The History of Zhouyi①

Before we begin, let's take a look at the subject of our study. Of course, it would be great if you have a copy on hand.

Just a simple copy of Zhouyi will do. Turn it over - of course, you need to be aware that it is different from the old Zhouyi.

What did the old Zhouyi look like?

What you see below is a two-thousand-year-old version of the Zhouyi.

This version of the Zhouyi was unearthed in December 1973 at the Mawangdui No. 3 Han Tomb in Changsha, owned by the son of Changsha's prime minister, Li Cang, in the early Han Dynasty, and judged by experts to have been copied in the early years of the Wendi Emperor of the Western Han Dynasty (between about 180 and 170 B.C.E.). Because the book is copied on silk, so it is called "Palm Zhou Yi", referred to as "Palm Yi" or "Palm Yi".

In addition to being copied on silk, Zhou Yi was also copied on bamboo slips.

In 1977, the Shuanggudui No. 1 Han Tomb in Fuyang City, Anhui Province, unearthed a copy of the Zhouyi on bamboo slips. As the tomb owner is the second generation of Western Han Ruyinhou Xiahou Zao, died in the fifteenth year of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty (165 BC), so it can be determined that the age of the "Zhouyi" at least and the Mawangdui Palm "Zhouyi" is not comparable to, but I do not know what, this bamboo is more fragile than the Palm, rotted into a pile of small fragments, the experts have spent a lot of effort to finally put the remnants of its pieces of the seven pieces of the eight, barely see that this is above the original copy of the "Zhouyi". The original copy of the "Zhou Yi", really not easy ah!

The first two Zhou Yi, are already more than two thousand years ago in the Western Han Dynasty version, but not the oldest version.

In 1994, the Shanghai Museum from the Hong Kong cultural relics market purchased a number of warring states Chu bamboo books, is the Shanghai Museum collection of warring states Chu bamboo books. From this batch of bamboo slips, one of the earliest versions of Zhouyi seen so far has been compiled, dating from the late Warring States period. (It is said that in July 2008, Tsinghua University, through the donation of alumni, rescued from Hong Kong collection of 2388 pieces of bamboo slips of the Warring States period also have content related to the "Zhouyi", due to the experts in the study of the bamboo slips before the completion of the experts are not willing to release all the photos, so, according to my humble observation, the current outflow of the photos of Tsinghua Jane has not yet been found in the text of the "Zhouyi". Therefore, so far, we can safely say that the Zhouyi in the collection of the Shanghai Museum is the earliest version of the Zhouyi that we can see.)

Below is the Chu Simplified version of the Zhouyi in the Shanghai Museum

Now, with the three versions of the Zhouyi mentioned above, we can safely and boldly say that we are standing on a very high starting point. Why pinch? Because all three versions came out after the 1970s, and the many Yi masters and experts before then simply didn't even have a chance to see them. From the Tang Dynasty to the present, the versions of Zhouyi that we have seen are the official versions published by the government, that is to say, the Zhouyi that we can buy on the market at present is exactly the same as the textbooks in the hands of the readers in the Tang Dynasty more than a thousand years ago, except for the differences in typography, annotation and traditional and simple fonts.

That said, in the early years of the Tang Dynasty, the printing press is not developed, readers want to find a standard textbook is very difficult, in order to facilitate the study of the Tang Emperor Wenzong Taihe four years (830 AD), at the suggestion of Zheng Qin, Tang Xuandu, the emperor sent seven years, the 12 classics on the stone, which is famous for the "Kai Cheng Shi Jing". "The first of the 12 classics to be engraved on stone was the Zhouyi.

The following picture is the "Kai Cheng Shi Jing" version of the "Zhouyi" topography:

So, "Kai Cheng Shi Jing" on the "Zhouyi", and from which place to copy? Originally, in the early years of the Tang Dynasty, in order to build spiritual civilization, rectify the chaotic academic and educational circles, the court decided to write and promulgate a unified textbook. Tang Taizong ordered by the state priest Kong Yingda called some famous scholars at that time, *** with the revision of the "five classic justice". The so-called Five Classics were the Zhouyi, Shangshu, Shijing, Rites, and Spring and Autumn Annals. Since Kong Yingda was well versed in the Wei Dynasty's Wang Yi (Wang Bi had annotated the Zhou Yi), he selected the passages of the Zhou Yi from Wang Bi's annotated text as the official version of the Justice of the Five Classics. In the 16th year of the Zhenguan period (642), the "Justice of the Five Classics" was written, and the version of the Zhou Yi annotated by Wang Bi became the official version from then on. The "Zhouyi" engraved on the "Kai Cheng Shi Jing" is actually Wang Bi's version of the "Zhouyi", which is the original face of all the versions currently on the market.

So how did Wang Bi's (226-249 CE) version of the Zhouyi differ from the Han version?

At present, we can find the Han version of the Zhouyi, in addition to the previously mentioned Mawangdui Palindrome and Fuyang Bamboo Slip, there is also a version of the Xiping Shijing. Hiping Shi Jing was carved in the Eastern Han Dynasty during the Hiping years (172-178 years), by the Eastern Han Dynasty famous calligrapher Cai Yong personally book Dan, will be "Zhou Yi" and other classics engraved on the stone tablets, set up in the Imperial College. The Xiping Shijing is the earliest official textbook engraved on a stone tablet, predating the Tang Dynasty's Kai Cheng Shijing by several hundred years. Although the stone tablet has been repeatedly robbed since the end of the Han Dynasty, and is now in bad shape, but after the careful collection of scholars such as Qu Wanli, we can still find part of the stone scripture on the remnants of the stone of the "Zhouyi".

The following picture is the Hiping Shijing's Zhouyi fragment topography:

After comparison, we found that the Eastern Han Dynasty Hiping Shijing version of Zhouyi and the Tang Dynasty Kaicheng Shijing version of Zhouyi, although the same is the official textbook, but there are differences in the writing style of individual words. Of course, this is not a big problem, the biggest difference between the two, reflected in the typography.

In the Xiping Stone Scriptures, the verses of the Zhouyi were originally engraved separately from the Yi Chuan - the so-called Yi Chuan, which is a commentary on the Zhouyi, and includes a series of works such as Tuan, Xiang, Xiangyi, Wenyin, and so on. As we can see, in the Tang Dynasty's Kai Cheng Shi Jing, these Tuan and Xiang commentaries were all mixed in with the scriptures (it is said that the first person to do this was Zheng Xuan, a famous scripture master in the Eastern Han Dynasty, who felt that this would help people understand). Therefore, when we open the book of Zhou Yi today, we will often see the words "Xiang said", "Tuan said", "Wenyan said" mixed in with the scriptures, please ignore them for the time being, because this is not the book of Zhou Yi! Although reading them helps us to understand how the ancient people viewed the book of Zhouyi, it is by far the best way to look at Zhouyi with your own eyes, regardless of whether you are a famous saint in ancient times or a renowned master in modern times, putting aside the commentaries of others.

At this point, we already have five versions of the book in our hands, according to the age of the following:

Shanghai Museum of Chu bamboo book version (late Warring States period)

Western Han Dynasty, Mawangdui palindrome version (180-170 BC)

Western Han Dynasty, Fuyang bamboo slips version (before 165 BC)

Eastern Han Dynasty Xiping stone scripture version (175 AD)

Tang Kai Cheng stone scripture version (830 AD)

After comparing these five versions, experts have concluded that the scriptures of these Zhouyi (after removing the passages) are basically identical. In other words, the earliest version (the Shanghai Museum version) and the current passages are basically unabridged and unaltered. The only difference is the way the characters are written: the former was transcribed in the Chu script of the Warring States period, while the simplified characters are on the current copy in our hands.

Other evidence also suggests that the content of the scriptures of the Zhouyi was finalized at least during the Warring States period. According to the History of the Jin Dynasty, during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Jin Dynasty (around 280 AD), a great grave robber found a large number of ancient bamboo slips (the famous "Kizuka Ancient Writings") in an ancient tomb of the Warring States period in Ki County (present-day Ki County, Henan Province), among which was an ancient copy of the Book of Changes.

This great archaeological discovery was known to the officials, who sent scholars such as Xun Xu, He Peak, Wei Heng, and Shu Ci to organize these ancient books. Because this batch of ancient books are written in the Warring States script, people in the Western Jin Dynasty is not easy to recognize, so it took some years of effort, and later, according to the "Book of Jin Shu Shu Ci biography", the group of experts to organize the "I Ching," two, and the "Zhou Yi" up and down the same scripture. Although experts are still debating whether the owner of the tomb at Kapitsuka was King Anli of Wei (d. 243 B.C.) or King Xiang of Wei (d. 296 B.C.), we can be sure that the late Warring States period's "Zhouyi" was no different from what we see today, except that it was copied down in a tadpole-like script.

So, after throwing out the notes on Yi Chuan and the like, we have the original Zhou Yi, an ancient book that has survived intact from at least the late Warring States period to the present day. If you don't find reading the explanations of expert masters enjoyable enough, you can also just find the most original version of this book from more than 2,000 years ago and read it for yourself.

Some people may think, ah ah, this is too difficult, tadpole writing, how to read ah?

It doesn't matter, because in fact, the ancient writing experts read this original version of the Zhouyi is also a headache, they often take the current version of the pile of yellowed bamboo tablets and compare half a day later, a sudden realization that: "Ah, so the ancient times this word used to be written this way ah!" And most of the Yi masters, believe me, are not much better than us at reading tadpoles.

Again, some people may ask: why not just read the passages since the content of all the versions doesn't actually change with them?

The reason is simple: the writing style varies too much from one version to the next.

To give a simple example, the Qiankun "Kun" word, in the Eastern Han Dynasty Xiping stone scripture on the writing is actually "?", and "乾" word in the Western Han Dynasty Mawangdui silk book on the writing is actually "键". The word "Qian" was actually written as "键" on the Mawangdui silk scrolls during the Western Han Dynasty! If you carefully compare the five versions of Zhou Yi, you will find that 80% of the characters are written differently!

Taking the Mawangdui Palindrome version as an example, there are eight characters written differently from today's writing style in a very small block of text in the image below:

Some people may ask: Why is it so confusing? No wonder the standard version of the scripture was inscribed on a tablet.

That's right, this kind of confusion is called "tongyong zi" (通假字). So, as a person who is interested in Chinese studies and does not want to be fooled, the first thing to remember is:

...... ...... All the ancient misspellings are tongyongyi, which is reasonable and legal.