Zhouyi: A New Translation with Commentary of the Book of Changes (Durham East Asia Series)
Richard Rutt
Language: English
Pages: 510
ISBN: 070071491X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Modern research has revealed the Book of Changes to be a royal divination manual of the Zhou state (500100 BC). This new translation synthesizes the results of modern study, presenting the work in its historical context. The first book to render original Chinese rhymes into rhymed English.
manuscript has, as so often, an elaborate substitute xigan. Kan, the received tag character, has become the name of the trigram reduplicated to form the hexagram. Waley (A135) saw Hexagram 29 as referring to religious rites, such as Shang and Zhou sacrifices to the moon, performed in a pit or hollow, and described in the ‘Jiyi’ section of Liji. Wen Yiduo saw the pit as a dungeon for prisoners, which certainly makes an intelligible reading. (W36) The pit could even be a grave, originally
statement) Compare 37:5 and Hexagram Statement 59. The repetition of ‘Offering’ looks like a fault in the text, but speculation would be fruitless. On the king’s presence, see the note to 37:5. (Base) The indication is comparable with that of 13:5. (2) I have translated as though there were no oracle in this line. Instead of treating yin ‘to stretch’ as a simple intensive ‘very’ in the prognostic, some would prefer to translate as ‘auspicious for a long time’ or take the character to be the
text is composed of quotations from line statements. This means that in rather more than two thirds of the entries comment is limited to 4 or fewer characters, though very rarely, as in 25:3, is no comment offered at all. The comments are heterogeneous and eclectic, with no attempt to be either systematic or exhaustive, and most entries deal with part of the text only, leaving much of the Zhouyi text untreated. Possibly an occasional and incomplete collection of random annotations has at some
earlier), she had cast the yarrow wands and met with an 8 (an unchangeable broken line) in Gen (Hexagram 52). The diviner said: ‘This means that Gen gives Sui (Hexagram 17). Sui means getting out. Your ladyship will get out soon.’ Jiang replied, ‘No. Zhouyi (Hexagram 17) says: “Sui means yuan heng li zhen: no trouble. Yuan is the source of goodness; heng is the sum of all excellence, li is the harmony of all that is right: zhen is the kingpin of activity. A prince, embodying goodness, is fit
is a call on Zhouyi for testimony regarding little-known facts. The contents of the book are taken as objectively true. There is no narrative here, but a long disquisition centring on a single quotation from Zhouyi. Zhao Jianzi asked the recorder Cai Mo how it had happened that when the Ji clan of Lu drove out their prince, who had died in exile from Lu in 510 BC, the other states had simply accepted the fait accompli. In his reply, Cai Mo said, ‘In Zhouyi, Zhen, the thunder trigram, riding