Zhou Yi (The Book of Changes)

Zhou Yi, also called Yi Jing or simply Yi, is a Confucian classic. According to Zheng Xuan‘s Yi Zan, the character Yi carries three meanings: change, simplicity, and constancy. It is traditionally said to have been produced by the people of Zhou; another interpretation holds that “Zhou” means thorough, all-encompassing, and circulating, hence the title. The work consists of two parts: the Jing (Classic) and the Zhuan (Commentaries).

The Jing is an ancient Chinese divination text, composed of the sixty-four hexagrams, each with its hexagram image, name, judgment, and line statements. The hexagram judgments and line statements explain the meanings of the hexagram images and line images respectively. Traditional accounts attribute the eight trigrams to Fuxi, their expansion into sixty-four hexagrams and the composition of the judgments to King Wen, and the line statements to the Duke of Zhou; however, the text was not produced by a single author at one time. The basic symbols “—” and “- -” evolved gradually from odd and even numbers in early yarrow-stalk divination. The hexagram judgments represent the long-term accumulation of original divinatory records and may have been finally organized by Western Zhou court scribes. Although it is a divination manual, its mysterious form contains the wisdom of ancient Chinese people, reveals the earliest beginnings of theoretical thinking and simple dialectical ideas, and preserves certain social customs and moral concepts of the Yin and Zhou periods.

The Zhuan is the earliest commentary on the Jing. It comprises ten pieces, collectively called the Ten Wings. Traditionally attributed to Confucius, modern scholarship regards most of them as Confucian works from the Warring States period or the Qin-Han transition. Through interpretations of the meaning and function of the Zhou Yi, its divination methods, the origin of the eight trigrams, and the arrangement of the sixty-four hexagrams and their line statements, the Zhuan creates a distinctive intellectual system that unites symbolic-numerical patterns with moral-philosophical meaning. Its doctrines of yin and yang, firmness and yielding, profoundly influenced the later development of Chinese philosophy.