations of it have been made by European scholars. The first was executed by Regis and other Roman Catholic missionaries in the begin- ning of last century, though it was given to the public only
1 Sze-ma Khien (History of the A'au Dynasty, p. 3) relates that, ' when he was confined in Yu-li, Wan increased the 8 trigrams to 64 hexagrams.'
2 E.g., hexagrams XVII, 1. 6; XLVI, 1. 4. Tan's authorship of the symbolism is recognised in the %o AAwan, b. c. 540.
3 P. Regis (vol. ii, p. 379) says : ' Vel nihil vel parum errabit qui dicet opus Yi King fuisse perfectum anno quinto AMng Wang, seu anno 1109 aut non ultra annum 1108, ante aerae Christianae initium; quod satis in rebus non omnino certis.' But the fifth year of king A'Mng was b.c. iiii.
CH. I. INTRODUCTION.
in 1834 by the late Jules Mohl, with a title commencing ' Y- King, antiquissimus Sinarum liber1.' The language of the other European translator of it, the Rev. Canon McClatchie of Shanghai, whose work appeared in 1876, is still more decided. The first sentence of his Introduction contains two very serious misstatements, but I have at present to do only with the former of them ; — that 'the Yi King is regarded by the Chinese with peculiar veneration, .... as being the most ancient of their classical writings.' The Shu is the oldest of the Chinese classics, and contains documents more than a thousand years earlier than king Wan. Several pieces of the Shih King are also older than anything in the Yi ; to which there can thus be assigned only the third place in point of age among the monuments of Chinese literature. Existing, however, about 3000 years ago, it cannot be called modern. Unless it be the books of the Pentateuch, Joshua, and Judges, an equal antiquity cannot be claimed for any portion of our Sacred Scriptures.
It will be well to observe here also how much older the The Text Text is than the Appendixes. Supposing
mt£th?r them to be the work of Confucius, though Appendixes, it will appear by and by that this assumption
1 It has been suggested that 'Antiquissimus Sinarum liber' may mean only ' A very ancient book of the Chinese,' but the first sentence of the Preface to the work commences : — ' Inter omnes constat Hbrorum Sinicorum, quos classicos vocant, primum et antiquissimum esse Y-King.'
At the end of M. De Guignes' edition of P.Gaubil's translation of the Shu, there is a notice of the Yi King sent in 1738 to the Cardinals of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide by M. Claude Visdelou, Bishop of Claudiopolis. M. De Guignes says himself, 'L' Y-King est le premier des Livres Canoniques des Chinois.' But P. Visdelou writes more guardedly and correctly: — 'Pour son anciennete, s'il en faut croire les Annales des Chinois, il a ete commence quarante-six siecles avant celui-ci. Si cela est vrai, comme toute la nation l'avoue unanimement, ou peut h, juste titre l'appeler le plus ancien des livres.' But he adds, 'Ce n'etoit pas proprement un livre. ni quelque chose d'approchant ; c'etoit une enigme tres obscure, et plus difficile cent fois a expliquer que celle du sphinx.'
P. Couplet expresses himself much to the same effect in the prolegomena (p. xviii) to the work called ' Confucius Sinarum Philosophus,' published at Paris in 1687 by himself and three other fathers of the Society of Jesus (Intor- cetta, Herdritch, and Rougemont). Both they and P. Visdelou give an example of a portion of the text and its interpretation, having singularly selected the same hexagram, — the 15th, on Humility.
8 THE YI KING. CH. i.
can be received as only partially correct, if indeed it be received at all, the sage could not have entered on their composition earlier than B.C. 483, 660 years later than the portion of the text that came from king Wan, and nearly 630 later than what we owe to the duke of Kslu. But during that long period of between six and seven centuries changes may have arisen in the views taken by thinking men of the method and manner of the Yi ; and I cannot accept the Text and the Appendixes as forming one work in any proper sense of the term. Nothing has prevented the full understanding of both, so far as parts of the latter can be understood, so much as the blending of them together, which originated with Pi Kih of the first Han dynasty. The common editions of the book have five of the Appendixes (as they are ordinarily reckoned) broken up and printed side by side with the Text; and the confusion thence arising has made it difficult, through the intermixture of incongruous ideas, for foreign students to lay hold of the meaning.
6. Native scholars have of course been well aware of the difference in time between the appearance of the Text and Labours of the Appendixes ; and in the Khang-hsi edition s toknfon °^ tnem the two are printed separately, the Yi. Only now and then, however, has any critic ventured to doubt that the two parts formed one homo- geneous whole, or that all the appendixes were from the style or pencil of Confucius. Hundreds of them have brought a wonderful and consistent meaning out of the Text ; but to find in it or in the Appendixes what is un- reasonable, or any inconsistency between them, would be to impeach the infallibility of Confucius, and stamp on themselves the brand of heterodoxy.
At the same time it is an unfair description of what . . , . they have accomplished to say, as has
An imperfect J * J
description of been done lately, that since the fires of their labours. ^^ «the foremost scholars of each gene- ration have edited the Text (meaning both the Text and the Appendixes), and heaped commentary after commen- tary upon it ; and one and all have arrived at the somewhat
CH. II. INTRODUCTION.
lame conclusion that its full significance is past finding out1.' A multitude of the native commentaries are of the highest value, and have left little to be done for the elucidation of the Text ; and if they say that a passage in an Appendix is 'unfathomable' or 'incalculable,' it is because their authors shrink from allowing, even to themselves, that the ancient sages intermeddled, and intermeddled unwisely, with things too high for them.
When the same writer who thus speaks of native
scholars goes on to say that 'in the same way a host
Erroneous Gf European Chinese scholars have made
acfaWs of C translations of the Yi, and have, if possible,
European made confusion worse confounded,' he only
scholars. shows how imperfectly he had made himself
acquainted with the subject. ' The host of European
Chinese scholars who have made translations of the Yi'
amount to two, — the same two mentioned by me above
on pp. 6, 7. The translation of Regis and his coadjutors 2
is indeed capable of improvement ; but their work as a
whole, and especially the prolegomena, dissertations, and
notes, supply a mass of correct and valuable information.
They had nearly succeeded in unravelling the confusion,
and solving the enigma of the Yi.
Chapter II.
The Subject-matter of the Text. The Lineal Figures and the Explanation of them.
1. Having described the Yi King as consisting of a text in explanation of certain lineal figures, and of appendixes to it, and having traced the composition of the former to
1 See a communication on certain new views about the Yi in the 'Times' of April 20, 1880; reprinted in Triibner's American, European, and Oriental Literary Record. New Series, vol. i, pp. 125-127.
2 Regis' coadjutors in the work were the Fathers Joseph de Mailla, who turned the Chinese into Latin word for word, and compared the result with the ManHu version of theYi; and Peter du Tartre, whose principal business was to supply the historical illustrations. Regis himself revised all their work and enlarged it, adding his own dissertations and notes. See Prospectus Operis, immediately after M. Mohl's Preface.
IO THE y! KING.
CH. II.
its authors in the twelfth century B. c, and that of the latter to between six and seven centuries later at least, I proceed to give an account of what we find in the Text, and how it is deduced from the figures.
The subject-matter of the Text may be briefly repre- sented as consisting of sixty- four short essays,
The Yi con- . ,,,.,, ,
sists of essays enigmatically and symbolically expressed, on
based onlmeal important themes, mostly of a moral, social,
and political character, and based on the same
number of lineal figures, each made up of six lines, some
of which are whole and the others divided.
The first two and the last two may serve for the present
as a specimen of those figures: : = iEE; and .: — — :,
— — 1. The Text says nothing about their origin and
formation. There they are. King Wan takes them up, one after another, in the order that suits himself, deter- mined, evidently, by the contrast in the lines of each successive pair of hexagrams, and gives their significance, as a whole, with some indication, perhaps, of the action to be taken in the circumstances which he supposes them to symbolise, and whether that action will be lucky or unlucky. Then the duke of Kau, beginning with the first or bottom line, expresses, by means of a symbolical or emblematical illustration, the significance of each line, with a similar indication of the good or bad fortune of action taken in connexion with it. The king's interpretation of the whole hexagram will be found to be in harmony with the combined significance of the six lines as interpreted by his son.
Both of them, no doubt, were familiar with the practice of divination which had prevailed in China for more than a thousand years, and would copy closely its methods and style. They were not divining themselves, but their words became oracles to subsequent ages, when men divined by the hexagrams, and sought by means of what was said under them to ascertain how it would be with them in the
1 See Plate I at the end of the Introduction.
CH. II. INTRODUCTION. I I
future, and learn whether they should persevere in or with- draw from the courses they were intending to pursue.
2. I will give an instance of the lessons which the lineal figures are made to teach, but before I do so, it will be
The origin of necessary to relate what is said of their origin, the lineal and of the rules observed in studying and gun interpreting them. For information on these
points we must have recourse to the Appendixes ; and in reply to the question by whom and in what way the figures were formed, the third, of which we made use in the last chapter, supplies us with three different answers.
(i) The nth paragraph of Section ii says : —
'Anciently, when the rule of all under heaven was in the hands of Pao-hsi, looking up, he contemplated the brilliant forms exhibited in the sky ; and looking down, he surveyed the patterns shown on the earth. He marked the ornamental appearances on birds and beasts, and the (different) suitabilities of the soil. Near at hand, in his own person, he found things for consideration, and the same at a distance, in things in general. On this he devised the eight lineal figures of three lines each, to exhibit fully the spirit-like and intelligent operations (in nature), and to classify the qualities of the myriads of things.'
Pao-hsi is another name for Fu-hsi, the most ancient personage who is mentioned with any definiteness in Chinese history, while much that is fabulous is current about him. His place in chronology begins in B.C. 3322, 5203 years ago. He appears in this paragraph as the deviser of the eight kwa or trigrams. The processes by which he was led to form them, and the purposes which he intended them to serve, are described, but in vague and general terms that do not satisfy our curiosity. The eight figures,
however, were t , — — . EE—EE, — :,
ZI ZZ, . and == ==; called k/iien, tui, li, /tan,
sun, khan, kan, and khwan; and representing heaven or the sky ; water, especially a collection of water as in a marsh or lake ; fire, the sun, lightning ; thunder ; wind and wood ; water, especially as in rain, the clouds, springs, streams in defiles, and the moon ; a hill or mountain ; and the earth. To each of these figures is assigned a certain attribute or quality which should be suggested by the
12 THE YI KING. CH. II.
natural object it symbolises ; but on those attributes we need not enter at present.
(ii) The 70th and 71st paragraphs of Section i give another account of the origin of the trigrams : —
'In (the system of) the Yi there is the Great Extreme, which produced the two I (Elementary Forms). These two Forms pro- duced the four Hsiang (Emblematic Symbols); which again produced the eight Kwa (or Trigrams). The eight Kwa served to determine the good and evil (issues of events), and from this determination there ensued the (prosecution of the) great business of life.'
The two elementary Forms, the four emblematic Symbols, and the eight Trigrams can all be exhibited with what
may be deemed certainty. A whole line ( ) and a
divided ( ) were the two 1. These two lines placed
over themselves, and each of them over the other, formed
the four Hsiang: -; : ; , The
same two lines placed successively over these Hsiang, formed the eight Kwa, exhibited above.
Who will undertake to say what is meant by ' the Great Extreme' which produced the two elementary Forms? Nowhere else does the name occur in the old Confucian literature. I have no doubt myself that it found its way into this Appendix in the fifth (?or fourth) century B.C. from a Taoist source. KiX Hsi, in his ' Lessons on the Yi for the Young,' gives for it the figure of a circle, — thus, O 5 observing thathe does so from the philosopher Kan (A.D.1017-1073)1, and cautioning his readers against thinking that such a representation came from Fu-hsi himself. To me the cir- cular symbol appears very unsuccessful. 'The Great Ex- treme,' it is said, 'divided and produced two lines, — a whole line and a divided line.' But I do not understand how this could be. Suppose it possible for the circle to unroll itself;
1 iiTau-jze, called KSto Tun-i and Ka.u Mau-shuh, and, still more commonly, from the rivulet near which was his favourite residence, Kau 'Lien-kki. Mayers (Chinese Reader's Manual, p. 23) says : — ' He held various offices of state, and was for many years at the head of a galaxy of scholars who sought for instruc- tion in matters of philosophy and research : — second only to K\x Hsi in literary repute.'
CH. II. INTRODUCTION.
— we shall have one long line, . If this divide
itself, we have two whole lines ; and another division of one of them is necessary to give us the whole and the divided lines of the lineal figures. The attempt to fashion the Great Extreme as a circle must be pronounced a failure.
But when we start from the two lines as bases, the formation of all the diagrams by a repetition of the process indicated above is easy. The addition to each of the trigrams of each of the two fundamental lines produces 1 6 figures of four lines; dealt with in the same way, these produce 32 figures of five lines ; and a similar operation with these produces the 64 hexagrams, each of which forms the subject of an essay in the text of the Yi. The lines increase in an arithmetical progression whose common difference is 1, and the figures in a geometrical progression whose common ratio is 2. This is all the mystery in the formation of the lineal figures ; this, I believe, was the process by which they were first formed ; and it is hardly necessary to imagine them to have come from a sage like Fu-hsi. The endowments of an ordinary man were sufficient for such a work. It was possible even to shorten the operation by proceeding at once from the trigrams to the hexagrams, according to what we find in Section i, paragraph 2 : —
'A strong and a weak line were manipulated together (till there were the 8 trigrams), and those 8 trigrams were added each to itself and to all the others (till the 64 hexagrams were formed).'
It is a moot question who first multiplied the figures
Who first from the trigrams universally ascribed to
^Set F{i-hsi to the 64 hexagrams of the Yi. The
to 64? more common view is that it was king Wan ;
but Ku Hsi, when he was questioned on the subject, rather
inclined to hold that Fu-hsi had multiplied them himself,
but declined to say whether he thought that their names
were as old as the figures themselves, or only dated from
the twelfth century B.C.1 I will not venture to controvert
1 A'u-gze JsT/nvan shu, or Digest of Works of .Ku-jze, chap. 26 (the first chapter on the Yi), art. 16.
14 THE YI KING. CH. II.
his opinion about the multiplication of the figures, but I must think that the names, as we have them now, were from king Wan.
No Chinese writer has tried to explain why the framers
stopped with the 64 hexagrams, instead of going on to
Why the 128 figures of 7 lines, 256 of 8, 512 of 9, and
noTcontirmed so on indefinitely. No reason can be given after 64. for it, but the cumbrousness of the result, and the impossibility of dealing, after the manner of king Wan, with such a mass of figures.
(iii) The 73rd paragraph of Section i, with but one para- graph between it and the two others which we have been considering, gives what may be considered a third account of the origin of the lineal figures : —
' Heaven produced the spirit-like things (the tortoise and the divining plant), and the sages took advantage of them. (The operations of) heaven and earth are marked by so many changes and transformations, and the sages imitated them (by means of the Yi). Heaven hangs out its (brilliant) figures, from which are seen good fortune and bad, and the sages made their emblematic inter- pretations accordingly. The Ho gave forth the scheme or map, and the Lo gave forth the writing, of (both of) which the sages took advantage.'
The words with which we have at present to do are — ' The Ho (that is, the Yellow River) gave forth the Map.' This map, according to tradition and popular belief, con- tained a scheme which served as a model to Fu-hsi in making his 8 trigrams. Apart from this passage in the Yi King, we know that Confucius believed in such a map, or spoke at least as if he did1. In the 'Record of Rites' it is said that 'the map was borne by a horse2;' and the thing, whatever it was, is mentioned in the Shu as still preserved at court, among other curiosities, in B.C. 1079 3. The story of it, as now current, is this, that 'a dragon- horse ' issued from the Yellow River, bearing on its back an arrangement of marks, from which Fu-hsi got the idea of the trigrams.
1 Analects IX, viii. 2 Li Ki VIII, iv, 16. 3 Shu V, xxii, 19.
CH. II. INTRODUCTION. 1 5
All this is so evidently fabulous that it seems a waste of time to enter into any details about it. My reason for doing so is a wish to take advantage of the map in giving such a statement of the rules observed in interpreting the figures as is necessary in this Introduction.
The map that was preserved, it has been seen, in the eleventh century B.C., afterwards perished, and though there
The form of was much speculation about its form from the the River Map. tjme that tjie restoration of the ancient classics was undertaken in the Han dynasty, the first delineation of it given to the public was in the reign of Hui 3ung of the Sung dynasty (a.d. uoi-1125)1. The most approved scheme of it is the following : —
OOOOOOO
|
• •••9 |
O O |
||
|
• |
O |
||
|
0 |
O |
• |
O |
|
0 |
OOO |
• |
O |
|
0 |
O |
• |
O O |
|
• •••• |
O |
||
|
O |
O |
It will be observed that the markings in this scheme are small circles, pretty nearly equally divided into dark and light. All of them whose numbers are odd are light circles, — Ji 3> 5> 7> 9 j and all °f them whose numbers are even are dark, — 2,4,6, 8, 10. This is given as the origin of what is said in paragraphs 49 and 50 of Section i about the numbers of heaven and earth. The difference in the colour of the circles occasioned the distinction of them and of what they
1 See Mayers' Chinese Reader's Manual, pp. 56, 57.
1 6 THE YI KING.
CH. II.
signify into Yin and Yang, the dark and the bright, the moon-like and the sun-like ; for the sun is called the Great Brightness (Thai Yang), and the moon the Great Ob- scurity (Thai Yin). I shall have more to say in the next chapter on the application of these names. Fu-hsi in making the trigrams, and king Wan, if it was he who first mul- tiplied them to the 64 hexagrams, found it convenient to
use lines instead of the circles : — the whole line ( )
for the bright circle (O), and the divided line ( ) for
the dark (®). The first, the third, and the fifth lines in a hexagram, if they are 'correct' as it is called, should all be whole, and the second, fourth, and sixth lines should all be divided. Yang lines are strong (or hard), and Yin lines are weak (or soft). The former indicate vigour and authority; the latter, feebleness and submis- sion. It is the part of the former to command ; of the latter to obey.
The lines, moreover, in the two trigrams that make up the hexagrams, and characterise the subjects which they represent, are related to one another by their position, and have their significance modified accordingly. The first line and the fourth, the second and the fifth, the third and the sixth are all correlates ; and to make the correlation perfect the two members of it should be lines of different qualities, one whole and the other divided. And, finally, the middle lines of the trigrams, the second and fifth, that is, of the hexagrams, have a peculiar value and force. If we have
a whole line ( ) in the fifth place, and a divided line
( ) in the second, or vice versa, the correlation is com- plete. Let the subject of the fifth be the sovereign or a commander-in-chief, according to the name and meaning of the hexagram, then the subject of the second will be an able minister or a skilful officer, and the result of their mutual action will be most beneficial and successful. It is specially important to have a clear idea of the name of the hexa- gram, and of the subject or state which it is intended to denote. The significance of all the lines comes thus to be of various application, and will differ in different hexagrams.
CH. ii. INTRODUCTION. I 7
I have thus endeavoured to indicate how the lineal figures were formed, and the principal rules laid down for the in- terpretation of them. The details are wearying, but my position is like that of one who is called on to explain an important monument of architecture, very bizarre in its conception and execution. A plainer, simpler structure might have answered the purpose better, but the architect had his reasons for the plan and style which he adopted. If the result of his labours be worth expounding, we must not grudge the study necessary to detect his processes of thought, nor the effort and time required to bring the minds of others into sympathy with his.
My own opinion, as I have intimated, is, that the second account of the origin of the trigrams and hexagrams is the true one. However the idea of the whole and divided lines arose in the mind of the first framer, we must start from them ; and then, manipulating them in the manner de- scribed, we arrive, very easily, at all the lineal figures, and might proceed to multiply them to billions. We cannot tell who devised the third account of their formation from the map or scheme on the dragon-horse of the Yellow River1. Its object, no doubt, was to impart a supernatural character to the trigrams and produce a religious veneration for them. It may be doubted whether the scheme as it is now fashioned be the correct one, — such as it was in the ATau dynasty. The paragraph where it is mentioned, goes on to say — ' The Lo produced the writing.' This writing was a scheme of the same character as the Ho map, but on the back of a tortoise, which emerged from the river Lo, and showed it to the Great Yii, when he was engaged in his celebrated work of draining off the waters of the flood, as related in the Shu. To the hero sage it sug- gested 'the Great Plan,' an interesting but mystical document of the same classic, ' a Treatise,' according to Gaubil, ' of Physics, Astrology, Divination, Morals, Politics, and Religion,' the great model for the government of the
1 Certainly it was not Confucius. See on the authorship of the Appen- dixes, and especially of Appendix III, in the next chapter.
[id] C
I 8 THE YI KING.
CH. II.
kingdom. The accepted representation of this writing is the following : —
OOOOOOOOO
O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O
O
o
But substituting numbers for the number of marks, we have
4 9 2
8 i 6
This is nothing but the arithmetical puzzle, in which the numbers from i to 9 are arranged so as to make 15 in whatever way we add them \ If we had the original form of ' the River Map,' we should probably find it a numerical trifle, not more difficult, not more supernatural, than this magic square.
3. Let us return to the Yi of Ka.u, which, as I have said above on p. 10, contains, under each of the 64 hexagrams, a brief essay of a moral, social, or political character, sym- bolically expressed.
1 For this dissection, which may also be called reductio ad absurd um, of the Lo writing, Iwas indebted first to P. Regis. See his Y-King I, p. 60. But Ku Hsi also has got it in the Appendix to his 'Lessons on the Yi for the Young.'
CH. II.
INTRODUCTION. 19
To understand it, it will be necessary to keep in mind
the circumstances in which king Wan addressed himself
to the study of the lineal figures. The kingdom, under
the sovereigns of the Yin or Shang dynasty,
Scouent0ryine was utterly disorganised and demoralised.
time of king j± brother of the reigning king thus described
Wan. . ...
its condition : — ' The house of Yin can no longer exercise rule over the land. The great deeds of our founder were displayed in a former age, but through mad addiction to drink we have destroyed the effects of his virtue. The people, small and great, are given to highway robberies, villainies, and treachery. The nobles and officers imitate one another in violating the laws. There is no certainty that criminals will be apprehended. The lesser people rise up and commit violent outrages on one another. The dynasty of Yin is sinking in ruin ; its condition is like that of one crossing a large stream, who can find neither ford nor bank V
This miserable state of the nation was due very much to
Th character the cliaracter and tyranny of the monarch.
eoCf the* ( When the son of Wan took the field against
monarch. ^ he thus denounced him in 'a Solemn
Declaration ' addressed to all the states : —
' Shau, the king of Shang, treats all virtue with contemptuous slight, and abandons himself to wild idleness and irreverence. He has cut himself off from Heaven, and brought enmity between him- self and the people. He cut through the leg-bones of those who were wading in a (winter-)morning ; he cut out the heart of the good man 2. His power has been shown in killing and murdering. His honours and confidence are given to the villainous and bad. He has driven from him his instructors and guardians. He has thrown to the winds the statutes and penal laws. He neglects the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth. He has discontinued the offerings
1 The Shu IV, xi, i, 2.
2 These were well-known instances of Shau's wanton cruelty. Observing some people one winter's day wading through a stream, he ordered their legs to be cut through at the shank-bone, that he might see the marrow which could so endure the cold. 'The good man' was a relative of his own, called Pl-kan. Having enraged Shau by the sternness of his rebukes, the tyrant ordered his heart to be cut out, that he might see the structure of a sage's heart.
C 2
20 THE YI KING. CH. II.
in the ancestral temple. He makes (cruel) contrivances of won- derful device and extraordinary ingenuity to please his wife 1. — God will no longer bear with him, but with a curse is sending down his ruin2.'
Such was the condition of the nation, such the character of the sovereign. Meanwhile in the west of the kingdom,
The lords of in a part of what is now the province of Shen- especialiy hsi, ^aY *ne principality of iTau, the lords of king Wan. which had long been distinguished for their ability and virtue. Its present chief, now known to us as king Wan, was isT/zang, who had succeeded to his father in B.C. 1 1 85. He was not only lord of Kau, but had come to be a sort of viceroy over a great part of the kingdom. Equally distinguished in peace and war, a model of all that was good and attractive, he conducted himself with re- markable wisdom and self-restraint. Princes and people would have rejoiced to follow him to attack the tyrant, but he shrank from exposing himself to the charge of being disloyal. At last the jealous suspicion of Shau was aroused. Wan, as has been already stated, was thrown into prison in B.C. 1 1 43, and the order for his death might arrive at any moment. Then it was that he occupied himself with the lineal figures.
The use of those figures — of the trigrams at least — had long been practised for the purposes of divination. The employment of the divining stalks is indicated in 'the Counsels of the Great Yu,' one of the earliest Books of the Shu 3, and a whole section in ' the Great Plan,' also a Book of the Shu, and referred to the times of the Hsia dynasty, describes how ' doubts were to be examined ' by means of the tortoise-shell and the stalks 4. Wan could not but be familiar with divination as an institution of his
1 We do not know what these contrivances were. But to please his wife, the infamous Ta-M, Shau had made 'the Heater' and 'the Roaster,' two instruments of torture. The latter was a copper pillar laid above a pit of burning charcoal, and made slippery ; culprits were forced to walk along it.
2 The Shu V, i, Sect, iii, 2, 3.
3 Shu II, ii, 18.. * ShuV, iv, 20-31. •
CH. II. INTRODUCTION. 2 I
country1. Possibly it occurred to him that nothing was Kin" Wan more likely to lull the suspicions of his in prison, dangerous enemy than the study of the
occupi<_d with ,..,., . r .
the lineal figures ; and if his keepers took notice of what figures. jie was doing, they would smile at his lines, and the sentences which he appended to them.
I like to think of the lord of Kku, when incarcerated in Yu-li, with the 64 figures arranged before him. Each hexa- gram assumed a mystic meaning, and glowed with a deep significance. He made it tell him of the qualities of various objects of nature, or of the principles of human society, or of the condition, actual and possible, of the kingdom. He named the figures, each by a term descriptive of the idea with which he had connected it in his mind, and then he pro- ceeded to set that idea forth, now with a note of exhortation, now with a note of warning. It was an attempt to restrict the follies of divination within the bounds of reason. The last but one of the Appendixes bears the name of Sequence of the Diagrams.' I shall have to speak of it more at length in the next chapter. I only remark at present that it deals, feebly indeed, with the names of the hexagrams in harmony with what I have said about them, and tries to account for the order in which they follow one another. It does all this, not critically as if it needed to be established, but in the way of expository statement, relating that about which there was no doubt in the mind of the author.
But all the work of prince K/iang or king Wan in the Yi thus amounts to no more than 64 short paragraphs.
Work of the We do not know what led his son Tan to
omhesqwate enter into his work and complete it as he lines. did. Tan was a patriot, a hero, a legislator,
and a philosopher. Perhaps he took the lineal figures in hand as a tribute of filial duty. What had been done for the whole hexagram he would do for each line, and make it clear that all the six lines ' bent one way their precious influence,' and blended their rays in the globe of light which his father had made each figure give forth.
1 In the Book of Poetry we have Wan's grandfather (Than-fii, III, i, ode 3. 3) divining, and his son (king Wu, III, i, ode 10. 7) doing the same.
2 2 THE YI KING.
But his method strikes us as singular. Each line seemed to become living, and suggested some phenomenon in nature or some case of human experience, from which the wisdom or folly, the luckiness or unluckiness, indicated by it could be inferred. It cannot be said that the duke carried out his plan in a way likely to interest any one but a hsien shang who is a votary of divination, and admires the style of its oracles. According to our notions, a framer of emblems should be a good deal of a poet, but those of the Yi only make us think of a dryasdust. Out of more than 350, the greater number are only grotesque. We do not recover from the feeling of disappointment till we remember that both father and son had to write ' according to the trick,' after the manner of diviners, as if this lineal augury had been their profession.
4. At length I come to illustrate what I have said on the subject-matter of the Yi by an example. It shall be the
The seventh treatment of the seventh hexagram (=_=),
which king Wan named Sze, meaning Hosts. The character is also explained as meaning ' multitudes ;' and in fact, in a feudal kingdom, the multitudes of the people were all liable to become its army, when occasion required, and the 'host' and the 'population' might be interchangeable terms. As Froude expresses it in the introductory chapter to his History of England, ' Every man was regimented somewhere.'
The hexagram Sze is composed of the two trigrams Khan ( — — =) and Khwan (= =), exhibiting waters collected on the earth ; and in other symbolisms besides that of the Yi, waters indicate assembled multitudes of men. The waters on which the mystical Babylon sits in the Apocalypse are explained as ' peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.' I do not positively affirm that it was by this interpretation of the trigrams that
king Wan saw in EEE EE the feudal hosts of his country
collected, for neither from him nor his son do we learn, by their direct affirmation, that they had any acquaintance with the trigrams of Fu-hsi. The name which he gave
CH. II. INTRODUCTION. 23
the figure shows, however, that he saw in it the feudal hosts in the field. How shall their expedition be conducted that it may come to a successful issue ?
Looking again at the figure, we see that it is made up of five divided lines, and of one undivided. The undivided line occupies the central place in the lower trigram, — the most important place, next to the fifth, in the whole hexagram. It will represent, in the language of the com- mentators, 'the lord of the whole figure;' and the parties represented by the other lines may be expected to be of one mind with him or obedient to him. He must be the leader of the hosts. If he were on high, in the fifth place, he would be the sovereign of the kingdom. This is what king Wan says : —
' Sze indicates how (in the case which it supposes), with firmness and correctness, and (a leader of) age and experience, there will be good fortune and no error.'
This is a good auspice. Let us see how the duke of Kkn expands it. He says : —
'The first line, divided, shows the host going forth according to the rules (for such a movement). If those (rules) be not good, there will be evil.'
We are not told what the rules for a military expedition were. Some commentators understand them of the reasons justifying the movement, — that it should be to repress and punish disorder and rebellion. Others, with more likelihood, take them to be the discipline or rules laid down to be observed by the troops. The line is divided, a weak line in a strong place, 'not correct:' this justifies the caution given in the duke's second sentence.
The Text goes on : —
' The second line, undivided, shows (the leader) in the midst of the hosts. There will be good fortune and no error. The king has thrice conveyed to him his charge.'
This does not need any amplification. The duke saw in the strong line the symbol of the leader, who enjoyed
24 THE YI KING. CH. II.
the full confidence of his sovereign, and whose authority- admitted of no opposition.
On the third line it is said : —
' The third line, divided, shows how the hosts may possibly have many commanders : — (in such a case) there will be evil.'
The third place is odd, and should be occupied by a strong line, instead of which we have a weak line in it. But it is at the top of the lower trigram, and its subject should be in office or activity. There is suggested the idea that its subject has vaulted over the second line, and wishes to share in the command and honour of him who has been appointed sole commander-in-chief. The lesson in the previous line is made of none effect. We have a divided authority in the expedition. The result can only be evil.
On the fourth line the duke wrote : —
' The fourth line, divided, shows the hosts in retreat : there is no error.'
The line is also weak, and victory cannot be expected ; but in the fourth place a weak line is in its correct position, and its subject will do what is right in his circumstances. He will retreat, and a retreat is for him the part of wisdom. When safely affected, where advance would be disastrous, a retreat is as glorious as victory.
Under the fifth line we read : —
' The fifth line, divided, shows birds in the fields which it is advantageous to seize (and destroy). There will be no error. If the oldest son lead the host, and younger men be (also) in com- mand, however firm and correct he may be, there will be evil.'
We have an intimation in this passage that only defensive war, or war waged by the rightful authority to put down rebellion and lawlessness, is right. The 'birds in the fields ' are emblematic of plunderers and invaders, whom it will be well to destroy. The fifth line symbolises the chief authority, but here he is weak or humble, and has given all power and authority to execute judgment into the hands of the commander-in-chief, who is the oldest son ; and in the subject of line 3 we have an example of the younger men who would cause evil if allowed to share his power.
CH. II. INTRODUCTION. 2$
Finally, on the sixth line the duke wrote : —
' The topmost line, divided, shows the great ruler delivering his charges (lo the men who have distinguished themselves), appointing some to be rulers of states, and others to be chiefs of clans. But small men should not be employed (in such positions).'
The action of the hexagram has been gone through. The expedition has been conducted to a successful end. The enemy has been subdued. His territories are at the disposal of the conqueror. The commander-in-chief has done his part well. His sovereign, ' the great ruler,' comes upon the scene, and rewards the officers who have been conspicuous by their bravery and skill, conferring on them rank and lands. But he is warned to have respect in doing so to their moral character. Small men, of ordinary or less than ordinary character, may be rewarded with riches and certain honours ; but land and the welfare of its population should not be given into the hands of any who are not equal to the responsibility of such a trust.
The above is a specimen of what I have called the essays that make up the Yi of A"au. So would king Wan and his son have had all military expeditions conducted in their country 3000 years ago. It seems to me that the princi- ples which they lay down might find a suitable application in the modern warfare of our civilised and Christian Europe. The inculcation of such lessons cannot have been without good effect in China during the long course of its history.
Sze is a fair specimen of its class. From the other 63 hexagrams lessons are deduced, for the most part equally good and striking. But why, it may be asked, why should they be conveyed to us by such an array of lineal figures, and in such a farrago of emblematic representations? It is not for the foreigner to insist on such a question. The Chinese have not valued them the less because of the antiquated dress in which their lessons are arrayed. Hun- dreds of their commentators have evolved and developed their meaning with a minuteness of detail and felicity of illustration that leave nothing to be desired. It is for foreign students of Chinese to gird up their loins for the
26 THE YI KING. CH. nr.
mastery of the book instead of talking about it as mysterious and all but inexplicable.
Granting, however, that the subject-matter of the Yi is what has been described, very valuable for its practical wisdom, but not drawn up from an abysmal deep of philosophical speculation, it may still be urged, ' But in all this we find nothing to justify the name of the book as Yi King, the " Classic of Changes." Is there not something more, higher or deeper, in the Appendixes that have been ascribed to Confucius, whose authority is certainly not in- ferior to that of king Wan, or the duke of Kan ?' To reply fully to this question will require another chapter.
Chapter III.
The Appendixes.
i. Two things have to be considered in this chapter: — the authorship of the Appendixes, and their contents. The Subjects of Text is ascribed, without dissentient voice, to the chapter. ]<jng Wan, the founder of the Kau dynasty, and his son Tan, better known as the duke of Kau ; and I have, in the preceding chapters, given reasons for accept- ing that view. As regards the portion ascribed to king Wan, the evidence of the third of the Appendixes and the statement of Sze-ma K/iien are as positive as could be desired ; and as regards that ascribed to his son, there is no ground for calling in question the received tradition. The Appendixes have all been ascribed to Confucius, though not with entirely the same unanimity. Perhaps I have rather intimated my own opinion that this view cannot be sustained. I have pointed out that, even if it be true, between six and seven centuries elapsed after the Text of the classic appeared before the Appendixes were written ; and I have said that, considering this fact, I cannot regard its two parts as a homo- geneous whole, or as constituting one book in the ordinary acceptation of that name. Before entering on the question of the authorship, a very brief statement of the nature and number of the Appendixes will be advantageous.
CH, III.
INTRODUCTION. 2J
2. They are reckoned to be ten, and called the Shih Y?
or ' Ten Wings.' They are in reality not so many ; but the
,T , Text is divided into two sections, called the
IN nmber and
nature of the Upper and Lower, or, as we should say, the Appendixes. firgt and secondj and tiien the commentary on
each section is made to form a separate Appendix. I have found it more convenient in the translation which follows to adopt a somewhat different arrangement.
My first Appendix, in two sections, embraces the first and second ' wings,' consisting of remarks on the paragraphs by king Wan in the two parts of the Text.
My second Appendix, in two sections, embraces the third and fourth 'wings,' consisting of remarks on the symbolism of the duke of Kau in his explanation of the individual lines of the hexagrams.
My third Appendix, in two sections, embraces the fifth and sixth 'wings,' which bear the name in Chinese of 'Appended Sentences,' and constitute what is called by many 'the Great Treatise.' Each wing has been divided into twelve chapters of very different length, and I have followed this arrangement in my sections. This is the most important Appendix. It has less of the nature of commentary than the previous four wings. While explaining much of what is found in the Text, it diverges to the origin of the trigrams, the methods pursued in the practice of divination, the rise of many arts in the progress of civilisation, and other subjects.
My fourth Appendix, also in two sections, forms the seventh ' wing.' It is confined to an amplification of the expositions of the first and second hexagrams by king Wan and his son, purporting to show how they may be interpreted of man's nature and doings.
My fifth Appendix is the eighth ' wing,' called ' Dis- courses on the Trigrams.' It treats of the different arrange- ment of these in respect of the seasons of the year and the cardinal points by Fu-hsi and king Wan. It contains also one paragraph, which might seem to justify the view that there is a mythology in the Yi.
My sixth Appendix, in two sections, is the ninth 'wing,' —
28 THE Yf KING.
CH. III.
' a Treatise on the Sequence of the Hexagrams/ intended to trace the connexion of meaning between them in the order in which they follow one another in the Text of king Wan.
My seventh Appendix is the tenth 'wing,' an exhibition of the meaning of the 64 hexagrams, not taken in succession, but promiscuously and at random, as they approximate to or are opposed to one another in meaning.
3. Such are the Appendixes of the Yi King. We have The author- to enquire next who wrote them, and espe- ship of the cially whether it be possible to accept the
Appendixes. * L r
dictum that they were all written by Con- fucius. If they have come down to us, bearing unmistake- ably the stamp of the mind and pencil of the great sage, we cannot but receive them with deference, not to say with reverence. If, on the contrary, it shall appear that with great part of them he had nothing to do, and that it is not certain that any part of them is from him, we shall feel entirely at liberty to exercise our own judgment on their contents, and weigh them in the balances of our reason.
None of the Appendixes, it is to be observed, bear the There is no superscription of Confucius. There is not a
superscription single sentence in any one of them ascribing
01 Confucius . °
on any of the it to him. I gave in the first chapter, on Appendixes. p 2? tne eariiest testimony that these treatises were produced by him. It is that of Sze-ma K/iien, whose 'Historical Records' must have appeared about the year 100 before our era. He ascribes all the Appendixes, except the last two of them, which he does not mention at all, expressly to Confucius ; and this, no doubt, was the common belief in the fourth century after the sage's death.
But when we lookfor ourselves into the third and fourth Appendixes — the fifth, sixth, and seventh 'wings' — both The third of wnich are specified by K/den, we find and fourth it impossible to receive his statement about evidently them. What is remarkable in both parts not from 0f the third is, the frequent occurrence of
Coniucius. *
the formula, ' The Master said,' familiar to all readers of the Confucian Analects. Of course, the
CH. in. INTRODUCTION. 29
sentence following that formula, or the paragraph covered by it, was, in the judgment of the writer, in the language of Confucius ; but what shall we say of the portions preceding and following? If he were the author of them, he would not thus be distinguishing himself from himself. The formula occurs in the third Appendix at least twenty-three times. Where we first meet with it, Ku Hsi has a note to the effect that ' the Appendixes having been all made by Confucius, he ought not to be himself introducing the formula, " The Master said;" and that it maybe presumed, wherever it occurs, that it is a subsequent addition to the Master's text.' One instance will show the futility of this attempt to solve the difficulty. The tenth chapter of Section i com- mences with the 59th paragraph : —
' In the Yi there are four things characteristic of the way of the sages. We should set the highest value on its explanations, to guide us in speaking ; on its changes, for the initiation of our move- ments ; on its emblematic figures, for definite action, as in the construction of implements; and on its prognostications, for our practice of divination.'-
This is followed by seven paragraphs expanding its statements, and we come to the last one of the chapter which says, — 'The Master said, "Such is the import of the statement that there are four things in the Yi, character- istic of the way of the sages." ' I cannot understand how it could be more fully conveyed to us that the compiler or compilers of this Appendix were distinct from the Master whose words they quoted, as it suited them, to confirm or illustrate their views.
In the fourth Appendix, again, we find a similar occurrence of the formula of quotation. It is much shorter than the third, and the phrase, ' The Master said,' does not come before us so frequently ; but in the thirty-six paragraphs that compose the first section we meet with it six times.
Moreover, the first three paragraphs of this Appendix are older than its compilation, which could not have taken place till after the death of Confucius, seeing it professes to quote his words. They are taken in fact from a narrative of the 3o iTwan, as having been spoken by a marchioness-
30 THE Vl KING.
CH. III.
dowager of Lii fourteen years before Confucius was born. To account for this is a difficult task for the orthodox critics among the Chinese literati. K\x Hsi attempts to perform it in this way : — that anciently there was the explanation given in these paragraphs of the four adjectives employed by king Wan to give the significance of the first hexa- gram ; that it was employed by Mu ATiang of Lu ; and that Confucius also availed himself of it, while the chronicler used, as he does below, the phraseology of 'The Master said,' to distinguish the real words of the sage from such ancient sayings. But who was 'the chronicler?' No one can tell. The legitimate conclusion from Kus criticism is, that so much of the Appendix as is preceded by 'The Master said ' is from Confucius, — so much and no more. I am thus obliged to come to the conclusion that Confucius had nothing to do with the composition of these two Ap- pendixes, and that they were not put together till after his death. I have no pleasure in differing from the all but unanimous opinion of Chinese critics and commentators. What is called 'the destructive criticism 'has no attractions for me ; but when an opinion depends on the argument adduced to support it, and that argument turns out to be of no weight, you can no longer set your seal to this, that the opinion is true. This is the position in which an examination of the internal evidence as to the authorship of the third and fourth Appendixes has placed me. Confu- cius could not be their author. This conclusion weakens the „ . , confidence which we have been accustomed
Bearing of .
the conclusion to place in the view that ' the ten wings were as^°fthVi!lird to be ascribed to him unhesitatingly. The
and fourth on ° J
the other view has broken down in the case of three ppen of them ; — possibly there is no sound reason
for holding the Confucian origin of the other seven.
I cannot henceforth maintain that origin save with bated breath. This, however, can be said for the first two Appendixes in my arrangement, that there is no evidence against their being Confucian like the fatal formula, ' The Master said.' So it is with a good part of my fifth Appendix ; but the concluding paragraphs of it, as well as the seventh
CH. III. INTRODUCTION. 3 1
Appendix, and the sixth also in a less degree, seem too trivial to be the production of the great man. As a translator of every sentence both in the Text and the Appendixes, I confess my sympathy with P. Regis, when he condenses the fifth Appendix into small space, holding that the 8th and following paragraphs are not worthy to be translated. ' They contain,' he says, ' nothing but the mere enumeration of things, some of which may be called Yang, and others Yin, without any other cause for so thinking being given. Such a method of procedure would be unbecoming any philosopher, and it cannot be denied to be unworthy of Confucius, the chief of philosophers V
I could not characterise Confucius as ' the chief of phi- losophers,' though he was a great moral philosopher, and has been since he went out and in among his disciples, the best teacher of the Chinese nation. But from the first time my attention was directed to the Yi, I regretted that he had stooped to write the parts of the Appendixes now under remark. It is a relief not to be obliged to receive them as his. Even the better treatises have no other claim to that character besides the voice of tradition, first heard nearly 400 years after his death.
4. I return to the Appendixes, and will endeavour to give a brief, but sufficient, account of their contents.
The first bears in Chinese the name ofThwan AT wan, 'Treatise on the Thwan,' thwan being the name given The first to tne paragraphs in which Wan expresses Appendix. his sense of the significance of the hexagrams. He does not tell us why he attaches to each hexagram such and such a meaning, nor why he predicates good fortune or bad fortune in connexion with it, for he speaks oracularly, after the manner of a diviner. It is the object of the writer of this Appendix to show the processes of king Wans thoughts in these operations, how he looked at the component trigrams with their symbolic intimations, their attributes and qualities, and their linear composition, till he could not think otherwise of the figures than he did. All these considerations are sometimes taken into account,
1 Regis' Y-King. vol. ii, p. 576.
32
THE Yl KING.
CH. in.
and sometimes even one of them is deemed sufficient. In this way some technical characters appear which are not found in the Text. The lines, for instance, and even whole trigrams are distinguished as kang and ^au, 'hard or strong' and 'weak or soft.' The phrase Kwei-shan, 'spirits,' or 'spiritual beings/ occurs, but has not its physical signification of 'the contracting and expanding energies or operations of nature.' The names Yin and Yang, mentioned above on pp. 15, 16, do not present themselves.
I delineated, on p. 11, the eight trigrams of Fu-hsi, and gave their names, with the natural objects they are said to represent, but did not mention the attributes, the virtu tes, ascribed to them. Let me submit here a table of them, with those qualities, and the points of the compass to which they are referred. I must do this because king Wan made a change in the geographical arrangement of them, to which reference is made perhaps in his text and certainly in this treatise. He also is said to have formed an entirely different theory as to the things represented by the trigrams, which it will be well to give now, though it belongs properly to the fifth Appendix.
Ffj-HSl's TRIGRAMS.
|
I |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 khwan |
|
— — . — — |
kan |
||||||
|
£Aien |
tui |
U |
ian |
sun |
khan |
||
|
0 43 6? ^ % M X |
<u O |
c '3 a <u — 43 W |
c H |
0 0 C <u 43 H |
Water, as in rain, clouds, springs, streams, and defiles. The moon. |
.5 '8 d 0 S 0 3 |
43* u 43 H |
|
s. |
S.E. |
E. |
N.E. |
s.w. |
W. |
N.W. |
N. |
|
c u .5 p- u |
Pleasure ; complacent satisfaction. |
Sii c 0 $1 |
3 fciO 0 •S p- 0 g> |
iC <3 IS 7— <u ^ P, |
>> 3 0 *n V Ph |
0 ■5 '-5 ... d mi; .S rt |
0 13 c O cti 43 P- =5 u |
CH. III.
INTRODUCTION.
33
The natural objects and phenomena thus represented are found up and down in the Appendixes. It is impossible to believe that the several objects were assigned to the several figures on any principles of science, for there is no indication of science in the matter : it is difficult even to suppose that they were assigned on any comprehensive scheme of thought. Why are tui and khan used to represent water in different conditions, while khan, more- over, represents the moon? How is sun set apart to represent things so different as wind and wood? At a very early time the Chinese spoke of ' the five elements,' meaning water, fire, wood, metal, and earth ; but the tri- grams were not made to indicate them, and it is the general opinion that there is no reference to them in the Yi *.
Again, the attributes assigned to the trigrams are learned mainly from this Appendix and the fifth. We do not readily get familiar with them, nor easily accept them all. It is im- possible for us to tell whether they were a part of the jargon of divination before king Wan, or had grown up between his time and that of the author of the Appendixes.
King Wan altered the arrangement of the trigrams so that not one of them should stand at the same point of the compass as in the ancient plan. He made them also representative of certain relations among themselves, as if they composed a family of parents and children. It will be sufficient at present to give a table of his scheme.
KING WAN S TRIGRAMS.
|
I |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 khwan |
|
ll |
sun |
Hn |
kan |
khan |
Mien |
tui |
|
|
_ t-.' ■-3 <o <U 3 |
14 'O t/J O S |
a o <L> O |
DO V tD • C c O M |
a o in a o o K CO |
y o 3 |
||
|
S. |
S.E. |
E. |
N.E. |
N. |
N.W. |
w. |
S.W. |
[16]
1 See Ka.o Yi's Hai Yu 3hung Khao, Book I, art. 3 (1790). D
34 THE YI KING. CH. III.
There is thus before us the apparatus with which the writer of the Appendix accomplishes his task. Let me select one of the shortest instances of his work. The
fourteenth hexagram is =====> called Ta Yu, and meaning ' Possessing in great abundance.' King Wan saw in it the symbol of a government prosperous and realising all its proper objects ; but all that he wrote on it was 'Ta Yu (indicates) great progress and success.' Unfolding that view of its significance, the Appendix says :• —
' In Ta Yu the weak (line) has the place of honour, is grandly central, and (the strong lines) above and below respond to it. Hence comes its name of " Possession of what is great." The attributes (of its constituent trigrams, /c/iien and li) are strength and vigour, elegance and brightness. (The ruling line in it) re- sponds to (the ruling line in the symbol of) heaven, and its actings are (consequently all) at the proper times. Thus it is that it is said to indicate great progress and success.'
In a similar way the paragraphs on all the other 63 hexagrams are gone through ; and, for the most part, with success. The conviction grows upon the student that the writer has on the whole apprehended the mind of king Wan.
I stated, on p. 32, that the name kwei-shan occurs The name m this Appendix. It has not yet, however,
Kwei-shan. received the semi-physical, semi-metaphysical signification which the comparatively modern scholars of the Sung dynasty give to it. There are two passages where it is found; — the second paragraph on A^/nen, the fifteenth hexagram, and the third on Fang, the fifty-fifth. By consulting them the reader will be able to form an opinion for himself. The term kwei denotes specially the human spirit disembodied, and shan is used for spirits whose seat is in heaven. I do not see my way to translate them, when used binomially together, otherwise than by spiritual beings or spiritual agents.
K\x Hsi once had the following question suggested by the second of these passages put to him : — 'Kwei-shan is a name for the traces of making and transformation ; but when it is said that (the interaction of) heaven and earth
CH. III.
INTRODUCTION. 35
is now vigorous and abundant, and now dull and void, growing and diminishing according to the seasons, that constitutes the traces of making and transformation ; why- should the writer further speak of the Kwei-shan? ' He replied, 'When he uses the style of "heaven and earth," he is speaking of the result generally ; but in ascribing it to the Kwei-shan, he is representing the traces of their effective interaction, as if there were men (that is, some personal agency) bringing it about V This solution merely explains the language away. When we come to the fifth Appendix, we shall understand better the views of the period when these treatises were produced.
The single character s h a n is used in explaining the t h w a n on K wan, the twentieth hexagram, where we read : —
'In Kwan we see the spirit-like way of heaven, through which the four seasons proceed without error. The sages, in accordance with (this) spirit-like way, laid down their instructions, and all under heaven yield submission to them.'
The author of the Appendix delights to dwell on the changing phenomena taking place between heaven and earth, and which he attributes to their interaction ; and he was penetrated evidently with a sense of the harmony between the natural and spiritual worlds. It is this sense, indeed, which vivifies both the thwan and the explanation of them.
5. We proceed to the second Appendix, which professes to do for the duke of TTau's symbolical exposition of the several lines what the Thwan AT wan does for the entire
The second figures. The work here, however, is accom-
Appendix. pHshed with less trouble and more briefly. The whole bears the name of Hsiang i^wan, 'Treatise on the Symbols ' or ' Treatise on the Symbolism (of the Yi).'
1 See the ' Collected Comments ' on hexagram 55 in the Khang-hsi edition of the Yi (App. I). 'The traces of making and transformation' mean the ever- changing phenomena of growth and decay. Our phrase 'Vestiges of Creation ' might be used to translate the Chinese characters. See the remarks of the late Dr. Medhurst on the hexagrams 15 and 55 in his ' Dissertation on the Theology of the Chinese,' pp. 107-112. In hexagram 15, Canon McClatchie for kwei- shan gives ' gods and demons ; ' in hexagram 55, ' the Demon-gods.'
D 2
36 THE YI KING. CH. III.
If there were reason to think that it came in any way from Confucius, I should fancy that I saw him sitting with a select class of his disciples around him. They read the duke's Text column after column, and the master drops now a word or two, and now a sentence or two, that illuminate the meaning. The disciples take notes on their tablets, or store his remarks in their memories, and by and by they write them out with the whole of the Text or only so much of it as is necessary. Whoever was the original lecturer, the Appendix, I think, must have grown up in this way.
It would not be necessary to speak of it at greater length, if it were not that the six paragraphs on the symbols of the duke of Kau are always preceded by one which is called 'the Great Symbolism,' and treats of the trigrams composing the hexagram, how they go together to form the six-lined figure, and how their blended meaning appears in the institutions and proceedings of the great men and kings of former days, and of the superior men of all time. The paragraph is for the most part, but by no means always, in harmony with the explanation of the hexagram by king Wan, and a place in the Thwan iTwan would be more appropriate to it. I suppose that, because it always begins with the mention of the two symbolical trigrams, it is made, for the sake of the symmetry, to form a part of the treatise on the Symbolism of the Yi.
I will give a few examples of the paragraphs of the Great Symbolism. The first hexagram =EEE is formed
The Great by a repetition of the trigram Kh i e n
Symbolism, representing heaven, and it is said on it : — ' Heaven in its motion (gives) the idea of strength. The superior man, in accordance with this, nerves himself to ceaseless activity.'
The second hexagram = = is formed by a repetition of the trigram Khwan =E =, representing the earth, and it is said on it: — 'The capacious receptivity of the earth is what is denoted by Khwan. The superior man, in accordance with this, with his large virtue, supports men and things.'
CH. III. INTRODUCTION. 37
The forty-fourth hexagram, called Kau . is formed
by the trigrams Sun , representing wind, and
AV/ien , representing heaven or the sky, and it is
said on it: — '(The symbol of) wind, beneath that of the sky, forms Kau. In accordance with this, the sovereign distributes his charges, and promulgates his announce- ments throughout the four quarters (of the kingdom).'
The fifty-ninth hexagram, called Hwan == =, is formed by the trigrams Khan — — . representing water, and
Sun , representing wind, and it is said on it: —
' (The symbol of) water and (that of wind) above it form Hwan. The ancient kings, in accordance with this, pre- sented offerings to God, and established the ancestral temple.' The union of the two trigrams suggested to king Wan the idea of dissipation in the alienation of men from the Supreme Power, and of the minds of parents from their children ; a condition which the wisdom of the ancient kings saw could best be met by the influences of religion.
One more example. The twenty-sixth hexagram, called Ta K/iix == =, is formed of the trigrams K/iien, repre- senting heaven or the sky, and Kan ==""==, representing a mountain, and it is said on it : — ' (The symbol of) heaven in the midst of a mountain forms Ta K/iu. The superior man, in accordance with this, stores largely in his memory the words of former men and their conduct, to subserve the accumulation of his virtue.' We are ready to exclaim and ask, ' Heaven, the sky, in the midst of a mountain ! Can there be such a thing?' and ATu Hsi will tell us in reply, 1 No, there cannot be such a thing in reality ; but you can conceive it for the purpose of the symbolism.'
From this and the other examples adduced from the Great Symbolism, it is clear that, so far as its testimony bears on the subject, the trigrams of Fu-hsi did not receive their form and meaning with a deep intention that they should serve as the basis of a philosophical scheme con- cerning the constitution of heaven and earth and all that
THE YI KING. CH. III.
is in them. In this Appendix they are used popularly, just as one
' Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.'
The writer moralises from them in an edifying manner. There is ingenuity, and sometimes instruction also, in what he says, but there is no mystery. Chinese scholars and gentlemen, however, who have got some little acquaintance with western science, are fond of saying that all the truths of electricity, heat, light, and other branches of European physics, are in the eight trigrams. When asked how then they and their countrymen have been and are ignorant of those truths, they say that they have to learn them first from western books, and then, looking into the Yi, they see that they were all known to Confucius more than 2000 years ago. The vain assumption thus manifested is childish ; and until the Chinese drop their hallucination about the Yi as containing all things that have ever been dreamt of in all philosophies, it will prove a stumbling-block to them, and keep them from entering on the true path of science.
6. We go on to the third Appendix in two sections, being the fifth and sixth 'wings,' and forming what is called 'The The third Great Treatise.' It will appear singular to the Appendix. reader, as it has always done to myself, that neither in the Text, nor in the first two Appendixes, does the character called Yi, which gives its name to the classic, once appear. It is the symbol of ' change,' and is formed from the character for ' the sun ' placed over that for ' the moon V As the sun gives place to the moon, and the moon to the sun, so is change always proceeding in the phenomena of nature and the experiences of society. We meet with the character nearly fifty times in this Appendix; — applied most commonly to the Text of our classic, so that Yi King or Yi Shu is 'the Classic or Book of Changes.' It is also applied often to the changes in the lines of the
Mj = H , the sun, placed over ty], a form of the old JT) (= Ef ), the
CH. in. INTRODUCTION. 39
figures, made by the manipulations of divination, apart from any sentence or oracle concerning them delivered by king Wan or his son. There is therefore the system of the Yi as well as the book of the Yi. The definition of the name which is given in one paragraph will suit them both : — ' Production and reproduction is what is called (the process of) change1.' In nature there is no vacuum. When anything is displaced, what displaces it takes the empty room. And in the lineal figures, the strong and the weak lines push each other out.
Now the remarkable thing asserted is, that the
Harmony be- changes in the lines of the figures and
tween the lines ^ changes of external phenomena show
ever changing tl1^ *-"«*"& r
and the changes a wonderful harmony and concurrence. We
in external , #
phenomena. read •
' The Yi was made on a principle of accordance with heaven and earth, and shows us therefore, without rent or confusion, the course (of things) in heaven and earth 2.'
« There is a similarity between the sage and heaven and earth ; and hence there is no contrariety in him to them. His knowledge embraces all things, and his course is intended to be helpful to all under the sky ; and therefore he falls into no error. He acts according to the exigency of circumstances, without being carried away by their current ; he rejoices in Heaven, and knows its ordi- nations ; and hence he has no anxieties. He rests in his own (present) position, and cherishes the spirit of generous benevolence; and hence he can love (without reserve)3.'
' (Through the Yi) he embraces, as in a mould or enclosure, the transformations of heaven and earth without any error ; by an ever- varying adaptation he completes (the nature of) all things without exception ; he penetrates to a knowledge of the course of day and night (and all other correlated phenomena). It is thus that his operation is spirit-like, unconditioned by place, while the changes (which he produces) are not restricted to any form.'
One more quotation : —
« The sage was able to survey all the complex phenomena under the sky. He then considered in his mind how they could be
» III, i, 29 (chap. 5. 6). 2 ni, i, 20 (chap. 4. 1).
3 III, i, 22.
40 THE YI KING. CH. ill.
figured, and (by means of the diagrams) represented their material forms and their character V
All that is thus predicated of the sage, or ancient sages, though the writer probably had Fu-hsi in his mind, is more than sufficiently extravagant, and reminds us of the language in ' the Doctrine of the Mean,' that ' the sage, able to assist the transforming and nourishing powers of heaven and earth, may with heaven and earth form a ternion2.'
I quoted largely, in the second chapter, from this Ap- pendix the accounts which it gives of the formation of the lineal figures. There is no occasion to return to that subject. Let us suppose the figures formed. They seem to have . . the significance, when looked at from certain
Divination. ... , . , . , , .
points ot view, which have been determined for us by king Wan and the duke of A'au. But this does not amount to divination. How can the lines be made to serve this purpose ? The Appendix professes to tell us.
Before touching on the method which it describes, let
me observe that divination was practised in China from
a very early time. I will not say 5,200 years
divination. a&°' m the days of Fu-hsi, for I cannot
repress doubts of his historical personality ;
but as soon as we tread the borders of something like
credible history, we find it existing. In the Shu King, in
a document that purports to be of the twenty-third century
B.C.3, divination by means of the tortoise-shell is mentioned ;
and somewhat later we find that method continuing, and
also divination by the lineal figures, manipulated by means
of the stalks of a plant 4, the Ptarmica Sibirica5, which
is still cultivated on and about the grave of Confucius, where
I have myself seen it growing.
The object of the divination, it should be acknowledged,
Object of the was not to discover future events absolutely,
divination. as jf they cou\d be known beforehand 6, but
1 III, i, 38 (chap. 8. 1). 2 Doctrine of the Mean, chap. xxii.
3 The SM II, ii, 18. * The Shu V, iv, 20, 31.
5 See Williams' Syllabic Dictionary on the character £&£■
6 Canon McClatchie (first paragraph of his Introduction) says : — ' The Yi is regarded by the Chinese with peculiar veneration .... as containing a mine of
CH. III.
INTRODUCTION. 41
to ascertain whether certain schemes, and conditions of events contemplated by the consulter, would turn out luckily or unluckily. But for the actual practice the stalks of the plant were necessary ; and I am almost afraid to write that this Appendix teaches that they were produced by Heaven of such a nature as to be fit for the purpose. ' Heaven,' it says, in the 73rd paragraph of Section i, quoted above on p. 14, 'Heaven produced the spirit-like things.' The things were the tortoise and the plant, and in paragraph 68, the same quality of being shan, or 'spirit-like,' is ascribed to them. Occasionally, in the field of Chinese literature, we meet with doubts as to the efficacy of divina- tion, and the folly of expecting any revelation of the character of the future from an old tortoise-shell and a handful of withered twigs a ; but when this Appendix was made, the writer had not attained to so much common sense. The stalks were to him 'spirit-like,' possessed of
knowledge, which, if it were possible to fathom it thoroughly, would, in their estimation, enable the fortunate possessor to foretell all future events.' This misstatement does not surprise me so much as that Morrison, generally accurate on such points, should say (Dictionary, Part II, i, p. 1020, on the character^) :— ' Of the odd and even numbers, the k wa or lines of Fu-hsi are the visible signs ; and it being assumed that these signs answer to the things signified, and from a knowledge of all the various combinations of numbers, a knowledge of all possible occurrences in nature may be previously known.' The whole article from which I take this sentence is inaccurately written. The language of the Appendix on the knowledge of the future given by the use of the Yi is often incautious, and a cursory reader may be misled ; to a careful student, however, the meaning is plain. The second passage of the Shu, referred to above, treats of ' the Examination of Doubts,' and concludes thus :— ' When the tortoise-shell and the stalks are both opposed to the views of men, there will be good fortune in stillness, and active operations will be unlucky.'
1 A remarkable instance is given by Liu K\ (of the Ming dynasty, in the fifteenth century) in a story about Shao Phing, who had been marquis of Tung- ling in the time of 3hin, but was degraded under Han. Having gone once to Sze-ma Ki-ku, one of the most skilful diviners of the country, and wishing to know whether there would be a brighter future for him, Sze-ma said, ' Ah ! is it the way of Heaven to love any (partially)? Heaven loves only the virtuous. What intelligence is possessed by spirits? They are intelligent (only) by their connexion with men. The divining stalks are so much withered grass ; the tortoise-shell is a withered bone. They are but things, and man is more intelligent than things. Why not listen to yourself instead of seeking (to learn) from things?' The whole piece is in many of the collections of Ku Wan, or Elegant Writing.
42 THE YI KING. CH. III.
a subtle and invisible virtue that fitted them for use in divining.
Given the stalks with such virtue, the process of mani- Formation pulating them so as to form the lineal figures
of the lineal [s described (Section i, chap, q, parr. 40-^8),
figures by the . \ r 7,r 17 J "
divining but it will take the student much time and stalks. thought to master the various operations. Forty-nine stalks were employed, which were thrice ma- nipulated for each line, so that it took, eighteen manipu- lations to form a hexagram. The lines were determined by means of the numbers derived from the River Map or scheme. Odd numbers gave strong or undivided lines, and even numbers gave the weak or divided. An important part was played in combining the lines, and forming the hexagrams by the four emblematic symbols, to which the numbers 9, 8, 7, 6 were appropriated1. The figures having been formed, recourse was had for their interpretation to the thwan of king Wan, and the em- blematic sentences of the duke of ATau. This was all the part which numbers played in the divination by the Yi, helping the operator to make up his lineal figure. An analogy has often been asserted between the numbers of the Yi and the numbers of Pythagoras ; and certainly we might make ten, and more than ten, antinomies from these Appendixes in startling agreement with the ten principia of the Pythagoreans. But if Aristotle was correct in holding that Pythagoras regarded numbers as entities, and main- tained that Number was the Beginning (Principle, ap\)j) of things, the cause of their material existence, and of their
1 These numbers are commonly derived from the River Scheme, in the outer sides of which are the corresponding marks : — •••••• opposite to • • ;
0000000, opposite too; ••••••••, opposite to ••••; and ooooooooo,
opposite to o o o. Hence the number 6 is assigned to ZZZ ^TT, 7 to ',
8 to ~~ ~ — and 9 to ' Hence also, in connexion with the formation
of the figures by manipulation of the stalks, 9 becomes the number symbolical of the undivided line, as representing Kkien -. and 6 of the divided
line, as representing Khwan — ■ . But the late delineation of the map,
as given on p. 15, renders all this uncertain, so far as the scheme is concerned. The numbers of the hsiang, however, may have been fixed, must have been fixed indeed, at an early period.
CH. III. INTRODUCTION. 43
modifications and different states, then the doctrine of the philosopher of Samos was different from that of the Yi \ in which numbers come in only as aids in divining to form the hexagrams. Of course all divination is vain, nor is the method of the Yi less absurd than any other. The Chinese themselves have given it up in all circles above those of the professional quacks, and yet their scholars continue to maintain the unfathomable science and wisdom of these appended treatises !
It is in this Appendix that we first meet with the
The names names y'ln an^ yang2, of which I have
Yin and spoken briefly on pp. 15, 16. Up to this point,
Yang. . . r . , r ,
instead of them, the names for the two elementary forms of the lines have been kang and zau, which I have translated by ' strong and weak,' and which also occur here ten times. The following attempt to explain these different names appears in the fifth Appen- dix, paragraph 4 : —
' Anciently when the sages made the Yi, it was with the design that its figures should be in conformity with the principles under- lying the natures (of men and things), and the ordinances appointed (for them by Heaven). With this view they exhibited in them the way of heaven, calling (the lines) yin and yang; the way of earth, calling them the strong (or hard) and the weak (or soft) ; and the way of man, under the names of benevolence and righteous- ness. Each (trigram) embraced those three Powers, and being repeated, its full form consisted of six lines.'
However difficult it may be to make what is said here intelligible, it confirms what I have affirmed of the signi- ficance of the names yin and yang, as meaning bright and dark, derived from the properties of the sun and moon. We may use for these adjectives a variety of others, such as active and inactive, masculine and feminine, hot and cold, more or less analogous to them ; but there arise the important questions, — Do we find yang and yin not merely used to indicate the quality of what they are applied
1 See the account of Pythagoras and his philosophy in Lewes' History of Philosophy, pp. 18-38 (1871).
2 See Section i, 24, 32, 35 ; Section ii, 2S, 29, 30, 35.
44 THE YI KING. CH. in.
to, but at the same time with substantival force, denoting what has the quality which the name denotes ? Had the doctrine of a primary matter of an ethereal nature, now expanding and showing itself full of activity and power as yang, now contracting and becoming weak and inactive as yin: — had this doctrine become matter of speculation when this Appendix was written ? The Chinese critics and commentators for the most part assume that it had. P. Regis, Dr. Medhurst, and other foreign Chinese scholars repeat their statements without question. I have sought in vain for proof of what is asserted. It took more than a thousand years after the closing of the Yi to fashion in the Confucian school the doctrine of a primary matter. We do not find it fully developed till the era of the Sung dynasty, and in our eleventh and twelfth centuries1. To find it in the Yi is the logical, or rather illogical, error of putting ' the last first.' Neither creation nor cosmogony was before the mind of the author whose work I am analysing. His theme is the Yi, — the ever-changing phe- nomena of nature and experience. There is nothing but this in the 'Great Treatise' to task our powers; — nothing deeper or more abstruse.
1 As a specimen of what the ablest Sung scholars teach, I may give the remarks (from the 'Collected Comments') of A"u A'an (of the same century as Ku Hsi, rather earlier) on the 4th paragraph of Appendix V : — ' In the Yi there is the Great Extreme. When we speak of the yin and yang, we mean the air (or ether) collected in the Great Void. When we speak of the Hard and Soft, we mean that ether collected, and formed into substance. Benevolence and righteousness have their origin in the great void, are seen in the ether sub- stantiated, and move under the influence of conscious intelligence. Looking at the one origin of all things we speak of their nature ; looking at the endowments given to them, we speak of the ordinations appointed (for them). Looking at them as (divided into) heaven, earth, and men, we speak of their principle. The three are one and the same. The sages wishing that (their figures) should be in conformity with the principles underlying the natures (of men and things) and the ordinances appointed (for them), called them (now) yin and yang, (now) the hard and the soft, (now) benevolence and righteousness, in order thereby to exhibit the ways of heaven, earth, and men; it is a view of them as related together. The trigrams of the Yi contain the three Powers ; and when they are doubled into hexagrams, there the three Powers unite and are one. But there are the changes and movements of their (several) ways, and therefore there are separate places for the yin and yang, and reciprocal uses of the hard and the soft.'
CH. III. INTRODUCTION. 45
As in the first Appendix, so in this, the namekwei-shan
occurs twice ; in paragraghs 21 and 50 of Section i. In the
The name former instance, each part of the name has
Kwei-shan. j|-s significance. Kwei denotes the animal soul or nature, and Shan, the intellectual soul, the union of which constitutes the living rational man. I have trans- lated them, it will be seen, by ' the a n i m a and the animus/ Canon McClatchie gives for them 'demons and gods ;' and Dr. Medhurst said on the passage, 'The kwei-shans are evidently the expanding and contracting principles of human life The kwei-shans are brought about by the dis- solution of the human frame, and consist of the expanding and ascending shan, which rambles about in space, and of the contracted and shrivelled kwei, which reverts to earth and nonentity V
This is pretty much the same view as my own, though I would not here use the phraseology of 'expanding and contracting.' Canon McClatchie is consistent with himself, and renders the characters by 'demons and gods.'
In the latter passage it is more difficult to determine the exact meaning. The writer says, that 'by the odd numbers assigned to heaven and the even numbers assigned to earth, the changes and transformations are effected, and the spirit-like agencies kept in movement ; ' meaning that by means of the numbers the spirit-like lines might be formed on a scale sufficient to give a picture of all the changing phenomena, taking place, as if by a spiritual agency, in nature. Medhurst contents himself on it with giving the explanation of K\x Hsi, that 'the kwei-shans refer to the contractions and expandings, the recedings and approachings of the productive and completing powers of the even and odd numbers2.' Canon McClatchie does not follow his translation of the former passage and give here ' demons and gods,' but we have 'the Demon-god (i.e. Shang Ti) V I shall refer to this version when considering the fifth Appendix.
1 Dissertation on the Theology of the Chinese, pp. 111,112.
2 Theology of the Chinese, p. 122,
juisseriauon on me 1 neology 01 lat Theology of the Chinese, p. 122, Translation of the Vi King, p. 31a.
46 THE YI KING. CH. III.
The single character shan occurs more than twenty
times; — used now as a substantive, now as an adjective,
and again as a verb. I must refer the reader
Shan alone. , . .
to the translation and notes for its various significance, subjoining in a note a list of the places where it occurs 1.
Much more might be said on the third Appendix, for the writer touches on many other topics, antiquarian and speculative, but a review of them would help us little in the study of the leading subject of the Yi. In passing on to the next treatise, I would only further say that the style of this and the author's manner of presenting his thoughts often remind the reader of ' the Doctrine of the Mean.' I am surprised that ' the Great Treatise ' has never been ascribed to the author of that Doctrine, 3ze~ sze, the grandson of Confucius, whose death must have taken place between B.C. 400 and 450.
7. The fourth Appendix, the seventh ' wing ' of the Yi, need not detain us long. As I stated on p. 27, it is con-
The fourth fined to an exposition of the Text on the first Appendix. ancj second hexagrams, being an attempt to show that what is there affirmed of heaven and earth may also be applied to man, and that there is an essential agreement between the qualities ascribed to them, and the benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom, which are the four constituents of his moral and intellectual nature.
It is said by some of the critics that Confucius would have treated all the other hexagrams in a similar way, if his life had been prolonged, but we found special grounds for denying that Confucius had anything to do with the composition of this Appendix ; and, moreover, I cannot think of any other figure that would have afforded to the author the same opportunity of discoursing about man. The style and method are after the manner of ' the Doctrine of the Mean' quite as much as those of 'the Great Treatise/ Several paragraphs, moreover, suggest to us the magnilo- quence of Mencius. It is said, for instance, by 3ze-sze, of
1 Section i, 23, 32, 57, 58, 62, 64, 67, 68, 69, 73, 76, 81; Section ii, II, 15, 33. 34. 41. 45-
CH. III. INTRODUCTION. 47
the sage, that 'he is the equal or correlate of Heaven V and in this Appendix we have the sentiment expanded into the following : —
' The great man is he who is in harmony in his attributes with heaven and earth ; in his brightness with the sun and moon ; in his orderly procedure with the four seasons; and in his relation to what is fortunate and what is calamitous with the spiritual agents. He may precede Heaven, and Heaven will not act in opposition to him ; he may follow Heaven, but will act only as Heaven at the time would do. If Heaven will not act in opposition to him, how much less will man ! how much less will the spiritual agents2!'
One other passage may receive our consideration : — ' The family that accumulates goodness is sure to have super- abundant happiness, and the family that accumulates evil is sure to have superabundant misery V
The language makes us think of the retribution of good and evil as taking place in the family, and not in the in- dividual ; the judgment is long deferred, but it is inflicted at last, lighting, however, not on the head or heads that most deserved it. Confucianism never falters in its affirma- tion of the difference between good and evil, and that each shall have its appropriate recompense; but it has little to say of the where and when and how that recompense will be given. The old classics are silent on the subject of any other retribution besides what takes place in time. About the era of Confucius the view took definite shape that, if the issues of good and evil, virtue and vice, did not take effect in the experience of the individual, they would certainly do so in that of his posterity. This is the prevailing doctrine among the Chinese at the present day ; and one of the earliest expressions, perhaps the earliest expression, of it was in the sentence under our notice that has been copied from this Appendix into almost every moral treatise that circulates in China. A wholesome and an important truth it is, that 'the sins of parents are visited
1 -fiTung-yung xxxi, 4.
2 Section i, 34. This is the only paragraph where kwei-shan occurs.
3 Section ii, 5.
48 THE Yf KING.
CH. in.
on their children;' but do the parents themselves escape the curse? It is to be regretted that this short treatise, the only 'wing' of the Yi professing to set forth its teach- ings concerning man as man, does not attempt any definite reply to this question. I leave it, merely observing that it has always struck me as the result of an after-thought, and a wish to give to man, as the last of 'the Three Powers,' a suitable place in connexion with the Yi. The doctrine of 'the Three Powers' is as much out of place in Con- fucianism as that of 'the Great Extreme.' The treatise contains several paragraphs interesting in themselves, but it adds nothing to our understanding of the Text, or even of the object of the appended treatises, when we try to look at them as a whole.
8. It is very different with the fifth of the Appendixes, The fifth which is made up of ' Remarks on the Appendix. Trigrams.' It is shorter than the fourth, consisting of only 22 paragraphs, in some of which the author rises to a height of thought reached nowhere else in these treatises, while several of the others are so silly and trivial, that it is difficult, not to say impossible, to believe that they are the production of the same man. We find in it the earlier and later arrangement of the trigrams, — the former, that of Fu-hsi, and the latter, that of king Wan ; their names and attributes; the work of God in nature, described as a progress through the trigrams ; and finally a distinctive, but by no means exhaustive, list of the natural objects, symbolised by them.
It commences with the enigmatic declaration that ' Anciently, when the sages made the Yi,' (that is, the lineal First figures, and the system of divination by
paragraph, them), ' in order to give mysterious assistance to the spiritual Intelligences, they produced (the rules for the use of) the divining plant.' Perhaps this means no more than that the lineal figures were made to ' hold the mirror up to nature,' so that men by the study of them would understand more of the unseen and spiritual opera- tions, to which the phenomena around them were owing, than they could otherwise do.
CH. in. INTRODUCTION. 49
The author goes on to speak of the Fu-hsi trigrams, and passes from them to those of king Wan in paragraph 8. That and the following two are very remarkable ; but before saying anything of them, I will go on to the 14th, which is the only passage that affords any ground for saying that there is a mythology in the Yi. It says : —
*K hiQXi is (the symbol of) heaven, and hence is styled father.
Khwan is (the symbol of) earth, and hence is ythe W ° stylec* mother. A'an (shows) the first application
(of khwan to khxen), resulting in getting (the first of) its male (or undivided lines), and hence we call it the oldest son. Sun (shows) a first application {of kh\en to khwan), resulting in getting (the first of) its female (or divided lines), and hence we call it the oldest daughter. Khan (shows) a second application (of khwan to kh\en), and Li a second (of kh\&n to khwan), resulting in the second son and second daughter. In A^an and Tui we have a third application (of khwan to k/iien and of £//ien to khwan), resulting in the youngest son and youngest daughter.'
From this language has come the fable of a marriage between K /new and Khwan, from which resulted the six other trigrams, considered as their three sons and three daughters ; and it is not to be wondered at, if some men of active and ill-regulated imaginations should see Noah and his wife in those two primary trigrams, and in the others their three sons and the three sons' wives. Have we not in both cases an ogdoad ? But I have looked in the paragraph in vain for the notion of a marriage-union between heaven and earth.
It does not treat of the genesis of the other six trigrams by the union of the two, but is a rude attempt to explain their forms when they were once existing \ According to the idea of changes, AVnen and Khwan are continually vary- ing their forms by their interaction. As here represented, the
1 This view seems to be in accordance with that of Wu Khang (of the Yuan dynasty), as given in the 'Collected Comments' of the Khang-hsl edition. The editors express their approval of it in preference to the interpretation of Kvl Hsi, who understood the whole to refer to the formation of the lineal figures, the ' application' being ' the manipulation of the stalks to fin.d the proper line.' [16] E
5o
THE YI KING. CH. III.
other trigrams are not ' produced v by a marriage-union, but from the application, literally the seeking, of oneof them — of Khwan as much as of K/iien — addressed to the other2. This way of speaking of the trigrams, moreover, as father and mother, sons and daughters, is not so old as Fu-hsi ; nor have we any real proof that it originated with king Wan. It is not of ' the highest antiquity.' It arose some time in ' middle antiquity,' and was known in the era of the Appendixes ; but it had not prevailed then, nor has it prevailed since, to discredit and supersede the older nomenclature. We are startled when we come on it in the place which it occupies. And there it stands alone. It is not entitled to more attention than the two paragraphs that precede it, or the eight that follow it, none of which were thought by P. Regis worthy to be translated. I have just said that it stands ' alone.' Its existence, however, seems to me to be supposed in the fourth chapter, paragraphs 28-30, of the third Appendix, Section ii ; but there only the trigrams of 'the six children ' are mentioned, and nothing is said of 'the parents.' Kan, khan, and kan are referred to as being yang, and sun, li, and tui as being yin. What is said about them is trifling and fanciful.
Leaving the question of the mythology of the Yi, of
which I am myself unable to discover a trace, I now call
attention to paragraphs 8-10, where the author speaks of
the work of God in nature in all the year as a progress
, through the trigrams, and as being effected
Operation of 7 . . _, . . ,«
God in nature by His Spirit. The description assumes the
throughout peculiar arrangement of the trigrams, ascribed
to king Wan, and which I have exhibited
above, on page 3$z. Father Regis adopts the general view
1 But the Chinese term Shang f£, often rendered ' produced,' must not be pressed, so as to determine the method of production, or the way in which one thing comes from another.
2 The significance of the mythological paragraph is altogether lost in Canon McClatchie's version: — 'JTAien is Heaven, and hence he is called Father; Khwan is Earth, and hence she is called Mother; Kan is the first male, and hence he is called the eldest son,' &c. &c.
3 The reader will understand the difference in the two arrangements better by a reference to the circular representations of them on Plate III.
CH. III. INTRODUCTION. 5 1
of Chinese critics that Wan purposely altered the earlier and established arrangement, as a symbol of the disorganisation and disorder into which the kingdom had fallen1. But it is hard to say why a man did something more than 3000 years ago, when he has not himself said anything about it. So far as we can judge from this Appendix, the author thought that king Wan altered the existing order and position of the trigrams with regard to the cardinal points, simply for the occasion, — that he might set forth vividly his ideas about the springing, growth, and maturity in the vegetable kingdom from the labours of spring to the cessation from toil in winter. The marvel is that in doing this he brings God upon the scene, and makes Him in the various processes of nature the ' all and in all.' The 8th paragraph says : —
'God comes forth in Zan (to his producing work) ; He brings (His processes) into full and equal action in Sun; they are mani- fested to one another in Li ; the greatest service is done for Him in Khwan; He rejoices in Tui; He struggles in A"^ien; He is comforted and enters into rest in Khan; and he completes (the work of) the year in Kan.'
God is here named Ti, for which P. Regis gives the Latin ' Supremus Imperator,' and Canon McClatchie, after him, 'the Supreme Emperor.' I contend that 'God' is really the correct translation in English of Ti ; but to render it here by ' Emperor' would not affect the meaning of the paragraph. K\\ Hsi says that 'by Ti is intended the Lord and Governor of heaven;' and Khung Ying-ta, about five centuries earlier than ATu, quotes Wang Pi, who died A.D.
1 E.g. I, 23, 24 : — ' Observant etiam philosophi (lib. 15 Sinicae philosophiae Sing-li) principem Wan-wang antiquum octo symbolorum, unde aliae figurae omnes pendent, ordinem invertisse ; quo ipsa imperii suis temporibus subversio graphice exprimi poterat, mutatis e naturali loco, quern genesis dederat, iis quatuor figuris, quae rerum naturalium pugnis ac dissociationibus, quas pos- terior labentis anni pars aflerre solet, velut in antecessum, repraesentandis idoneae videbantur; v. g. si symbolum — — — — Li, ignis, supponatur loco svmboli ' : Khan, aquae, ntriiisqiie tlementi inordinatio principi visa
est non minus apta ad significandas ruinas et clades reipublicae male ordinatae, quam naturales ab hieme aut imminente aut saeviente rerum geueratarum cor- ruptiones.' See also pp. 67, 6S.
E 2
52 THE Yl KING.
CH. in.
249, to the effect that ' Ti is the lord who produces (all) things, the author of prosperity and increase.'
I must refer the reader to the translation in the body of the volume for the 9th paragraph, which is too long to be introduced here. As the 8th speaks directly of God, the 9th, we are told, 'speaks of all things following Him, from spring to winter, from the east to the north, in His progress throughout the year.' In words strikingly like those of the apostle Paul, when writing his Epistle to the Romans, Wan AV/ung-jung (of the Khang-hsi period) and his son, in their admirable work called, ' A New Digest of Collected Expla- nations of the Yi King,' say: — 'God (Himself) cannot be seen ; we see Him in the things (which He produces).' The first time I read these paragraphs with some understanding, I thought of Thomson's Hymn on the Seasons, and I have thought of it in connexion with them a hundred times since. Our English poet wrote : —
'These, as they change, Almighty Father, these Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing spring Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and love. Then comes Thy glory in the summer months, With light and heat refulgent. Then Thy sun Shoots full perfection through the swelling year. Thy bounty shines in autumn unconfined, And spreads a common feast for all that lives. In winter awful Thou!'
Prudish readers have found fault with some of Thomson's expressions, as if they savoured of pantheism. The language of the Chinese writer is not open to the same captious objection. Without poetic ornament, or swelling phrase of any kind, he gives emphatic testimony to God as re- newing the face of the earth in spring, and not resting till He has crowned the year with His goodness.
And there is in the passage another thing equally wonderful. The 10th paragraph commences: — 'When we speak of Spirit, we mean the subtle presence (and operation of God) with all things ;' and the writer goes on to illustrate this sentiment from the action and influences symbolised
CH. III. INTRODUCTION. 53
by the six 'children,' or minor trigrams, — water and fire, thunder and wind, mountains and collections of water. Kn Hsi says, that there is that in the paragraph which he does not understand. Some Chinese scholars, however, have not been far from descrying the light that is in it. Let Liang Yin, of our fourteenth century, be adduced as an example of them. He says: — 'The spirit here simply means God. God is the personality (literally, the body or substantiality) of the Spirit ; the Spirit is God in opera- tion. He who is lord over and rules all things is God ; the subtle presence and operation of God with all things is by His Spirit.' The language is in fine accord with the definition of shan or spirit, given in the 3rd Appendix, Section i, 32.
I wish that the Treatise on the Trigrams had ended with the icth paragraph. The writer had gradually risen to a noble Concluding elevation of thought from which he plunges paragraphs. jnto a slOUgh of nonsensical remarks which it would be difficult elsewhere to parallel. I have referred on p. 31 to the judgment of P. Regis about them. He could not receive them as from Confucius, and did not take the trouble to translate them, and transfer them to his own pages. My plan required me to translate everything published in China as a part of the Yi King ; but I have given my rea- sons for doubting whether any portion of these Appendixes be really from Confucius. There is nothing that could better justify the supercilious disregard with which the classical literature of China is frequently treated than to insist on the concluding portion of this treatise as being from the pencil of its greatest sage. I have dwelt at some length on the 14th paragraph, because of its mythological semblance ; but among the eight paragraphs that follow it, it would be difficult to award the palm for silliness. They are descriptive of the eight trigrams, and each one enu- merates a dozen or more objects of which its subject is symbolical. The writer must have been fond of and familiar with horses. K/iien, the symbol properly of heaven, suggests to him the idea of a good horse ; an old horse ; a lean horse \. and a piebald. A^an, the symbol of thunder, suggests the
54 THE Yi KING.
CH. III.
idea of a good neigher ; of the horse with white hind-legs ; of the prancing horse ; and of one with a white star in his forehead. Khan, the symbol of water, suggests the idea of the horse with an elegant spine; of one with a high spirit ; of one with a drooping head ; and of one with a shambling step. The reader will think he has had enough of these symbolisings of the trigrams. I cannot believe that the earlier portions and this concluding portion of the treatise were by the same author. If there were any evidence that paragraphs 8 to 10 were by Confucius, I should say that they were worthy, even more than worthy, of him ; what follows is mere drivel. Horace's picture faintly pourtrays the inconsistency between the parts : — ' Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne.'
In reviewing the second of these Appendixes, I was led to speak of the original significance of the trigrams, in opposition to the views of some Chinese who pretend that they can find in them the physical truths discovered by the researches of western science. May I not say now, after viewing the phase of them presented in these paragraphs, that they were devised simply as aids to divination, and partook of the unreasonableness and uncertainty belonging to that?
9. The sixth Appendix is the Treatise on the Sequence of the Hexagrams, to which allusion has been made more The sixth than once. It is not necessary to dwell on Appendix. jj- aj- length. King Wan, it has been seen, gave a name to each hexagram, expressive of the idea — some moral, social, or political truth — which he wished to set forth by means of it ; and this name enters very closely into its interpretation. The author of this treatise endeavours to explain the meaning of the name, and also the sequence of the figures, or how it is that the idea of the one leads on to that of the next. Yet the reader must not expect to find in the 64 a chain 'of linked sweetness long drawn out.' The connexion between any two is generally sufficiently close ; but on the whole the essays, which I have said they form, resemble 'a heap of orient pearls at random strung.' The changeableness of human
CH. in. INTRODUCTION. 55
affairs is a topic never long absent from the writer's mind. He is firmly persuaded that ' the fashion of the world passeth away.' Union is sure to give place to separation, and by and by that separation will issue in re-union.
There is nothing in the treatise to suggest anything about its authorship ; and as the reader will see from the notes, we are perplexed occasionally by meanings given to the names that differ from the meanings in the Text. 10. The last and least Appendix is the seventh, called The seventh 3a Kwa 7^ wan, or 'Treatise on the Lineal Appendix. Figures taken promiscuously,' — not with re- gard to any sequence, but as they approximate, or are opposed, to one another in meaning. It is in rhyme, more- over, and this, as much as the meaning, determined, no doubt, the grouping of the hexagrams. The student will learn nothing of value from it; it is more a 'jeu d'esprit' than anything else.
PLATE I.
ams, in the order in which they appear in the Yi, and were arranged by king Wan.
E
sung hsii mang £un khwan khien
14 13 12 11 10 9
ta yu thung zan phi thai li hsiao lehb
22 21 20 19 18 17
pi shih ho kwan lin kd sui
30 29 28 27 26 25
n"™ li khan ta kwo 1 ta MQ wfl wang
38 37 36 35 34 33
n khwei k& zan ming i gin ta *wang thun
L46 45 44 43 42 4i
an shang jhui kau kwai yi sun
i 54 53 52 5i 5° 49__
lg
kwei mei £ien kan Aan ting ko
I 62 61 60 59 58 57
i hsiao kwo A-unsr fu A-ieh hwan tui
PLATE I.
The Hexagrams, in the order in which they appear in the Vi, and were arranged by king Wan.
sung hsu mang Aim khwan Mien
|
yii |
1 . |
la yu |
,h»„B rfn |
phi |
thai |
11 |
haiao Mil |
|
|
= 4 3 J |
P1 3° |
... *9 |
kuan 18 |
■9 111: |
kil 16 |
*5 |
||
|
^^^ |
~T |
b |
"ULan |
ta kwo |
i |
_ |
~^— |
|
|
3! |
36 |
35 |
|
33 |
||||
|
Inch |
■ |
~ |
khwei |
Jia ;an |
" |
J"1 |
rr"^- |
Ihim |
|
— 4 — |
_■' |
_4 — |
_*_ |
44 |
_4-'i_- |
4i |
_J'_ |
|
|
$"ig |
Id , |
,hu, |
kwii |
yi |
=^F |
|||
|
=zz |
= |
= = |
== |
=r= |
= '= |
srs |
49 |
|
|
: |
^^~ |
Ken |
ting |
ko |
||||
|
6; |
6, |
6i |
60 |
59 |
58 |
|||
|
U |
, |
III!
mm
III IIIIII
iiIiii
Mill
m
'A
Inn
mill
mill
mm
4k
www w\v.
IIIIII III 111
IIIIII IIIIII
/"Ml
"III,
'Si
m&
II I
III III III III III III
III III ill III
III III II III III ll
Ulustratin
rams, with the :ing WAN.
tu
%
PLATE III.
Fig. 1.
Illustrating the tenth paragraph of Appendix V.
|
khwan |
llicn |
||||
|
~ ~ |
^^^^ |
||||
|
youngest daughter |
U second daughter |
eldest daughter |
kfin youngest son |
khan second son |
ian |
|
=-= |
^^^^ |
== |
ZZ^h |
=-= |
= = |
|
upper line of khwan |
second line of khwan |
first line of khwan |
upper line of JAien |
second line of Mien |
first line of AAien |
Fig. 2.
Order of the Trigrams, with the cardinal and other points to which they are severally referred.
CCORDING TO KING WAN.
A' . OKPING TO FU-HSI.
t$
¥
II
HI
III
#
j_m u
%
****,
7S
THE YI KING.
TEXT. SECTION I. I. The Khien Hexagram.
Explanation of the entire figure by king Wan. KM en (represents) what is great and originating, penetrating, advantageous, correct and firm.
Explanation of the separate lines by the duke of .ffau.
i. In the first (or lowest) line, undivided, (we see its subject as) the dragon lying hid (in the deep). It is not the time for active doing.
2. In the second line, undivided, (we see its sub- ject as) the dragon appearing in the field. It will be advantageous to meet with the great man.
3. In the third line, undivided, (we see its subject as) the superior man active and vigilant all the day, and in the evening still careful and apprehensive. (The position is) dangerous, but there will be no mistake.
4. In the fourth line, undivided, (we see its sub- ject as the dragon looking) as if he were leaping up, but still in the deep. There will be no mistake.
5. In the fifth line, undivided, (we see its subject as) the dragon on the wing in the sky. It will be advantageous to meet with the great man.
58 the y! king.
TEXT.
6. In the sixth (or topmost) line, undivided, (we see its subject as) the dragon exceeding the proper limits. There will be occasion for repentance.
7. (The lines of this hexagram are all strong and undivided, as appears from) the use of the number nine. If the host of dragons (thus) appearing were to divest themselves of their heads, there would be good fortune.
The Text under each hexagram consists of one paragraph by king Wan, explaining the figure as a whole, and of six (in the case of hexagrams 1 and 2, of seven) paragraphs by the duke of J£au, explaining the individual lines. The explanatory notices introduced above to this effect will not be repeated. A double space will be used to mark off the portion of king Wan from that of his son.
Each hexagram consists of two of the trigrams of Fu-hsi, the lower being called 'the inner,' and the one above 'the outer.' The lines, however, are numbered from one to six, commencing with the lowest. To denote the number of it and of the sixth line, the terms for ' commencing ' and ' topmost ' are used. The inter- mediate lines are simply ' second,' ' third,' &c. As the lines must be either whole or divided, technically called strong and weak, yang and yin, this distinction is indicated by the application to them of the numbers nine and six. All whole lines are nine, all divided lines, six.
Two explanations have been proposed of this application of these numbers. The .Oien trigram, it is said, contains 3 strokes ( ). and the Khwan 6 (~ ~). But the yang contains
the yin in itself, and its representative number will be 3 + 6 = 9, while the yin, not containing the yang, will only have its own number or 6. This explanation, entirely arbitrary, is now deservedly abandoned. The other is based on the use of the ' four Hsiang,' or emblematic figures ( ■ the great or old yang, — T
the young yang, = = the old yin, and — — the young yin). To these are assigned (by what process is unimportant for our present purpose) the numbers 9, 8, 7, 6. They were 'the old yang,' represented by 9, and 'the old yin,' represented by 6, that, in the manipulation of the stalks to form new diagrams, determined the changes of figure; and so 9 and 6 came to be used as the
SECT. I. THE KHWAN HEXAGRAM. 59
II. The Kiiwan Hexagram.
Khwan (represents) what is great and originating, penetrating, advantageous, correct and having the firmness of a mare. When the superior man (here
names of a yang line and a yin line respectively. This explana- tion is now universally acquiesced in. The nomenclature of first nine, nine two, &c, or first six, six two, &c, however, is merely a jargon ; and I have preferred to use, instead of it, in the translation, in order to describe the lines, the names 'undivided' and 'divided.'
I. Does king Wan ascribe four attributes here to Kh'\trv, or only two ? According to Appendix IV, always by Chinese writers assigned to Confucius, he assigns four, corresponding to the princi- ples of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and knowledge in man's nature. Ku Hsi held that he assigned only two, and that we should translate, ' greatly penetrating,' and 'requires to be correct and firm,' two responses in divination. Up and down throughout the Text of the 64 hexagrams, we often find the characters thus coupled together. Both interpretations are possible. I have followed what is accepted as the view of Confucius. It would take pages to give a tithe of what has been written in justification of it, and to reconcile it with the other.
' The dragon ' is the symbol employed by the duke of A^au to represent 'the superior man' and especially 'the great man/ exhibiting the virtues or attributes characteristic of heaven. The creature's proper home is in the water, but it can disport itself on the land, and also fly and soar aloft. It has been from the earliest time the emblem with the Chinese of the highest dignity and wis- dom, of sovereignty and sagehood, the combination of which con- stitutes ' the great man.' One emblem runs through the lines of many of the hexagrams as here.
But the dragon appears in the sixth line as going beyond the proper limits. The ruling-sage has gone through all the sphere in which he is called on to display his attributes ; it is time for him to relax. The line should not be always pulled tight ; the bow should not be always kept drawn. The unchanging use
6o the y! king.
TEXT.
intended) has to make any movement, if he take the initiative, he will go astray ; if he follow, he will find his (proper) lord. The advantageousness will be seen in his getting friends in the south-west, and losing friends in the north-east. If he rest in cor- rectness and firmness, there will be good fortune.
i. In the first line, divided, (we see its subject) treading on hoarfrost. The strong ice will come (by and by).
2. The second line, divided, (shows the attribute of) being straight, square, and great. (Its opera- tion), without repeated efforts, will be in every respect advantageous.
3. The third line, divided, (shows its subject) keeping his excellence under restraint, but firmly maintaining it. If he should have occasion to en- gage in the king's service, though he will not claim the success (for himself), he will bring affairs to a good issue.
4. The fourth line, divided, (shows the symbol of) a sack tied up. There will be no ground for blame or for praise.
5. The fifth line, divided, (shows) the yellow lower garment. There will be great good fortune.
of force will give occasion for repentance. The moral meaning found in the line is that ' the high shall be abased.'
The meaning given to the supernumerary paragraph is the opposite of that of paragraph 6. The ' host of dragons without their heads ' would give us the next hexagram, or Kh wan, made up of six divided lines. Force would have given place to submission, and haughtiness to humility ; and the result would be good fortune. Such at least is the interpretation of the paragraph given in a narrative of the 3o-j£wan under b. c. 513. For further explanation of the duke of Aau's meaning, see Appendixes II and IV.
SECT. I. THE KHWAN HEXAGRAM. 6 1
6. The sixth line, divided, (shows) dragons fight- ing in the wild. Their blood is purple and yellow.
7. (The lines of this hexagram are all weak and divided, as appears from) the use of the number six. If those (who are thus represented) be per- petually correct and firm, advantage will arise.
II. The same attributes are here ascribed to Khwan, as in the former hexagram to Kh'izn ; — but with a difference. The figure, made up of six divided lines, expresses the ideal of subordination and docility. The superior man, represented by it, must not take the initiative ; and by following he will find his lord, — the subject, that is of jOien. Again, the correctness and firmness is defined to be that of ' a mare,' ' docile and strong,' but a creature for the service of man. That it is not the sex of the animal which the writer has chiefly in mind is plain from the immediate mention of the superior man, and his lord.
That superior man will seek to bring his friends along with him- self to serve his ruler.. But according to the arrangement of the trigrams by king Wan, the place of Khwan is in the south-west, while the opposite quarter is occupied by the yang trigram Kan, as in Figure 2, Plate III. All that this portion of the Th wan says is an instruction to the subject of the hexagram to seek for others of the same principles and tendencies with himself to serve their common lord. But in quietness and firmness will be his strength.
The symbolism of the lines is various. Paragraph 2 presents to us the earth itself, according to the Chinese conception of it, as a great cube. To keep his excellence under restraint, as in para- graph 3, is the part of a minister or officer, seeking not his own glory, but that of his ruler. Paragraph 4 shows its subject exer- cising a still greater restraint on himself than in paragraph 3. There is an interpretation of the symbolism of paragraph 5 in a narrative of the 3o Zwan, under the 1 2th year of duke AV^ao, b.c. 530. 'Yellow' is one of the five 'correct' colours, and the colour of the earth. ' The lower garment ' is a symbol of humility. The fifth line is the seat of honour. If its occupant possess the qualities indicated, he will be greatly fortunate.
See the note on the sixth line of hexagram 1. What is there said to be 'beyond the proper limits' takes place here 'in the wild.' The humble subject of the divided line is transformed into a
62 THE YI KING. TEXT.
III. The Aajn Hexagram.
Kun (indicates that in the case which it pre- supposes) there will be great progress and success, and the advantage will come from being correct and firm. (But) any movement in advance should not be (lightly) undertaken. There will be advantage in appointing feudal princes.
i. The first line, undivided, shows the difficulty (its subject has) in advancing. It will be advanta- geous for him to abide correct and firm ; advan- tageous (also) to be made a feudal ruler.
2. The second line, divided, shows (its subject) distressed and obliged to return ; (even) the horses of her chariot (also) seem to be retreating. (But) not by a spoiler (is she assailed), but by one who seeks her to be his wife. The young lady maintains her firm correctness, and declines a union. After ten years she will be united, and have children.
3. The third line, divided, shows one following the deer without (the guidance of) the forester, and only finding himself in the midst of the forest. The superior man, acquainted with the secret risks, thinks it better to give up the chase. If he went forward, he would regret it.
dragon, and fights with the true dragon, the subject of the undivided line. They fight and bleed, and their blood is of the colour proper to heaven or the sky, and the colour proper to the earth. Paragraph 7 supposes that the hexagram Khwan should become changed into .Oien ; — the result of which would be good.
SECT. I. THE #UN HEXAGRAM. 63
4. The fourth line, divided, shows (its subject as a lady), the horses of whose chariot appear in retreat. She seeks, however, (the help of) him who seeks her to be his wife. Advance will be fortu- nate ; all will turn out advantageously.
5. The fifth line, undivided, shows the difficulties in the way of (its subject's) dispensing the rich favours that might be expected from him. With firm- ness and correctness there will be good fortune in small things ; (even) with them in great things there will be evil.
6. The topmost line, divided, shows (its subject) with the horses of his chariot obliged to retreat, and weeping tears of blood in streams.
III. The character called Jfun is pictorial, and was intended to show us how a plant struggles with difficulty out of the earth, rising gradually above' the surface. This difficulty, marking the first stages in the growth of a plant, is used to symbolise the struggles that mark the rise of a state out of a condition of disorder, consequent on a great revolution. The same thing is denoted by the combination of the trigrams that form the figure ; — as will be seen in the notes on it under Appendix II.
I have introduced within parentheses, in the translation, the words ' in the case which the hexagram presupposes.' It is necessary to introduce them. King Wan and his son wrote, as they did in every hexagram, with reference to a particular state of affairs which they had in mind. This was the unspoken text which controlled and directed all their writing ; and the student must try to get hold of this, if he would make his way with comfort and success through the Yi. Wan saw the social and political world around him in great disorder, hard to be remedied. But he had faith in himself and the destinies of his House. Let there be prudence and caution, with unswerving adherence to the right ; let the government of the different states be entrusted to good and able men : — then all would be well.
The first line is undivided, showing the strength of its subject. He will be capable of action, and his place in the trigram of mobility will the more dispose him to it. But above him is the
64 THE Yi KING. TEXT.
IV. The Mang Hexagram.
Mang (indicates that in the case which it pre- supposes) there will be progress and success. I do not (go and) seek the youthful and inexperienced,
trigram of peril ; and the lowest line of that, to which especially he must look for response and co-operation, is divided and weak. Hence arise the ideas of difficulty in advancing, the necessity of caution, and the advantage of his being clothed with authority.
To the subject of the second line, divided, advance is still more difficult. He is weak in himself; he is pressed by the subject of the strong line below him. But happily that subject, though strong, is correct ; and above in the fifth line, in the place of authority, is the strong one, union with whom and the service of whom should be the objects pursued. All these circumstances suggested to the duke of Kiw the idea of a young lady, sought in marriage by a strong wooer, when marriage was unsuitable, rejecting him, and finally, after ten years, marrying a more suitable, the only suitable, match for her.
The third line is divided, not central, and the number of its place is appropriate to the occupancy of a strong line. All these things should affect the symbolism of the line. But the outcome of the whole hexagram being good, the superior man sees the imme- diate danger and avoids it.
The subject of the fourth line, the first of the upper trigram, has recourse to the strong suitor of line i, the first of the lower trigram ; and with his help is able to cope with the difficulties of the position, and go forward.
The subject of the fifth line is in the place of authority, and should show himself a ruler, dispensing benefits on a great scale. But he is in the very centre of the trigram denoting perilousness, and line 2, which responds to 5, is weak. Hence arises the sym- bolism, and great things should not be attempted.
The sixth line is weak ; the third responding to it is also weak ; it is at the extremity of peril ; the game is up. What can remain for its subject in such a case but terror and abject weeping ?
SECT. I. THE MANG HEXAGRAM. 65
but he comes and seeks me. When he shows (the sincerity that marks) the first recourse to divination, I instruct him. If he apply a second and third time, that is troublesome ; and I do not instruct the troublesome. There will be advantage in being firm and correct.
1. The first line, divided, (has respect to) the dispelling of ignorance. It will be advantageous to use punishment (for that purpose), and to re- move the shackles (from the mind). But going on in that way (of punishment) will give occasion for regret.
2. The second line, undivided, (shows its subject) exercising forbearance with the ignorant, in which there will be good fortune ; and admitting (even the goodness of women, which will also be fortunate. (He may be described also as) a son able to (sustain the burden of) his family.
3. The third line, divided, (seems to say) that one should not marry a woman whose emblem it might be, for that, when she sees a man of wealth, she will not ^keep her person from him, and in no wise will advantage come from her.
4. The fourth line, divided, (shows its subject as if) bound in chains of ignorance. There will be occasion for regret.
5. The fifth line, divided, shows its subject as a simple lad without experience. There will, be good fortune.
6. In the topmost line, undivided, we see one smiting the ignorant (youth). But no advantage
[16] F
66 THE YI KING. TEXT.
will come from doing him an injury. Advantage would come from warding off injury from him.
IV. As A^un shows us plants struggling from beneath the sur- face, Mang suggests to us the small and undeveloped appearance which they then present ; and hence it came to be the symbol of youthful inexperience and ignorance. The object of the hexagram is to show how such a condition should be dealt with by the parent and ruler, whose authority and duty are represented by the second and sixth, the two undivided lines. All between the first and last sentences of the Thwan must be taken as an oracular response received by the party divining on the subject of enlightening the youthful ignorant. This accounts for its being more than usually enigmatical, and for its being partly rhythmical. See Appendix I, in loc.
The subject of the first line, weak, and at the bottom of the figure, is in the grossest ignorance. Let him be punished. If punishment avail to loosen the shackles and manacles from the mind, well ; if not, and punishment be persevered with, the effect will be bad.
On the subject of the second line, strong, and in the central place, devolves the task of enlightening the ignorant ; and we have him discharging it with forbearance and humility. In proof of his generosity, it is said that ' he receives,' or learns from, even weak and ignorant women. He appears also as 'a son' taking the place of his father.
The third line is weak, and occupies an odd place belonging properly to an undivided line ; nor is its place in the centre. All these things give the subject of it so bad a character.
The fourth line is far from both the second and sixth, and can get no help from its correlate, — the first line, weak as itself. What good can be done with or by the subject of it ?
The fifth line is in the place of honour, and has for its correlate the strong line in the second place. Being weak in itself, it is taken as the symbol of a simple lad, willing to be taught.
The topmost line is strong, and in the highest place. It is natural, but unwise, in him to use violence in carrying on his educational measures. A better course is suggested to him.
SECT. I. THE HSU HEXAGRAM. 67
V. The Hsu Hexagram.
Hsu intimates that, with the sincerity which is declared in it, there will be brilliant success. With firmness there will be good fortune ; and it will be advantageous to cross the great stream.
1. The first line, undivided, shows its subject waiting in the distant border. It will be well for him constantly to maintain (the purpose thus shown), in which case there will be no error.
2. The second line, undivided, shows its subject waiting on the sand (of the mountain stream). He will (suffer) the small (injury of) being spoken (against), but in the end there will be good fortune.
3. The third line, undivided, shows its subject in the mud (close by the stream). He thereby invites the approach of injury.
4. The fourth line, divided, shows its subject waiting in (the place of) blood. But he will get out of the cavern.
5. The fifth line, undivided, shows its subject waiting amidst the appliances of a feast. Through his firmness and correctness there will be good fortune.
6. The topmost line, divided, shows its subject entered into the cavern. (But) there are three guests coming, without being urged, (to his help).
f 2
68 THE YI KING.
TEXT.
If he receive them respectfully, there will be good fortune in the end.
V. Hsu means waiting. Strength confronted by peril might be expected to advance boldly and at once to struggle with it ; but it takes the wiser plan of waiting till success is sure. This is the lesson of the hexagram. That ' sincerity is declared in it' is proved from the fifth line in the position of honour and authority, central, itself undivided and in an odd place. In such a case, nothing but firm correctness is necessary to great success.
' Going through a great stream,' an expression frequent in the Yi, may mean undertaking hazardous enterprises, or encountering great difficulties, without any special reference; but more natural is it to understand by 'the great stream' the Yellow river, which the lords of A'au must cross in a revolutionary movement against the dynasty of Yin and its tyrant. The passage of it by king Wu, the son of Wan in b.c. i 122, was certainly one of the greatest deeds in the history of China. It was preceded also by long ' waiting,' till the time of assured success came.
' The border ' under line 1 means the frontier territory of the state. There seems no necessity for such a symbolism. 'The sand' and ' the mud ' are appropriate with reference to the watery defile ; but it is different with ' the border.' The subject of the line appears at work in his distant fields, not thinking of anything but his daily work ; and he is advised to abide in that state and mind.
' The sand ' of paragraph 2 suggests a nearer approach to the defile, but its subject is still self-restrained and waiting. I do not see what suggests the idea of his suffering from ' the strife of tongues.'
In paragraph 3 the subject is on the brink of the stream. His advance to that position has provoked resistance, which may result in his injury.
Line 4 has passed from the inner to the upper trigram, and entered on the scene of danger and strife ; — 'into the place of blood.' Its subject is 'weak and in the correct place for him;' he therefore retreats and escapes from the cavern, where he was engaged with his enemy.
Line 5 is strong and central, and in its correct place, being that of honour. All good qualities therefore belong to the subject of it, who has triumphed, and with firmness will triumph still more.
Line 6 is weak, and has entered deeply into the defile and its caverns. What will become of its subject? His correlate is the
SECT. r. THE SUNG HEXAGRAM. 69
VI. The Sung Hexagram.
Sung intimates how, though there is sincerity in one's contention, he will yet meet with opposition and obstruction ; but if he cherish an apprehensive caution, there will be good fortune, while, if he must prosecute the contention to the (bitter) end, there will be evil. It will be advantageous to see the great man ; it will not be advantageous to cross the great stream.
1. The first line, divided, shows its subject not perpetuating the matter about which (the contention is). He will suffer the small (injury) of being spoken against, but the end will be fortunate.
2. The second line, undivided, shows its subject unequal to the contention. If he retire and keep concealed (where) the inhabitants of his city are (only) three hundred families, he will fall into no mistake.
3. The third line, divided, shows its subject keeping in the old place assigned for his support, and firmly correct. Perilous as the position is, there will be good fortune in the end. Should he per-
strong line 3 below, which comes with its two companions to his help. If they are respectfully received, that help will prove effectual. P. Regis tries to find out a reference in these ' three guests ' to three princes who distinguished themselves by taking part with A'au in its struggle with Yin or Shang; see vol. i, pp. 279-282. I dare not be so confident of any historical reference.
7<D THE Yl KING.
TEXT.
chance engage in the king's business, he will not (claim the merit of) achievement.
4. The fourth line, undivided, shows its subject unequal to the contention. He returns to (the study of Heaven's) ordinances, changes (his wish to contend), and rests in being firm and correct. There will be good fortune.
5. The fifth line, undivided, shows its subject contending ; — and with great good fortune.
6. The topmost line, undivided, shows how its subject may have the leathern belt conferred on him (by the sovereign), and thrice it shall be taken from him in a morning.
VI. We have strength in the upper trigram, as if to regulate and control the lower, and peril in that lower as if looking out for an opportunity to assail the upper ; or, as it may be represented, we have one's self in a state of peril matched against strength from without. All this is supposed to give the idea of contention or strife. But the undivided line in the centre of Khan is emblematic of sincerity, and gives a character to the whole figure. An individual, so represented, will be very wary, and have good fortune ; but strife is bad, and if persevered in even by such a one, the effect will be evil. The fifth line, undivided, in an odd place, and central, serves as a representative of ' the great man,' whose agency is sure to be good ; but the topmost line being also strong, and with its two companions, riding as it were, on the trigram of peril, its action is likely to be too rash for a great enterprise. See the treatise on the Thwan, in loc.
The subject of line 1 is weak and at the bottom of the figure. He may suffer a little in the nascent strife, but will let it drop; and the effect will be good.
Line 2 represents one who is strong, and has the rule of the lower trigram ; — he has the mind for strife, and might be expected to engage in it. But his strength is weakened by being in an even place, and he is no match for his correlate in line 5, and therefore retreats. A town or city with only three hundred families is said
SECT. i. THE SZF. HEXAGRAM. 7 1
VII. The Sze Hexagram.
Sze indicates how, in the case which it supposes, with firmness and correctness, and (a leader of) age
to be very small. That the subject of the line should retire to so insignificant a place is further proof of his humility.
Line 3 is weak and in an odd place. Its subject therefore is not equal to strive, but withdraws from the arena. Even if forced into it, he will keep himself in the background; — and be safe. 'He keeps in the old place assigned for his support' is, literally, 'He eats his old virtue;' meaning that he lives in and on the appanage assigned to him for his services.
Line 4 is strong, and not in the centre ; so that we are to con- ceive of its subject as having a mind to strive. But immediately above it is line 5, the symbol of the ruler, and with him it is hope- less to strive ; immediately below is 3, weak, and out of its proper place, incapable of maintaining a contention. Its proper correlate is the lowest line, weak, and out of its proper place, from whom little help can come. Hence its subject takes the course indicated, which leads to good fortune.
Line 5 has every circumstance in favour of its subject. Line 6 is strong and able to contend successfully ; but is there to be no end of striving ? Persistence in it is sure to end in defeat and disgrace. The contender here might receive a reward from the king for his success ; but if he received it thrice in a morning, thrice it would be taken from him again. As to the nature of the reward here given, see on the Li A'i, X, ii, 32.
P. Regis explains several of the expressions in the Text, both in the Thwan and the Hsiang, from the history of king Wan and his son king Wu. Possibly his own circumstances may have suggested to Wan some of the Thwan; and his course in avoiding a direct colli- sion with the tyrant Shau, and Wu's subsequent exploits may have been in the mind of the duke of A'au. Some of the sentiments, however, cannot be historically explained. They are general pro- tests against all contention and strife.
72 THE y! KING.
TEXT.
and experience, there will be good fortune and no error.
i. The first line, divided, shows the host going forth according to the rules (for such a movement). If these be not good, there will be evil.
2. The second line, undivided, shows (the leader) in the midst of the host. There will be good for- tune and no error. The king has thrice conveyed to him the orders (of his favour).
3. The third line, divided, shows how the host may, possibly, have many inefficient leaders. There will be evil.
4. The fourth line, divided, shows the host in retreat. There is no error.
5. The fifth line, divided, shows birds in the fields, which it will be advantageous to seize (and destroy). In that case there will be no error. If the oldest son leads the host, and younger men (idly occupy offices assigned to them), however firm and correct he may be, there will be evil.
6. The topmost line, divided, shows the great ruler delivering his charges, (appointing some) to be rulers of states, and others to undertake the head- ship of clans ; but small men should not be employed (in such positions).
VII. The conduct of military expeditions in a feudal kingdom, and we may say, generally, is denoted by the hexagram Sze. Referring to Appendixes I and II for an explanation of the way in which the combination of lines in it is made out to suggest the idea of an army, and that idea being assumed, it is easy to see how the undivided line in the second place should be interpreted of the general, who is responded to by the divided line in the fifth and royal place. Thus entire trust is reposed in him. He is strong
SECT. I. THE ri HEXAGRAM. 73
VIII. The Pi Hexagram.
Pi indicates that (under the conditions which it supposes) there is good fortune. But let (the prin- cipal party intended in it) re-examine himself, (as if)
and correct, and his enterprises will be successful. He is denomi- nated /('ang zan, 'an old, experienced man.'
' The rules,' it is said, 'are twofold; — first, that the war be for a righteous end ; and second, that the manner of conducting it, especially at the outset, be right.' But how this and the warning in the conclusion should both follow from the divided line being in the first place, has not been sufficiently explained.
How line 2 comes to be the symbol of the general in command of the army has been shown above on the Thwan. The orders of the king thrice conveyed to him are to be understood of his appoint- ment to the command, and not of any rewards conferred on him as a tribute to his merit. Nor is stress to be laid on the ' thrice.' 1 It does not mean that the appointment came to him three times ; but that it was to him exclusively, and with the entire con- fidence of the king.'
The symbolism of line 3 is very perplexing. P. Regis translates it: — 'Milites videntur deponere sarcinas in curribus. M al e.' Canon McClatchie has : — ' Third-six represents soldiers as it were lying dead in their baggage carts, and is unlucky.' To the same effect was my own translation of the paragraph, nearly thirty years ago. But the third line, divided, cannot be forced to have such an indication. The meaning I have now given is more legitimate, taken character by character, and more in harmony with the scope of the hexagram. The subject of line 2 is the one proper leader of the host. But line 3 is divided and weak, and occupies the place of a strong line, as if its subject had perversely jumped over two, and perched himself above it to take the command. This interpretation also suits better in the 5th paragraph.
Line 4 is weak and not central ; and therefore ' to retreat ' is
74
THE \i KING. TEXT.
by divination, whether his virtue be great, uninter- mitting, and firm. If it be so, there will be no error. Those who have not rest will then come to him ; and with those who are (too) late in coming it will be ill.
i. The first line, divided, shows its subject seek- ing by his sincerity to win the attachment of his object. There will be no error. Let (the breast) be full of sincerity as an earthenware vessel is of its contents, and it will in the end bring other advantages.
2. In the second line, divided, we see the move- ment towards union and attachment proceeding from the inward (mind). With firm correctness there will be good fortune.
3. In the third line, divided, we see its subject seeking for union with such as ought not to be associated with.
4. In the fourth line, divided, we see its subject
natural for its subject. But its place is even, and proper for a divided line ; and the retreat will be right in the circumstances.
In line 5 we seem to have an intimation of the important truth that only defensive war, or war waged by the rightful authority to put down rebellion and lawlessness, is right. ' The birds in the fields' symbolise parties attacking for plunder. The fifth line symbolises the chief authority, — the king, who is weak, or humble, and in the centre, and cedes the use of all his power to the general symbolised by line 2. The subject of 2 is 'the oldest son.' Those of three and four are supposed to be ' the younger brother and son,' that is, the younger men, who would cause evil if admitted to share the command.
The lesson on the topmost line is true and important, but the critics seem unable to deduce it from the nature of the line, as divided and in the sixth place.
sect. i. the pi hexagram. 75
seeking for union with the one beyond himself. With firm correctness there will be eood fortune.
5. The fifth line, undivided, affords the most illus- trious instance of seeking union and attachment. (We seem to see in it) the king urging his pursuit of the game (only) in three directions, and allowing the escape of all the animals before him, while the people of his towns do not warn one another (to prevent it). There will be good fortune.
6. In the topmost line, divided, we see one seek- ing union and attachment without having taken the first step (to such an end). There will be evil.
VIII. The idea of union between the different members and classes of a state, and how it can be secured, is the subject of the hexagram Pi. The whole line occupying the fifth place, or that of authority, in the hexagram, represents the ruler to whom the subjects of all the other lines offer a ready submission. According to the general rules for the symbolism of the lines, the second line is the correlate of the fifth ; but all the other lines are here made subject to that fifth ; — which is also a law of the Yi, according to the ' Daily Lecture.' To me it has the suspicious look of being made for the occasion. The harmony of union, therefore, is to be secured by the sovereign authority of one ; but he is warned to see to it that his virtue be what will beseem his place, and subjects are warned not to delay to submit to him.
Where does the ' sincerity ' predicated of the subject of line 1 come from ? The ' earthenware vessel ' is supposed to indicate its plain, unadorned character; but there is nothing in the position and nature of the line, beyond the general idea in the figure, to suggest the attribute.
Line 2 is the proper correlate of 5. Its position in the centre of the inner or lower trigram agrees with the movement of its subject as proceeding from the inward mind.
Line 3 is weak, not in the centre, nor in its correct place. The lines above and below it are both weak. All these things are sup- posed to account for what is said on it.
' The one beyond himself in line 4 is the ruler or king, who is
76 THE YI KING. TEXT.
IX. The Hsiao Kiit Hexagram.
Hsiao Kkii indicates that (under its conditions) there will be progress and success. (We see) dense clouds, but no rain coming from our borders in the west.
i. The first line, undivided, shows its subject re- turning and pursuing his own course. What mistake should he fall into ? There will be good fortune.
2. The second line, undivided, shows its subject, by the attraction (of the former line), returning (to the proper course). There will be good fortune.
the subject of 5, and with whom union ought to be sought. The divided line, moreover, is in a place proper to it. If its subject be firm and correct, there will be good fortune.
The subject of line 5 is the king, who must be the centre of union. The ancient kings had their great hunting expeditions in the different seasons ; and that of each season had its peculiar rules. But what is stated here was common to all. When the beating was completed, and the shooting was ready to commence, one side of the enclosure into which the game had been driven was left open and unguarded; — a proof of the royal benevolence, which did not want to make an end of all the game. So well known and understood is this benevolence of the model king of the hexagram, that all his people try to give it effect. Thus the union contemplated is shown to be characterised by mutual confidence and appreciation in virtue and benevolence.
A weak line being in the 6th place, which is appropriate to it, its subject is supposed to be trying to promote union among and with the subjects of the lines below. It is too late. The time is past. Hence it is symbolised as ' without a head,' that is, as not having taken the first step, from which its action should begin, and go on to the end.
SECT. I. THE HSIAO Kllti HEXAGRAM. J J
3. The third line, undivided, suggests the idea of a carriage, the strap beneath which has been removed, or of a husband and wife looking on each other with averted eyes.
4. The fourth line, divided, shows its subject possessed of sincerity. The danger of bloodshed is thereby averted, and his (ground for) apprehension dismissed. There will be no mistake.
5. The fifth line, undivided, shows its subject possessed of sincerity, and drawing others to unite with him. Rich in resources, he employs his neigh- bours (in the same cause with himself).
6. The topmost line, undivided, shows how the rain has fallen, and the (onward progress) is stayed ; — (so) must we value the full accumulation of the virtue (represented by the upper trigram). But a wife (exercising restraint), however firm and correct she may be, is in a position of peril, (and like) the moon approaching to the full. If the superior man prosecute his measures (in such circumstances), there will be evil.
IX. The name Hsiao Khh. is interpreted as meaning ' small restraint.' The idea of ' restraint ' having once been determined on as that to be conveyed by the figure, it is easily made out that the restraint must be small, for its representative is the divided line in the fourth place ; and the check given by that to all the undivided lines cannot be great. Even if we suppose, as many critics do, that all the virtue of that upper trigram Sun is concentrated in its first line, the attribute ascribed to Sun is that of docile flexibility, which cannot long be successful against the strength emblemed by the lower trigram Khxzw. The restraint therefore is small, and in the end there will be ' progress and success.'
The second sentence of the Thwan contains indications of the place, time, and personality of the writer which it seems possible to ascertain. The fief of A'au was the western portion of the
78 THE YI KING. TEXT-
X. The Li Hexagram.
(Li suggests the idea of) one treading on the tail of a tiger, which does not bite him. There will be progress and success.
kingdom of Yin or Shang, the China of the twelfth century b. c, the era of king Wan. Rain coming and moistening the ground is the cause of the beauty and luxuriance of the vegetable world, and the emblem of the blessings flowing from good training and good government. Here therefore in the west, the hereditary territory of the house of iTau, are blessings which might enrich the whole kingdom ; but they are somehow restrained. The dense clouds do not empty their stores.
P. Regis says : — ' To declare openly that no rain fell from the heavens long covered with dense clouds over the great tract of country, which stretched from the western border to the court and on to the eastern sea, was nothing else but leaving it to all thought- ful minds to draw the conclusion that the family of Wan was as worthy of the supreme seat as that of Shau, the tyrant, however ancient, was unworthy of it (vol. i, p. 356).' The intimation is not put in the Text, however, so clearly as by P. Regis.
Line 1 is undivided, the first line of Kh'ien, occupying its proper place. Its subject, therefore, notwithstanding the check of line 4, resumes his movement, and will act according to his strong nature, and go forward.
Line 2 is also strong, and though an even place is not appropriate to it, that place being central, its subject will make common cause with the subject of line 1 ; and there will be good fortune.
Line 3, though strong, and in a proper place, yet not being in the centre, is supposed to be less able to resist the restraint of line 4 ; and hence it has the ill omens that are given.
The subject of line 4, one weak line against all the strong lines of the hexagram, might well expect wounds, and feel apprehension in trying to restrain the others ; but it is in its proper place ; it is the first line also of Sun, whose attribute is docile flexibility.
SECT. I. THE LI HEXAGRAM. 79
i. The first line, undivided, shows its subject treading his accustomed path. If he go forward, there will be no error.
2. The second line, undivided, shows its subject treading the path that is level and easy ; — a quiet and solitary man, to whom, if he be firm and correct, there will be good fortune.
3. The third line, divided, shows a one-eyed man (who thinks he) can see ; a lame man (who thinks he) can walk well ; one who treads on the tail of a tiger and is bitten. (All this indicates) ill fortune. We have a (mere) bravo acting the part of a great ruler.
4. The fourth line, undivided, shows its subject treading on the tail of a tiger. He becomes full of apprehensive caution, and in the end there will be good fortune.
5. The fifth line, undivided, shows the resolute tread of its subject. Though he be firm and correct, there will be peril.
6. The sixth line, undivided, tells us to look at (the whole course) that is trodden, and examine the
The strong lines are moved to sympathy and help, and ' there is no mistake.'
Line 5 occupies the central place of Sun, and converts, by the sincerity of its subject, 4 and 6 into its neighbours, who suffer themselves to be used by it, and effect their common object.
In line 6, the idea of the hexagram has run its course. The harmony of nature is restored. The rain falls, and the onward march of the strong lines should now stop. But weakness that has achieved such a result, if it plume itself on it, will be in a position of peril ; and like the full moon, which must henceforth wane. Let the superior man, when he has attained his end, remain in quiet.
80 THE YI KING. text.
presage which that gives. If it be complete and without failure, there will be great good fortune.
X. The character giving its name to the hexagram plays an im- portant part also in the symbolism ; and this may be the reason why it does not, as the name, occupy the first place in the Thwan. Looking at the figure, we see it is made up of the trigrams Tui, representing a marsh, and Kh'\o.x\, representing the sky. Tui is a yin trigram, and its top line is divided. Below .A^ien, the great symbol of strength, it may readily suggest the idea of treading on a tiger's tail, which was an old way of expressing what was hazardous (Shu V, xxv, 2). But what suggests the statement that 'the tiger does not bite the treader?' The attribute of Tui is pleased satisfaction. Of course such an attribute could not be predicated of one who was in the fangs of a tiger. The coming scatheless out of such danger further suggests the idea of ' progress and success' in the course which king Wan had in his mind. And according to Appendix VI, that course was 'propriety,' the observance of all the rules of courtesy. On these, as so many stepping-stones, one may tread safely amid scenes of disorder and peril.
Line 1 is an undivided line in an odd place ; giving us the ideas of activity, firmness, and correctness. One so characterised will act rightly.
Line 2 occupies the middle place of the trigram, which is sup- posed to symbolise a path cut straight and level along the hill-side, or over difficult ground. Line 5 is not a proper correlate, and hence the idea of the subject of 2 being * a quiet and solitary man.'
Line 3 is neither central nor in an even place, which would be proper to it. But with the strength of will which the occupant of an odd place should possess, he goes forward with the evil results so variously emblemed. The editors of the imperial edition, in illustration of the closing sentence, refer to Analects VII, x.
Line 4 is in contiguity with 5, whose subject is in the place of authority ; but he occupies the place proper to a weak or divided line, and hence he bethinks himself, and goes softly.
Beneath the symbolism under line 5, lies the principle that the most excellent thing in ' propriety ' is humility. And the subject of the line, which is strong and central, will not be lacking in this, but bear in mind that the higher he is exalted, the greater may be his fall.
SECT. I. THE THAI HEXAGRAM.
XI. The Thai Hexagram.
In Thai (we see) the little gone and the great come. (It indicates that) there will be good fortune, with progress and success.
i. The first line, undivided, suggests the idea of grass pulled up, and bringing with it other stalks with whose roots it is connected. Advance (on the part of its subject) will be fortunate.
2. The second line, undivided, shows one who can bear with the uncultivated, will cross the Ho without a boat, does not forget the distant, and has no (selfish) friendships. Thus does he prove himself acting in accordance with the course of the due Mean.
3. The third line, undivided, shows that, while there is no state of peace that is not liable to be disturbed, and no departure (of evil men) so that they shall not return, yet when one is firm and correct, as he realises the distresses that may arise, he will commit no error. There is no occasion for sadness at the certainty (of such recurring changes) ; and in this mood the happiness (of the present) may be (long) enjoyed.
4. The fourth line, divided, shows its subject fluttering (down);— not relying on his own rich
What is said on line 6 is good, but is only a truism. The whole course has been shown; if every step has been right and appropriate, the issue will be very good. [16] G
82 THE YI KING.
TEXT.
resources, but calling in his neighbours. (They all come) not as having received warning, but in the sincerity (of their hearts).
5. The fifth line, divided, reminds us of (king) Ti-yi's (rule about the) marriage of his younger sister. By such a course there is happiness and there will be great good fortune.
6. The sixth line, divided, shows us the city wall returned into the moat. It is not the time to use the army. (The subject of the line) may, indeed, announce his orders to the people of his own city ; but however correct and firm he may be, he will have cause for regret.
XL The language of the Thwan has reference to the form of Thai, with the three strong lines of Kh\en below, and the three weak lines of Khwan above. The former are 'the great,' active and vigorous ; the latter are ' the small,' inactive and submissive. But where have the former ' come ' from, and whither are the latter ' gone ?' In many editions of the Yi beneath the hexagram of Thai
here, there appears that of Kwei Mei, the 54th in order (ZZ — ).
which becomes Thai, if the third and fourth lines exchange places. But in the notes on the Thwan, in the first Appendix, on hexa- gram 6, I have spoken of the doctrine of ' changing figures,' and intimated my disbelief of it. The different hexagrams arose necessarily by the continued manipulation of the undivided and divided lines, and placing them each over itself and over the other. When king Wan wrote these Thwan, he was taking the 64 hexa- grams, as they were ready to his hand, and not forming one from another by any process of divination. The ' gone ' and ' come ' are merely equivalent to ' below ' and ' above,' in the lower trigram or in the upper.
A course in which the motive forces are represented by the three strong, and the opposing by the three weak lines, must be pro- gressive and successful. Thai is called the hexagram of the first month of the year, the first month of the natural spring, when for six months, through the fostering sun and genial skies, the pro- cesses of growth will be going on.
SECT. I. THE PHI HEXAGRAM. 8^
XII. The Phi Hexagram.
In Pht there is the want of good understanding between the (different classes of) men, and its in- dication is unfavourable to the firm and correct
The symbolism of paragraph i is suggested by the three strong lines of AT/nen all together, and all possessed by the same instinct to advance. The movement of the first will be supported by that of the others, and be fortunate.
The second line is strong, but in an even place. This is sup- posed to temper the strength of its subject ; which is expressed by the first of his characteristics. But the even place is the central ; and it is responded to by a proper correlate in the fifth line above. Hence come all the symbolism of the paragraph and the auspice of good fortune implied in it.
Beneath the symbolism in paragraph 3 there lies the persuasion of the constant change that is taking place in nature and in human affairs. As night succeeds to day, and winter to summer, so calamity may be expected to follow prosperity, and decay the flourishing of a state. The third is the last of the lines of Khien, by whose strength and activity the happy state of Thai has been produced. Another aspect of things may be looked for; but by firmness and correctness the good estate of the present may be long continued.
According to the treatise on the Thwan, the subjects of the fourth and other upper lines are not ' the small returning ' as opponents of the strong lines below, as is generally supposed ; but as the correlates of those lines, of one heart and mind with them to maintain the state of Thai, and giving them, humbly but readily, all the help in their power.
Ti-yi, the last sovereign but one of the Yin dynasty, reigned from b.c. 1 191 to 1 155; but what was the history of him and his sister here referred to we do not know. P. Regis assumes that he gave his sister in marriage to the lord of Aau, known in