Chapter 8 The writing era of the third section "Book of Changes"

The old saying is that "Fuxi's family" draws eight trigrams; King Wen of Zhou emphasized hexagrams and deduced them, making hexagrams and line speeches; Confucius made ten wings.This is called the "Three Sages of the Book of Changes".Of course this is just a legend. According to the research of many modern scholars, the hexagrams and lines in the scriptures were completed in the early Western Zhou Dynasty.Because first of all, from the perspective of language, it is relatively simple and ancient, and many places seem to be intelligible and incomprehensible, especially the hexagrams, which are quite similar to the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty.Try to compare:

oracle bone inscription Guisi Bu, □, Zhen. Ten days of death (in the mouth) (disaster). ——Luo Zhenyu's "The Essence of Yin Xu's Calligraphy" "Book of Changes" Yao Ci Zhen, the father-in-law is lucky, there is no blame. ——The hexagrams of "Master" are frequently repeated, harsh, and there is no blame. ——"Recovery" Six and Three Lines Secondly, from the perspective of customs and habits, there is a saying in the ninth line of the first hexagram of "Feng" that "if you meet your partner, there will be no blame for ten days". "Xun" is 10 days (so there are upper, middle and lower thirty days in a month).This sentence means: If you meet someone who matches you, even within ten days, nothing will happen to you.It is a custom in the Yin and Zhou dynasties to predict the good and bad fortune of Yixun, and it is called "Buxun".The "ten-day misfortune" in the oracle bone inscriptions quoted above means "no misfortune within a ten-day period".This habit disappeared in the middle of the Zhou Dynasty.Furthermore, judging from the historical events mentioned in the hexagrams and lines, it is said that Emperor Gaozong of Yin defeated the ghost Fang tribe ("Jiji" ninety-three); King Zhou's father Diyi married a daughter ("Tai" sixty-five); Stories such as Kanghou, the younger brother of King Wu, who was entrusted to Wei to raise the gifted horses ("Jin" hexagrams) and other stories did not reflect the historical events and ideology after the Eastern Zhou Dynasty.Therefore, the hexagrams and lines should be completed in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty.

Based on this, it can be deduced in reverse: because the hexagrams and the lines are used to explain the hexagrams and hexagrams, it can be seen that the hexagrams and hexagrams must have appeared earlier, even as early as the era before the Zhou Dynasty destroyed the Shang.The ancients often liked to borrow sages for self-respect, so it is understandable to use well-known figures such as Fuxi, King Wen of Zhou, and Confucius as named authors to improve the authority of "Book of Changes".However, according to "Historical Records", Confucius did study the "Book of Changes", so that "Wei compiled three masterpieces, and three books were destroyed", which shows his hard work.

The "Ten Wings" came into being much later than the scriptures.During the Jin Dynasty, the tomb of King Wei Xiang (King Anli) in the Warring States Period was excavated, and many bamboo slips were unearthed, including ancient books such as "Book of Changes" and "Ji Nian".Du Yu, a scholar at that time, had seen these cultural relics before.According to him: "The "Book of Changes" and "Jiannian" are the most divided (clearly identified). The upper and lower scriptures of "Zhouyi" are exactly the same as today. ", "Xici", it is suspected that Zhongni created it in Lu at the time, and it has not yet spread to distant countries." (See "The Preface to the Explanation of the Collection of Spring and Autumn Classics"), it can be seen that there is no "Ten Wings" in the ancient "Book of Changes".

Generally speaking, "彖" is an earlier work explaining "Book of Changes".There are many rhymes in it, but the rhymes are different from those in the Spring and Autumn Period and closer to the "Chu Ci" in the Warring States Period. It can be seen that its era is close to the Warring States Period. "Xiang" quoted "The Analects of Confucius Xianwen", and "Book of Rites Shenyi" also quoted "Xiang" from the hexagram "Kun". It can be seen that "Xiang" appeared after it became popular and before "Shenyi" was written, roughly in the The middle and late Warring States period. "Wenyan" quoted "Zuo Zhuan", so we can know that its writing must have been in the late Warring States period after "Zuo Zhuan" became popular. "Xi Ci" was quoted by Lu Jia and Sima Tan in the early Han Dynasty, and it must have been written before the Han Dynasty; "Shuo Gua", "Xu Gua", and "Miscellaneous Gua" are even later, already in the Han Dynasty.

Therefore, from the perspective of philology, we might rather say that the "Book of Changes" and "Biography" in the "Book of Changes" are essentially two different materials. "Jing" (64 other hexagrams and their hexagrams and Yaoci) is a divination book that sprouted in ancient times and was compiled in the early Western Zhou Dynasty.It reflects the thought of the era at the end of the Yin Dynasty and the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty. "Biography" (Ten Wings) is a collection of philosophical theories that was compiled from the Warring States period and completed in the early Han Dynasty.It reflects the thinking of the era from the Warring States period to the early Han Dynasty.The two are related but different.We must have such a concept of the times when we study "Book of Changes".Otherwise, either the ideology of the Shang and Zhou slave society was imposed on the Qin and Han feudal society, or the ideology of the Qin and Han feudal society was imposed on the Shang and Zhou slave society.This is all unscientific.