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Yijing Research

Reading the Ancient Language

There is a tiger in hexagram 10. Someone steps on its tail, yet the text says the tiger does not bite. The episode sounds simple enough, until we compare early manuscripts and find that one version has a different character where the received text has 咥, “to bite.” This is where translating the Zhouyi becomes especially enjoyable. A single character can send us from a received book to silk manuscripts, old dictionaries and bronze inscriptions, and each source may show the sentence from a new angle.

The tiger’s tail

The received hexagram statement reads 履虎尾不咥人亨. Many translations describe stepping on a tiger’s tail without being bitten, followed by an auspicious indication. It is a fine image: someone gets dangerously close to a tiger and escapes unharmed.

The name 履 Lü also means stepping, walking or proceeding. But the Mawangdui silk text writes the name with 禮, the character associated with ritual propriety and proper conduct. That is not a random curiosity. Later commentary itself connects the two words, and the difference invites us to ask what kind of proceeding the image suggests. Are we merely walking, or are we moving with a sense of how to behave?

The puzzling word comes later. The Mawangdui text has 真 where the received version has 咥; the Fuyang manuscript gives 實. At first, the alternatives tempted me to explore whether the passage referred to a “true person” rather than to a tiger biting someone. It was an attractive possibility, especially when read beside the third line of the hexagram. But grammar matters. The text uses 不, not the negative word we would normally expect in that proposed construction. Other evidence favours the conventional reading of biting. I followed the alternatives, tested the sentence against the Chinese, and returned to “bite” with a much better understanding of why it fits.

That is what I enjoy about translation. The first answer was not the end of the investigation; it was the beginning of a much better question.

Rain in hexagram 9

Another passage I have spent considerable time with is the sixth line of hexagram 9:

既雨既處。尚德載。婦貞厲。月幾望。君子征凶。

Let us begin with just three characters: 既雨, ji yu. If you know 既 from modern Chinese as “already,” “it has rained” might be a natural first thought. But what did the expression mean when diviners and scribes used it in early China?

Several oracle-bone inscriptions record rain that stopped. In one such record, after describing rainfall, the scribe uses 既 to mark its ending. That makes “the rain has stopped” a rewarding possibility for our line. It also works nicely with the following 既處, in which 處 can suggest coming to rest or staying in a place.

The text becomes a scene rather than an abstract statement. The rain has stopped. Someone may now be considering how to proceed. And the next expression, 尚德載, can be explored in connection with support or transport. Gao Heng imagined a traveller hoping to obtain a ride after rain had made the road difficult. Whether one adopts all of his reading or not, it gives the sentence movement, landscape and people: things that translation should help us see.

The same line goes on to mention a woman, the nearly full moon and a lord setting out on an expedition. These are vivid fragments of an early world. They can be difficult to connect as one modern narrative, and that is all right. We can examine them together without pretending that every word must refer to the same episode.

A pit that makes a sound

An old Serendipity article of mine, The pit and the drum, began with the doubled character 坎坎 kan-kan. In the Shijing, the same repeated sound describes blows on timber. Now turn to hexagram 29, where the third line begins 來之坎坎. Usually we think of 坎 as a pit, a hollow or danger. Could the repeated word also suggest a sound?

The Mozi describes an ingenious way to listen for enemy tunnels approaching a city: deep listening wells and vessels with stretched membranes that allowed defenders to hear the digging. Put the pit, the sound and the approaching danger together and a scene emerges that is almost cinematic. I explored whether the images of hexagram 29 might be read against that scene.

I was not proposing that the whole hexagram was originally written as instructions for detecting tunnellers. In fact, the last line did not fit my picture. What I enjoyed was discovering a connection that made me look again at familiar words. A short Chinese expression can send you into ancient military engineering, and suddenly a hexagram that you thought you knew sounds rather different.

A word can change the picture

Consider 孚 fu, familiar from the expression 有孚. Many readers know it as “trust” or “sincerity.” In an earlier article I worked within that range of meaning. Later, looking more closely at the development of the written character and early divination formulae, I investigated its possible relationship with 保 bao, protection or support. Oracle bones contain 有保, an expression that could describe receiving support from ancestors or spirits.

For a reader of the Yijing, the difference is worth exploring. “There is sincerity” draws our attention to a person’s attitude. “There is protection” draws it toward the help that makes an undertaking possible. They may lead to different questions about the situation. My later proposal is an interpretation supported by certain palaeographic connections; it is not a dictionary entry that everyone must adopt. The original article gives the inscriptions and the argument for anyone who would like to follow it further.

Translations as travelling companions

You can enjoy the Yijing without reading Chinese. Indeed, a good translation opens the door. But two translations may present quite different scenes, and comparing them can be illuminating. Which one reads the expression as a concrete ancient action? Which one draws on later commentary? Which words are actually there in Chinese, and which have been supplied to make the English flow?

Try it with a short line: look up two translations, read both, and then consult the original characters if you are curious. You may end up preferring one version, borrowing something from both, or forming a third picture of your own. That freedom is one of the pleasures of this book.

We have now met the text from the inside: six lines, recurring expressions, paired hexagrams, rhythm and tiny Chinese sentences packed with images. Next we can move away from the printed page to the objects that preserve much earlier divination: bones, shells, pottery, bronze and inscribed numbers.

Sources and further reading