Chinese philosophy
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The I Ching ( Wade-Giles ) or "Yì Jīng" ( pinyin ), also known as the Classic of Changes , Book of Changes and Zhouyi , 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 to the 2nd millennium BC. [ 3 ] Modern scholarship suggests that the earliest layer of the text may date from the end of the 2nd millennium BC, [ 4 ] but place doubts on the mythological aspects in the traditional accounts. [ 4 ] Some consider the I Ching' as the oldest extant book of divination, dating from 1,000 BC and before. [ 5 ] The oldest manuscript that has been found, albeit incomplete, dates back to the Warring States Period (around 475-221 BC). [ 6 ]
