no one really knows who wrote Yi Jing
The I-ching or the Book of Changes is usually known as a book of
divination. It grew out first of the ancient practice of divination by
using the yellow stalks. Although the formation of the Book of Changes
started very early, the complete version of the Book of Changes we have now
emerged around 1st c A.D. It is a long process of formation, not completed
by one person at one time. The origin of the trigrams, which were perhaps mainly a result of the imitations of the cracks formed on the Shang dynasty oracle bones, tradition has attributed four persons to the formation of the Book of Changes. It may be said that the link to these ancient sages and kings no doubt was an attempt to show the continuity of tradition.
Fu-xi who was said to create the 8 trigrams to indicate the images of the
natural world. A legendary sage-ruler in the remote antiquity, he was said
to be the first person who drew the 8 trigrams by contemplating the natural
scenes in heaven and on earth.
The second person who contributed to the formation of the Book of Changes
is King Wen of the feudal Chou (around the 12th C. B.C.). He was said to
combine these 8 trigrams with one another and produced 64 hexagrams. In
addition, he also provided his judgments to each of the hexagram. The
judgments King Wen appended to the hexagrams are advices on what action to
take or what approach to adopt when dealing with a given situation. The
purposes of these advices are to generate good fortune and prevent or avoid
bad luck.
Third is the Duke of Chou (d. in 1094 B.C.) who provided interpretation to
each individual line. These line-by-line interpretations coincide with the
judgment of the hexagram made by his father, King Wen. In a similar way,
these line-by line explanations suggest the advantages or disadvantages of
any given situation or course of action. Each interpretation represents a
situation or a position giving rise to action. A hexagram, therefore,
represents 6 changing situations linked to one another.
Finally Confucius was said to have written philosophical treatises on the
hexagrams, judgments, and line-by-line interpretations. These are the
so-called ten wings or appendices to the Book of Changes.
So, the the complete version of the Book of Changes consists of 4 parts: 1.
hexagrams, 2. King Wen's judgments, 3. Duke Zhou's line-by-line
interpretations, and 4. Confucius' ten appendices.
Since the compilation of the Book of Changes is involved with three people
of the Chou, it is also called Chou I.
Correlative Cosmology
It is not shared by this post-culture-revolution generation.
The Book of Changes, a very old ancient text of divination, is well known
for this ancient Chinese view toward cosmology.
Correlative cosmology is conceptualized mainly through the theory of
yin-yang and the theory of wu-xing, or complementary bipolarity and
cyclical periodicity.
Complementary bipolarity is the pattern of rise and fall, birth and death,
waxing and waning, and even success and failure so forth
The movement of bipolar alternation appears to be cyclical in form, appears
in a pattern of recurrence, which is found not only in seasonal, and
biological changes but also manifest in dynastic changes: cold and hot,
birth and death, rise and fall, separation and return, sorrow and joy.
We are not sure about the origin of yin-yang theory. When the terms yin and
yang were first mentioned, yin and yang simply signify the shady and sunny
sides of the hill. The northern side of a mountain is called Yin, dark, and
the southern side Yang, facing the sun.
Later yin and yang were gradually used for representing the two forces
which produce numerous cosmic phenomena.
For example, an ancient text says that life and death of human being come
by means of yin and yang.
The Taoist books DDJ and Zhuangzi also mention a few times that myriad
things are produced by the interaction of the yin and yang forces.
All what I have just said is to suggest that although the concept of yin
and yang dates from very early times; though at the beginning they stand
for very concrete images: sunshine and shadow, later they became symbolic
representations. A school of thought was called the Yin-Yang school in the
Warring-Sates period.
While the concept of yin-yang explains the origin of the universe and the
process of changes, the wu-xing interpret the structure of the universe
categorize each object or phenomenon.
DaoDe Jing by Lao Tzu
The Taoist work DDJ (or in English the Classic of the Way and the Virtue)
is also known as Lao-tzu, because the work is traditionally attributed to
the person Lao-tzu, Old Master, who is believed to be an old contemporary
of Confucius.
Authorship and Date
Now more and more scholars have agreed that the DDJ is not written by a
single person at one time, but it is a collection of the ideas and concepts
which we identify as Taoist.
D. C. Lau even calls this work a Taoist anthology.
Fung Yu-lan, another Chinese scholar, argues that he is willing to accept
Lao Tzu as a historical person, an old contemporary of Confucius. But on
the other hand, Feng also says that he would place this work DDC in a late
period; that is, the work was perhaps composed or compiled after the rise
of the school of Names, mainly because the work DDJ contains many
counterarguments about the functions of names, language, and intellectual
knowledge.
Yiwu, you are right one out of three!
Shouldn't you know a little bit of your roots? |
