Description
Book SynopsisThe Zhou Changes, better known in the West as I Ching, is one of the masterpieces of world literature. This book, the climax of more than forty years of research in Chinese archaeology, explores the text’s origins in the oracle-bone and milfoil divinations of Bronze Age China and how it transformed over the course of the Zhou dynasty into the first of the Chinese classics. The book provides an in-depth survey of the theory and practice of divination to demonstrate how the hexagram and line statements of the text were produced and how they were understood at the time.
Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgements List of Figures and Tables Conventions Introduction Part 1 The Context 1 The Zhou Changes: Received Text and Early Manuscripts 2 The Philosophy of Divination in Ancient China 3 Turtle-Shell Divination 4 Milfoil Divination 5 Milfoil Divination with the Zhou Changes 6 The Poetic Imagination Part 2 The Text 7 The Hexagram 8 The Hexagram Statement 9 The Line Statement 10 Intra-hexagram and Inter-hexagram Structures of Hexagram Texts 11 The Hexagram Sequence 12 From Divination to Philosophy Works Cited Index of Zhou Changes Lines Index of Zhou Changes Hexagram and Line Statements Cited General Index
