6,493
edits
Difference between revisions of "I Ching"
→History
Occultwiki (talk | contribs) |
Occultwiki (talk | contribs) |
||
| Line 7: | Line 7: | ||
The core of the I Ching is a Western Zhou divination text called the ''Changes of Zhou'' (Chinese: 周易; pinyin: Zhōu yì). Various modern scholars suggest dates ranging between the 10th and 4th centuries BC for the assembly of the text in approximately its current form. Based on a comparison of the language of the Zhou yi with dated bronze inscriptions, the American sinologist Edward Shaughnessy dated its compilation in its current form to the last quarter of the 9th century BC, during the early decades of the reign of King Xuan of Zhou (r. c. 827 – 782 BC). A copy of the text in the Shanghai Museum corpus of bamboo and wooden slips (discovered in 1994) shows that the Zhou yi was used throughout all levels of Chinese society in its current form by 300 BC, but still contained small variations as late as the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BC). | The core of the I Ching is a Western Zhou divination text called the ''Changes of Zhou'' (Chinese: 周易; pinyin: Zhōu yì). Various modern scholars suggest dates ranging between the 10th and 4th centuries BC for the assembly of the text in approximately its current form. Based on a comparison of the language of the Zhou yi with dated bronze inscriptions, the American sinologist Edward Shaughnessy dated its compilation in its current form to the last quarter of the 9th century BC, during the early decades of the reign of King Xuan of Zhou (r. c. 827 – 782 BC). A copy of the text in the Shanghai Museum corpus of bamboo and wooden slips (discovered in 1994) shows that the Zhou yi was used throughout all levels of Chinese society in its current form by 300 BC, but still contained small variations as late as the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BC). | ||
The name ''Zhou yi'' literally means the "changes" (易; Yì) of the Zhou dynasty. The "changes" involved have been interpreted as the transformations of hexagrams, of their lines, or of the numbers obtained from the divination. | The name ''Zhou yi'' literally means the "changes" (易; Yì) of the Zhou dynasty. The "changes" involved have been interpreted as the transformations of hexagrams, of their lines, or of the numbers obtained from the divination. Feng Youlan proposed that the word for "changes" originally meant "easy," as in a form of divination easier than the [[oracle]] bones, but there is little evidence for this. | ||
==Structure== | ==Structure== | ||