The book "Book of Changes"
Before we begin, let's take a look at our research object. Of course, it would be better if you have a copy on hand.
As long as a simple "Book of Changes" is enough. Open it - of course, you need to pay attention to the fact that it is different from the previous "Book of Changes".
What was the Zhouyi like in the past?
What you see below is a version of "The Book of Changes" from more than 2,000 years ago.
This version of "The Book of Changes" was unearthed in Han Tomb No. 3 at Mawangdui in Changsha in December 1973. The owner of the tomb was the son of Li Cang, the prime minister of Changsha in the early Han Dynasty. According to expert judgment, this volume was copied The time was around the early years of Emperor Wen of the Western Han Dynasty (about 180 to 170 BC). Because it is a book copied on silk, it is called "Silk Book of Changes", or "Silk Book of Changes" or "Silk Book of Changes" for short.
In addition to being copied on cloth, the Book of Changes was also copied on bamboo slips.
In 1977, the Book of Changes copied on bamboo slips was unearthed from Han Tomb No. 1 in Shuanggudui, Fuyang City, Anhui Province. Since the owner of the tomb is Xiahou Zao, the second generation of Ruyin Marquis of the Western Han Dynasty, who died in the fifteenth year of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty (165 BC), it can be determined that this Zhouyi is at least as old as the Mawangdui silk book Zhouyi. The bamboo slips are comparable to each other, but I don't know what it is, but this bamboo slip is more fragile than silk and rotted into a bunch of small pieces. The experts spent a lot of effort to finally put the fragments together, and they can barely read it. It turned out that the copy above was from "The Book of Changes". It was not easy!
The previous two "Books of Changes" are already versions from the Western Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago, but they are not the oldest versions.
In 1994, the Shanghai Museum purchased a batch of Chu Bamboo Books from the Warring States Period from the Hong Kong cultural relics market for the Shanghai Museum’s collection. From this batch of bamboo slips, the earliest version of "The Book of Changes" seen so far was sorted out, which dates from the late Warring States Period. (It is said that in July 2008, Tsinghua University, through donations from alumni, rescued and collected 2,388 Warring States Bamboo Slips from Hong Kong, which also contained content related to the "Book of Changes", because experts were unwilling to publish all the photos before studying the bamboo slips. Therefore, according to my observation, the text of "The Book of Changes" has not been found in the photos of Tsinghua bamboo slips that have been leaked so far. Therefore, so far, we can safely say that the "Book of Changes" collected by the Shanghai Museum is the earliest version of the "Book of Changes" that we can see. "Book of Changes")
The picture below is the Chu bamboo slip version of "Book of Changes" collected by the Shanghai Museum
Now, with the above three versions of "Book of Changes", we can rest assured. To be bold, we stand at a very high starting point. Why pinch? Because these three versions only came out after the 1970s, many Yixue masters and experts before that did not even have the chance to see them. From the Tang Dynasty to the present, the version of "Zhouyi" that everyone has seen is the official version announced by the government. In other words, except for the differences in typesetting, annotations and traditional and simplified fonts, the "Zhouyi" that we can currently buy on the market has It is exactly the same as the textbooks in the hands of scholars in the Tang Dynasty more than a thousand years ago.
In the early years of the Tang Dynasty, printing was underdeveloped, and it was difficult for scholars to find a standard textbook. In order to facilitate everyone's learning, in the fourth year of Taihe (830 AD), Emperor Wenzong of the Tang Dynasty, under the advice of Zheng Tan and Tang Xuandu , the emperor sent people to spend seven years to inscribe 12 classics on stones. This is the famous "Kaicheng Stone Classics". Among the 12 classics, the first one engraved on stone was "The Book of Changes".
The picture below is the rubbing of the "Zhouyi" in the "Kaicheng Stone Classic" edition:
So, where did the "Zhouyi" in the "Kaicheng Stone Classic" come from? What was copied? It turns out that in the early years of the Tang Dynasty, in order to meet the needs of spiritual civilization construction and to rectify the chaotic academic and educational circles, the imperial court decided to write and publish textbooks that unified the classics and meanings. Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty ordered that Kong Yingda, the prince of the country, summoned some famous scholars at the time to compile and compile the "Five Classics of Justice" together. The so-called Five Classics are "Book of Changes", "Book of Songs", "Book of Songs", "Li" and "Spring and Autumn".
Since Kong Yingda was proficient in "Wang's Book of Changes" in the Wei Dynasty (Wang Bi once annotated "Book of Changes"), he selected the "Zhou Yi" scriptures in Wang Bi's annotated version as the official version of "Five Classics of Justice". In the 16th year of Zhenguan (642), "Five Classics of Justice" was compiled, and the version of "Zhouyi" annotated by Wang Bi became the official version. The "Book of Changes" engraved on the "Kaicheng Stone Classic" is actually Wang Bi's version of the "Book of Changes", which is the original appearance of all the popular versions on the market today.
So, how is Wang Bi’s (226-249 AD) version of the Zhouyi different from the Zhouyi of the Han Dynasty?
At present, the Han Dynasty version of "Zhouyi" that we can find, in addition to the Mawangdui silk version and Fuyang bamboo slip version mentioned above, there is also a "Xiping Stone Classic" version. The Xiping Stone Sutra was engraved during the Xiping period of the Eastern Han Dynasty (172-178). The famous calligrapher Cai Yong of the Eastern Han Dynasty personally wrote the elixirs and carved the "Book of Changes" and other classics on the stone tablet, which was established in Taixue. The Xiping Stone Classic is the earliest official textbook engraved on a stone tablet, hundreds of years earlier than the Stone Classic in the Tang Dynasty. Although the stone tablets have suffered many disasters since the end of the Han Dynasty and are now in ruins, after careful collection by scholars such as Qu Wanli, we can still find some of the "Book of Changes" written on the remnants of the stone scriptures.
The picture below is a fragmentary rubbing of the "Book of Changes" of the Xiping Stone Classic:
After comparison, we found that the "Zhouyi" of the Xiping Stone Classic of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the "Book of Changes" of the Tang Dynasty "Book of Changes", although both are official textbooks, there are still differences in the writing of individual characters. Of course, this is not a big problem. The biggest difference between the two is reflected in the layout.
In the Xiping Stone Classic, the scriptures of "Zhouyi" were originally carved separately from the Yi Zhuan - the so-called Yi Zhuan is the annotation of "Zhouyi", including "彖", "xiang", A series of works such as "Xici" and "Classical Chinese". We see that in the stone classics of the Tang Dynasty, these comments on "彖" and "xiang" have all been mixed into the scriptures (it is said that the first person to do this was Zheng Xuan, a famous classics master in the Eastern Han Dynasty. He felt that This will help everyone understand). So when we open the "Book of Changes" today, we often see the words "Xiang said", "彖" said, "Wenyan said" mixed in the scriptures. Please ignore them for the time being, because this is not the Zhouyi. "Original content, although reading them will help us understand how ancient people viewed the book "Zhouyi", so far, we can completely put aside other people's annotations, whether he is a famous ancient saint or a modern A well-known master took a look at "The Book of Changes" from his own eyes.
Speaking of which, we already have five versions of "The Book of Changes" in our hands, which are according to the year:
The Chu Bamboo Edition collected by the Shanghai Museum (late Warring States Period)
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Mawangdui Silk Edition of the Western Han Dynasty (180 BC - 170 BC)
Fuyang Bamboo Slip Edition of the Western Han Dynasty (before 165 BC)
Xiping Stone Sutra Edition of the Eastern Han Dynasty (A.D. 175)
Tang Kaicheng Stone Classic Edition (A.D. 830)
After comparing these five versions, experts concluded that: these versions of the "Book of Changes" The scriptures (excluding the transmissions) are basically identical. In other words, the earliest version (Shanghai Museum Edition) and the current popular version have basically not undergone any deletions or changes. The only difference is the way the characters are written: the former is copied in the Chu script of the Warring States Period, while the popular notebook in our hands uses simplified characters.
Other evidence also shows that at least during the Warring States Period, the textual content of the "Book of Changes" had been finalized. According to the "History of Jin", during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Jin Dynasty (about 280 AD), a great tomb robber discovered a large number of ancient bamboo slips (the famous "Ji County") in a Warring States tomb in Ji County (now Ji County, Henan Province). "Tomb Ancient Text"), among which is the ancient version of "Zhouyi".
This great archaeological discovery was officially informed, and scholars such as Xun Xu, He Qiao, Wei Heng, and Shu Xi were sent to sort out these ancient books. Since these ancient books were all written in Warring States characters, it was difficult for people in the Western Jin Dynasty to recognize them, so it took several years of work. Later, according to the "Jin Shu Shu Xi Zhuan", the expert group sorted out "two chapters of the Book of Changes, It is the same as the upper and lower classics of "Zhouyi".
Although experts are still debating whether the owner of the tomb in Jizhong is King Anli of Wei (died 243 BC) or King Xiang of Wei (died 296 BC), we can already be sure that the content of the "Book of Changes" in the late Warring States period is It is no different from what we see today, except that it was copied in a tadpole-like script.
So, after throwing away the annotations such as the Yi Zhuan, we get the original "Zhouyi", an ancient book that has been passed down to today in its entirety from at least the late Warring States Period. If you feel that the explanations by experts and masters are not enough, you can also directly find the original version of this book from more than 2,000 years ago and read it yourself.
Some people may think, ah, this is too difficult. How can I understand it if it is written in tadpole writing?
It doesn’t matter, because in fact, ancient writing experts also have a huge headache when reading this original version of "Zhouyi". They often compare the current version with the pile of yellowed bamboo pieces for a long time. , suddenly enlightened and said: "Ah, it turns out that this character was written like this in ancient times!" And most of the Yi Xue masters, believe me, their ability to read tadpole prose is not much better than ours.
Some people may ask: Since the content of all versions has not changed, why not just read the current version?
The reason is very simple: because the writing methods of different versions are too different.
To give a simple example, the word "kun" for Qiankun was actually written as "四" in the Xiping Stone Classics of the Eastern Han Dynasty, while the word "Qian" was written as "四" on the Mawangdui silk script of the Western Han Dynasty. It’s actually a “key”! If you carefully compare the above five versions of "Zhouyi", you will find that 80% of the characters are written in different ways!
Taking the Mawangdui silk edition as an example, in the picture below there are eight characters that are different from today’s writing in a small block of text:
Some people may ask: Why is this so? Confusion? No wonder the Standard Version of scriptures should be engraved on tablets.
Yes, the scientific name for this phenomenon of chaotic writing is "Tongjiazi". Therefore, as a person who is interested in Chinese studies but does not want to be fooled, the first thing to remember is:
...All typos in ancient times are false characters, which are reasonable and legal of.