''Jiaoshi Yilin'' ( (or just "Mr. Jiao's Many Thoughts on the Book of Changes") is a
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
book of
divination
Divination (from Latin ''divinare'', 'to foresee, to foretell, to predict, to prophesy') is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic, standardized process or ritual. Used in various forms throughout histor ...
composed during the
Western Han Dynasty
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Emperor Gaozu of Han, Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by th ...
. Modeled on the ''
I Ching
The ''I Ching'' or ''Yi Jing'' (, ), usually translated ''Book of Changes'' or ''Classic of Changes'', is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zho ...
'', the work was attributed to Jiao Yanshou (焦延壽, see
:zh:焦贛), courtesy name Jiao Gan焦贛, who came from Liang 梁 (modern Shang Qiu 商丘, Henan) and was a tutor in the household of the Prince of Liang (early 1st century BCE). He was a scholar and official, reaching the rank of district magistrate in Xiao Huang 小黃 (near modern
Kaifeng
Kaifeng () is a prefecture-level city in east-central Henan province, China. It is one of the Eight Ancient Capitals of China, having been the capital eight times in history, and is best known for having been the Chinese capital during the Nort ...
开封, Henan). He was a student of the great Yi Jing scholar
Meng Xi
Meng may refer to:
* Meng (surname) (孟), a Chinese surname
* Master of Engineering (MEng or M.Eng.), an academic or professional master's degree in the field of engineering
* , "M with hook", letter used in the International Phonetic Alphabet ...
孟喜 and passed on the traditions of his school to
Jing Fang
Jing Fang (, 78–37 BC), born Li Fang (), courtesy name Junming (), was born in present-day 東郡頓丘 ( Puyang, Henan) during the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). He was a Chinese music theorist, mathematician and astrologer. Although ...
京房. However, some scholars suspect that the book was composed later, perhaps in the late Western Han, perhaps even somewhat later. I am inclined to agree with those who attribute the book to Cui Zhuan (崔篆), a scholar and official who was active in the time of the
Wang Mang
Wang Mang () (c. 45 – 6 October 23 CE), courtesy name Jujun (), was the founder and the only Emperor of China, emperor of the short-lived Chinese Xin dynasty. He was originally an official and consort kin of the Han dynasty and later ...
interregnum (9 - 23 CE). Many of the verses seem oriented to the use of traveling merchants.
[Gait, Christopher, (2016) ''The Forest of Changes, A Han Dynasty Compendium of Divination'']
Yi Lin literally means a forest or grove of changes. The book consists of 4096 verses. The verses represent all the possible combinations of the sixty-four hexagrams of the Book of Changes (Yi Jing/I Ching), thus 64 X 64 = 4096. Many of the verses of the Yi Lin were apparently lost over time and only approximately 1500 verses are unique, with the remaining verses full or partial duplicates. The verses are most often two couplets of four characters each. Some verses are as short as three lines and some as long as eight. Many of the longer verses have orphaned couplets at the end that do not seem to fit with the first two couplets.
When divining using the Yi Jing the figure may be unchanging (hexagram 50 remains 50, for example), or can have one or more moving lines which change it into another hexagram (16, third and fourth, lines changing, becomes 8). In this edition of the Forest of Changes that would be described as 16 - 8, and the text is:
16 - 8
Even a ravenous tiger,
Will not eat a spiny hedgehog.
Yu the Great carved out the Dragon Gate.
Avoiding misfortune and eliminating calamity,
The people attain peace.
This verse has several typical elements of the Forest. For one, there is a bit of folk wisdom on tigers and hedgehogs. Then comes the reference to Yu the Great, tamer of floods and founder of the Xia Dynasty. The verse uses an image from Chinese mythology in which Yu is supposed to have carved out a mountain as part of his herculean labors changing the flood pattern of China.
Later diviners made use of various techniques to determine one or both of the hexagrams for an Yi Lin reading. These often included drawing trigram images from the world around them and the events they were inquiring about and using a system to associate hexagrams with each hour. The
Song Dynasty
The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the rest ...
Yi Jing scholar
Shao Yong
Shao Yong (; 1011–1077), courtesy name Yaofu (堯夫), named Shào Kāngjié (邵康節) was a
Chinese cosmologist, historian, philosopher, and poet who greatly influenced the development of Neo-Confucianism across China during the Song dynast ...
is said to have used the Forest of Changes as part of his system of Plum Blossom Numerology.
Dating the Text
The following items lend credence to at least portions of the text being written later than the lifetime of Jiao Yan Shou (1st century BCE), the purported author:
The Red Lord, mentioned in 28 - 34, is a mythological figure that became popular in the waning days of the Western Han, and is to be found in the so-called Han Apocrypha literature.
References to the
Queen Mother of the West
The Queen Mother of the West, known by various local names, is a mother goddess in Chinese religion and mythology, also worshipped in neighbouring Asian countries, and attested from ancient times. From her name alone some of her most importan ...
as a goddess to whom prayers for rescue are directed place the book at or near the end of the Western Han since an attitude toward her as a saving figure was not observed until that time (See Loewe, 1979).
At least one verse (45 - 42) points quite clearly to the story of Wang Zhao Jun. Most of the key events in her life were in the 30s BCE.
Although there have been many periods of flooding in China, one particularly heavy set of floods happened in 29 BCE. The large number of verses in the Forest about flood disasters lead me to believe it was written at a time when many floods were happening. Thus this is a very tenuous dating parameter, but it cannot be entirely excluded.
Themes in the Forest
A somewhat subjective survey of the themes in the book produces this list:
* The wisdom and power of the ancient sage kings.
* The mandate of heaven and the rise and fall of dynasties.
* The events of the Zhou overthrow of the Shang and the parallels with the overthrow of the first dynasty, the Xia, overthrown by the Shang.
* The arc of dynastic history, from receiving the mandate and the glory days down to the descent into madness and perversion is often mentioned, along with the continuity or lack thereof of ancestral veneration for the ruler and state.
* The importance of both auspicious and inauspicious omens at the level of the state or empire;
* Confucian virtues such as filial piety, humility and moral resilience. By this last term I mean the many occasions in which Confucian officials and those they admire in history stand up to rulers on matters of right and wrong and decisions that affect the safety of the state, as well as the habit of such officials to retire in times of bad governance and reemerge when a worthy ruler is on the throne.
* Reliance on omens, a practice particularly popular with the school of governance of scholars of the Gong Yang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals during the Han Dynasty.
* The cult of the Queen Mother of the West.
* Remembering and watching out for disasters in good times before they get a chance to develop; a concept found in the Book of Changes and elsewhere.
* Traveling merchants. A large number of texts are about business journeys, markets, transporting goods, obtaining profits, etc.
* Folk sayings and songs and folk beliefs and Daoist or Huang Lao schools.
See also
*
Wen Wang Gua
Wen Wang Gua () is a method of interpreting the results of I Ching divination that was first described in writing by Jing Fang (78–37 BC) in Han dynasty China. It is based on correlating trigrams to the Celestial Stems and Earthly Branches of t ...
References
External links
Original Chinese text which, however, requires proofreading and revision.
English translation of the Forest of Changes
{{Authority control
Chinese books of divination