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88-656: According to the I Ching , nine is a yang number; the ninth day of the ninth month in the Chinese calendar (or double nine) has extra yang (a traditional Chinese spiritual concept) and is thus an auspicious date. Hence, the day is also called "Double Yang Festival" ( 重陽節 ). It is customary to climb a mountain, drink chrysanthemum liquor , and wear the zhuyu ( 茱萸 ) plant ( Cornus officinalis ). Both chrysanthemum and zhuyu are considered to have cleansing qualities and are used on other occasions to air out houses and cure illnesses. On this holiday, some Chinese also visit

176-509: A certain extent in South Korea , remain virtually identical to traditional characters, with variations between the two forms largely stylistic. There has historically been a debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters . Because the simplifications are fairly systematic, it is possible to convert computer-encoded characters between the two sets, with the main issue being ambiguities in simplified representations resulting from

264-552: A complete mystery to academics. Regardless of their historical relation to the text, the philosophical depth of the Ten Wings made the I Ching a perfect fit to Han period Confucian scholarship. The inclusion of the Ten Wings reflects a widespread recognition in ancient China, found in the Zuo zhuan and other pre-Han texts, that the I Ching was a rich moral and symbolic document useful for more than professional divination. Arguably

352-576: A consensus formed around 2nd-century AD scholar Ma Rong 's attribution of the text to the joint work of Fuxi, King Wen of Zhou, the Duke of Zhou, and Confucius , but this traditional attribution is no longer generally accepted. Another tradition about the I Ching was that most of it was written by Tang of Shang . The basic unit of the Zhou yi is the hexagram ( 卦 guà ), a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines ( 爻 yáo ). Each line

440-588: A day of celebration. In contemporary times, it is an occasion for hiking and chrysanthemum appreciation. Other activities include flying kites, making flower cakes, and welcoming married daughters back home for visiting. Stores sell rice cakes ( 糕 "gāo", a homophone for height 高 ) with mini colorful flags to represent zhuyu . Most people drink chrysanthemum tea, while a few traditionalists drink homemade chrysanthemum wine. Children learn poems about chrysanthemums and many localities host chrysanthemum exhibits. Mountain climbing races are also popular; winners get to wear

528-512: A method of yarrow stalk divination that is still used throughout the Far East. In the modern period, Gao Heng attempted his own reconstruction, which varies from Zhu Xi in places. Another divination method , employing coins, became widely used in the Tang dynasty and is still used today. In the modern period; alternative methods such as specialized dice and cartomancy have also appeared. In

616-625: A misreading of the Records of the Grand Historian . Although it rested on historically shaky grounds, the association of the I Ching with Confucius gave weight to the text and was taken as an article of faith throughout the Han and Tang dynasties. The I Ching was not included in the burning of the Confucian classics , and textual evidence strongly suggests that Confucius did not consider

704-583: A more rigorous representation and interpretation of I Ching. Gao Heng , an expert in pre-Qin China, re-investigated its use as a Zhou dynasty oracle. Edward Shaughnessy proposed a new dating for the various strata of the text. New archaeological discoveries have enabled a deeper level of insight into how the text was used in the centuries before the Qin dynasty. Proponents of newly reconstructed Western Zhou readings, which often differ greatly from traditional readings of

792-405: A notable impact on the 1960s counterculture and on 20th century cultural figures such as Philip K. Dick , John Cage , Jorge Luis Borges , Terence McKenna and Hermann Hesse . Joni Mitchell references the six yang hexagram in "Amelia", a song on the album Hejira , where she describes the image of "...six jet planes leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain...". It also inspired

880-613: A standard set of Chinese character forms used to write Chinese languages . In Taiwan , the set of traditional characters is regulated by the Ministry of Education and standardized in the Standard Form of National Characters . These forms were predominant in written Chinese until the middle of the 20th century, when various countries that use Chinese characters began standardizing simplified sets of characters, often with characters that existed before as well-known variants of

968-535: A synthesis of the two, arguing that the text was primarily a work of divination that could be used in the process of moral self-cultivation, or what the ancients called "rectification of the mind" in the Great Learning . Zhu Xi's reconstruction of I Ching yarrow stalk divination , based in part on the Great Commentary account, became the standard form and is still in use today. As China entered

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1056-568: A wreath made of zhuyu . In Japan, the festival is known as Chōyō but also as the Chrysanthemum Festival ( 菊の節句 , Kiku no Sekku ) and it is one of Japan's five sacred ancient festivals (sekku). It is most commonly celebrated on the 9th day of the 9th month according to the Gregorian calendar rather than the lunisolar calendar, i.e. on September 9. It is celebrated at both Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. The festival

1144-869: Is 産 (also the accepted form in Japan and Korea), while in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan the accepted form is 產 (also the accepted form in Vietnamese chữ Nôm ). The PRC tends to print material intended for people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and overseas Chinese in traditional characters. For example, versions of the People's Daily are printed in traditional characters, and both People's Daily and Xinhua have traditional character versions of their website available, using Big5 encoding. Mainland companies selling products in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional characters in order to communicate with consumers;

1232-416: Is a modern invention. Yin and yang are represented by broken and solid lines: yin is broken ( ⚋ ) and yang is solid ( ⚊ ). Different constructions of three yin and yang lines lead to eight trigrams (八卦) namely, Qian (乾, ☰), Dui (兌, ☱), Li (離, ☲), Zhen (震, ☳), Xun (巽, ☴), Kan (坎, ☵), Gen (艮, ☶), and Kun (坤, ☷). The different combinations of the two trigrams lead to 64 hexagrams. The following table numbers

1320-729: Is among the oldest of the Chinese classics . The I Ching was originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC). Over the course of the Warring States and early imperial periods (500–200 BC), it transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the Ten Wings . After becoming part of the Chinese Five Classics in the 2nd century BC,

1408-407: Is celebrated in the wish for the longevity of one's life and is observed by drinking chrysanthemum sake and eating dishes such as chestnut rice ( kuri-gohan ) and chestnuts with glutinous rice ( kuri- mochi ). In Korea, the festival is known as Jungyangjeol ( 중양절 ), and it is celebrated on the 9th day of the 9th month. Koreans would consume chrysanthemum leaves in pancakes. As the festival

1496-404: Is either broken or unbroken. The received text of the Zhou yi contains all 64 possible hexagrams, along with the hexagram's name ( 卦名 guàmíng ), a short hexagram statement ( 彖 tuàn ), and six line statements ( 爻辭 yáocí ). The statements were used to determine the results of divination, but the reasons for having two different methods of reading the hexagram are not known, and it

1584-431: Is meant to celebrate and cultivate good health, outdoor activities such as carrying dogwood, climbing hills or mountains for picnics, and gazing at chrysanthemum blossoms are carried out. I Ching The I Ching or Yijing ( Chinese : 易經 , Mandarin: [î tɕíŋ] ), usually translated Book of Changes or Classic of Changes , is an ancient Chinese divination text that

1672-420: Is not explained, and none of the stories employ predetermined commentaries, patterns, or interpretations. Only the hexagrams and line statements are used. By the 4th century BC, the authority of the Zhou yi was also cited for rhetorical purposes, without relation to any stated divination. The Zuo Zhuan does not contain records of private individuals, but Qin dynasty records found at Shuihudi show that

1760-457: Is not known how the yarrow stalks became numbers, or how specific lines were chosen from the line readings. In the hexagrams, broken lines were used as shorthand for the numbers 6 ( 六 ) and 8 ( 八 ), and solid lines were shorthand for values of 7 ( 七 ) and 9 ( 九 ). The Great Commentary contains a late classic description of a process where various numerological operations are performed on a bundle of 50 stalks, leaving remainders of 6 to 9. Like

1848-527: Is not known why hexagram statements would be read over line statements or vice versa. The book opens with the first hexagram statement, yuán hēng lì zhēn ( 元亨利貞 ). These four words are often repeated in the hexagram statements and were already considered an important part of I Ching interpretation in the 6th century BC. Edward Shaughnessy describes this statement as affirming an "initial receipt" of an offering, "beneficial" for further "divining". The word zhēn ( 貞 , ancient form [REDACTED] )

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1936-493: The Chinese Commercial News , World News , and United Daily News all use traditional characters, as do some Hong Kong–based magazines such as Yazhou Zhoukan . The Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified characters. DVDs are usually subtitled using traditional characters, influenced by media from Taiwan as well as by the two countries sharing the same DVD region , 3. With most having immigrated to

2024-413: The 1911 Revolution , the I Ching lost its significance in political philosophy, but it maintained cultural influence as one of China's most ancient texts. Chinese writers offered parallels between the I Ching and subjects such as linear algebra and logic in computer science , aiming to demonstrate that ancient Chinese cosmology had anticipated Western discoveries. The sinologist Joseph Needham took

2112-576: The Eastern Han , I Ching interpretation divided into two schools, originating in a dispute over minor differences between different editions of the received text. The first school, known as New Text criticism, was more egalitarian and eclectic, and sought to find symbolic and numerological parallels between the natural world and the hexagrams. Their commentaries provided the basis of the School of Images and Numbers . The other school, Old Text criticism,

2200-634: The I Ching was an influential text across East Asia. In 1557, the Korean Neo-Confucianist philosopher Yi Hwang produced one of the most influential I Ching studies of the early modern era, claiming that the spirit was a principle ( li ) and not a material force ( qi ). Hwang accused the Neo-Confucian school of having misread Zhu Xi. His critique proved influential not only in Korea but also in Japan. Other than this contribution,

2288-559: The I Ching was the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East and was the subject of scholarly commentary. Between the 18th and 20th centuries, it took on an influential role in Western understanding of East Asian philosophical thought. As a divination text, the I Ching is used for a Chinese form of cleromancy known as I Ching divination in which bundles of yarrow stalks are manipulated to produce sets of six apparently random numbers ranging from 6 to 9. Each of

2376-725: The I Ching —known in Korean as the Yeok Gyeong  ( 역경 )—was not central to the development of Korean Confucianism, and by the 19th century, I Ching studies were integrated into the silhak reform movement. In medieval Japan, secret teachings on the I Ching —known in Japanese as the Eki Kyō  ( 易経 )—were publicized by Rinzai Zen master Kokan Shiren and the Shintoist Yoshida Kanetomo during

2464-640: The Shanghainese -language character U+20C8E 𠲎 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-20C8E —a composition of 伐 with the ⼝   'MOUTH' radical—used instead of the Standard Chinese 嗎 ; 吗 . Typefaces often use the initialism TC to signify the use of traditional Chinese characters, as well as SC for simplified Chinese characters . In addition, the Noto, Italy family of typefaces, for example, also provides separate fonts for

2552-522: The Shuogua attributes to the symbolic function of the hexagrams the ability to understand self, world, and destiny. Throughout the Ten Wings, there are passages that seem to purposefully increase the ambiguity of the base text, pointing to a recognition of multiple layers of symbolism. The Great Commentary associates knowledge of the I Ching with the ability to "delight in Heaven and understand fate;"

2640-515: The Tang dynasty , Emperor Taizong of Tang ordered Kong Yingda to create a canonical edition of the I Ching . Choosing Wang Bi 's 3rd-century Annotated Book of Changes ( Zhōuyì zhù ; 周易注 ) as the official commentary, he added to it further commentary drawing out the subtler details of Wang Bi's explanations. The resulting Right Meaning of the Book of Changes ( Zhōuyì zhèngyì ; 周易正義 ) became

2728-607: The Warring States period ( c.  475  – 221 BC). It is possible that other divination systems existed at this time; the Rites of Zhou name two other such systems, the Lianshan  [ zh ] and the Guicang . The name Zhou yi literally means the 'changes' ( 易 ; yì ) of the Zhou dynasty . The 'changes' involved have been interpreted as the transformations of hexagrams, of their lines, or of

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2816-525: The Zhou yi a "classic". An ancient commentary on the Zhou yi found at Mawangdui portrays Confucius as endorsing it as a source of wisdom first and an imperfect divination text second. However, since the Ten Wings became canonized by Emperor Wu of Han together with the original I Ching as the Zhou Yi, it can be attributed to the positions of influence from the Confucians in the government. Furthermore,

2904-491: The Zhou yi does not contain any cosmological analogies, the I Ching was read as a microcosm of the universe that offered complex, symbolic correspondences. The official edition of the text was literally set in stone, as one of the Xiping Stone Classics . The canonized I Ching became the standard text for over two thousand years, until alternate versions of the Zhou yi and related texts were discovered in

2992-485: The Zhou yi itself, yarrow stalk divination dates to the Western Zhou period, although its modern form is a reconstruction. The ancient narratives Zuo Zhuan and Guoyu contain the oldest descriptions of divination using the Zhou yi . The two histories describe more than twenty successful divinations conducted by professional soothsayers for royal families between 671 and 487 BC. The method of divination

3080-518: The Zuo Zhuan stories, individual lines of hexagrams are denoted by using the genitive particle zhi ( 之 ), followed by the name of another hexagram where that specific line had another form. In later attempts to reconstruct ancient divination methods, the word zhi was interpreted as a verb meaning 'moving to', an apparent indication that hexagrams could be transformed into other hexagrams. However, there are no instances of "changeable lines" in

3168-600: The Zuo Zhuan . In all 12 out of 12 line statements quoted, the original hexagrams are used to produce the oracle. In 136 BC, Emperor Wu of Han named the Zhou yi "the first among the classics", dubbing it the Classic of Changes or I Ching . Emperor Wu's placement of the I Ching among the Five Classics was informed by a broad span of cultural influences that included Confucianism , Taoism , Legalism , yin-yang cosmology , and Wu Xing physical theory. While

3256-421: The 1960s, with the translations of Wilhelm and John Blofeld attracting particular interest. Richard Rutt 's 1996 translation incorporated much of the new archaeological and philological discoveries of the 20th century. The most commonly used English translations of the I Ching are: Other notable English translations include: Traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are

3344-442: The 1968 song " While My Guitar Gently Weeps " by The Beatles . The modern period also brought a new level of skepticism and rigor to I Ching scholarship. Li Jingchi spent several decades producing a new interpretation of the text, which was published posthumously in 1978. Modern data scientists including Alex Liu proposed to represent and develop I Ching methods with data science 4E framework and latent variable approaches for

3432-474: The 20th century. Part of the canonization of the Zhou yi bound it to a set of ten commentaries called the Ten Wings . The Ten Wings are of a much later provenance than the Zhou yi , and are the production of a different society. The Zhou yi was written in Early Old Chinese , while the Ten Wings were written in a predecessor to Middle Chinese . The specific origins of the Ten Wings are still

3520-616: The 64 possible sets corresponds to a hexagram , which can be looked up in the I Ching . The hexagrams are arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence . The interpretation of the readings found in the I Ching has been discussed and debated over the centuries. Many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision-making, as informed by Confucianism , Taoism and Buddhism . The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and been paralleled with many other traditional names for

3608-634: The American sinologist Edward Shaughnessy dated its compilation in its current form to the last quarter of the 9th century BC, during the early decades of the reign of King Xuan of Zhou ( r.   c.  827  – 782  BC). A copy of the text in the Shanghai Museum corpus of bamboo and wooden slips discovered in 1994 shows that the Zhou yi was used throughout all levels of Chinese society in its current form by 300 BC, but still contained small variations as late as

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3696-473: The I Ching as mentioned in his writings. The psychologist Carl Jung took interest in the possible universal nature of the imagery of the I Ching , and he introduced an influential German translation by Richard Wilhelm by discussing his theories of archetypes and synchronicity . Jung wrote, "Even to the most biased eye, it is obvious that this book represents one long admonition to careful scrutiny of one's own character, attitude, and motives." The book had

3784-434: The I Ching was central to Leibniz's characteristica universalis , or 'universal language', which in turn inspired the standards of Boolean logic and for Gottlob Frege to develop predicate logic in the late 19th century. In the 20th century, Jacques Derrida identified Hegel's argument as logocentric , but accepted without question Hegel's premise that the Chinese language cannot express philosophical ideas. After

3872-640: The Kamakura era. I Ching studies in Japan took on new importance during the Edo period , during which over 1,000 books were published on the subject by over 400 authors. The majority of these books were serious works of philology, reconstructing ancient usages and commentaries for practical purposes. A sizable minority focused on numerology, symbolism, and divination. During this time, over 150 editions of earlier Chinese commentaries were reprinted across Edo Japan, including several texts that had become lost in China. In

3960-555: The People's Republic of China, traditional Chinese characters are standardised according to the Table of Comparison between Standard, Traditional and Variant Chinese Characters . Dictionaries published in mainland China generally show both simplified and their traditional counterparts. There are differences between the accepted traditional forms in mainland China and elsewhere, for example the accepted traditional form of 产 in mainland China

4048-551: The Shanghai Library, was almost certainly arranged in the King Wen sequence, and it has even been proposed that a pottery paddle from the Western Zhou period contains four hexagrams in the King Wen sequence. Whichever of these arrangements is older, it is not evident that the order of the hexagrams was of interest to the original authors of the Zhou yi . The assignment of numbers, binary or decimal, to specific hexagrams,

4136-459: The Ten Wings directly into the central text of the I Ching , creating such a persuasive narrative that Han commentators were no longer considered significant. A century later Han Kangbo added commentaries on the Ten Wings to Wang Bi's book, creating a text called the Zhouyi zhu . The principal rival interpretation was a practical text on divination by the soothsayer Guan Lu . At the beginning of

4224-513: The Ten Wings tends to use diction and phrases such as "the master said", which was previously commonly seen in the Analects , thereby implying the heavy involvement of Confucians in its creation as well as institutionalization. In the canonical I Ching , the hexagrams are arranged in an order dubbed the King Wen sequence after King Wen of Zhou, who founded the Zhou dynasty and supposedly reformed

4312-532: The United States during the second half of the 19th century, Chinese Americans have long used traditional characters. When not providing both, US public notices and signs in Chinese are generally written in traditional characters, more often than in simplified characters. In the past, traditional Chinese was most often encoded on computers using the Big5 standard, which favored traditional characters. However,

4400-533: The early Edo period, Japanese writers such as Itō Jinsai , Kumazawa Banzan , and Nakae Tōju ranked the I Ching the greatest of the Confucian classics. Many writers attempted to use the I Ching to explain Western science in a Japanese framework . One writer, Shizuki Tadao , even attempted to employ Newton's laws of motion and the Copernican principle within an I Ching cosmology. This line of argument

4488-401: The early modern period, the I Ching took on renewed relevance in both Confucian and Daoist studies. The Kangxi Emperor was especially fond of the I Ching and ordered new interpretations of it. Qing dynasty scholars focused more intently on understanding pre-classical grammar, assisting the development of new philological approaches in the modern period. Like the other Chinese classics,

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4576-603: The festival date back as early as the Warring States period According to legend, the traditions of hiking and drinking chrysanthemum wine on this day began with the Han dynasty man Fei Changfang  [ zh ] and his disciple Huan Jing  [ zh ] . One year, Fei advised Huan to bring chrysanthemum wine and food and climb a mountain with his family on the ninth day of the ninth month. Huan followed his master's instructions, and when he returned home he found that his livestock had all suddenly died; if he had not climbed

4664-420: The graves of their ancestors to pay their respects. In Hong Kong and Macau, whole extended families head to ancestral graves to clean them, repaint inscriptions and lay out food offerings such as roast suckling pig and fruit, which are then eaten (after the spirits have consumed the spiritual element of the food). Chongyang cake is also popular and incense sticks are burned during the holiday. The origins of

4752-485: The hexagrams in King Wen order. The sinologist Michael Nylan describes the I Ching as the best-known Chinese book in the world. Eliot Weinberger wrote that it is the most "recognized" Chinese book. In East Asia, it is a foundational text for the Confucian and Daoist philosophical traditions, while in the West, it attracted the attention of Enlightenment intellectuals and prominent literary and cultural figures. During

4840-478: The hexagrams in a format that resembles modern binary numbers , although he did not intend his arrangement to be used mathematically. This arrangement, sometimes called the binary sequence , later inspired Gottfried Leibniz . The 12th century Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi, co-founder of the Cheng–Zhu school, criticized both of the Han dynasty lines of commentary on the I Ching , saying that they were one-sided. He developed

4928-617: The hexagrams were privately consulted to answer questions such as business, health, children, and determining lucky days. The most common form of divination with the I Ching in use today is a reconstruction of the method described in these histories, in the 300 BC Great Commentary , and later in the Huainanzi and the Lunheng . From the Great Commentary ' s description, the Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi reconstructed

5016-409: The image and number work of Jing Fang , Yu Fan and Xun Shuang , is no longer extant. Only short fragments survive, from a Tang dynasty text called Zhou yi jijie . With the fall of the Han, I Ching scholarship was no longer organized into systematic schools. The most influential writer of this period was Wang Bi , who discarded the numerology of Han commentators and integrated the philosophy of

5104-493: The inverse is equally true as well. In digital media, many cultural phenomena imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, such as music videos, karaoke videos, subtitled movies, and subtitled dramas, use traditional Chinese characters. In Hong Kong and Macau , traditional characters were retained during the colonial period, while the mainland adopted simplified characters. Simplified characters are contemporaneously used to accommodate immigrants and tourists, often from

5192-418: The line number, the line statements may make oracular or prognostic statements. Some line statements also contain poetry or references to historical events. Archaeological evidence shows that Zhou dynasty divination was grounded in cleromancy , the production of seemingly random numbers to determine divine intent. The Zhou yi provided a guide to cleromancy that used the stalks of the yarrow plant , but it

5280-419: The line statements, but it is also possible that the line statements were derived from the hexagram names. The line statements, which make up most of the book, are exceedingly cryptic. Each line begins with a word indicating the line number, "base, 2, 3, 4, 5, top", and either the number 6 for a broken line, or the number 9 for a whole line. Hexagrams 1 and 2 have an extra line statement, named yong . Following

5368-725: The mainland. The increasing use of simplified characters has led to concern among residents regarding protecting what they see as their local heritage. Taiwan has never adopted simplified characters. The use of simplified characters in government documents and educational settings is discouraged by the government of Taiwan. Nevertheless, with sufficient context simplified characters are likely to be successfully read by those used to traditional characters, especially given some previous exposure. Many simplified characters were previously variants that had long been in some use, with systematic stroke simplifications used in folk handwriting since antiquity. Traditional characters were recognized as

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5456-682: The majority of Chinese text in mainland China are simplified characters , there is no legislation prohibiting the use of traditional Chinese characters, and often traditional Chinese characters remain in use for stylistic and commercial purposes, such as in shopfront displays and advertising. Traditional Chinese characters remain ubiquitous on buildings that predate the promulgation of the current simplification scheme, such as former government buildings, religious buildings, educational institutions, and historical monuments. Traditional Chinese characters continue to be used for ceremonial, cultural, scholarly/academic research, and artistic/decorative purposes. In

5544-983: The merging of previously distinct character forms. Many Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between these character sets. Traditional characters are known by different names throughout the Chinese-speaking world. The government of Taiwan officially refers to traditional Chinese characters as 正體字 ; 正体字 ; zhèngtǐzì ; 'orthodox characters'. This term is also used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard characters, including both simplified, and traditional, from other variants and idiomatic characters . Users of traditional characters elsewhere, as well as those using simplified characters, call traditional characters 繁體字 ; 繁体字 ; fántǐzì ; 'complex characters', 老字 ; lǎozì ; 'old characters', or 全體字 ; 全体字 ; quántǐzì ; 'full characters' to distinguish them from simplified characters. Some argue that since traditional characters are often

5632-424: The method of interpretation. The sequence generally pairs hexagrams with their upside-down equivalents; the eight hexagrams that do not change when turned upside-down, are instead paired with their inversions (exchanging yin and yang lines). Another order, found at Mawangdui in 1973, arranges the hexagrams into eight groups sharing the same upper trigram. But the oldest known manuscript, found in 1987 and now held by

5720-400: The most important of the Ten Wings is the Great Commentary ( Dazhuan ) or Xi ci , which dates to roughly 300 BC. The Great Commentary describes the I Ching as a microcosm of the universe and a symbolic description of the processes of change. By partaking in the spiritual experience of the I Ching , the Great Commentary states, the individual can understand the deeper patterns of

5808-438: The mountain as instructed, the same would have happened to him and his family. An alternative origin story involves intrigue in the imperial court of Emperor Gaozu of Han . As part of Empress Lü 's jealous plot against Consort Qi , the latter's maid was forced out of the imperial palace. The maid, surnamed Jia ( 賈 ; 贾 ), told the common people that in the palace it was customary to wear dogwood and drink chrysanthemum wine on

5896-535: The ninth day of the ninth month, and these customs spread more widely. In 1966, Taiwan rededicated the holiday as "Senior Citizens' Day", underscoring one custom as it is observed in Mainland China, where the festival is also an opportunity to care for and appreciate the elderly. Double Ninth may have originated as a day to drive away danger, but like the Chinese New Year , over time, it became

5984-429: The numbers obtained from the divination. Feng Youlan proposed that the word for 'changes' originally meant 'easy', as in a form of divination easier than the oracle bones , but there is little evidence for this. There is also an ancient folk etymology that sees the character for 'changes' as containing the sun and moon, the cycle of the day. Modern sinologists believe the character to be derived either from an image of

6072-426: The numinous and bright and to classify the myriad things". The Zhou yi itself does not contain this legend and indeed says nothing about its own origins. The Rites of Zhou , however, also claims that the hexagrams of the Zhou yi were derived from an initial set of eight trigrams. During the Han dynasty there were various opinions about the historical relationship between the trigrams and the hexagrams. Eventually,

6160-677: The official script in Singapore until 1969, when the government officially adopted Simplified characters. Traditional characters still are widely used in contexts such as in baby and corporation names, advertisements, decorations, official documents and in newspapers. The Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative in Southeast Asia regarding simplification. Although major public universities teach in simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications such as

6248-459: The opposite opinion, arguing that the I Ching had actually impeded scientific development by incorporating all physical knowledge into its metaphysics. However, with the advent of quantum mechanics , physicist Niels Bohr credited the yin and yang symbolism for providing inspiration of his interpretation of the new field, which disproved principles from older Western classical mechanics. The principle of complementarity heavily used concepts from

6336-700: The original standard forms, they should not be called 'complex'. Conversely, there is a common objection to the description of traditional characters as 'standard', due to them not being used by a large population of Chinese speakers. Additionally, as the process of Chinese character creation often made many characters more elaborate over time, there is sometimes a hesitation to characterize them as 'traditional'. Some people refer to traditional characters as 'proper characters' ( 正字 ; zhèngzì or 正寫 ; zhèngxiě ) and to simplified characters as 簡筆字 ; 简笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'simplified-stroke characters' or 減筆字 ; 减笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'reduced-stroke characters', as

6424-833: The predominant forms. Simplified characters as codified by the People's Republic of China are predominantly used in mainland China , Malaysia, and Singapore. "Traditional" as such is a retronym applied to non-simplified character sets in the wake of widespread use of simplified characters. Traditional characters are commonly used in Taiwan , Hong Kong , and Macau , as well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside of Southeast Asia. As for non-Chinese languages written using Chinese characters, Japanese kanji include many simplified characters known as shinjitai standardized after World War II, sometimes distinct from their simplified Chinese counterparts . Korean hanja , still used to

6512-494: The processes of change such as yin and yang and Wu Xing . The core of the I Ching is a Western Zhou divination text called the Changes of Zhou ( Chinese : 周易 ; pinyin : Zhōu yì ). Modern scholars suggest dates ranging between the 10th and 4th centuries BC for the assembly of the text in approximately its current form. Based on a comparison of the language of the Zhou yi with dated bronze inscriptions ,

6600-482: The sage who reads it will see cosmological patterns and not despair in mere material difficulties. The Japanese word for 'metaphysics', keijijōgaku ( 形而上学 ) is derived from a statement found in the Great Commentary that "what is above form [ xíng ér shàng ] is called Tao ; what is under form is called a tool". The word has also been borrowed into Korean and re-borrowed back into Chinese. The Ten Wings were traditionally attributed to Confucius , possibly based on

6688-659: The standard edition of the I Ching through the Song dynasty . By the 11th century, the I Ching was being read as a work of intricate philosophy, as a jumping-off point for examining great metaphysical questions and ethical issues. Cheng Yi , patriarch of the Neo-Confucian Cheng–Zhu school , read the I Ching as a guide to moral perfection. He described the text as a way to for ministers to form honest political factions, root out corruption, and solve problems in government. The contemporary scholar Shao Yong rearranged

6776-504: The sun emerging from clouds, or from the content of a vessel being changed into another. The Zhou yi was traditionally ascribed to the Zhou cultural heroes King Wen of Zhou and the Duke of Zhou , and was also associated with the legendary world ruler Fuxi . According to the canonical Great Commentary , Fuxi observed the patterns of the world and created the eight trigrams ( 八卦 ; bāguà ), "in order to become thoroughly conversant with

6864-571: The text, are sometimes called the "modernist school". The I Ching has been translated into Western languages dozens of times. The earliest published complete translation of the I Ching into a Western language was a Latin translation done in the 1730s by the French Jesuit missionary Jean-Baptiste Régis and his companions that was published in Germany in the 1830s. Historically, the most influential Western-language I Ching translation

6952-636: The traditional character set used in Taiwan ( TC ) and the set used in Hong Kong ( HK ). Most Chinese-language webpages now use Unicode for their text. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends the use of the language tag zh-Hant to specify webpage content written with traditional characters. In the Japanese writing system , kyujitai are traditional forms, which were simplified to create shinjitai for standardized Japanese use following World War II. Kyūjitai are mostly congruent with

7040-985: The traditional characters in Chinese, save for minor stylistic variation. Characters that are not included in the jōyō kanji list are generally recommended to be printed in their traditional forms, with a few exceptions. Additionally, there are kokuji , which are kanji wholly created in Japan, rather than originally being borrowed from China. In the Korean writing system , hanja —replaced almost entirely by hangul in South Korea and totally replaced in North Korea —are mostly identical with their traditional counterparts, save minor stylistic variations. As with Japanese, there are autochthonous hanja, known as gukja . Traditional Chinese characters are also used by non-Chinese ethnic groups. The Maniq people living in Thailand and Malaysia use Chinese characters to write

7128-518: The ubiquitous Unicode standard gives equal weight to simplified and traditional Chinese characters, and has become by far the most popular encoding for Chinese-language text. There are various input method editors (IMEs) available for the input of Chinese characters . Many characters, often dialectical variants, are encoded in Unicode but cannot be inputted using certain IMEs, with one example being

7216-505: The universe. Among other subjects, it explains how the eight trigrams proceeded from the eternal oneness of the universe through three bifurcations . The other Wings provide different perspectives on essentially the same viewpoint, giving ancient, cosmic authority to the I Ching . For example, the Wenyan provides a moral interpretation that parallels the first two hexagrams, 乾 ( qián ) and 坤 ( kūn ), with Heaven and Earth, and

7304-539: The words for simplified and reduced are homophonous in Standard Chinese , both pronounced as jiǎn . The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han dynasty c.  200 BCE , with the sets of forms and norms more or less stable since the Southern and Northern dynasties period c.  the 5th century . Although

7392-407: Was Richard Wilhelm 's 1923 German translation, which was translated into English in 1950 by Cary Baynes . Although Thomas McClatchie and James Legge had both translated the text into English already in the 19th century, while Paul-Louis-Félix Philastre and Charles de Harlez had both translated it in the same period into French, the text gained significant traction during the counterculture of

7480-600: Was also used for the verb 'divine' in the oracle bones of the late Shang dynasty , which preceded the Zhou. It also carried meanings of being or making upright or correct, and was defined by the Eastern Han scholar Zheng Xuan as "to enquire into the correctness" of a proposed activity. The names of the hexagrams are usually words that appear in their respective line statements, but in five cases (2, 9, 26, 61, and 63) an unrelated character of unclear purpose appears. The hexagram names could have been chosen arbitrarily from

7568-455: Was criticized by Georg Friedrich Hegel , who proclaimed that binary system and Chinese characters were "empty forms" that could not articulate spoken words with the clarity of the Western alphabet . In their commentary, I Ching hexagrams and Chinese characters were conflated into a single foreign idea, sparking a dialogue on Western philosophical questions such as universality and the nature of communication. The usage of binary in relation to

7656-475: Was later taken up in China by the Qing politician Zhang Zhidong . Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , who was corresponding with Jesuits in China , wrote the first European commentary on the I Ching in 1703. He argued that it proved the universality of binary numbers and theism , since the broken lines, the "0" or "nothingness", cannot become solid lines, the "1" or "oneness", without the intervention of God . This

7744-512: Was more scholarly and hierarchical, and focused on the moral content of the text, providing the basis for the School of Meanings and Principles. The New Text scholars distributed alternate versions of the text and freely integrated non-canonical commentaries into their work, as well as propagating alternate systems of divination such as the Taixuanjing . Most of this early commentary, such as

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