![]() That led to some debate among philosophers, which played its role in making the book known to Europeans. He had learned about it from Jesuits stationed in China. It was none other than the German philosopher Leibniz who wrote the first known Western commentary of it in 1703, pointing out its binary system. It took quite a while for the book to reach the Western world. It's sort of an honorary title for a book, signifying that it belongs to the all-time Chinese cultural treasures. The word ching is best translated as classic. I discuss that more on this webpage:Īs for the name of the book, it was changed to I Ching in 136 BC by a Chinese emperor who thereby included it among the prominent classics of Chinese literature. When they are arranged one above the other, the meaning of that hexagram starts to emerge as if by itself. There are eight trigrams, each representing a basic force of nature. Still, I would claim that it makes more sense to see the hexagrams as combinations of two trigram (three lines each). That gives a total of 64 possible combinations in hexagrams. Yin and yang are also the building blocks of the 64 hexagrams of the book, in what could very well be described as sort of a binary system: each of the six lines of a hexagram can be either solid (yang) or broken (yin). This change is described by the dynamics between yin and yang, the famous polarity of ancient Chinese cosmology. So, what's implied with the name of the book is the statement that everything changes, always. The word chou means circle or something revolving, as well as universal. Initially it was called Chou I ( Zhou Yi), The Changes of Chou, which was the name of the dynasty during which the book emerged. ![]() It probably got its present form around 800 BC, but its method of divination may well be hundreds of years older than that. The origin of the I Ching (also spelled Yi jing) is unclear because of its high age. Here's a few of the most prominent ones, and some more information about the book and its history. There are many English translations of the book. Its 64 chapters have mainly been used for divination since that distant origin, and it still is. I Ching, The Book of Change, is nearly 3,000 years old.
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