The Yȋ King
1. Confucius is reported to have said on one
occasion, ‘If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study
of the Yî, and might then escape falling into great errors 1:1.’
There was a Yî in the time of Confucius. The
utterance is referred by the best critics to the closing period of Confucius’
life, when he had returned from his long and painful wanderings among the
States, and was settled again in his native Lû. By this time he was nearly
seventy, and it seems strange, if he spoke seriously, that he should have
thought it possible for his life to be prolonged other fifty years. So far as
that specification is concerned, a corruption of the text is generally
admitted. My reason for adducing the passage has simply been to prove from it
the existence of a Yî King in the time of Confucius. In the history of him by
Sze-mâ Khien it is stated that, in the closing years of his life, he became
fond of the Yî, and wrote various appendixes to it, that he read his copy of it
so much that the leathern thongs (by which the tablets containing it were bound
together) were thrice worn out, and that he said, ‘Give me several years
(more), and I should be master of the Yî 1:2.’ The ancient books on which
Confucius had delighted to discourse with his disciples were those of History,
Poetry, and Rites and Ceremonies 2:1; but ere he passed away from among them,
his attention was much occupied also by the Yî as a monument of antiquity,
which in the prime of his days he had too much neglected.
2. Khien says that Confucius wrote various
appendixes to the Yî, specifying all but two of the treatises, which go The Yî
is now made up of the Text which Confucius saw and the Appendixes ascribed to
him by the name of the ‘Ten Appendixes,’ and are, with hardly a dissentient
voice, attributed to the sage. They are published along with the older Text,
which is based on still older lineal figures, and are received by most Chinese
readers, as well as by foreign Chinese scholars, as an integral portion of the
Yî King. The two portions should, however, be carefully distinguished. I will
speak of them as the Text and the Appendixes.
3. The Yî happily escaped the fires of Žhin, which
proved so disastrous to most of the ancient literature of China in The Yî
escaped the fires of Žhin B. C. 213. In the memorial which the premier Lî Sze
addressed to his sovereign, advising that the old books should be consigned to
the flames, an exception was made of those which treated of ‘medicine,
divination, and husbandry 2:2.’ The Yî was held to be a book of divination, and
so was preserved.
In the catalogue of works in the imperial library,
prepared by Liû Hin about the beginning of our era, there is an enumeration of
those on the Yî and its Appendixes,--the books of thirteen different authors or
schools, comprehended in 294 portions of larger or smaller dimensions 2:3. I
need not follow the history and study of the Yî into the line of the centuries
since the time of Liû Hin. The imperial Khang-hsî edition of it, which appeared
in 1715, contains quotations from the commentaries of 218 scholars, covering,
more or less closely, the time from the second century B. C. to our seventeenth
century. I may venture to say that those 218 are hardly a tenth of the men who
have tried to interpret the remarkable book, and solve the many problems to
which it gives rise.
4. It may be assumed then that the Yî King, properly
The Yî before Confucius, and when it was made so called, existed before
Confucius, and has come down to us as correctly as any other of the ancient
books of China; and it might also be said, as correctly as any of the old
monuments of Hebrew, Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin literature. The question arises
of how far before Confucius we can trace its existence. Of course an inquiry into this point will not
include the portions or appendixes attributed to the sage himself. Attention
will be called to them by and by, when I shall consider how far we are
entitled, or whether we are at all entitled, to ascribe them to him. I do not
doubt, however, that they belong to what may be called the Confucian period,
and were produced some time after his death, probably between B.C. 450 and 350.
By whomsoever they were written, they may be legitimately employed in
illustration of what were the prevailing views in that age on various points
connected with the Yî. Indeed, but for the guidance and hints derived from them
as to the meaning of the text, and the relation between its statements and the
linear figures, there would be great difficulty in making out any consistent
interpretation of it.
(i) The earliest mention of the classic is found in
the The Yî mentioned in the Official Book of Kâu Official Book of the Kâu
dynasty, where it is said that, among the duties of ‘the Grand Diviner,’ ‘he
had charge of the rules for the three Yî (systems of Changes), called the
Lien-shan, the Kweî-žhang, and the Yî of Kâu; that in each of them the regular
(or primary) lineal figures were 8, which were multiplied, in each, till the),
amounted to 64.’ The date of the Official Book has not been exactly
ascertained. The above passage can hardly be reconciled with the opinion of the
majority of Chinese critics that it was the work of the duke of Kâu, the
consolidator and legislator of the dynasty so called; but I think there must
have been the groundwork of it at a very early date. When that was composed or
compiled, there was existing, among the archives of the kingdom, under the
charge of a high officer, ‘the Yî of Kâu,’--what constitutes the Text of the
present Yî; the Text, that is, as distinguished from the Appendixes. There were
two other Yî, known as the Lien-shan and the Kwei-žhang. It would be a waste of
time to try to discover the meaning of these designations. They are found in
this and another passage of the Official Book; and nowhere else. Not a single
trace of what they denoted remains, while we possess ‘the Yî of Kâu’ complete
4:1.
(ii) In the Supplement of Žo Khiû-ming to ‘the
Spring and Autumn,’ The Yî mentioned in the Žo Khwan there is abundant evidence
that divination by the Yî was frequent, throughout the states of China, before
the time of Confucius. There are at least eight narratives of such a practice,
between the years B.C. 672 and 564, before he was born; and five times during
his life-time the divining stalks and the book were had recourse to on
occasions with which he had nothing to do. In all these cases the text of the
Yî, as we have it now, is freely quoted. The ‘Spring and Autumn’ commences in
B.C. 722. If it extended back to the rise of the Kâu dynasty, we should, no
doubt, find accounts of divination by the Yî interspersed over the long
intervening period. For centuries before Confucius appeared on the stage of his
country, the Yî was well known among the various feudal states, which then
constituted the Middle Kingdom 5:1.
Footnotes
1:1:1 Confucian Analects, VII, xvi.
1:1:2 The Historical Records; Life of Confucius, p.
12.
2:2:1 Analects, VII, xvii.
2:2:2 Legge’s Chinese Classics, I, prolegomena, pp.
6-9.
2:2:3 Books of the Earlier Han; History of
Literature, pp. 1, 2.
4:4:1 See the Kâu Kwan (or Lî), Book XXIV, parr. 3,
4, and 27. Biot (Le Tcheou Lî, vol. ii, pp. 70, 71) translates the former two
paragraphs thus: 'Il (Le Grand Augure) est préposé aux trois methodes pour les
changements (des lignes divinatoires). La première est appelée Liaison des
montagnes (Lien-shan); la seconde, Retour et Conservation (Kwei-žhang); la
troisième, Changements des Kâu. Pour toutes il y a huit lignes symboliques
sacrées, et soixante-quatre combinaisons de ces lignes.'
Some tell us that by Lien-shan was intended Fû-hsî,
and by Kwei-žhang Hwang Tî; others, that the former was the Yî of the Hsiâ
dynasty, and the latter that of Shang or Yin. A third set will have it that
Lien-shan was a designation of Shăn Năng, between Fû-hsî and Hwang Tî. I should
say myself, as many Chinese critics do say, that Lien-shan was an arrangement
of the lineal symbols in which the first figure was the present 52nd hexagram,
Kăn consisting of the trigram
representing mountains doubled; and that Kwei-žhang was an arrangement where
the first figure was the present 2nd hexagram, Khwăn consisting of the trigram representing the
earth doubled,--with reference to the disappearance and safe keeping of plants
in the bosom of the earth in winter. All this, however, is only conjecture.
5:5:1 See in the Žo Khwan, under the 22nd year of
duke Kwang (B.C. 672); the 1st year of Min (1661); and in his 2nd year (660);
twice in the 15th year of Hsî (645); his 25th year (635); the 12th year of Hsüan,
(597); the 16th year of Khăng (575); the 9th year of Hsiang (564); his 25th
year (548); the 5th year of Khâo (537); his 7th year (535); his 12th year
(530); and the 9th year of Âi (486).
The Yî King, Sacred Books of the East Vol. 16; The
Sacred Books of China, Vol. 2 of 6, Part II of The Texts of Confucianism,
trans. James Legge. Oxford, the Clarendon Press [1882].
