The I Ching (Wade-Giles), “Yì Jīng” (Pinyin), Classic of Changes or Book of Changes; also called Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. The book contains a divination system comparable to Western geomancy or the West African Ifá system. In Western cultures and modern East Asia, it is still widely used for this purpose.
The standard text originated from the ancient text (古文經) transmitted by Fei Zhi (费直, c50 BC -AD 10) of the Ha...
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The I Ching (Wade-Giles), “Yì Jīng” (Pinyin), Classic of Changes or Book of Changes; also called Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. The book contains a divination system comparable to Western geomancy or the West African Ifá system. In Western cultures and modern East Asia, it is still widely used for this purpose.
The standard text originated from the ancient text (古文經) transmitted by Fei Zhi (费直, c50 BC -AD 10) of the Han Dynasty. During the Han Dynasty this version competed with the bowdlerised new text (今文經) version transmitted by Tian He at the beginning of the Western Han. However, by the time of the Tang Dynasty the ancient text version, which had survived Qin’s book-burning by being preserved amongst the peasantry, became the accepted norm among Chinese scholars.
The earliest extant version of the text, written on bamboo slips, albeit incomplete, is the Chujian Zhouyi, and dates to the latter half of the Warring States period (mid 4th to early 3rd...
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