Although the specific circumstances under which the Yijing found its way to various East Asian countries naturally differed, there seem to be certain similarities in the way that it traveled. In the first place, from the early centuries of the common era into the late nineteenth century, the classical Chinese written language was the lingua franca of virtually all literate elites in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, employed in a fashion roughly analogous to the scholarly use of Latin in the West; thus there was no need to translate it—except, on occasion, to render it in a more vernacular form to make it somewhat more accessible to commoners. Second, during this same period, intellectual life in all three areas came to be shaped in significant ways by the broad, albeit constantly evolving, patterns of Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist thought in China. Third, since the Yijing continued to occupy an exalted position in China for some two thousand years, into the twentieth century, there was never a time when it lacked prestige in these peripheral areas. A fourth feature of the process by which various East Asian peoples borrowed from Chinese culture was their periodic use of emissaries—individuals and groups who visited China and brought back Chinese texts and traditions to their home countries in a self-conscious and sometimes quite systematic way. But once such texts arrived, their interaction with indigenous ideas and institutions produced significant variations.
The Interplay between Local and Borrowed Cultural Forms
From about 1400 CE to the late nineteenth century, the dominant cultural agents of China (literati and wealthy merchants), Japan (hereditary samurai and wealthy merchants), Korea (hereditary yangban aristocrats), and Vietnam (rural literati) all enthusiastically embraced the fundamental values associated with various strands of Confucianism.1 Although this particular brand of learning might have been initially identified with Chinese culture, it transcended space and ethnicity. Alien conquerors of China, such as the Mongols and Manchus, employed it selectively for their own purposes, as did the Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese.2
The elites who ruled Choson (or Joseon) Korea (1392–1910), as well as those who held sway over Le (1428–1789) and early Nguyen (1802–1945) dynasty Vietnam, were substantially different in many ways from their counterparts in China—even though the governments of both states chose their officials (and also reinforced their orthodoxies) by means of civil service examinations written in classical Chinese. In Tokugawa Japan (1600–1868), where there was no such examination system, the intellectual independence of the samurai class was especially great. Thus, although the Tokugawa shoguns eventually selected Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism as their official orthodoxy, there was no significant institutional reinforcement of it.3
In Choson Korea, the examination system, modeled generally after the Ming-Qing system, was theoretically open to commoners, but in fact it was generally limited to yangban, who, by some accounts, had to demonstrate repeatedly their allegiance to Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy in both word and deed. At the same time, however, the Choson examinations often prized literary (especially poetic) skills to a greater degree than did their Chinese counterparts, and occasionally the examination questions departed from the state orthodoxy.4
The Vietnamese examination system followed the Chinese model in certain respects, but the Vietnamese system was not truly countrywide, and printed books were in chronically short supply. At times the Vietnamese exams were somewhat more practical than those of the Chinese or Koreans, and on occasion they included Daoist and Buddhist as well as Confucian content. Moreover, Vietnam lacked China’s and Korea’s “academy-based scholastic warfare.” Village organizations provided the basic environment for Confucian learning in Vietnam, with the result that they were much more likely than academies to tolerate unorthodox popular ideas and eclectic formulations.5
In each East Asian setting, then, institutionalized Confucianism took different forms, interacting with other belief systems, including Buddhism, Daoism, and indigenous religions, in complex ways. The situation in Tibet was complicated for somewhat different reasons. Varying degrees of Chinese overlordship in this diverse and isolated area during the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties did virtually nothing to Confucianize Tibetan culture, which remained steadfastly Buddhist in character, dominated by clerics known as lamas (lit., “superior ones”). There was, however, a considerable degree of interaction between Chinese and Tibetan elites at various times, which resulted in a two-way flow of cultural influences. Several Chinese emperors took an interest in Tibetan Buddhism, particularly during the Qing period, and at least some Tibetan lamas gravitated toward certain Chinese philosophical texts, including the Changes.
With this brief overview as background, let us now look at the various ways that the Yijing came to be transmitted and transformed in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Tibet during the past several hundred years.
Japan
The Japanese case is comparatively well-known.6 The Changes found its way to Japan no later than the sixth century CE, but it was not until the seventeenth century that interest in the document blossomed. From the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1600 to the fall of the regime in 1868, more than a thousand books were written on the Changes—an amount not much less than the total number of books written on the Yijing during the more or less contemporary Qing period in China—a country with a population about fifteen times greater than Japan’s.
In part the outburst of Japanese writing on the Changes had to do with roughly contemporary scholarly fashions in China. But it also had a practical political dimension. From the very beginning of the Tokugawa era, the Yijing was used to bolster and amplify Tokugawa Confucianism. In the early Tokugawa period, many emperors and shoguns sought spiritual and practical guidance in the Changes. For instance Shogun Tsunayoshi, who ruled from 1680 to 1709, presided over at least 240 Yijing seminars in one seven-year period. In these seminars, Tsunayoshi sometimes gave his own lectures on Zhu Xi’s Fundamental Meaning of the Zhou Changes to audiences consisting of not only his close retainers but also daimyo and other high-ranking samurai, local administrative personnel, executive officials, Buddhist monks, and Shinto priests.7
The Yijing was often used to support the central Confucian notion of loyalty to the ruler. Thus we find Matsunaga Sekigo writing in the seventeenth century: “The Classic of Changes reads: ‘At the beginning, we had Heaven and Earth, then husband and wife followed. Father and son came after husband and wife. Ruler and subject came after father and son.’ Who can live without these relationships? If you apply filial piety to your parents to serve your ruler, it becomes loyalty. Using the method of settling family affairs to govern the country will bring peace and stability.”8
The Changes could also explain the shogun’s unique position as a ruler administering the realm in the emperor’s name. Another seventeenth-century Japanese writer, Asayama Soshin, tells us: “Of the six unbroken lines [of the Qian hexagram, number 1], the lord’s place is indicated by the second line from the top, the fifth from the bottom. Why not the first line at the very top, as some would argue? If the ruler of the realm thinks that he is the top of everything … he should be told that this is clearly contrary to the Way of Heaven, that he will do evil things. The place at the top has the following negative commentary in the Yijing: ‘A dragon at the top will have cause to repent.’”9 Actually the top line statement says only that the dragon who “overreaches” (i.e., is “arrogant”) will have cause for regret, but the point remained that it was all right for the emperor to be at the top because he did not rule, he merely reigned.
The Yijing could be used to validate or undergird other Japanese cultural traditions as well—including both native Shinto and borrowed Buddhism. Buddhists, for instance, often explained the idea of reincarnation in terms of the following passage from the Great Commentary of the Changes: “We trace things back to their origins then turn back to their ends. Thus we understand the axiom of life and death. With the consolidation of material force [qi] into essence, a person comes into being, but with the dissipation of one’s spirit, change comes about. It is due to this that we understand the true state of gods and spirits.”10 Similarly, Shinto scholars sought to validate their belief system by reference to the Changes. A common strategy was to cite the Commentary on the Judgments for the Guan hexagram (“Viewing,” number 20), which reads: “Viewing the Way of the Spirits [pronounced Shendao in Chinese and Shinto in Japanese], one finds that the four seasons never deviate, and so the sage establishes his teachings on the basis of … [this Way], and all under Heaven submit to him.”11
There were, of course, other ways of linking the Yijing to indigenous Shinto beliefs. Kumazawa Banzan (1619–91) wrote:
The Way of the sages in China is also the Way of the Spirits. Shinto in my country [Japan] is the Shinto of Heaven and Earth. The Changes is also the Shinto of Heaven and Earth…. The Chinese sage known as Fuxi was the first to draw the lines of the Qian trigram and the Kun trigram, which later developed into the eight trigrams and eventually became the sixty-four hexagrams. Similarly, we [Japanese] have used the number eight, such as the Yata no [Mirror] and the Yasaka [Jade], because the Shinto of Heaven and Earth is one, and it is naturally the same wonderful principle shared by both Japan and China.12
As in other areas of East Asia during the same period, Zhu Xi’s interpretations of the Yijing were considered orthodox during much of the Tokugawa period, but this did not prevent scholars in Japan, Korea, or Vietnam from criticizing Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy, using the Evidential Studies approach of contemporary Chinese critics as well as their own distinctive methodologies.13 An excellent example is the wideranging scholarship of Ito Togai (1670–1736), whose Comprehensive Explanation of the Text and the Ten Wings of the Zhou Changes—part of a long family tradition of Yijing-related research—has been described as the most important single work written on the classic in Japan during the entire Tokugawa period. In this book and others, Ito systematically dismantled several commonly accepted opinions about the Yijing, including the idea that Confucius was the author of the Ten Wings.14
Not surprisingly the Yijing inspired Japanese imitations, as it had done in China and would do also in Korea. One such work was Yamaga Soko’s (1622–85) numerologically oriented Exploring the Origins of Things and Our Impulses to Action, a work reminiscent of Shao Yong’s Supreme Principles That Rule the World and explicitly designed to convey the essence of the Changes. Rather than drawing on the eight trigrams, however, Yamaga employed eight esoteric symbols that resemble fragments of Japan’s indigenously developed Kana syllabary—symbols that he used to “convey the essential forms of change in history.”15 Yamaga is well-known for his view that Japan rather than China was the center and apex of civilization, and that the two Japanese deities, Izanagi and Izanami, were in fact the foundations of the concepts of yin and yang.
As these few examples suggest, individuals of all outlooks and backgrounds embraced the Yijing in Tokugawa Japan—not only Confucians, Buddhists, and Shinto clergy, but also exponents of “Ancient Learning,” so-called Mito scholars (emphasizing reverence for the emperor), and advocates of Western ideas or “Dutch Learning.” As a result the Changes penetrated all levels of Japanese society. Samurai scholars and members of the clergy studied the Changes and also divined with it; merchants used the Yijing to make all kinds of business decisions (there were even commercial divination manuals that used the sixty-four hexagrams of the Yijing to predict price fluctuations in the rice market), and as a justification for their profession. Manuals prepared for artisans explained crafts such as shipbuilding and architecture in terms of the Changes, and peasants throughout the land conducted their daily lives in accordance with the dictates of professional fortune-tellers and Yijing-influenced almanacs.16
In Japanese high culture, as in Chinese society, the symbolism of the Changes appeared everywhere—from artistic, literary, and musical criticism to popular drama, the tea ceremony, flower arranging, and board games. Its symbolism also played a significant role in Japanese science, technology, medicine, and military affairs—again, as it did in these same realms of Chinese culture. Even distinctly Japanese cultural forms, such as tanka poetry (consisting of five lines of thirtyone syllables, broken down 5-7-5-7-7), came to be explained in terms of Yijing numerical categories.
Over time the Yijing became increasingly assimilated to the indigenous culture of Japan, at least in some circles. Thus we find Jiun Sonja (1718–1804), a nativist scholar, arguing that the images of the Yellow River Chart (which by some accounts provided the model for the eight trigrams) were manifested through the Okitsu Mirror, a round bronze object kept at the sacred Ise shrine. According to Jiun, the authors of the Changes “copied our ancient divination of Takam-gahara [a place in the “high heaven” where Izanagi and Izanami lived] in formulating its text and style. The whole book is completely borrowed from us [the Japanese].”17 Hirata Atsutane (1776–1843), for his part, went so far as to assert that the ancient Chinese culture hero Fuxi, putative inventor of the trigrams, was actually a Shinto deity.18
FIGURE 4.1
An Yijing-Inspired Japanese Painting: Uragami Gyokudo’s (1745–1820) Reading the Changes Sitting by a Mountain Waterfall
This large painting (ca. 168.1 × 92.4 cm) displays a number of characteristic features of Chinese-style landscapes—steep mountains, flowing water, and abundant foliage. It also contains some quite unusual features, notably the several circular, plateaulike outcroppings. The person consulting the Changes occupies a tiny hut near the bottom of the painting, midway between the two sides. Reproduced with permission from the Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art.
Although the Yijing was often cited to support the political status quo, it could also be used to justify political reform. Thus we have Ito Jinsai (1627–1705) using the Ge hexagram (“Radical Change,” number 49) to explain the need for new solutions to contemporary problems: “If the sages of the past lived in today’s world,” he wrote, “they would have to act according to today’s customs, and apply today’s laws. Therefore, [the Classic of Changes says,] ‘When the great man does a leopard change, it means that his pattern [i.e., culture] becomes magnificent, and when the petty man radically changes his countenance, it means he will follow his sovereign with obedience.’ Thus, the country will naturally be well governed.”19
Eventually, as the Tokugawa rulers began to lose their political authority in the mid-nineteenth century, the Yijing was increasingly used to attack the shogunate. Hirose Tanso (1782–1856), focusing on hexagram number 12 [Pi in Chinese, “Obstruction”] wrote, for example, that the arrangement of the trigrams in this hexagram (with Qian, “Heaven,” at the top and Kun, “Earth,” below) indicated a kind of cosmological blockage, signifying that the sovereign and his subjects were not in harmony. This, he said, symbolized a country “without proper rule.” He went on to argue that the ruling warrior family (i.e., the shogunate) had made the mistake of arrogantly creating too much distance between above and below, making communication impossible.20
In 1868 the Tokugawa Shogunate fell, owing to the self-sacrifice of revolutionaries such as Yoshida Shoin (1830–59), whose use of the Yijing to express his personal and political opinions is well documented. In prison, awaiting execution for his revolutionary activities, Yoshida composed the following poignant verse:
With nothing to do in prison, I contemplate the principles of the Yijing to understand the principles of change. Through the hole of this broken hut, I sometimes look up and watch the clouds floating by.21
Korea
In Korea, as in Japan, the influence of the Changes was pervasive. Because the governments in both of these neighboring states drew heavily upon various Confucian traditions of scholarship and rulership from the early sixteenth century into the late nineteenth, the Yijing occupied a prominent place in all elite discourses. As in Japan, it had wide application at every level of Korean society, extending into the realms of language, philosophy, religion, art, music, literature, science, medicine, and social customs. It also played a major role in the geomantic traditions of Korea, as it did in all other areas of East Asia.22
The Yijing found its way to Korea no later than the fourth century CE (some argue it arrived several centuries earlier), but it was not until the Choson period (1392–1910) that its influence began to spread dramatically. During most of this time, the Korean government solidly supported an orthodox Cheng-Zhu–style Neo-Confucianism based on the Chinese model. But over time, as in Japan and Vietnam, Korean scholars embraced all the philosophical options that developed in China from the Song dynasty through the Qing. Moreover, they developed distinctive interpretations of their own.23
The same was naturally true in the narrower but increasingly important realm of Yijing scholarship. Some scholars have viewed the writings of So Kyongdok (also known as Hwadam; 1489–1546), inspired in part by the cosmological speculations of the Song dynasty scholar Shao Yong and others, as the foundation of Korean “Changes Studies.” Hwadam was an early exponent of the idea that qi, generated in the form of yin and yang by the Supreme Ultimate, actually created material objects, and that this creative process was only “guided” by principle.24 In other words, he believed that the physical substance of things was more important than the cosmic “principle” that endowed these things with their distinctive natures. But Hwadam’s materialist views met powerful resistance from more orthodox Neo-Confucian thinkers such as Yi Hwang (1501–70), known more generally in both Korea and the West by his pen name, T’oegye25 (see figure 4.2).
T’oegye, often considered to be the most influential philosopher in all of Korean history, vigorously defended most of Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucian ideas, including the notion that the principle of things had priority over the material force (qi) of which they were constituted.26 His intellectual support for Zhu Xi is evident in several of T’oegye’s many Yijing-related lectures and writings, which attempted to systematize Neo-Confucian learning in Korea and to clarify certain obscure passages in Zhu’s Introduction to the Study of the Changes. T’oegye’s works were reprinted at least twice in Japan, where they had a considerable influence on Tokugawa scholarship.27
Yi Yulgok (1536–84), one of T’oegye’s students, tried to strike a middle position between that of his teacher and various qi-oriented Korean scholars such as So Kyongdok and Ki Taesung (1527–72). On the one hand, he acknowledged the theoretical primacy of principle over material force, but on the other, he argued for a complex, situation-based relationship between the two, with no beginning and no end. Although he accepted the distinction made in the Great Commentary of the Yijing between what was “above physical form” (“the Way”) and what was “below physical form” (“concrete objects”), he saw principle not as prior to material force but rather as the reason for it.28
Similarly Yulgok believed that although Heaven and human beings shared the same “sincerity,” they were nonetheless distinguishable, as evidenced in the Qian hexagram (number 1). According to Yulgok the four characters that make up Qian’s judgment—yuan, heng, li, and zhen—were the Heavenly counterparts to the “Four Beginnings” of human nature (benevolence, moral duty, ritual propriety, and humane knowledge) identified and celebrated by the great Chinese philosopher Mencius (372–289 BCE). To yulgok the Qian hexagram must be interpreted as both the creative (moral) power of the cosmos and the creative action of the (moral) leader, who, by his sincerity, “awakens [people] and develops their higher nature.”29
FIGURE 4.2
The Generative Power of the Supreme Ultimate
This Qing dynasty diagram, made famous by the Chinese philosopher Zhou Dunyi (1017–73) and widely distributed throughout Choson Korea (it appears prominently, for instance, on the wall of T’oegye’s reconstructed Pottery Mountain Academy), shows how the Supreme Ultimate generates yin and yang, which, in their ebb and flow and interaction, produce qi. Qi becomes manifest in various combinations of the five agents (depicted on the corners and in the middle of the square), and it in turn becomes the stuff of which all things, animate and inanimate, are constituted. The question that Yijing scholars throughout East Asia constantly debated was the exact relationship between the “principle” of these things (a kind of Platonic ideal) and the qi of which they were constituted.
Another particularly interesting Korean thinker who sought to reconcile Neo-Confucian dichotomies was Chang Hyon-gwang (also known as Yohon, 1554–1637). Chang used the metaphor of weaving to illustrate the relationship between principle and material force. As he explained it, principle was the warp of unchanging substance, while material force was the woof of variable application. Both were part of a single Way. Similarly nature and emotion were interrelated rather than separate. Chang also believed—in the fashion of the Chinese philosopher Cheng Hao (1032–85)—that the principle of Heaven and Earth and all things was contained in the mind, making knowledge of everything possible.30 For much of his adult life, Chang dedicated himself wholeheartedly to studying the Yijing. According to popular legend, he neither ate nor slept while so engaged. He wrote at least three influential books on the Changes, one of which was based on a series of lectures he gave to the Korean emperor on the political ethics of the Yijing.31
The point to be emphasized once again is that much of the scholarship on the Changes, whether Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese, defies the usual simplistic categories. Although Chang’s writings are suffused with themes identified with the Chinese school of Yijing interpretation known as Meanings and Principles, they also reflect an abiding interest in the approach known as the School of Images and Numbers. And although Chang thoroughly embraced the methodological concerns of the School of Evidential Studies, he also emphasized statecraft and practical affairs.32
All of Chang’s works on the Changes display enormous erudition. He was an extremely broad-ranging scholar who thoroughly investigated virtually every issue that had arisen in Chinese Yijing studies up to his own time. Although he accepted many orthodox ideas of the Cheng-Zhu school, he also disagreed with Zhu Xi and others on specific points, arguing, for example, that the theory of doubling that produced the sixty-four hexagrams from yin and yang was inconsistent. He also engaged in extremely detailed textual criticism, pointing out mistakes in previous Chinese and Korean scholarship and suggesting alternative readings.33
Chang’s Illustrated Explanation of Changes Scholarship provides an excellent example of the enthusiasm Choson scholars had for Yijing-related diagrams. It also reveals Chang’s own fascination with the Yellow River Chart and the Luo River Writing, derivative illustrations of which occupy one entire chapter of this nine-chapter work. Many of the diagrams in his book are organized according to particular philosophical themes, such as the Supreme Ultimate, Heaven and Earth, the Sun and the Moon, Yin and Yang, the Five Agents, Creation, Categories of Things, and the Decrees of Heaven. Chang also includes individual essays on topics such as the deployment of troops, in which he draws on the judgment and the first line statement of the Shi hexagram (“Army,” number 7) to argue for the importance of order and discipline in military affairs.
Later in his book Chang devotes attention to the alleged precursors of the Changes, such as the Linked Mountains and Return to the Hidden, as well as works inspired by the Yijing, such as Yang Xiong’s Classic of Great Mystery. His illustrated analysis of the Mystery is particularly detailed and insightful, involving critical comparisons not only with the Changes itself but also with the numerologically oriented work of Chinese scholars such as Jing Fang and Shao Yong.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, “Solid Learning” (also called Han Learning or Evidential Studies) became popular in Korea, as it had been somewhat earlier in China. Downplaying metaphysics in favor of textual criticism, scholars of Solid Learning used the images and numbers of the Changes in creative new ways. Kim Sokmun (1658–1735), for example, tried to employ the Yijing to explain newly introduced Western scientific concepts, including the rotation of the earth and Ptolemaic astronomy. Significantly, he argued (in the fashion of Chinese scholars such as Fang Yizhi and Jiang Yong) that all natural phenomena can be represented by the symbolism of the Yijing.34
Chong Yagyong (Tasan, 1762–1836) was another powerful advocate of Western science and Solid Learning in Choson Korea. He wrote three highly regarded books on the Changes, all of which employed rigorous philological methods and broke new interpretive ground. Chong was a particularly exacting and scientifically minded scholar, whose meticulous scholarship brought Korean philological approaches to the classic to new heights.35 But unlike most Evidential Studies scholars in China, he admired Zhu Xi’s Basic Meaning of the Zhou Changes and was harshly critical of a good deal of Han dynasty scholarship—especially the writings of Zheng Xuan.36 Chong was also critical of a great many other famous Chinese scholars: Wang Bi and Han Kangbo for their Daoist leanings; Tang literati for being either trivial, dry, or careless; Shao Yong for being too esoteric; Cheng Yi for relying too heavily on Wang Bi; Lai Zhide for making too many mistakes; Li Guangdi for betraying Zhu Xi’s teachings in his capacity as the editor of the Balanced Compendium on the Zhou Changes; and Mao Qiling for “collecting the leftover words of the ancients to block the great achievements of Master Zhu [Xi].”37
Chong’s critique of so much of Chinese scholarship on the Changes reflects an attitude prevalent among late Choson Confucians that “legitimate Confucianism could no longer be found in China but was preserved in Korea.”38 This sort of cultural pride was also expressed in what has been described as “Jizi worship.”39 Since Jizi (“Viscount Ji”)—an upright uncle of the evil last ruler of the Shang dynasty, Zhou Xin—came to be viewed as a patriarch of the ancient Koreans, scholars in the late Choson period tended to valorize him. And since his name appears explicitly in the Yijing (in the fifth line statement of the Mingyi hexagram [“Suppression of the Light,” number 36]), some Korean scholars—including Chong Yagyong—came to believe that Jizi may have had a role in writing a portion of the basic text of the Changes.
Another expression of Yijing-related cultural pride in Korea was the production of a book by Kim Hang (Kim Il-bu, 1826–88) titled the Correct Changes. Kim was the teacher of a famous nationalistic Korean scholar, Sin Ch’aeho (1880–1936), who would later claim that the Yijing was originally a Korean text.40 In the Correct Changes, Kim seeks to go beyond the accomplishments of China’s early sages by devising a trigram configuration that differs from both the standard Former Heaven sequence attributed to Fuxi and the Later Heaven sequence attributed to King Wen. In this new configuration, the positions of Qian and Kun in the Former Heaven sequence are reversed (so that Kun is in the south) and Gen, the “youngest son” trigram, is in the east (where the developmental order of the Later Heaven sequence normally begins). By so doing, Kim symbolically privileges Korea as the center of a new world order for the future—heralding a new age of peace, prosperity, and joy.41 Kim also devised a “Correct Changes Diagram of Metal and Fire,” which served as the conceptual equivalent of China’s famous Yellow River Chart and Luo River Writing.42
These nineteenth-century efforts in Korea to amplify the content and to change the orientation of the Yijing recall similar but much earlier attempts in China to go beyond the Changes—notably Yang Xiong’s Classic of Great Mystery and the apocryphal Han treatise known as Opening up the Regularities of Qian. But Kim’s approach was nationalistically inspired—a nationalism reflected in the views of many exponents of “Changes Studies” in Korea to this day.43
Vietnam
Nationalism also inspired creative scholarship on the Yijing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Vietnam. But from the end of China’s thousand-year occupation of north Vietnam (also known as Tonkin) in the tenth century CE until well into the French colonial era, most Vietnamese intellectuals enthusiastically embraced Chinese classical scholarship, aspiring to be part of a distinctively Sinic “domain of manifest civility”—the Vietnamese equivalent of the long-standing Chinese notion of their country as the “domain of ritual propriety and moral duty.”44
To be sure, from at least the thirteenth century onward (and especially from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries), use of the unique Chu-Nom or Nom script—a complex and uniquely Vietnamese system of writing based in part on the same visual, phonetic, and semantic principles used to construct characters in classical Chinese—had the effect of making works identified with other cultural traditions (including, of course, the Yijing) seem somewhat more “Vietnamese.” But on the whole, in Vietnam, as in Korea and Japan, the prestige of Chinese characters was so great that elites tended to write primarily in classical Chinese until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century—even though alternative, indigenously developed scripts such as Nom, Korean Hangul, and Japanese Kana had been available for hundreds of years.
The Yijing was probably introduced into Vietnam at about the same time as it reached Korea and Japan, but it did not become influential until the establishment of the Le dynasty (1428–1789). During that period Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism became state orthodoxy, and the Changes was studied both as a Confucian classic at the Imperial College and as a divination manual at the Ministry of Rites. Even then, however, it did not occupy a particularly important place in the Vietnamese examination system, and few students seem to have specialized in it.45
Nonetheless, as in Tokugawa Japan and Choson Korea, ideas derived from the Yijing influenced many realms of Le dynasty culture, from politics, music, art, literature, and mathematics to medicine, agriculture, calendrical studies, geography, religion, popular lore, and a wide range of divinatory theories and practices. Moreover several Le dynasty scholars became quite famous for their writings on the Changes—notably Nguyen Binh Khiem (1491–1585), the preeminent Nom poet of his age and a man known popularly today as the “Vietnamese Nostradamus.” Philosophically Nguyen used the Yijing to unite Neo-Confucian metaphysics with Daoism and Buddhism. He also gained fame as an able and insightful exponent of Shao Yong’s numerological approach to divination (Nguyen’s mother reportedly taught Yijing-related numerology), and of the time-honored Chinese fortune-telling technique called the Great One.46 Nguyen’s writings are still studied in Vietnam for their predictions of modern events.47
As with Japan and Korea, scholars of the Changes in Le dynasty Vietnam had access to standard Chinese works on the Yijing, such as the Ming dynasty’s Great Comprehensive Compilation of the Zhou Changes and the Qing period’s Balanced Compendium on the Zhou Changes. Most such works were published in Vietnam during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and all reflected an orthodoxy based on Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism. But despite this official orthodoxy (or perhaps because of it), other currents of thought circulated in Vietnam at the time—as in Japan and Korea—encouraging scholars to explore new interpretative ground. Significantly many Vietnamese scholars found a preimperial form of Confucianism alluring, as it seemed to speak more directly to the politics and geography of their country than did the visions of Song and post-Song dynasty thinkers, who were themselves the products of a highly developed bureaucratic state that had been at least a thousand years in the making.48
Le Quy Don (1726–84), however—arguably the most important Vietnamese philosopher in the eighteenth century—had no particular interest in the distant past. His writings, including a highly regarded commentary on the Yijing titled An Explanation of the Classic of Changes for Different Levels, reflected an attraction to Chinese Evidential Studies scholarship as well as, somewhat paradoxically, a deep commitment to Cheng-Zhu thought. Drawing on Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean traditions of practical statecraft, he used the Yijing explicitly to promote political and social reforms.49 He did not, however, transgress the boundaries established by Chinese scholars in the realms of either textual interpretation or domestic politics. Nor did the work of transitional scholars such as Nhu Ba Si (1759–1840).50
It is sometimes said that Vietnamese scholars were not as preoccupied as their Chinese counterparts with philological and metaphysical debates.51 But based on my own perusal of dozens of Yijing-related handwritten manuscripts in the Hanoi National Library that were produced in the late Le period or the early Nguyen dynasty (1802–1945), it seems clear that the authors were genuinely interested in these topics, especially metaphysics. Many of these works are undated and anonymous, and some are written at least in part in Nom characters (prose, verse, or a combination of the two). They range in length from several hundred to only a few dozen pages. Some of these manuscripts adopt a question-and-answer format, while others present their Yijing-related information in the form of short essays. Some texts are organized topically, and a few employ an explicitly comparative approach, analyzing the Changes together with other Chinese classics, such as the Classic of Poetry and the Spring and Autumn Annals.52
The most striking feature of these and other late Le and early Nguyen manuscripts is their philosophical eclecticism. Although most of these works give lip service to the great Song dynasty Neo-Confucian thinkers Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi, quoting liberally from their respective writings on the Changes, many reflect a particular interest in the numerology of the Yellow River Chart and the Luo River Writing, and in practical techniques of divination. Another interesting feature of these manuscripts is the great range in their content. Some, for example, include texts derived from spiritwriting (introduced to Vietnam from China in the latter half of the eighteenth century), and some even include account books.
The Nguyen dynasty began in the early nineteenth century with a particularly staunch defense of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy, which started to erode, however, after China’s defeat in the Sino-French War of 1884–85. Prior to 1885 the Vietnamese government did much to bolster the civil service examinations and to promote Confucian morality. It published Nom editions of the Chinese classics, including the Changes, and adopted the commentaries of Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi as the official standard for interpretations of the Yijing in the Vietnamese civil service examinations.
A typical example of the way Nom writing and Cheng-Zhu textual analysis came together in support of state orthodoxy can be found in a work by Dang Thai Bang (dates unknown) titled Songs [Explicating] the Zhou Changes in National Pronunciation (1815; see figure 4.3). This work—which includes four prefaces, a poetic inscription, and an account of milfoil divination ritual based on the model established by Zhu Xi—consists primarily of divided pages in which the basic text of the Yijing occupies the top of each page and a series of songs in “six-eight” verse corresponding to it appear at the bottom. The songs and commentaries consist mainly of Chinese characters interspersed with Nom characters.
For the most part, the prefaces to the work express routine opinions about the Changes, but they make a special point of applauding the author’s decision to offer a verse interpretation in “national pronunciation” as a means of introducing novices to the Yijing. Take, for example, the preface written by Pham Quy Thich (1759–1825), who himself produced several important works on the Changes. Pham begins with a discussion of how commentaries on ancient works elucidate the ideas of the Confucian sages, noting that without such explanations, the “meanings and principles” expressed by the sages cannot be fully understood. He goes on to emphasize the difficulty of the document (which he describes as more subtle and profound than any other book), Dang’s deep familiarity with the classic, and the need to instruct Vietnamese students using the national pronunciation. Pham points out that although the classical learning of the Vietnamese and the Chinese is the same, Vietnamese pronunciations of the written characters are different—thus the need to create a version of the classic that is both accessible to Vietnamese students and easy to learn through chanting.
FIGURE 4.3
Vietnamese Yijing Manuscript in Classical Chinese and Nom Characters
This partial page from Dang Thai Bang’s Songs [Explicating] the Zhou Changes in National Pronunciation depicts the Zhun hexagram (number 3 in the conventional sequence). Above it, in large characters, are the primary qualities of its constituent trigrams, “Water” (Kan) above and “Thunder” (Zhen) below, followed by the hexagram name (an unusual configuration). To the left of these elements are the judgment and a series of commentaries written in small Chinese and Nom characters. Reproduced with permission from the Vietnamese Nom Preservation Foundation and the National Library of Vietnam, http://nomfoundation.org.
The writings of the great nineteenth-century scholar Nguyen Khuyen (1835–1909) place in sharp relief the tensions created by Western imperialism, particularly after 1885. They reveal a sharp critique of Vietnamese society under French colonial rule as well as Nguyen’s anguish over not being able to alter the situation. Here is an undated poem by Nguyen in classical Chinese that captures his emotions:
How can a winter day compete in length with a summer one?
[Yet] the south breeze is as cool as the north wind.
Thinking [that a rotten rat is] tasty, the owl scolds the phoenix;
A cunning mind is never exhausted, as the oriole catches the cicada.
If the realm within the oceans opens up to a new world
People’s customs should join [reflect] the pristine vastness of the ancient past.
Up alone in the early morning, I study the Changes
[But] the increase and decrease [of the current situation] are hard to discern.53
Here, with allusions to the ruminations of the Tang calligrapher Liu Gongquan (778–865) about the length of days in winter and summer and two parables from the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi (the story of a “tasty” rotten rat and the tale of a bird who is after a mantis who is after a cicada—all of whom are captured by a hunter), Nguyen expresses his anxiety and uncertainty about the present and the future. The Changes in this context provides no solace.
Although by the late Nguyen period Chinese-style Confucian scholarship in Vietnam was in decline and under pressure, at least a few classically trained and nationalistically minded Vietnamese scholars tried to use the Changes and other Chinese works to advocate reform. One such person was Le Van Ngu (b. 1859), an examination failure who traveled to Europe for three months in 1900 and came back radicalized.54 Le considered himself to be a “wild scholar”—a maverick who dared to criticize Zhu Xi and other exponents of “orthodox studies” in Vietnam. But he was also critical of Han and Tang scholarship on the Changes and had no use at all for post-Song scholarship on the classic. In this sense he was very much like the Korean scholar Chong Yagyong, who became highly critical of almost all major Chinese commentaries on the Yijing. In the preface to one of his most famous writings, Le tells us: “Born thousands of years [after the sages] and having witnessed the decline of Changes scholarship and the rise of heretical views, I have been engrossed in the study of the Yijing. I have discovered ideas undiscovered by former Confucians and elaborated ideas not yet fully elaborated.”55
Like the Chinese scholars Fang Yizhi and Jiang Yong at an earlier time, Le held the Yellow River Chart and the Luo River Writing in especially high regard, believing that “all natural principles” could be found in these two numerological illustrations. He did not, however, admire the Yijing-related speculations of Shao Yong, whose ideas seemed too complicated and abstract.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Le’s thought is the way he used the Changes to interpret various Western-inspired ideas, from science and technology to politics and theology. Convinced that an enthusiasm for Western learning among the Vietnamese people had led them to decadence, materialism, selfishness, and a general neglect of the hallowed Yijing, he argued that the slavish embrace of Western civilization would only bring more difficulties and suffering to his people. Although he valued the political principle of constitutional monarchy and used an analysis of the Bo hexagram (“Peeling,” number 23) to justify it, he was far less taken with Western science, maintaining that the wonders of the Changes were “ten thousand times more amazing than the Western principles of cannon, ships, cars, and electricity.”56
Tibet
The history of both the transmission and the use of the Yijing in Tibet offers a striking contrast to that in Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. First, unlike the elites in the latter three East Asian countries, comparatively few Tibetan scholars knew any classical Chinese. Second, Indian influence was far stronger in Tibet than it was in these other areas, which were all well within the Chinese cultural orbit.
The Yijing initially came to Tibet as a respected Chinese classic during the early Tang dynasty, in the seventh century CE, but it seems to have never acquired the aura there that attached to it in most of East Asia. Nor did it permeate many realms of Tibetan culture, as it did in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. To be sure, by late Tang times Tibetan diviners had begun to use the trigrams of the Changes in more or less the Chinese fashion, and later they also borrowed some of the numerological diagrams of the Yijing—notably the Luo River Writing—known popularly as the “Nine Palaces.”
But the Tibetans seem not to have made much use of hexagrams for divinatory or other symbolic purposes, and although some Tibetan lamas, such as Thuken Losang Chokyi Nyima (also known as Thu’ubkwan blo-bzan-chos-kyi-ni-ma, 1737–1802), had a scholarly interest in the Changes, reliable information on the nature of their work is difficult to come by.57 We do know, however, that Thuken, who reportedly studied at the Tibetan Buddhist Yonghe Temple in Beijing for three years, wrote a famous study of Asian philosophical thought titled The Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems, which devotes at least some attention to the history of the Yijing, the Luo River Writing, and related Chinese divination texts.58
For at least a thousand years there have been three main types of Tibetan divination, in addition to various techniques associated with the indigenous Bon tradition: (1) Astrology, (2) a rare and secret approach called Martial Conquest, and (3) Elemental Divination. In popular usage the Tibetan divinatory arts tend to be identified either with India-based “White Calculations,” named after the Tibetan term for India, or China-based “Black Calculations,” named after the Tibetan word for China. Fundamentally, Chinese-style Elemental Divination, and more recent forms of divination and astrology that were introduced into Tibet from China during the mid-seventeenth century, are viewed as a Black Calculations.
In Black Calculations, which have been influenced by each of China’s “Three Teachings” (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism), we find a concern with many of the cosmic variables that are characteristic of Changes interpretations throughout East Asia: yin and yang (the Tibetan equivalents are pho and mo), calendrical cycles of twelve and sixty, the five agents, the eight trigrams, and “magic squares” (known generically in Tibetan as mewa and in Mongolian as mangga), based on the numerical configurations of the Luo River Writing.59 Tibetan tradition traces Elemental Divination to Fuxi, the putative inventor of the eight trigrams in China; hence their importance in this system. Many of the other symbols in Tibetan divination are entirely domestic in origin or at least have no discernible Chinese roots.
The famous late-eighteenth-century work by Sangye Gyatso (also rendered as Sangs-rgyas rGya-mtsho, 1653–1705)—known popularly as the White Beryl Treatise—shows, with the aid of strikingly beautiful illustrations, how trigrams, magic squares, and the five agents from the Chinese tradition, together with the symbols of the Indian zodiac, interact to shed light on the future.60 Gyurme Dorje’s introduction to the White Beryl Treatise describes the elaborate preparations and ceremonies that accompany a formal divination. First, he says, “dreams should be inspected and recognized as auspicious or inauspicious, according to the criteria in the White Beryl.” Other preparations focus on the specific time and place of the divination. In general, prognostications “should be carried out during the waxing phase of the lunar month”—in the morning to determine past signs, in the afternoon to determine future signs, and around noon to determine present events. Food or incense should be offered to the local deities. In all these activities, both the diviner and the subject should pay homage to the various Buddhas as well as to the lineage-holders of elemental divination, and all the particular deities associated with the directions, animal signs, agents, trigrams, numeric squares, planets, and constellations, “inviting them to be present, conjoined with offering prayers and confession prayers.”61
The divination itself involves the use of black, neutral, or mottled pebbles to represent the various relationships existing among the five agents, trigrams, numbered squares, and animal signs. After arranging these pebbles (or employing an analogous chart), the diviner makes a determination according to the stipulations of the White Beryl Treatise.62 Gyurme Dorje concludes his description with the following explanation: “Lying at the heart of all these [divinatory] understandings is the notion of ‘auspicious coincidence’ (rten-‘brel). From the Buddhist point of view, the term rten-‘brel refers to the twelve links of dependent origination (pratityasamutpada), through which past actions bring about present and future results within the course of cyclic existence.” He goes on to say that “it is important to bear in mind that the predictions are not considered to be deterministic, but cautionary and prescriptive. If the outcome is auspicious, no action need be taken, but if the portents are negative, the subject is strongly advised to undertake the appropriate counteracting rites which have the power to nullify those negative influences.”63
As these remarks clearly indicate, all Tibetan divinatory systems are based on Buddhist assumptions about the world of “conventional reality” rather than “ultimate reality.” They do not conflict with Buddhist notions of karmic retribution, for even when one’s lifespan seems to be determined by one or another divinatory technique, the length of that life, like other aspects of the future, depends on which of its various karmas (i.e., thoughts and deeds) “ripen.” Thus, although a divination or horoscope analysis can provide a general prediction of the situations that might be encountered in one’s life, there are no assurances that the life in question will actually unfold in any particular way. In a sense, then, the assumptions of Tibetan divination are like those of the Yijing: certain circumstances will naturally occur in the course of a life, but how one responds to them will ultimately determine the outcome.
In traditional Tibetan society, astrologers might be lamas, monks, or specially trained laypersons who received donations from the public for their demonstrable divinatory (and often medical) skills.64 In large monasteries monks determined auspicious times for Buddhist ceremonies, made forecasts for weather and harvests, and compiled calendars and almanacs for a variety of religious events and holidays. These almanacs often shared features with those of the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese, including a preoccupation with lucky and unlucky days for various activities.65 In rural Tibet local specialists divined for villagers, casting horoscopes for newborn children, comparing astrological profiles for couples contemplating wedlock, predicting auspicious geomantic sites for buildings and graves, and determining appropriate times for weddings, funerals, and other occasions. The charts that informed such predictions were ubiquitous in premodern Tibet and have been described and illustrated in a great many publications.66
FIGURE 4.4
Trigrams on a Tibetan Ritual Horn
Photo taken by author.
Like other peoples in East Asia, the Tibetans seem to have been eager to domesticate the Yijing—that is, to assimilate it to their indigenous culture. Some Tibetan commentators in the past have emphasized affinities between the Changes and Tantric Buddhism, and other scholars in both the Buddhist and Bon traditions have transformed Confucius—the putative transmitter of Yijing divination (and other forms of fortune-telling, according to Tibetan tradition)—into their own religious figure, named Kong-tse ‘phrulrgyal or Khong-spu-rtsi, an emanation of Manjugh-osa, one of many forms assumed by the bodhisattva Manjushri.67
As another example of this process of domestication, in Tibet the eight trigrams sometimes acquired symbolic identifications that were very different from their traditional Chinese ones. Zhen, for example, usually associated with thunder, came to be linked in certain Tibetan divination systems with “meteoric iron.”68 And when displayed as protective symbols on various craft productions, including woodblock prints and the bright silk Tibetan paintings known as thangkas, the eight trigrams often appear in configurations other than the standard Former Heaven (Fuxi) and Later Heaven (King Wen) sequences of the Chinese tradition. At times in these varied Tibetan configurations, certain trigrams are repeated while others are omitted.69
There are other significant differences between Chinese and Tibetan divinatory symbolism. For instance the five agents and the twelve zodiacal animals of Tibet do not always correspond exactly to their Chinese counterparts (this is true also of the Vietnamese zodiac). Similarly correlations between the eight trigrams and the five agents in Tibet do not always conform to Chinese models. In fact, in some Tibetan cosmological constructions, each trigram has a different agent associated with it, requiring the addition of non-Chinese agents such as air.70 Moreover the Tibetans created new divinatory symbols, including four-lined tetragrams—although there was, of course, a Chinese precedent for this sort of representation with Yang Xiong’s wellknown Classic of Great Mystery.71
The Yijing in Modern East Asia
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, imperialism became an increasingly prominent theme in the histories of the four cultures mentioned above. But foreign aggression in East Asia played itself out in very different ways. China, first to feel the sting of Western imperialism, suffered under the yoke of the infamous “unequal treaties” from 1842 to 1943. Japan, subject to a similar set of onerous stipulations beginning in the 1850s, became an imperialist power itself after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, colonizing Taiwan in 1895 and then Korea in 1910. Vietnam fell increasingly under French domination in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, only to be subjugated by the Japanese in 1940. Tibet, initially threatened by the British, became more or less independent from 1912 to 1950, but the Chinese periodically attempted to exert what they considered to be suzerain control over Tibet.
Under these circumstances traditional attitudes began to break down. Nonetheless, as we have seen in the cases of China, Korea, and Vietnam, the study and use of the Yijing continued in certain circles during the early twentieth century. The same was true in Japan. Indeed, divination with the Changes, particularly as practiced by an entrepreneur named Takashima Kaemon (1832–1914), was a significant theme in the political history of Meiji Japan. Consulted by a great many bureaucrats throughout the Meiji period (1868–1912), Takashima became hugely popular as both a scholar and a diviner, not only in Japan but also in China, where a Chinese edition of his famous book My Judgment on the Changes circulated among Qing dynasty scholars and officials. One of his followers, Sugiura Shigetake (1855–1924), also translated the book into English.72
Remarkable transformations have taken place in the political, social, and cultural environments of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam during the post–World War II era, but nothing has been as dramatic in any of these areas as the “Yijing fever” that swept over China during the 1980s and 1990s. This enthusiasm for the classic had both a popular and an academic dimension, and it was manifest in an avalanche of books and journals of every conceivable sort. Nor, as far as I know, has there been anything in the rest of East Asia like the establishment of the Zhouyi Theme Park (in Fuling, Sichuan), a vast complex marking the spot where, nearly a thousand years ago, the Song scholar Cheng Yi, in banishment, completed his famous commentary on the Changes.73 Although Yijing-based divinatory practices continue to be discouraged by communist governments, professional diviners can easily be found in China and Vietnam (although not, as far as I know, in North Korea).
There has been one Yijing-related development outside of China worthy of at least brief mention: the establishment in 1926 in Vietnam of the highly eclectic transnational Cao Dai religion, which boasts an estimated several million adherents. The supreme deity or “God” of the Cao Dai faith is an amalgamation of Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian cosmogonic and cosmological concepts. The Cao Dai story of creation, in brief, is that the eternal Dao generated a “father-mother” God, who created yin and yang, which in turn produced all things. In 1920 God revealed the Cao Dai teachings to Ngo Van Chieu (1878–1932?), a Vietnamese administrator, and then to others through the medium of spirit-writing. The structure of the church is fundamentally Catholic; the ethics are overwhelmingly Confucian, and the symbolism includes elements from the Yijing, notably dragons and trigrams (albeit unusually arranged).74 Among the deities of this religion are the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Laozi; its three primary saints are Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925; Chinese revolutionary and political leader), Victor Hugo (1802–85; French writer, artist, and statesman), and Nguyen Binh Khiem (1491–1585; Vietnamese administrator, educator, and poet). One of the three administrative branches of the Cao Dai teaching is the Eight Trigrams Palace, which “directs all activities of the universe under the leadership of God and [the] Holy Spirits.”75