Joseph Adler’s translation of Zhu Xi’s The Original Meaning of the Yijing
Zhu Xi, The Original Meaning of the Yijing. Translated and edited by Joseph A Adler. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020, hardback $65 and paperback $28, viii + 387 pp. Hardback ISBN 9780231191241.
I've been delving into Joseph Adler's translation of Zhu Xi's commentary on the Yijing (Zhouyi benyi) since it came out in 2020, but had a break from this site for some years so didn't review it then. Recently Columbia University Press brought out a more affordable paperback.
People might be surprised by how little Zhu Xi (1130–1200) wrote on each line and judgment. And yet what he did write often seems on the mark of a particular way of looking at the Yi. Adler of course translates the Yijing itself in the manner Zhu Xi understood it, rather than taking in more recent insights, such as those of the modern school in the past century (some of these modern views, though, feature in the introduction and endnotes). Zhu Xi's commentary represents what became the 'traditional' understanding of the oracle, along with the commentary by Cheng Yi (1033–1107), which was translated by L Michael Harrington in a rather opaque manner in 2019 (Adler had quite an exchange [PDF] with Harrington about his translation choices in the journal Dao).
Adler's is a very careful and thoughtful translation, it's clearly been pondered deeply and honed over time to get it just right. I recently re-read his 1984 dissertation 'Divination and Philosophy: Chu Hsi's Understanding of the I Ching', and was surprised how cogently his later work was prefigured in this very early work. Adler followed up his interest in Zhu Xi and the Yijing with his contribution to Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching (1990), written with Kidder Smith, Peter K Bol, and Don J Wyatt. Then came in 2002 his translation of Zhu Xi's Introduction to the Study of the Classic of Change (Yixue qimeng), a short work aiming to put across the principles of practical divination (which is available in a free 2017 version [PDF] that corrects the production errors of the first and only printing).
Zhu Xi constantly emphasised that the Yijing originally was for people to divine, all sorts of people from all stations of society – scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants. To treat it as a book of moral philosophy and wisdom (as it became by the addition of the Ten Wings), to be read but not consulted, was the wrong approach. This might be thought obvious by those who put their questions to the oracle today, but in his time the book was something for the literati to quote and expound upon, or at least in Zhu Xi's circle (not that different from academics who study the Yijing now but regard divination as superstitious nonsense and never consult the oracle themselves). So for him it was virtually a revelation to realise it was a book intended for divination, as odd as it seems. He wrote in a letter to a close friend in 1175:
I recently had an idea about how to read the Yi. When the sage[s] created the Yi it originally was to cause people to engage in divination, in order to decide what was permissible or not in their behavior, and thereby to teach people to be good. (p 12)
Hence the reference to the 'original meaning' of the Yijing in the title. It is not the original meaning in the sense of a reconstructed Bronze Age document, but rather points to this original divinatory purpose, though it is doubtful any but the upper echelons of society would have originally consulted it.
Zhu Xi's commentary is often couched in terms of structural concepts such as a line 'riding' on another line ('Just at the moment of being happy, a yielding line occupies the place of honor, infatuated with happiness and riding on the firm 9 in the fourth', hexagram 16/5, p 119), and notions such as 'correctness', 'centrality', and 'correspondence' (pp 32–33), as well as component trigrams. I'm not sure there is much taste for some of these concepts these days, but it's interesting to see how Zhu Xi handles them in a reliable translation. Take, for instance, the fourth line of hexagram 49:
[Line 4] 9 in the fourth: Regret vanishes; there is honesty. Changing the Mandate is auspicious.
This is a yang line occupying a yin position, so there is regret. But it is already past the center of the hexagram, the boundary of water and fire, so it is time for change. The firm and yielding lines are balanced and change is occurring, so 'regret vanishes.' But there must be honesty; only then will change become auspicious. This clarifies to the diviner that if he has this virtue and accords with the time, he will be believed, regret will vanish, and good fortune will ensue. (p 216)
The 'boundary of water and fire' refers to the trigrams lake and fire. Zhu Xi appears to have got this idea of a boundary from Wang Bi (226–249) – or from Cheng Yi who got it from Wang Bi – who wrote about this line being 'situated at the boundary of water and fire' (處水火之際). Quite a poetic way to see it, but what surprises me about this example though is that he says nothing about 'Changing the Mandate'. I presume he understood it as a reference to changing the mandate of Heaven, the dynastic change from the Shang to the Zhou (particularly given the rest of the hexagram and the Commentary on the Judgment, p 214, which states as much), and regarded it as not in need of explanation. It might be noted here that Richard Wilhelm, in his Book III, where he also concentrates on structural matters, says the opposite concerning the 'correctness' of the line: 'As a strong line in a yielding place, this line is harmoniously balanced.' Sounds reasonable, as much of this kind of analysis often does when saying anything (blinding by science), but in terms of the idea of correctness this is actually a yang line in an even-numbered or yin position, and so technically it is 'incorrect', as Zhu Xi implies by saying it is the reason for regret.
Structural concepts often make it seem as if Yijing hexagrams form a game with rules, like the game of Go (you can actually visualise the eight trigrams on a Go board, as is shown in The Secrets of the I Ching by Kim and Lee, but I don't think it'll improve your game). This kind of specialised language is both fascinating and daunting, as if change were a precise strategy for generals poring over a map. Of course it is not, and yet there is a wide-eyed wonder in applying this kind of template to events, particularly if one gets good at it. Many xiangshu (image and number) practitioners, for instance, believe they can make all sorts of complex and precise calculations of fate, yet their philosophical grasp of what fate actually is remains rudimentary at best. It is like being a professor of duncehood.
It is useful to study this kind of scaffolding applied to a hexagram, rather than just read the words of the text, even if ultimately one gets little out of it in terms of understanding what the oracle is saying. Because any appreciation of pattern is of value. It should be emphasised that Zhu Xi's comments are intended to be helpful in practical divination. You're expected to see, for instance, that the idea of the 9 in the second being restrained by the 6 in the fifth while occupying a central position, meaning it is able to limit itself and not advance, is sufficient commentary on, in this case, hexagram 26/2 (p 148). One thing that is good about it is that it takes the hexagram figures away from just being fancy coat hangers for words, suggesting an internal dynamic of the lines themselves (not that the combination of six-line hexagram figures and words has ever been an ordinary text, it is actually the first hypertext, linked by moving lines). There surely is an interplay of the lines to be appreciated, though many of the accreted ways of describing it can easily lapse into the formulaic and arbitrary, rather than being a genuinely exciting beholding of pattern. As with all these things, one can use the systems and approaches of others, in this case Zhu Xi, to find one's own way into an understanding.
There is a concise but wide-ranging introduction and extensive detailed endnotes. For me, one of the gems of the book is the translation of the Xici zhuan, Treatise on the Appended Remarks, along with Zhu Xi's commentary (aka the Dazhuan, the Great Treatise in Wilhelm). I look things up in this often and find it a pleasing translation. As with all of the book, the actual Yijing is in bold text and Zhu Xi's commentary is in roman. This works better than Lynn's use of serif and sans-serif to distinguish interlinear remarks in his translation of Wang Bi's commentary.
Nine of the Ten Wings are translated plus commentary, the rather lacklustre Ninth Wing dealing with the sequence isn't included because Zhu Xi didn't comment on it. Zhu Xi separated all this material from the judgment and lines (the original Zhouyi oracle) but Adler has interleaved back the Tuan zhuan, Xiang zhuan, and Wenyan, as is the case with 'collated' editions. Adler initially wanted to do it as Zhu Xi had it, but found it unworkable as it was not so easy to follow. I can see the sense of this, practically speaking, but Tze-ki Hon has argued in China Review International 26.3 [PDF] that it distorts Zhu Xi's intention to depict the 'original meaning' of the Yijing, because now it is mixed up with the kind of commentary he didn't want to provide for the oracle itself, for all he commented on these Wings separately. I am undecided on this issue, but find it a useful discussion. In relation to the example of hexagram 49/4 given above if the Tuan zhuan were removed you wouldn't have in immediate proximity in that hexagram the reference to Tang and Wu changing the mandate, complying with Heaven and responding to the people, which Zhu Xi seemed to make a point of not commenting on. That certainly changes the character of the text just in this one small place.
One can learn a lot about the Yijing from this book, there is much to study throughout. I think it is an excellent work.
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