Before we begin, let's take a look at our research topic. Of course, it would be better if you had one at hand.
Just a simple book of changes. Open it-of course, what you need to pay attention to is that it is different from the previous Zhouyi.
What was the previous Zhouyi like?
What you see below is the version of Zhouyi more than two thousand years ago.
This edition of Zhouyi was unearthed in No.3 Han Tomb in Mawangdui, Changsha,1February, 973. The owner of the tomb is the son of Hou Licang, the prime minister of Changsha in the early Han Dynasty. According to experts' judgment, this volume was copied in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty (about 180 BC to 170 BC). Because it is a book copied on silk, it is called Silk Book of Changes, or Silk Book for short.
Besides being copied on cloth, the Book of Changes was also copied on bamboo slips.
1977, the bamboo slips "Book of Changes" were unearthed in the Han TombNo. Shuanggudui 1 in Fuyang City, Anhui Province. Because the owner of the tomb was Hou Xiahou, the second generation of Confucianism in the Western Han Dynasty, who died in the fifteenth year of Emperor Wen (BC 165), it can be determined that this Zhouyi is at least as old as Mawangdui's silk book Zhouyi, but I don't know what it is, but this bamboo slip is more fragile than silk book, and it has rotted into a pile of small pieces, and experts have finally made great efforts.
The first two Zhouyi editions were in the Western Han Dynasty more than two thousand years ago, but they were not the oldest editions.
During the period of 1994, Shanghai Museum purchased and collected a batch of Chu bamboo books from Hong Kong cultural relics market for Shanghai Museum. The earliest version of Zhouyi compiled from these bamboo slips can be traced back to the late Warring States period. (It is said that in July 2008, 2,388 pieces of bamboo slips collected by Tsinghua University from Hongkong were also related to Zhouyi through alumni donation. Because experts refused to publish all the photos before studying bamboo slips, according to my observation, the words of Zhouyi have not been found in the photos of bamboo slips in Tsinghua. So far, we can safely say that the Zhouyi of Shanghai Museum is the earliest edition we can see. )
The picture below shows the Chu bamboo slips Zhouyi collected in Shanghai Museum.
Now with the above three versions of Zhouyi, we can safely say that we stand at a very high starting point. Why are you pinching? Because these three versions were published after the 1970s, before that, many Yi-ology masters and experts didn't even have a chance to read them. From the Tang Dynasty to the present, the versions of Zhouyi that you have seen are all officially published, that is to say, the Zhouyi that we can buy in the market at present is exactly the same as the textbooks in the hands of scholars in the Tang Dynasty more than 0/000 years ago, but the typesetting, annotations and simplified fonts are different.
It is said that 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 their study, in the fourth year of Tang Wenzong Taihe (AD 830), at the suggestion of Hetang, the emperor sent people to spend seven years putting 12 scriptures on stones, which is the famous "Kai Jing". 12 classic, the first one carved on a stone is Zhouyi.
The following picture shows the rubbings of Zhouyi, the version of Kaicheng Shijing:
So, where did you copy the Book of Changes? It turned out that in the early years of the Tang Dynasty, in order to meet the needs of spiritual civilization construction and rectify the chaotic academic and educational circles, the court decided to compile, revise and promulgate unified textbooks. Emperor Taizong ordered some famous scholars at that time to be summoned by imperial academy Kong to jointly compile the Five Classics Justice. The so-called Five Classics are Zhouyi, Shangshu, Shijing, Li and Chunqiu. Because Kong was proficient in Wei, Jin and Yi Dynasties (Wang Bi had annotated the Book of Changes), he chose the book of changes annotated by Wang Bi as the official version of the justice of the Five Classics. In the 16th year of Zhenguan (642), Justice of the Five Classics was written, and the version of Zhouyi annotated by Wang Bi became the official version. The Book of Changes engraved on the Book of Changes is actually Wang Bi's version of the Book of Changes, which is the true face of all popular versions on the market at present.
So, what's the difference between Wang Bi's (AD 226-249) version of Zhouyi and that of Han Dynasty?
At present, the Chinese version of Zhouyi can be found, in addition to the aforementioned Mawangdui silk edition and Fuyang bamboo slips edition, there is also a Xiping Shijing edition. Xiping Shijing was carved in Xiping period of Eastern Han Dynasty (172- 178). Cai Yong, a famous calligrapher in the Eastern Han Dynasty, personally wrote Dan, and carved the Zhouyi and other classics on stone tablets, standing in imperial academy. The Book of Songs in Xiping is the earliest official textbook engraved on stone tablets, which is hundreds of years earlier than the Book of Songs in Kaicheng in Tang Dynasty. Although the stone tablet has survived many disasters since the end of the Han Dynasty, we can still find some Zhouyi on the residual stone after careful collection by scholars such as Qu Wanli.
The following picture shows the rubbings of Xiping Shijing's Zhouyi:
Through comparison, we find that the Book of Changes published in Xiping Book of Songs in the Eastern Han Dynasty and the Book of Changes published in Kaicheng Book of Songs in the Tang Dynasty are both official textbooks, but 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 typesetting.
In the Book of Songs in Xiping, the scripture of Zhouyi was originally carved from the Book of Changes-the so-called Book of Changes is the annotation of Zhouyi, including a series of works such as Xun, Xiang, Cohesion and Classical Chinese. We can see that in the classics of the Tang Dynasty, the annotations of Xun and Xiang have been mixed in the classics (it is said that Zheng Xuan, a famous master of Confucian classics in the Eastern Han Dynasty, was the first person to do so, and he thought it would help everyone understand). Therefore, when we open the Book of Changes today, we often see words such as "meeting", "Xunyue" and "classical Chinese agreement" mixed in the book. Please ignore them for the time being, because this is not the original content of the Book of Changes. Although reading them will help us understand how the ancients viewed the Book of Changes, at present,
Speaking of which, we already have five versions of Zhouyi, arranged in chronological order:
Chu Bamboo Slips Collected in Shanghai Museum (Late Warring States Period)
Silk Edition of Mawangdui in Western Han Dynasty (BC 180-BC 170)
Bamboo Slips of Fuyang in the Western Han Dynasty (BC 165 years ago)
Xiping Book of Songs in the Eastern Han Dynasty (A.D. 175)
Tang Kaicheng Stone Classic Edition (AD 830)
After comparing these five versions, experts come to the conclusion that the texts of Zhouyi (except biography) are basically the same. In other words, the earliest version (Shanghai Museum Edition) and the current version are basically unchanged. The only difference is the writing of characters: the former was copied with Chu characters in the Warring States period, while the common books in our hands are simplified characters.
Other evidence also shows that at least in the Warring States period, the contents of the scriptures in Zhouyi have been finalized. According to the Records of the History of Jin Dynasty, during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Jin Dynasty (about 280 AD), a grave robber found a large number of ancient bamboo slips (the famous ancient prose in Jizhong) in an ancient tomb of the Warring States in Jixian County (now Jixian County, Henan Province), including the ancient Zhouyi.
This major archaeological discovery was officially announced to the public, and scholars such as Xun Xu, He Jiao, Wei Heng and Shu Xi were sent to sort out these ancient books. Because these ancient books were written during the Warring States period, it was difficult for people to identify them in the Western Jin Dynasty, so they were used for several years. Later, according to the biography of Jin Shu Shu Xi, the expert group sorted out "two books of the Book of Changes, which are the same as the upper and lower classics of the Book of Changes". Although experts are still debating whether the owner of the tomb in Jizhong is Wei Anli Wang (who died in 243 BC) or Wei Xiangwang (who died in 296 BC), we can be sure that the Zhouyi at the end of the Warring States Period is no different from the Zhouyi we see today, except that it was copied in a language similar to tadpoles.
So aside from annotations such as Yi Zhuan, what we get is the original Zhouyi, an ancient book that has been completely circulated to this day since at least the late Warring States period. If you don't think it's enough to read the explanations of experts and masters, you can also read the original version of this book more than 2,000 years ago.
Some people will think, oh, this is too difficult. How can you understand what tadpoles write?
It doesn't matter, because in fact, experts in ancient Chinese characters have a headache when they read the original Zhouyi. They often compare the current version with the pile of yellow bamboo pieces for a long time and suddenly say, "Ah, this word was written like this in ancient times!" " And most Yi-ology masters, believe me, their ability to see tadpoles is not much better than ours.
Some people will ask: since the contents of each version have not changed, why not just read the whole book?
The reason is simple: because the different versions of the writing are too different.
For a simple example, the word "Kun" written by Gan Kun is actually a "cloud" in Xiping Stone Scripture in the Eastern Han Dynasty, while the word "Gan" in Mawangdui silk book in the Western Han Dynasty is actually a "key"! If you carefully compare the above five versions of Zhouyi, you will find that 80% of them are written differently!
Take the silk Mawangdui as an example. In the picture below, there are eight words written differently from today:
Some people will ask: Why is it so messy? No wonder the standard version of scripture has to be engraved.
Yes, the scientific name of this phenomenon of confusing words is "interchangeable words". Therefore, as a person who is interested in Chinese studies and doesn't want to be fooled, the first thing to remember is:
..... Ancient typos are common words, which are reasonable and legal.