Text of Confucianism Part 02

SR No.: 007676
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1882
Total Pages: 2405
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 43 MB

Page 198

SECT. II.
THE TING HEXAGRAM.
171
5. The fifth line, divided, shows the caldron with yellow ears and rings of metal in them. There will be advantage through being firm and correct.
6. The sixth line, undivided, shows the caldron with rings of jade. There will be great good fortune, and all action taken will be in every way advantageous.
L. Ting was originally a pictorial character, representing a caldron with three feet and two ears, used for cooking and preparing food for the table (the mat in old times) and the altar. The picture has disappeared from the character, but it is said that in the hexagram we have an outline from which fancy may construct the vessel. The lower line, divided, represents its feet; lines 2, 3, 4, all undivided, represent the body of it; line 5, divided, represents its two ears, and line 6, undivided, the handle by which it was carried, or suspended from a hook. Appendix VI makes Ting follow Ko in the order of the hexagrams, because there is no changer of the appearance and character of things equal to the furnace and caldron !
Ting and Zing (48) are the only two hexagrams named from things in ordinary use with men; and they are both descriptive of the government's work of nourishing. There are three hexagrams of which that is the theme, I (27), under which we are told in Appendix I that 'the sages nourished men of worth, by means of them to reach to the myriads of the people.' Zing treats of the nourishment of the people generally by the government through its agricultural and other methods; Ting treats of the nourishment of men of talents and virtue; and that being understood, it is said, without more ado, that it'intimates great progress and success.' The Text that follows, however, is more difficult to interpret than that of Zing.
Line 1 is weak, and little or nothing can be expected from its subject. But it has a proper correlate in the strong 4; and the disastrous overthrow, causing the feet to be directed towards 4, is understood to be lucky, as accelerating the co-operation of their two lines! The overturned caldron is thereby emptied of bad stuff that had accumulated in it!! The writer uses another illustration, which comes to the same thing. A concubine is less honourable than a wife, like the overthrown caldron. But if she have a son,
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