Diffusion des savoirs de l'École normale supérieure. Www.chinesephilosophy.net. I Ching : 1. Ch'ien / The Creative. I Ching. The I Ching, also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes, Zhouyi and Yijing, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts.[1] The book contains a divination system comparable to Western geomancy or the West African Ifá system; in Western cultures and modern East Asia, it is still widely used for this purpose.
Traditionally, the I Ching and its hexagrams were thought to pre-date recorded history,[2] and based on traditional Chinese accounts, its origins trace back to the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE.[3] Modern scholarship suggests that the earliest layers of the text may date from the end of the 2nd millennium BCE, but place doubts on the mythological aspects in the traditional accounts.[4] Some consider the I Ching the oldest extant book of divination, dating from 1,000 BCE and before.[5] The oldest manuscript that has been found, albeit incomplete, dates back to the Warring States period (475–221 BCE).[6] History[edit] Traditional view[edit] Modernist view[edit] Structure[edit]