I Ching

The I Ching, or Book (I) of Changes (Ching), belongs to the greatest treasures of religion; it is hierarchically the first of Old China’s Five Classics (the four other Classics are the Shu Ching, or The Book of History (rules for Politics); the Shih Ching, or The Book of Odes; the Li Chi, or The Book of Rites; the Ch’un Ch’in, or The Spring and Autumn Annals, annals of one Chinese province where Confucius lived).

A Twofold Structure: Oracular Formulae and (Official) Commentaries

Ten centuries of successive stratifications of practices and texts frame this monument of Chinese wisdom, whose secrets have not yet all been discovered by archeologists, philologists, and after them theologians or thinkers. Out of divination customs from the Shang dynasty (1750–1050 BCE) appeared, during the Chou dynasty (1050–771 BCE), the ancestor of the I Ching, the Chou I, or Changes of Chou, a compilation of oracular formulae. From the eighth century before the Common Era to the second of the Common Era,...