The Classic of Changes (I Ching / Yìjīng / 易經) is one of the oldest and most enduring texts in the Chinese literary tradition, and one of the oldest books on record. The trigrams and method are classically attributed to the culture hero and legendary emperor Fu Xi (c. 2800 BCE), who also invented fishing, hunting, music, writing, laws, and the calendar. Around 1000 BCE, King Wen of Zhou combined them into the 64 hexagrams and wrote the core judgements, followed by his son the Duke of Zhou, who wrote the line texts in the following century. The appendices, or Ten Wings, are traditionally attributed to the philosopher Confucius, though Legge's commentary throws significant doubt on this attribution.
Consulted for millennia as an oracle, a philosophical framework, and a guide to the patterns underlying human experience and the natural world, the Yìjīng has for millennia shaped the Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions, as well as Chinese literature, art, medicine, and statecraft.
James Legge's was the first Professor of Chinese at Oxford and the principal translator of Sacred Books of the East. His translation was the first in English and remains a landmark of sinological scholarship.
Included here in full are Legge's substantial introductory essays, situating the text in its historical and cultural context; his careful translation of the core text (Jīng 經) with the judgements (Tuàn 彖) and line statements; and all of the Ten Wings (Shí Yì 十翼), including the Tuànzhuàn, Xiàngzhuàn, Xìcí, Wényán, Shuōguà, Xùguà, and Záguà.
A comprehensive, scholarly, and scrupulously annotated entry point into one of humanity's great classics, Legge's Yìjīng has yet to be surpassed for accessibility combined with rigor.
Whether you come to the Yìjīng as a student of Chinese philosophy (Zhōngguó zhéxué 中國哲學), a practitioner of divination, or simply a curious reader seeking a window into the deepest currents of Chinese thought, this edition serves as an invaluable companion.