Table Of ContentC
ONTENTS
Info
Preface
Versions of the Zhou Yi
Translations and commentaries
Dating and authorship of the Zhou Yi
Structure and context of the Zhou Yi
The difficulties of understanding the Zhou Yi
Trigrams and hexagrams
Divinations recorded in the Zuo Zhuan and Guo Yu
The yarrow sticks method
The script
Introduction to the translation
元 亨 貞 Yuan, Heng and Zhen
Translation of the Zhou Yi With comments and glossary
Appendix I — Frequently occurring characters
Appendix II — Trigrams and hexagrams
Appendix III — Chinese text
Works cited
Translation of the Zhou Yi with translator’s interpretations
Table of hexagram numbers
How to use the yarrow sticks and coins
I
NFO
I Ching - The Original Core of the Book of Changes
Lars Bo Christensen - January 2015
ISBN 978-87-997976-0-8
Additional sources and video clips can be found at:
www.zhouyi.dk
P
REFACE
T
he Book of Changes is famous in both China and the West as a classic of Chinese wisdom and as
a divination manual. The Chinese title 易經 is transcribed in several different ways, although it
is usually written either “Yi Jing” or “I Ching”. There have been many attempts at translating the
Book of Changes. However, the translations are all very different. Furthermore, the existing
translations include different content. This is of course confusing to readers who wish to come to
understand this famous and truly wonderful book.
The present work is concerned solely with the core text of the Book of Changes.
In order to avoid confusion between the core text and the complete classic with commentaries from
later periods I refer to the original core text as 周易 which is transcribed “Zhou Yi” or “Chou I” and
is pronounced “djow-ee”.
周易 Zhou Yi means “The Book of Changes from the Zhou Dynasty”.1
The Zhou Yi consists of 64 verses with seven lines in each verse, except the two first which have
eight lines. The total number of lines is 450. Although yi 易 occurs twice in the book itself there is
nothing in the text directly indicating what exactly 易 in the title refers to. However, there can be no
doubt that the Zhou Yi was originally a divination manual and I find it obvious that 易 refers to the
system of changing numbers which decides the combination of lines of text in the written divination
answers.
The Book of Changes has not only been a famous and respected book for more than 2500 years, it has
also been a challenging enigma ever since the first accounts of it. Since ancient times, the Book of
Changes has inspired people to contemplate life and cosmology and it has given rise to a multitude of
philosophical ideas, not only in ancient China but throughout Chinese history including our time. It has
also become increasingly popular in the West.
Commentaries and translations of the Zhou Yi are plentiful. Yet, it is a fact that hardly anyone could
ever understand the Zhou Yi, even in ancient times. The proof of this statement is in the fact that all
translations and interpretations of the Zhou Yi diverge enormously from each other—there are barely
two lines that are agreed upon. Therefore, it is absolutely fair to say that there has, at least since the
beginning of the Han dynasty, never been any agreement in the interpretations or translations of the
Zhou Yi.
Yet, the Zhou Yi has always been held in as much high respect as the texts of Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, Kong
Zi or Meng Zi—all of which are much easier to read. It is as if the Zhou Yi’s popularity was never
affected by the fact that hardly anybody could ever read the core part. Nevertheless, the Zhou Yi has
been used for divination and citation of wise words by millions of people for more than two
millennia.
The language of the Western Zhou period was, in fact, sufficiently evolved to be able to express
almost anything. However, it still had many limitations and without the framework of a context it can
be especially difficult to translate short lines of early Classical Chinese and this is often the case in
the Zhou Yi. To reveal the context is, therefore, the key to a successful translation.
I regard the apparent lack of a context and structure to be the main reason the Zhou Yi has been
translated in so many different ways. But there is, in fact, an internal logic in every hexagram and also
in the development of the 64 hexagrams. Furthermore, there are obvious relationships between the 32
pairs of hexagrams. This is sufficient to constitute the outline of the context which is needed to
determine the further direction of the translation.
• The present work makes it clear that the Zhou Yi was written by a single author.
• It also determines that the so-called “received version” is the most original.
• It clarifies the internal structure of the hexagrams.
• It explains the relations of all the 32 hexagram pairs.
• It investigates the yarrow sticks method.
• It proposes an explanation of how the divination answers were interpreted.
• It gives detailed definitions of nearly 800 words based on text examples from before the Han
dynasty.
• But primarily, it provides a meaningful and coherent translation.
The purpose of this book is to make a well-founded description and translation of the Zhou Yi. This
demands Chinese text, footnotes and a large glossary—all of which may be of little interest to most
non-sinologists. Therefore, I have provided a “stripped down” version of the translation placed at the
very end of the book, which is, in fact, the beginning of a traditional Chinese book. My own
interpretation of the meaning of each of the 450 lines is written in cursive script below the lines of
this translation.
Some chapters are rather technical. Before reading them I would recommend performing the practical
techniques with coins or sticks which are described at the end of the book.
I would like to extend many thanks for help and advice to Donald B. Wagner and especially to Stella
Sørensen for many hours of work correcting my English.
C
ONVENTIONS
The word “hexagram” refers to the famous 64 images of six lines but it also refers to the 64
verses of seven or eight lines of text that are associated with the lines.
Hexagram numbers are often referred to as H+number.
The first line of each hexagram is describing the overall theme of the verse and is referred to as “the
title line” or “line 0”.
The first of the hexagram lines 初 is referred to as “line 1”.
Then follow line 2, 3, 4 and 5.
The top line of the hexagrams 上 is referred to as “line 6”.
Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own.
1 The name Zhou Yi 周易 was mentioned 10 times in the Zuo Zhuan which is the oldest historical source we have for the name. The
record in which it was mentioned was for the year 672 BCE. The Zuo Zhuan itself is from before 340 BCE.
V Z Y
ERSIONS OF THE HOU I
T
he famous sinologist Bernhard Karlgren called the Zhou Yi “a muddle”, “gibberish” and
“obscure”.1 Considering his talent for reading Classical Chinese this could be a strong
indication that the text was corrupt and he and other scholars had much better success translating other
ancient texts.
There exists a very large number of Zhou Yi translations and commentaries and many translators and
commentators have indeed assumed that the text was corrupt and proposed that certain characters
should be changed because some point in the text did not make sense to them. Naturally, many authors,
editors and copyists of ancient Chinese texts committed errors, used loan characters or replaced
characters because of naming taboos. In many texts it is not a big problem to determine mistakes and
loan characters, but with more difficult texts there is an obvious danger of wrongly replacing
characters. It is not unreasonable to suspect that the Zhou Yi could have been corrupted over time, and
that the true meaning was to be found by searching for the correct loan characters and correcting the
mistakes. This approach to the translation of the Zhou Yi is quite common, but has, in my opinion,
never helped produce a useful translation. If there is any hope left of finding a meaningful translation
after all the futile attempts it can only be based on a single version which is possible to translate in a
meaningful way without any replacement of characters. Otherwise, this hope wouldn’t live long out in
the dense jungle of previous translations, commentaries and different versions. However, having said
that, I actually do see justification for the replacement of a single character in hexagram 9 line 4.
There exist a number of analyses and comparisons of the different versions of the Zhou Yi, most
notably Unearthing the Changes by Edward L. Shaugnessy. Some of these have produced interesting
theories and conclusions which have been useful to clarify a general overview of the problems
regarding the Zhou Yi. I have not, however, found any variations in the excavated texts that seemed to
be improvements in the readability, and none of these versions have changed my own conclusion that
the received version is the one closest to the original. This argument is supported by my translation in
general, but I consider the lines from the Zhou Yi which are cited in the divination records in the Zuo
Zhuan to also be weighty arguments. They are briefly explained in the chapter ‘Divinations recorded
in the Zuo Zhuan and Guo Yu’ and are identical with the received version and very likely real
accounts. There is, in my opinion, no reason to believe these records should have been invented for
the occasion of writing the Zuo Zhuan or that they were rewritten later to suit an officially approved
standard.
T
HE RECEIVED VERSION
The so-called received version has been handed down in the imperial libraries at least since the Han
dynasty and was made publicly available by order of Emperor Kang Xi in 1715. The overall
recognizable meaning, the contextual framework and the structure that can be discovered in the
received version and also the almost verbatim citations from the Zhou Yi which can be found in the
Zuo Zhuan have convinced me that this is the most original version. I have based my translation
entirely on it—I have only changed one single character in H9 line 4. There is, at this time, no
evidence to prove the original order of the hexagrams. But a different sequence would have had no
practical impact because the hexagrams were located in the text with the yarrow sticks on the basis of
the hexagram lines—not the number in the sequence. My translation follows the hexagram order of the
received version.
The received version consists of 4933 characters2 and it has 784 unique characters. The details of the
text will be explained in the respective chapters and the glossary.
T M
HE AWANGDUI VERSION
A silk copy of the Zhou Yi was found in the Han dynasty tomb of Li Cang who died in 168 BCE. The
tomb was located in the village Mawangdui in Changsha in the Hunan province. Edward L.
Shaughnessy provides a further description and a translation in I Ching—The Classic of Change.
Finding this relatively well preserved copy naturally caused great excitement. However,
approximately 7% of the text was lost,3 only 31 hexagram titles were identical with the received
version and just 29 lines of the total 450 were identical. When corrected for missing parts of the text
in the Mawangdui version there are only about 11004 characters which are the same as the received
version’s 4033 characters (excluding line numbers which are mostly the same). A large portion of the
different characters can carry the same meaning as their received counterpart, but there are still very
many differences which are difficult to explain. With good intentions, and if seen in isolation, many
lines can make some sense, but viewed in the context of hexagrams with a common theme, the lines of
this version are almost without either meaning or common themes. The order of the hexagrams in this
version is also completely different from the received. As before mentioned, it is not possible to
determine the original sequence at this time.5
The notes to Shaughnessy’s translation show, that there are very many places where he has replaced
characters in his translation. Some of the different characters could very well be considered
“misspellings” or regional variations in writing, but the sheer amount of differences makes this
argument invalid—the meaning is simply lost. Many dedicated scholars have been engaged in an
enormously complicated attempt to analyse and compare the different versions of the Zhou Yi and to
extract possible evidence that could prove an earlier different version than the received. But with
regards to the Mawangdui version, the number of obvious mistakes and inconsistencies are so great
that I consider it doubtful if any safe conclusions can ever come from it.
I believe there can be two reasons for the differences between the Mawangdui version and the
received version:
1. The scribe could simply not understand the text, assumed the original was faulty and tried to
improve the text with characters that seemed to have better logic.
2. The text was copied by an ignorant scribe who listened to someone reciting the Zhou Yi by heart. If
the text was made only for this particular burial, there would probably have been no proofreading. I
find this to be the most plausible possibility. Especially so because many characters that are different
in the Mawangdui version have the same sound as their counterpart in the received version.6
The text is full of obvious mistakes, for example in H53 line 2 (received version H38) where it is
very clear that 无咎九二 does not belong in the sentence 九二无咎九二愚主于巷无咎 because the
number 九二 is the line number and 无咎 clearly belongs to the end of the preceding line. The
received version is 九二遇主于巷无咎.
Another random example could be that in the received version and the Shanghai version the sentence
有孚攣如 is the same in both H9 line 5 and H61 line 5. But in the Mawangdui version the character
攣 is replaced with in H9 and 論 in H61, both with similar sound. It is very hard to see the meaning of these two characters
in the sentence.
There are also clearly many mistakes in the line numbering of the Mawangdui version.7 This is easy
to determine because the line numbers determine the hexagram lines. This cannot be considered minor
mistakes, because it would have rendered the manual unusable. These mistakes further strengthen the
impression of the text as being a grave gift that was not intended for real use.
There are many characters which are written with variants in some places in the text and with the
same characters as the received version in other places in the text. An example could be that both 凶
and 兇 are used for the same meaning, even within the same hexagram (H32). This is also the case
with 小 and 少. These mistakes may not disturb the reader so much, but when 孚 and 復 are confused
it obviously becomes very difficult to distinguish which is “return” and which is “confidence”. The
same goes for 大 and 泰 which are also confused within the same hexagram (in H10, H26 and H28).
否 is well-known to replace 不 and indeed does so in the entire Mawangdui version. The received
version H12 is called 否 which is a logic and clear theme of this hexagram. In the Mawangdui
version this hexagram is H2, and here both 不 and 婦 are used to replace 否 (in line 0 and line 2).
This is in itself confusing, but furthermore, both 否 and 不 occur in H12 of the received text. This
means that there is no way the reader could understand the difference of 否 and 不. Besides this, the
translation of line 5 of the Mawangdui version becomes almost comical when 婦 is used instead of
否: “A resting wife is good for a great man. ‘Will she disappear, will she disappear?’ He then ties her
to the mulberry tree.” I find the received version to make much better sense in this case.
Although 亡 should be a well-attested variant of both 喪 and 无 it is very confusing that 亡 is used as
a variant for both 喪 and 无 in the same text. Furthermore, 亡 is also used in the meaning
“disappear”. It would thus have been very difficult to know the precise meaning of 亡.
This kind of problems are quite typical for this version but are just a few random examples; the
confusion in this version is endless. I believe no one could ever read and understand this particular
copy.
T S M
HE HANGHAI USEUM BAMBOO STRIP VERSION
A batch of bamboo strips was looted in 1993 from a tomb near the capital of the Chu state in the
Warring States period. A part of the Zhou Yi was written on 58 of the strips. They are now stored at
the Shanghai Museum. These bamboo strips are best known as the “Shanghai Museum version” but
are also sometimes called the “Chu Bamboo strip version”. The bamboo strips have been dated to the
end of the 4th century BCE which makes it the oldest extant version of the Zhou Yi at the present
moment. Disregarding the line numbers, 38 % of the text was saved from the mud of the tomb (1571
characters compared to the 4161 characters of the received version). There were 184 lines extant (32
only partial) of the total 450. Of these only one single line is completely identical with its received
counterpart (H17 line 5). Only 26 of the titles were saved (of which six missing titles were verified
from the text of the hexagram lines).8 Comparing the amount of differences with the received version,
it seems to be about the same percentage as the differences between the Mawangdui version and the
received version. However, the differences between the two excavated versions are, in fact, also
very many.
At first glance the Shanghai Museum version looks considerably different than the received version.
However, the differences are mainly variations in writing. In general, the text seems to be very close
in meaning to the received version. Besides the variations of many characters, there are often missing
or added characters compared to the received version, but usually without much impact of the
meaning. But there are also many places where the differences are of a confusing nature, like H26 line
2 輿說輹 where the Shanghai Museum has 車敚复 instead. 車 and 敚 has the same meaning as 輿 and
說, but 复 would not have been precise enough to describe a part on the vehicle, and so this loses the
precise meaning of the line.
The Shanghai Museum version is wonderfully printed in: 馬承源: 上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書 vol.
三 p. 11-70. It is described in detail in English in Unearthing the Changes by Edward L. Shaugnessy.
T F
HE UYANG BAMBOO STRIP VERSION
A copy of the Zhou Yi from the Han period was excavated in 1977 in Shuanggudui in the Anhui
province in the tomb of Xiahou Zao 夏候灶 (d. 164 BCE). It was written on bamboo strips but was
incomplete and fragmented. The remaining fragments consist of 752 strips with 3119 characters and
include hexagram drawings, titles and lines.9 In spite of the missing parts and the differences in the
way many characters were written, it is clear that this copy is close to the received version.
An interesting thing about the Fuyang Zhou Yi is that there are divination results appended to all
existing line fragments. Of the 3119 characters only 1110 belong to the Zhou Yi, the rest is appended
