I Ching, or more correctly Yi Jing, is perhaps the oldest book on earth. It was written in obsolete ancient Chinese language which is unintelligible to most of us today.

It talks about the sixty four arrangements of six broken or unbroken lines (each being called a yao).

Each of these arrangements is called a hexagram or gua.

Each gua corresponds to a story or a phenomenon.

Each yao also corresponds to certain happening or picture.

Even in ancient days different scholars had different interpretations of the hexagrams.

It started with the first sage, Fu Xi (doubtfully about 3300 B.C.) who developed the Ba Gua.

To some scholars Fu Xi was not the name of a person but the name of an entire tribe. This tribe knew how to raise animals for meat and milk. Fu Xi literally means "taming animals".

This tribe also knew how to use the eight arrangements of three broken or unbroken lines to record important events.

Other tribes were known to be discoverers of the use of fire, agriculture, and making homes on trees.

This is a more reasonable view.

In the time of Fu Hsi writing was not yet invented.

The first written explanation of the hexagrams was recorded by Wen Wang (King Wen), the founder of the Zhou Dynasty at about 1143 B.C.

Wen Wang's son, the Duke of Zhou, also contributed to the text of I Ching.

Then another sage Confucius (550-478 B.C.) spent his final years interpreting the I Ching.

These writings are all difficult to understand. The I Ching has been puzzling the Chinese for thousands of years. Some scholars even refuse to recognize it as a book of oracles.

It is not surprising we have many versions of the English translation of the I Ching. Yet none of the existing versions is easy to understand.

I shall not endeavor to translate the I Ching in my own version. Instead, I will extract the essence of the text and transcribe it into simple English with reference to modern living.

Previous Lesson | Next Lesson

Table of Contents