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1Si cela est vrai, comme toute ka nation V'avoue unanimement, ou peut & juste titre l’appeler le plus ancien des livres.’ But he adds, ‘Ce n’étoit pas proprement un livre, ni quelque chose d’approchant ; c’étoit une énigme trés obscure, et plus difficile cent fois a expliquer que celle du sphinx.’ P. Couplet expresses himself much to the same effect in the prolegomena (p. xviii) to the work called ‘Cenfucius Sinarum Philosophus,’ published at Paris in 1687 by himself and three other fathers of the Society of Jesus (Intercetta, Herdritch, and Rougemont). Both they and P. Visdelou give an example of a portion of the text and its interpretation, having singularly selected the same hexagram,—the 15th, on Humility. 8 THE yf KING. CH. 1. can be received as only partially correct, if indeed it be received at all, the sage could not have entered on their composition earlier than B.C. 483, 660 years later than the portion of the text that came from king W4n, and nearly 630 later than what we owe to the duke of K4u. But during that long period of between six and seven centuries changes may have arisen in the views taken by thinking men of the method and manner of the Yi; and I cannot accept the Text and the Appendixes as forming one work in any proper sense of the term. Nothing has prevented the full understanding of both, so far as parts of the latter can be understood, so much as the blending of them together, which originated with Pi Xih of the first Han dynasty. The common editions of the book have five of the Appendixes (as they are ordinarily reckoned) broken up and printed side by side with the Text; and the confusion thence arising has made it difficult, through the intermixture of incongruous ideas, for foreign students to lay hold of the meaning. 6. Native scholars have of course been well aware of the difference in time between the appearance of the Text and Labours of the Appendixes; and in the Khang-hsi edition schilawon Of them the two are printed separately. the Yi. § Only now and then, however, has any critic ventured to doubt that the two parts formed one homogeneous whole, or that all the appendixes were from the style or pencil of Confucius. Hundreds of them have brought a wonderful and consistent meaning out of the Text; but to find in it or in the Appendixes what is unreasonable, or any inconsistency between them, would be to impeach the infallibility of Confucius, and stamp on themselves the brand of heterodoxy. At the same time it is an unfair description of what An imperfect they have accomplished to say, as has description of been done lately, that since the fires of their labours. B3hin, ‘the foremost scholars of each generation have edited the Text (meaning both the Text and the Appendixes), and heaped commentary after commentary upon it ; and one and all have arrived at the somewhat CH. 11. INTRODUCTION. 9
2B3hin, ‘the foremost scholars of each generation have edited the Text (meaning both the Text and the Appendixes), and heaped commentary after commentary upon it ; and one and all have arrived at the somewhat CH. 11. INTRODUCTION. 9 lame conclusion that its full significance is past finding out?.’ A multitude of the native commentaries are of the highest value, and have left little to be done for the elucidation of the Text; and if they say that a passage in an Appendix is ‘unfathomable’ or ‘incalculable,’ it is because their authors shrink from allowing, even to themselves, that the ancient sages intermeddled, and intermeddled unwisely, with things too high for them. When the same writer who thus speaks of native scholars goes on to say that ‘in the same way a host Erroneous of European Chinese scholars have made account of the translations of the Yi, and have, if possible, European made confusion worse confounded,’ he only scholars. | shows how imperfectly he had made himself acquainted with the subject. ‘The host of European Chinese scholars who have made translations of the Yi’ amount to two,—the same two mentioned by me above on pp. 6, 7. The translation of Regis and his coadjutors 2 is indeed capablé of improvement; but their work as a ‘whole, and especially the prolegomena, dissertations, and notes, supply a mass of correct and valuable information. They had nearly succeeded in unravelling the confusion, and solving the enigma of the Yi. CHAPTER II. THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF THE TEXT. THE LINEAL FIGURES AND THE EXPLANATION OF THEM. 1. Having described the Yi King as consisting of a text in explanation of certain lineal figures, and of appendixes to it, and having traced the composition of the former to 1 See a‘communication on certain new views about the Yt in the ‘Times’ of April 20, 1880; reprinted in Triibner's American, European, and Oriental Literary Record, New Series, vol. i, pp. 125-127. ? Regis’ coadjutors in the work were the Fathers Joseph de Mailla, who tured the Chinese into Latin word for word, and compared the result with the Mankdu version of the Yi; and Peter du Tartre, whose principal business was to supply the historical illustrations. Regis himself revised all their work and enlarged it, adding his own dissertations and notes. See Prospectus Operis, immediately after M. Mohl’s Preface. . 10 THE Yi KING. CH. II.
3Regis himself revised all their work and enlarged it, adding his own dissertations and notes. See Prospectus Operis, immediately after M. Mohl’s Preface. . 10 THE Yi KING. CH. II. its authors in the twelfth century. B.c., and that of the latter to between six and seven centuries later at least, I proceed to give an account of what we find in the Text, and how it is deduced from the figures. The subject-matter of the Text may be briefly represented as consisting of sixty-four short essays, The Yf con- . . . sists of essays enigmatically and symbolically expressed, on arto important themes, mostly of a moral, social, and political character, and based on the same number of lineal figures, each made up of six lines, some of which are whole and the others divided. The first two and the last two may serve for the present as a specimen of those figures: | ! pp a. | | ==". The Text says nothing about their origin and formation. There they are. King Wan takes them up, one after another, in the order that suits himself, determined, evidently, by the contrast in the lines of each successive pair of hexagrams, and gives their significance, as a whole, with some indication, perhaps, of the action to be taken in the circumstances which he supposes them to symbolise, and whether that action will be lucky or unlucky. Then the duke of X4u, beginning with the first or bottom line, expresses, by means of a symbolical or emblematical illustration, the significance of each line, with a similar indication of the good or bad fortune of action taken in connexion with it. The king’s interpretation of the whole hexagram will be found to be in harmony with the combined significance of the six lines as interpreted by his son. Both of them, no doubt, were familiar with the practice of divination which had prevailed in China for more than a thousand years, and would copy closely its methods and style. They were not divining themselves, but their words became oracles to subsequent ages, when men divined by the hexagrams, and sought by means of what was said under them to ascertain how it would be with them in the 1 See Plate I at the end of the Introduction. CH. II. INTRODUCTION, II future, and learn whether they should persevere in or withdraw from the courses they were intending to pursue. 2. I will give an instance of the lessons which the lineal figures are made to teach, but before I do so, it will be The origin of Necessary to relate what is said of their origin, the lineal and of the rules observed in studying and figures. interpreting them. For information on these points we must have recourse to the Appendixes; and in reply to the question by whom and in what way the figures were formed, the third, of which we made use in the last chapter, supplies us with three different answers. (i) The 11th paragraph of Section ii says :—
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1Si cela est vrai, comme toute ka nation V'avoue unanimement, ou peut & juste titre l’appeler le plus ancien des livres.’ But he adds, ‘Ce n’étoit pas proprement un livre, ni quelque chose d’approchant ; c’étoit une énigme trés obscure, et plus difficile cent fois a expliquer que celle du sphinx.’ P. Couplet expresses himself much to the same effect in the prolegomena (p. xviii) to the work called ‘Cenfucius Sinarum Philosophus,’ published at Paris in 1687 by himself and three other fathers of the Society of Jesus (Intercetta, Herdritch, and Rougemont). Both they and P. Visdelou give an example of a portion of the text and its interpretation, having singularly selected the same hexagram,—the 15th, on Humility. 8 THE yf KING. CH. 1. can be received as only partially correct, if indeed it be received at all, the sage could not have entered on their composition earlier than B.C. 483, 660 years later than the portion of the text that came from king W4n, and nearly 630 later than what we owe to the duke of K4u. But during that long period of between six and seven centuries changes may have arisen in the views taken by thinking men of the method and manner of the Yi; and I cannot accept the Text and the Appendixes as forming one work in any proper sense of the term. Nothing has prevented the full understanding of both, so far as parts of the latter can be understood, so much as the blending of them together, which originated with Pi Xih of the first Han dynasty. The common editions of the book have five of the Appendixes (as they are ordinarily reckoned) broken up and printed side by side with the Text; and the confusion thence arising has made it difficult, through the intermixture of incongruous ideas, for foreign students to lay hold of the meaning. 6. Native scholars have of course been well aware of the difference in time between the appearance of the Text and Labours of the Appendixes; and in the Khang-hsi edition schilawon Of them the two are printed separately. the Yi. § Only now and then, however, has any critic ventured to doubt that the two parts formed one homogeneous whole, or that all the appendixes were from the style or pencil of Confucius. Hundreds of them have brought a wonderful and consistent meaning out of the Text; but to find in it or in the Appendixes what is unreasonable, or any inconsistency between them, would be to impeach the infallibility of Confucius, and stamp on themselves the brand of heterodoxy. At the same time it is an unfair description of what An imperfect they have accomplished to say, as has description of been done lately, that since the fires of their labours. B3hin, ‘the foremost scholars of each generation have edited the Text (meaning both the Text and the Appendixes), and heaped commentary after commentary upon it ; and one and all have arrived at the somewhat CH. 11. INTRODUCTION. 9
2B3hin, ‘the foremost scholars of each generation have edited the Text (meaning both the Text and the Appendixes), and heaped commentary after commentary upon it ; and one and all have arrived at the somewhat CH. 11. INTRODUCTION. 9 lame conclusion that its full significance is past finding out?.’ A multitude of the native commentaries are of the highest value, and have left little to be done for the elucidation of the Text; and if they say that a passage in an Appendix is ‘unfathomable’ or ‘incalculable,’ it is because their authors shrink from allowing, even to themselves, that the ancient sages intermeddled, and intermeddled unwisely, with things too high for them. When the same writer who thus speaks of native scholars goes on to say that ‘in the same way a host Erroneous of European Chinese scholars have made account of the translations of the Yi, and have, if possible, European made confusion worse confounded,’ he only scholars. | shows how imperfectly he had made himself acquainted with the subject. ‘The host of European Chinese scholars who have made translations of the Yi’ amount to two,—the same two mentioned by me above on pp. 6, 7. The translation of Regis and his coadjutors 2 is indeed capablé of improvement; but their work as a ‘whole, and especially the prolegomena, dissertations, and notes, supply a mass of correct and valuable information. They had nearly succeeded in unravelling the confusion, and solving the enigma of the Yi. CHAPTER II. THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF THE TEXT. THE LINEAL FIGURES AND THE EXPLANATION OF THEM. 1. Having described the Yi King as consisting of a text in explanation of certain lineal figures, and of appendixes to it, and having traced the composition of the former to 1 See a‘communication on certain new views about the Yt in the ‘Times’ of April 20, 1880; reprinted in Triibner's American, European, and Oriental Literary Record, New Series, vol. i, pp. 125-127. ? Regis’ coadjutors in the work were the Fathers Joseph de Mailla, who tured the Chinese into Latin word for word, and compared the result with the Mankdu version of the Yi; and Peter du Tartre, whose principal business was to supply the historical illustrations. Regis himself revised all their work and enlarged it, adding his own dissertations and notes. See Prospectus Operis, immediately after M. Mohl’s Preface. . 10 THE Yi KING. CH. II.
3Regis himself revised all their work and enlarged it, adding his own dissertations and notes. See Prospectus Operis, immediately after M. Mohl’s Preface. . 10 THE Yi KING. CH. II. its authors in the twelfth century. B.c., and that of the latter to between six and seven centuries later at least, I proceed to give an account of what we find in the Text, and how it is deduced from the figures. The subject-matter of the Text may be briefly represented as consisting of sixty-four short essays, The Yf con- . . . sists of essays enigmatically and symbolically expressed, on arto important themes, mostly of a moral, social, and political character, and based on the same number of lineal figures, each made up of six lines, some of which are whole and the others divided. The first two and the last two may serve for the present as a specimen of those figures: | ! pp a. | | ==". The Text says nothing about their origin and formation. There they are. King Wan takes them up, one after another, in the order that suits himself, determined, evidently, by the contrast in the lines of each successive pair of hexagrams, and gives their significance, as a whole, with some indication, perhaps, of the action to be taken in the circumstances which he supposes them to symbolise, and whether that action will be lucky or unlucky. Then the duke of X4u, beginning with the first or bottom line, expresses, by means of a symbolical or emblematical illustration, the significance of each line, with a similar indication of the good or bad fortune of action taken in connexion with it. The king’s interpretation of the whole hexagram will be found to be in harmony with the combined significance of the six lines as interpreted by his son. Both of them, no doubt, were familiar with the practice of divination which had prevailed in China for more than a thousand years, and would copy closely its methods and style. They were not divining themselves, but their words became oracles to subsequent ages, when men divined by the hexagrams, and sought by means of what was said under them to ascertain how it would be with them in the 1 See Plate I at the end of the Introduction. CH. II. INTRODUCTION, II future, and learn whether they should persevere in or withdraw from the courses they were intending to pursue. 2. I will give an instance of the lessons which the lineal figures are made to teach, but before I do so, it will be The origin of Necessary to relate what is said of their origin, the lineal and of the rules observed in studying and figures. interpreting them. For information on these points we must have recourse to the Appendixes; and in reply to the question by whom and in what way the figures were formed, the third, of which we made use in the last chapter, supplies us with three different answers. (i) The 11th paragraph of Section ii says :—
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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