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 393

366
THE APPENDIXES.
SECT. I.
undivided line) amount to 216; those for Khwăn (or the divided line), to 144. Together they are 360, corresponding to the days of the year.
53. The number produced by the lines in the two parts (of the Yi) amount to 11,520, corresponding to the number of all things.
54. Therefore by means of the four operations is the Yi completed. It takes 18 changes to form a hexagram.
55. (The formation of the eight trigrams constitutes the small completion (of the Y1).
56. If we led on the diagrams and expanded them, if we prolonged each by the addition of the proper lines, then all events possible under the sky might have their representation.
57. (The diagrams) make manifest (by their appended explanations), the ways (of good and ill fortune), and show virtuous actions in their spiritual relations. In this way, by consulting them, we may receive an answer (to our doubts), and we may also by means of them assist the spiritual (power in its agency in nature and providence).
58. The Master said: He who knows the method of change and transformation may be said to know what is done by that spiritual (power).'
Chapter IX, paragraphs 49-58, is of a different character from any of the preceding, and treats, unsatisfactorily, of the use of numbers in connexion with the figure of the Yi and the practice of divination.
In the Thang edition of the Yî, published in the seventh century, paragraph 49 is the first of the eleventh chapter according to the arrangement now followed. Khăng-sze restored it to its present place, which it occupied, as has been proved, during the Han
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