We often cannot say exactly when, where, or how ancient texts were born. Some of the reasons are obvious. The further away in time, the more likely a work’s origins will be obscure: memories fade, original materials disappear, alternative versions surface. Often, not least in the case of many of the world’s most sacred texts, diverse materials have accumulated over long periods, edited by different hands under different historical conditions. This is true, to a greater or lesser degree, of the Hebrew Bible (known, with some rearrangement of material, as the Old Testament), the Qur’an, the Hindu Vedas, and the early recorded pronouncements of Siddhartha, the historic Buddha. It is also true of the Zhou Changes, which, when sanctioned as a foundational text by the Chinese state in 136 BCE, became the Classic of Changes, or Yijing.
Myths and Histories
According to a prominent Chinese legend, a great culture hero named Fuxi invented a set of eight three-line symbols known as trigrams, which became the foundation of the Changes. The basic story reads like this:
When in ancient times Lord Baoxi [Fuxi] ruled the world as sovereign, he looked upward and observed the images in heaven and looked downward and observed the models that the earth provided. He observed the patterns on birds and beasts and what things were suitable for the land. Nearby, adopting them from his own person, and afar, adopting them from other things, he thereupon made the eight trigrams in order to become thoroughly conversant with the virtues inherent in the numinous and the bright and to classify the myriad things in terms of their true, innate natures.1
By this account Fuxi was able to represent by means of the eight trigrams a rudimentary but comprehensive understanding of the fundamental order of the universe.
Later, we are told, these eight trigrams came to be doubled, creating a total of sixty-four six-line figures called hexagrams, each with a one-or two-character name that described its fundamental symbolism. Some legends give Fuxi credit for this development; others suggest that another mythological personality, Shennong, may have devised the sixty-four hexagrams. Still other accounts assert that a fully historical figure, King Wen, founder of the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1045–256 BCE), invented the hexagrams and put them in what became their conventional order in 136 BCE. King Wen is also often credited with attaching to each hexagram the short explanatory texts known as judgments, and for adding to each individual line a line statement indicating its symbolic significance within the structure of each hexagram. Some sources claim that King Wen’s son, the Duke of Zhou, added the line statements, and much later Confucius (551–479 BCE) reportedly added the set of commentaries known collectively as the Ten Wings.
One or another version of this general narrative served for more than two thousand years as the commonly accepted explanation for how the Yijing evolved. The archaeological evidence, however, tells a rather different tale.
Trigrams and hexagrams seem to have developed from very early forms of Chinese numerology, including those associated with oracle bone divination—a Shang dynasty (ca. 1600–ca. 1050 BCE) royal practice. By applying intense heat to the dried plastrons of turtles and the scapulae of cattle—a technique sometimes known as pyromancy—the late Shang and early Zhou kings and their priestly diviners were able to produce cracks in the bone, which yielded answers to questions dealing with topics such as family matters, sacrifice, travel, warfare, hunting and fishing, and settlement planning. The “questions” were normally phrased as prayerlike declarations or proposals, the correctness of which could then be tested by divination(s). Written inscriptions carved into a great many of these oracle bones provide direct evidence of the issues the kings addressed as well as the outcomes of their divinations.2
So far archaeological excavations in China have yielded more oracle bones and bronzes with numerical inscriptions that indicate hexagrams than those that indicate trigrams; thus it is at least possible that the latter were derived from the former rather than the reverse, contrary to the common myth. Some scholars have suggested that as early as the twelfth or eleventh century BCE, Shang dynasty diviners may already have begun to analyze trigram and hexagram relationships in terms of techniques previously thought to date only from the final centuries of the Zhou dynasty or later, while others have argued that at least some of the numerical hexagrams found on oracle bones and bronzes are not related to the conventional divinatory traditions of the Changes at all.
Much debate surrounds the issue of when and why various sets of odd and even numbers became “hexagram pictures” with solid and broken lines, and at what point written statements came to be attached to these lines. A good guess is that a more or less complete early version of the basic text of the Changes emerged in China no later than about 800 BCE.3 Recent archaeological discoveries have shown, however, that there were several different traditions of Yijing-related divination in the latter part of the Zhou period, and that hexagram pictures and divinatory procedures took a variety of forms in different localities and at different times.
Some authorities believe that the solid lines of trigrams and hexagrams represent single-segment bamboo sticks used in divination, while broken lines represent double-segmented sticks. Others have suggested an early system of calculation based on knotted cords, in which a big knot signified a solid line and two smaller knots signified a broken line. Still others have argued that the eight trigrams were originally derived either from the cracks in oracle bones or from pictographs of certain key words or concepts that came to be associated with them. Yet another generative possibility may be a rudimentary sexual symbolism. It is difficult even for non-Freudians to look at the first two hexagrams in the received order—Qian and Kun, respectively—and not see representations of a penis and a vulva.
We do not know for certain what the numerically generated trigrams and hexagrams in late Shang and early Zhou oracle bones and other sources might have signified, but by the middle or late Zhou period the primary meanings of the eight trigrams seem to have stabilized (see below). No later than the fourth century, probably earlier, additional meanings began to be attached to these trigrams—meanings that would later become part of an important commentary to the basic text called “Explaining the Trigrams.”
As for the sixty-four hexagrams, we know only that at some point during the early Zhou period—probably about 800 BCE, but perhaps earlier—each of them acquired a name referring to a thing, an activity, a state, a situation, a quality, an emotion, or a relationship; for example, “Well,” “Cauldron,” “Marrying Maid,” “Treading,” “Following,” “Viewing,” “Juvenile Ignorance,” “Peace,” “Obstruction,” “Waiting,” “Contention,” “Ills to be Cured,” “Modesty,” “Elegance,” “Great Strength, “Contentment,” “Inner Trust,” “Joy,” “Closeness,” “Fellowship,” “Reciprocity.”4 There has always been a great deal of debate, however, about the order in which these hexagrams originally appeared, and about the early meanings of the hexagram names and their variants.5
In the conventional version of the Yijing, which may well represent the earliest order of the hexagrams, they are organized into pairs according to one of two principles, each of which involves opposition: The primary organizing principle is one of inversion, by which one hexagram becomes its opposite by virtue of being turned upside down. Fifty-six of the hexagrams fall into this category. The remaining eight, in which inversion would not produce a change, are joined by the principle of lateral linkage—that is, a hexagram structure that would emerge if each line of the original hexagram turned into its opposite.
INVERSION
LATERAL LINKAGE
Most hexagram names in the Changes seem to have been derived from a term or concept that appears in their respective judgments or individual line statements. Take, for example, Gen (number 52 in the conventional order), discussed briefly in the introduction and at greater length below and in subsequent chapters. In this hexagram the character gen appears not only in the judgment but also in all six line statements.6
Here is what one early Zhou dynasty understanding of the judgment and the individual line statements of Gen might have been:
JUDGMENT: If one cleaves the back he will not get hold of the body; if one goes into the courtyard he will not see the person. There will be no misfortune.
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First (bottom) line: Cleave the feet. There will be no misfortune. Favorable in a long-range determination.
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Second line: Cleave the lower legs, but don’t remove the bone marrow. His heart is not pleased.
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Third line: Cleave the waist, rend the spinal meat. It is threatening. Smoke the heart.
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Fourth line: Cleave the torso [lit., body]. There will be no misfortune.
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Fifth line: Cleave the jaw. Talk will be orderly. Troubles will go away.
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Sixth line: Cleave thickly. Auspicious.
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Another possible verbal meaning of gen in this particular hexagram is “to glare at,” which would, of course, fundamentally change the meaning of each line.8
As is apparent from this example, many hexagram judgments are extremely cryptic and subject to any number of interpretations. About 70 percent of them refer to ancient and now obscure divinatory formulas involving sacrifices or offerings to spirits.9 Here are a few examples of such formulas:
Qian (number 1 in the received order): “Primary receipt, favorable to divine.”
Shi (number 7): “The determination is favorable for a great man; no misfortune.”
Lü (number 10): “Step on the tiger’s tail; it won’t bite the person; a sacrificial offering.”
Tongren (number 13): “Gather the people in the open country; a sacrificial offering; favorable for crossing a big river; a favorable determination for a noble person.”
Dayou (number 14): “A great harvest; a grand offering.”
Qian (number 15): “An offering; for a noble person there will be a conclusion.”
Shike (number 21): “An offering; favorable for resolving a legal dispute.”
Bo (number 23): “Not favorable when there is somewhere to go.”
Longer judgments generally provide variations on the same or similar themes. For instance, Kun (number 2) reads: “Primary receipt. A determination favorable for a mare. A noble man who is going somewhere will first lose his way, and later find a host. Favorable to the west and south, one will find a friend; to the east and north, one will lose a friend. Auspicious in a determination about security.” Fu (number 24) reads: “An offering; in going out and coming in there will be no illness. A friend will arrive without misfortune; he will turn around and head back on his way, and return in seven days. Favorable for having somewhere to go.” One can easily see how such statements might lend themselves to a variety of interpretations, even if originally they referred to very specific circumstances.
Like judgments, the individual line statements of the hexagrams—which vary in length from as few as two characters to as many as thirty—often include records from previous divinations that were either transmitted orally or recorded in early divination manuals of one kind or another. Many of these statements seem to be based directly or indirectly on “omen verses” of the sort that can also be found on Shang dynasty oracle bones. Here are a few examples of line statements that happen to deal explicitly with the theme of military affairs: Line 5 of Shi (number 7): “In the hunt there is a catch: advantageous to shackle captives; no misfortune. The elder son leads the troops; the younger son carts the corpses; the determination is ominous.” Line 3 of Lü (number 10): “The feeble-sighted will be able to see; the lame will be able to walk. Step on a tiger’s tail; it will bite the person. Ominous. A warrior performs for the great ruler.” Line 6 of Fu (number 24): “Lost return; ominous; there will be a calamity. If troops are set in motion, there will be a great defeat. For the ruler of the state there will be a calamity; for up to ten years it will not be possible to launch a military campaign.”
As with the judgments, most line statements that contain explicitly divinatory material indicate positive prognostications or the nonjudgmental expression “no harm/misfortune.” The most common negative terms in the Changes—“regret,” “remorse,” “distress,” “threatening,” and “ominous”—appear only about 130 times in the judgments and line statements, compared to about 430 instances of “auspicious,” “favorable,” “advantageous,” or “successful.”10 Other fairly frequent divinatory terms, such as “to put something to use” (55 occurrences), also have positive connotations.
As should be readily apparent, commentaries have long been necessary to make sense of the cryptic utterances reflected in so many hexagram judgments and line statements. Indeed, over the past two millennia or so, virtually every one of the four thousand-plus substantive words in the basic text has been subjected to intense and relentless scrutiny.
Many passages from the Changes have been interpreted in widely disparate ways. The reasons for this diversity of opinion are not difficult to find. In the first place, the divinations recorded in the Changes usually lack sufficient context, inviting sometimes wild speculations. Ancient terms and allusions are often unclear; loan words, local variants, and scribal errors abound. Moreover, after the rise of Confucianism and other moralistic philosophies from about the sixth century BCE onward, simple value-neutral descriptions of events that appeared in the judgments and line statements of the “original” Changes increasingly became prescriptions for proper behavior: “dids” became “shoulds,” so to speak.
As part of the process, a number of obscure or unsettling terms and phrases came to be understood in new ways. Thus a term like fu, which originally seems to have denoted “capture” or a “captive” in war, came increasingly to be understood as a moral quality: “sincerity” or “trustworthiness.” Similarly the term heng, which originally had to do with the specific ritual sacrifices surrounding a divination, came to be glossed as “prevalence,” “success,” or “penetrating.” Zhen, originally denoting a “determination” of some sort, came to be interpreted as “constancy,” “perseverance,” or “correctness and firmness.”
Other Prominent Features of the Original Changes
Linguistic devices such as rhyme, alliteration, and the pairing of opposite ideas, which initially facilitated the memorization and transmission of prognostications, invested the line statements of the Changes with a powerful “word magic,” especially after they were rendered into writing.11 Roughly a third of the basic text contains rhymes of one sort or another. In some places entire phrases are rhymed; in others internal rhymes are more prevalent. An apt illustration is the Kun hexagram (number 2), in which the second word in five of its six major line statements is rhymed.
About twenty hexagrams have extensive rhyming schemes, and another thirty or so contain at least some rhymes. Many line statements also display plays on words and double entendres, which, like rhymes and alliterations, are almost invariably lost in translation.12 Among the numerous two-character juxtapositions in the basic text, we find contrasts such as presence and absence, loss and gain, bright and dark, sweet and bitter, big and small, up and down, level and slope, auspicious and ominous, going and coming, advance and retreat, beginning and ending, inside and outside, weeping and laughing, vassal and ruler, traveler and townsperson, older and younger, and tying and untying. These contrasts suggest a possible source of inspiration for the complementary qualities that later came to be associated with yin and yang. Although these two concepts are not identified as such in the earliest strata of the Changes, they are unmistakably manifest in the late Zhou dynasty commentaries that became known as the Ten Wings.
Another prominent feature of the early Changes is the way that many of its judgments and line statements concentrate certain kinds of information. For example, the third, fourth, and fifth lines of the hexagram known as Daxu or Dachu (conventionally translated “Great Domestication,” number 26) refer to a horse, an ox, and a pig, respectively. There are similar concentrations of information in hexagrams such as Shi (“The Army,” number 7, which deals with military affairs), Tongren (“Fellowship,” number 13, concerned specifically with fighting), Fu (“Return,” number 24, focused on travel), and Daguo (“Major Superiority,” number 28, containing botanical lore).
Some hexagrams present their information spatially as well as topically. Consider, for example, Jian (number 53):
Line 1: The wild goose advances to the riverbank; threatening for a small child. There will be talk. No misfortune.
Line 2: The wild goose advances to a boulder. It eats and drinks and goes “honk honk.” Auspicious.
Line 3: The wild goose advances to the high ground. The husband goes on a military campaign and does not return. The wife is pregnant but does not give birth. Ominous.
Line 4: The wild goose advances to the trees. Someone will get his perch. There will be no misfortune.
Line 5: The wild goose advances to a ridge. The wife does not become pregnant for three years. In the end, nothing overcomes it. Auspicious.
Line 6: The wild goose advances to high ground; its feathers can be used as an emblem [in a dance?]. Auspicious.13
Other such spatially oriented hexagrams include Qian (number 1), Xian (number 31), and Gen (number 52).
One of the most important structural features of the early Changes, and one that has received an enormous amount of commentarial attention throughout the centuries, has to do with the way that certain phrases in the line statements are repeated in two or more hexagrams. There are many examples of such shared utterances. Some are general prognostications: “Ominous for an attack,” for instance, occurs in the line statements of no less than ten hexagrams. Others are time notations: “Seven days,” for example, appears in the line statements of at least three hexagrams. Sometimes hexagrams are linked by oppositional line statements. In the Lü hexagram (number 56), we encounter the phrase “he gets his money-axes”; in the Sun hexagram (number 57), “he loses his money-axes.” In the Tongren hexagram (number 13), the subject of the fifth line first cries out and then laughs, while in the sixth line of Lü (number 56), the subject first laughs and then cries out.
Of particular interest to Chinese commentators have been shared lines or phrases in hexagrams that seem to be related structurally. For instance, the statement for the fourth line of Kuai (also known as Guai, number 43) contains exactly the same phrase—“with no skin on the buttocks, his walking is labored”—as the third line of Gou (number 44). Gou is the hexagram that would result if Kuai were turned upside down (at which point, of course, the fourth line of Kuai would become the third line of Gou). Similarly, line 3 in Jiji (number 63) and line 4 in Weiji (number 64) both refer to attacks on the Gui border state. There are several other instances of this type of relationship, indicating, it would appear, a conscious effort at correlation. Over the years, as we shall see, efforts by scholars and diviners to find creative ways of linking line statements with hexagram structures generated a great number of different systems involving the general idea of “hexagram changes.”
The Cultural Content of the Early Changes
Chinese scholars have long debated the basic nature of the Yijing. Some consider it to be nothing more than a divination manual, while others have described it as a book of philosophy, a historical work, an ancient dictionary or encyclopedia, an early scientific treatise, and even a mathematical model of the universe. Certain claims are easier to sustain than others, but it is clear in any case that the basic text of the Changes has much to tell us about the perceptions and preoccupations of both elites and commoners in late Shang and early Zhou dynasty China.
The vast world of ancestral and other spirits in Bronze Age China is implicit in the divinations, sacrifices, and prayers that suffuse the basic text of the Changes. But there are only a few explicit references to ghosts and spirits. Shangdi, the spiritual “Lord on High” of the Shang people, is mentioned only once in the basic text by name, and the spiritual power known as Tian or “Heaven” appears infrequently as such. On the other hand, the majority of hexagram judgments contain at least one reference to sacrifices, and some hexagrams—notably Lin (number 19), Guan (number 20), Xian (number 31), Gen (number 52), and Huan (number 59)—display a preoccupation with them, including some particularly gory details concerning the dismemberment of both animals and human war captives for ritual purposes. Here, for example, are the judgment and line statements of Xian, which seems to parallel Gen in certain respects:
JUDGMENT: Sacrificial offering; a favorable determination. Auspicious for taking a maiden as a wife.
Line 1: Cut [off?] the big toes [of the sacrificial victim].
Line 2: Cut the lower legs; ominous. Auspicious for dwellings.
Line 3: Cut the thighs. Take hold of the bone marrow. To go will be distressing.
Line 4: The determination is auspicious. Troubles will go away. You feel unsettled and go back and forth: a friend is following your thoughts.
Line 5: Cut the spinal flesh. No trouble.
Line 6: Cut the cheeks, jowls, and tongue.14
The basic text of the Changes reflects the sharp social divide between members of the aristocratic elite (“noble people” and “great men”) and commoners (“small people”). Later the term “noble people” (lit., “sons of lords”) would come to signify those with exemplary moral qualities, just as the term “small people” would come to mean selfish and petty persons. But in the earliest strata of the Changes, these are purely social distinctions. Virtually all sectors and strata of society are represented in the line statements: men, women, and children; husbands, wives, and concubines; farmers, merchants, bondservants, servants, bandits, priests, and magicians. In daily life there are births and burials; people lose things and gain things; they get sick and recover or die; they laugh and giggle; they sigh, cry, and sob (sometimes with snivel and snot); they moan and groan; and they cower in terror.
The economic world described in the basic text is primarily a pastoral and hunting one. There are no references to the sea and relatively few to the cultivation of crops—but many to hunting, herding, fishing, gathering plants, and raising livestock. There are several references to barbarians and to brutal and bloody punishments of various sorts, usually for unspecified crimes. As indicated above, tribal warfare and the taking of prisoners for slave labor or human sacrifice was a prominent characteristic of Shang society, and although ritualized human sacrifice diminished during the early Zhou period, recent archaeological discoveries indicate that it was still practiced.15
Not surprisingly, nature looms large in the earliest layers of the Changes. Several hexagrams refer explicitly to astronomical or calendrical phenomena, including Kui (number 38) and Feng (number 55). References in the former to foxes, swine, and ghosts pertain to celestial objects and configurations rather than terrestrial beings, and references in the latter to observances of the Dipper at midday suggest a solar eclipse. One of the most interesting instances of astronomical imagery in the Yijing appears in the line statements of Qian (number 1), which boasts an extra statement (as does Kun, number 2). The text reads:
Line 1: A submerged dragon; don’t use [the outcome of this determination].
Line 2: A dragon sighted in a field; it will be favorable to see a great man.
Line 3: The noble person throughout the day is vigorous, but at night he is wary; threatening but there will be no misfortune.
Line 4: Sometimes [the dragon] leaps in the deep; no misfortune.
Line 5: A dragon flying in the sky: it will be favorable to see a great man.
Line 6: A gorged dragon: there will be trouble.
Extra line: Seeing a group of dragons without heads: auspicious.16
Although on first blush the Qian hexagram seems to be concerned with the activities of a mythical beast,17 its focus is actually calendrical, and the imagery is, in fact, astronomical. That is, the dragon in the statements refers to a Chinese constellation named Canlong (lit., Blue-Green Dragon), which was “submerged” under the eastern horizon during the winter. It appeared just above the horizon in spring, extended fully across the sky in summer, and descended head-first beneath the western horizon at the autumnal equinox.18 The original symbolism, then, was seasonal: Qian represented the birth of things in the spring, their growth during the summer, and their maturity (and harvest) in the fall. Later the activities of the dragon as depicted in the Qian hexagram came to be widely understood as the actions appropriate to the “superior man” or “exemplary person”—another instance of transformed imagery.
Many of the line statements and judgments of the Changes describe objects and processes of nature: thunder and lightning, clouds, wind and rain, earth and fire; mountains, lakes, pools, rivers, rocks, trees, fruits, vines, and flowers. There are also animals of all sorts (some of which are described as mating), from supernatural beasts to both wild and domestic animals, including deer, foxes, birds of all kinds, pigs and piglets, horses, fish, pheasants, geese, tigers, leopards, elephants, goats, turtles, and rodents. Material objects mentioned in the line statements include gold, silk, jade, talismans, cowry shells, clothing, liquor, houses, food products, flasks, tureens, eating utensils, musical instruments, sacrificial altars and ritual vessels, wagons, carts, shoes, weapons, and various household items.
The Yijing also contains a significant number of personal and place names, titles, and historical allusions. Indeed, some traditional Chinese accounts of the Changes—and some recent Western ones as well—see in the work a “hidden history” of the late Shang and early Zhou dynasties.19 A close analysis of the line statements of the final two hexagrams of the conventional text reveals, for example, unmistakable references to the military activities of King Wu Ding (ca. 1200 BCE) of the Shang, and less obvious but still evident references to the Zhou dynasty’s desire to legitimate itself as the rightful successor to the Shang. This does not mean, however, that we can accept at face value all claims for the antiquity of the basic text. Despite tantalizing bits of evidence, it remains doubtful that King Wen wrote the judgments or the line statements of the received version of the Yijing.
Early Uses of the Changes
The Yijing began its life in China as a book of divination. The numbers that yielded hexagrams were derived from the manipulation of stalks of the dried milfoil plant (Achillea millefolium), also known as yarrow. We do not know, however, how the stalks were originally manipulated. All that can be said with confidence is that a hexagram was initially chosen by some numerical means, through manipulation of the milfoil stalks, and that a particular line was usually singled out for emphasis, perhaps in a process distinct from, but related to, the one that yielded the hexagram in the first place.
The most complete written records of Yijing-based divination in the Zhou dynasty come from the Zuo Commentary, a highly influential work dating from around the late fourth century BCE that was designed to explicate an extraordinarily brief and cryptic text known as the Spring and Autumn Annals. The Zuo Commentary provides about two dozen fairly detailed examples of how the Changes came to be used during the so-called Spring and Autumn period—specifically, from 672 to 485 BCE. Although it says nothing about the process by which hexagrams were generated, the text nonetheless allows us to discern certain significant patterns of interpretation as well as important changes in the way the Yijing was used over time.
There were four basic stages in early Changes divination according to the Zuo Commentary: first, a topic was proposed; second, a diviner was consulted; third, a stalk-casting process identified a particular hexagram to be examined; and finally, an expert (who may or may not have been the diviner) interpreted the results. Interpretations of this sort involved analyzing one or more of the constituent elements of the hexagram(s) under consideration—hexagram names, judgments, line statements, and especially trigram relationships. A constant feature of Changes interpretation throughout the Spring and Autumn period seems to be that it was “a rather ad hoc affair,” involving practices that were “multiple and often contradictory.”20 Later interpreters of the Yijing likewise enjoyed extraordinary latitude in their effort to make meaning out of its cryptic judgments, line statements, and trigram configurations.
The earliest stories of Yijing-based divinations in the Zuo Commentary indicate that a specific line came to be identified by a procedure in which one hexagram—however it might have been generated—was paired with another hexagram that differed in structure only by a single line. For example, to identify the interpretive importance of the fourth line of the Guan hexagram (number 20), the diviner would refer to “Guan’s Pi,” since the only structural difference between Guan and the Pi hexagram (number 12) is the fourth line, which is broken in Guan and solid in Pi (see below). An understanding of the line statement might then be facilitated by an analysis of the trigram symbolism of one or both hexagrams.
Here is an example, dating from 672 BCE, in which Marquis Li of the Chen state requested a divination about the prospects for his son, Jingzhong, to become a ruler:
[The diviner] encountered Guan’s Pi and he remarked, “The [fourth line statement of Guan] says, ‘Beholding the light of the state / It is beneficial to be the king’s guest.’” In interpreting these two rhymed passages, the diviner explained that Kun, the lower trigram of the Guan and Pi hexagrams, represented the land; Sun, the upper trigram of Guan, represented the wind; and Qian, the upper trigram of Pi, represented the heavens. Wind rising above the earth to the heavens symbolized a mountain, and thus “If the treasures of the mountain are illuminated by the light of heaven, then he [Jingzhong, the Marquis’ son] will occupy the land.”21
Another example of early Zhou hexagram analysis is the story of Duke Mu of Qin’s punitive expedition against Duke Hui of Jin in 645 BCE. Before the attack Duke Mu asked his diviner, Tufu, to consult the Changes regarding the outcome. Tufu selected the hexagram Gu (number 18; see below). The judgment of this hexagram reads in part: “Favorable for crossing a big river.” The diviner thus predicted victory (in apparently extemporaneous rhymed verse), remarking thereafter that Duke Mu’s troops would cross the Yellow River separating Qin from Jin, defeat the forces of Duke Hui, and arrest the duke. He explained that since the inner (lower) trigram of Gu was Sun (“Wind”) and the outer (upper) one was Gen (“Mountain”), the winds of Qin would blow down the “fruits” of Jin on the mountain and their assets would be seized.22 That is, Qin would prevail in the struggle. Significantly, in this case and several others as well, the trigrams that figure in the prognostication have primary symbolic associations similar, if not identical, to those that generally prevailed in later periods.
From about 600 BCE onward, the Changes came to be used not only for divination but also for rhetorical effect. That is, individuals used quotations from the text to bolster their arguments, indicating increasing public access to the work and greater public awareness of it. The Zuo Commentary provides several illuminating examples of this rhetorical usage. Here is one, involving a conflict between the feudal states of Jin and Chu in 597 BCE. At the time, an impetuous and insubordinate Jin officer named Zhizi led his forces across a river to attack the enemy without waiting for orders; in response, one of his military colleagues remarked: “This army [of Zhizi] is in great danger! The Changes expresses the idea in Shi’s Lin [i.e., the first line statement of the Shi hexagram, number 7 in the conventional order] that ‘The army sets out according to regulations. If it does not preserve them, it will be inauspicious.’”23 He follows this remark with a trigram analysis in which the “weakness” associated with Kun (“Earth”), the upper trigram in both the Shi and Lin hexagrams, and the “obstruction” associated with Dui (“Lake”), the lower trigram of Lin (number 19), combine to compromise the entire operation: “The regulations are not preserved.” Furthermore, we learn that the Lin hexagram means “not doing [work that should be done].” As a consequence, the colleague avers, “if we encounter [the enemy], we will certainly be defeated. Zhizi has set it up. Even if he escapes and returns home, there will certainly be a great fault.”
In this instance we have no indication that a divination was ever performed; what the text of the Zuo Commentary reveals is nothing more than a stinging critique of Zhizi’s insubordination, using the moral authority of the Changes and employing the trigram symbolism of both the Shi and Lin hexagrams as a kind of parable.
Extant texts from the Warring States period (ca. 475–221 BCE) tend overwhelmingly to reflect the use of the Changes for rhetorical purposes, but it is clear that during this period the basic text and its variants continued to be widely employed in divination, reaching ever broader segments of the population in the process. This expanded use of the document in various forms and for various purposes is particularly evident in recent Chinese archaeological discoveries of Yijing-related materials written on silk and bamboo during the fourth and third centuries BCE. What these discoveries reveal in particular is that several significantly different versions of the Changes circulated in China during the two or three centuries prior to its designation as a classic in 136 BCE, and that the final version probably owes a considerable debt to interpretive traditions represented by these alternative texts.
Unfortunately the five major hexagram-based texts discovered since the 1970s exist only in fragments, and scholars are still trying to determine what their relationship might have been to the final version of the Changes. Many hexagram names are the same or similar, as are several line statements and judgments, but the order of the hexagrams, the spacing of the trigrams, and even the structure of the individual lines sometimes differ substantially. In certain texts hexagrams appear side by side rather than sequentially, and there are instances in which we find geometric symbols or written prognostications that have no counterpart in the final version of the Changes. Intriguingly, one set of bamboo slips unearthed in 1993 includes inscriptions dating from the third century BCE that match almost exactly certain extant fragments of a long-lost hexagram-based text known as the Return to the Hidden, which reportedly predates the Changes.24
The most complete and revealing early alternative to the final version of the Changes is the Mawangdui (Hunan province) silk manuscript, discovered in 1973 and dating no later than 168 BCE.25 Although this manuscript is of great interest in its own right, for our purposes the most important feature of the document is the light it sheds on the complex process by which the Changes became a classic in 136 BCE. This process, still incompletely understood, involved the addition of a set of commentaries known collectively as the Ten Wings, which transformed a relatively simple divination manual into a sophisticated philosophical tract. What the Mawangdui manuscript tells us is that just decades before the Changes received canonical status, there was still no consensus on how to understand and use the basic text.
The Mawangdui manuscript is the only version of the Changes unearthed since the 1970s that contains a set of commentaries corresponding roughly to the Ten Wings. But, as with the order of the hexagrams in the Mawangdui basic text, these commentaries are organized in significantly different ways and include passages for which there are no counterparts in the received version of the Yijing. As one brief example, in the Mawangdui commentary known as the “The Properties [or Inner Concerns] of the Changes,” we find a long conversation between Confucius and his disciple Zi Gong in which the Sage, after being challenged by his assertive pupil, claims that he values the Changes as a book of wisdom, not as a divination manual:
Zi Gong said: “Does the Master also believe in milfoil divination?” The Master said: “I am right in [only] seventy out of one hundred prognostications…. As for the Changes, I do indeed put its prayers and divinations last, only observing its virtue and propriety…. The divinations of scribes and magicians tend toward virtue [through their examination of numbers] but are not yet there; [they] delight in it but they are not correct. Perhaps it will be because of the Changes that gentlemen of later generations will doubt me. I seek its virtue and nothing more. I am on the same road as the scribes and magicians but end up differently. The conduct of the gentleman’s virtue is to seek blessings; that is why he sacrifices, but little. The righteousness of his humaneness is to seek auspiciousness; that is why he divines but rarely.”26
This passage has occasioned a great deal of comment from Chinese and Western scholars, and while it seems clear that the Confucius represented here wants to emphasize that the Yijing is primarily a repository of ancient moral wisdom, his messages about prognostication seem quite mixed. In fact, in the passage immediately following the Sage’s exchange with his challenging student, he remarks that “the enlightened lord does not for a moment or a night or a day or a month fail to divine by turtle shell or milfoil … [in order to know] auspiciousness and inauspiciousness and to comply with Heaven and Earth.”27