23 November 2020
No regrets: about hui 悔
The character hui 悔 appears many times in the Zhouyi, the core text of the Book of Changes, and is often translated as ‘regret’. A student asked me if I could…
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Translation Notes
Explore historical sources, translations, research articles and critical discussions of the Yijing.
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10 July 2020
Crossing the great river
In this video we are going to look at the phrase she da chuan 涉大川, ‘cross the great river’ and the early usage of the keywords from this phrase.
Read article →9 March 2020
Hexagram 10, line 1
素履往无咎 Su 素: in early texts almost exclusively used as a descriptive adjective: ‘unadorned, plain, not processed or modified’. This also means that what follows it is a noun, an object.…
Read article →30 June 2019
Hexagram 10, Judgment
履虎尾不咥人亨 Lü 履: to step on (something); to walk; to proceed. The Mawangdui text has li 禮, ‘rules of conduct’, which reminds of the Xugua 序卦 line about H10: 物畜然後有禮故受之以履: “When…
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17 December 2018
Hexagram 09, line 6
既雨既處。尚德載。婦貞厲。月幾望。君子征凶。 Ji 既: on oracle bone and bronze inscriptions used with the meaning of ‘finished, complete, the end, to stop, the final stage’ (Liu Xinglong 劉興隆,《新編甲骨文字典》, p. 299; Ma Rusen 馬如森, 《殷墟甲骨學》, entry…
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19 March 2018
Hexagram 09, line 5
有孚攣如。富以其鄰。 有孚攣如: this sentence also occurs at H61.5. You fu 有孚: see here. Luan 攣: to join, to connect. There are a few dictionaries (like 《新甲骨文編》) who link this character to an oracle…
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14 March 2018
Hexagram 09, line 4
有孚血去. 惕出. 无咎. It has been more than a year since I wrote my last Translation Note. This has mainly to do with one word: punctuation. The original Chinese text does…
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11 February 2017
Hexagram 09, line 3
輿說輻. 夫妻反目. Yu 輿: a chariot, but also the box of the chariot: Shuo 說: loan for tuo 脫, ‘fall off’ or ‘remove’. It also is a loan for shui 税,…
Read article →27 January 2017
Hexagram 09, line 1 & 2
Line 1 復自道. 何其咎. 吉. I have struggled for many months with the segmentation of the first sentence, 復自道. I was not sure if I should read it as (1) 復自…
Read article →28 June 2016
Hexagram 09, Judgment
小畜. 亨. 密雲不雨自我西郊。 Xu 畜: accumulate, make it grow in small amounts. According to Lu Deming 陸德明 (556-627) it was originally written as xu 蓄, ‘to store, save, grow’. The top…
Read article →22 April 2016
Hexagram 08, line 6
比之无首。凶。 Shou 首: head; chief, leader; main points, essentials; the first, the highest. Also ‘towards (direction)’ and loan for dao 道, ‘road, path’ (漢語大詞典). Without a leader or direction, without the…
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17 April 2016
Hexagram 08, line 5
顯比。王用三驅。失前禽。邑人不誡。吉。 Xian 顯: appear, become visible, make public, (to) display, (to) manifest. Also a loan for xin 欣, ‘joyful (appearance)’. Xianbi 顯比 can mean that the alliance is made public. Sanqu…
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