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The Origin and Early Development of the Zhou Changes
Series: - Prognostication in History, Volume: 9
Author:
The
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.
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.
Edward L. Shaughnessy is the Creel Distinguished Service Professor of Early China at the University of Chicago. He has published more than 20 books and over 200 scholarly articles on all aspects of ancient China’s literary heritage.
"Empowered by new sources, new investigative techniques, and the intensity and direction of contemporary Chinese and Western scholarship, he arrives at a striking vindication of the Changes’ religious and cultural status. […] A model for providing the non-specialist with practical access to a classical text and an essential tool for the study of the origins of Chinese culture."
– Barbara Hendrischke, Religious Studies 49.1 (March 2023)
– Barbara Hendrischke, Religious Studies 49.1 (March 2023)
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Tables
Conventions
Introduction
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
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
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
Readers interested in all periods of Chinese intellectual history, especially ancient China; also the many people throughout the world for whom the book is a constant source of inspiration.