THE EARLY ZHOUYI
Ask about an event.
A campaign, a marriage, rain, or a crossing. Brief judgments address uncertain outcomes.
AFTER THE EARLY TEXT
The Ten Wings.
A new way to ask.
From “Will this turn out well?” to “How should we live within change?” The later commentaries opened an enduring conversation around the ancient text.
USES OF THE CHANGES
Read the situation.
People apply its words to war, succession, marriage, and diplomacy. Context changes the reading.
THE TEN WINGS
Consider how to act.
Images and judgments become resources for thinking about conduct, responsibility, and the world.
CONFUCIUS AND LATER READERS
A tradition larger
than one author.
Tradition attributes the Ten Wings to Confucius. The historical picture is more layered: differences in language and thought suggest work across generations. The Chinese edition follows scholarship that commonly locates their formation between the fourth and second centuries BCE.
The Records of the Historian and the Mawangdui manuscript Yao help establish the traditional connection between Confucius and the Changes. They do not by themselves establish that he personally wrote all ten sections. A Confucian lineage of interpretation and the authorship of each passage are different questions.
This was not an overnight move from divination to secular philosophy. Heaven, spirits, omens, and divination remain. The growing emphasis on conduct, timing, position, and judgment is what gives the reinterpretation its force.
Why ten? The Judgments, Images, and Appended Statements each have two parts. The Words, Discussion, Sequence, and Miscellaneous Hexagrams add four more: ten sections, usually grouped into seven works.
01
HEXAGRAMS 1–30
Commentary on the Judgments I
彖传上 · Tuàn, Part I
Great is Qian’s beginning: the many things depend on it to start; it governs Heaven.大哉乾元，万物资始，乃统天。
Giving a judgment its reasons
The Tuan connects a hexagram’s name, image, line positions, and outcome into an explanatory structure. Where the early text presents a brief formula, this commentary asks why that judgment makes sense.
Read the Chinese source ↗02
HEXAGRAMS 31–64
Commentary on the Judgments II
彖传下 · Tuàn, Part II
Xian means responding. The yielding is above and the firm below; the two energies respond and join.咸，感也。柔上而刚下，二气感应以相与。
From a situation to a relationship
The early Xian text concerns marriage and bodily responses. The Tuan develops this into an account of responsiveness among Heaven, Earth, women, men, and the many things: a move from particular statements toward wider concepts.
Read the Chinese source ↗03
HEXAGRAMS 1–30
Commentary on the Images I
象传上 · Xiàng, Part I
Heaven moves with vigor. The noble person accordingly strives without ceasing.天行健，君子以自强不息。
From natural images to human action
The Greater Images identify combinations of Heaven, Earth, mountain, lake, thunder, wind, water, and fire, then propose a human response. The Lesser Images interpret individual lines. Observation becomes a resource for self-cultivation and government.
Read the Chinese source ↗04
HEXAGRAMS 31–64
Commentary on the Images II
象传下 · Xiàng, Part II
A lake above the mountain: Xian. The noble person accordingly makes room to receive others.山上有泽，咸；君子以虚受人。
Learning a way of responding
The Images ask how someone should act within a configuration of circumstances. Making room for others is an important ethical reinterpretation of Xian; it should be distinguished from a direct translation of the early marriage and body passages.
Read the Chinese source ↗05
THE GREAT COMMENTARY
The Appended Statements I
系辞上传 · Xì Cí, Part I
One yin, one yang: this is called the Way. What continues it is good; what completes it is nature.一阴一阳之谓道。继之者善也，成之者性也。
Making change a subject of philosophy
Images, words, yin and yang, the Way and concrete things, sages, and divination become subjects of sustained reflection. The commentary asks how people can understand change through figures and language. It gives the Changes a philosophical account of its own practices.
Read the Chinese source ↗06
CHANGE, MAKING, AND HISTORY
The Appended Statements II
系辞下传 · Xì Cí, Part II
At an impasse, change; through change, passage; through passage, duration.穷则变，变则通，通则久。
People participate in change
Accounts of making tools, historical figures, and selected line statements explore how change occurs. People can recognize conditions, respond, and create. This extends the text beyond simply receiving a prediction about what will happen.
Read the Chinese source ↗07
QIAN AND KUN
Commentary on the Words
文言传 · Wén Yán
“Beginning” is the foremost of what is good; “success” is the gathering of what is excellent.元者，善之长也；亨者，嘉之会也。
Reading a formula as virtue
This commentary interprets yuan, heng, li, and zhen through an ethical order associated with benevolence, ritual, rightness, and correctness. The dragon’s changing position becomes material for thinking about moral growth and political timing.
Read the Chinese source ↗08
A NETWORK OF ASSOCIATIONS
Discussion of the Trigrams
说卦传 · Shuō Guà
The Way of Heaven is established as yin and yang; the Way of Earth as yielding and firm.立天之道曰阴与阳，立地之道曰柔与刚。
Giving eight figures a world of meanings
The eight trigrams are related to Heaven and Earth, family members, body parts, animals, directions, and qualities. Many familiar trigram associations belong to this interpretive system rather than being stated in the early hexagram and line texts.
Read the Chinese source ↗09
THE RECEIVED ORDER
Sequence of the Hexagrams
序卦传 · Xù Guà
Only after Heaven and Earth exist do the many things come into being.有天地然后万物生焉。
Turning sequence into a story
Repeated “after this, then that” explanations connect one hexagram to the next. A set of separate divinatory units becomes a continuing account of the world, living things, human relationships, and the unfinished crossing of the final hexagram.
Read the Chinese source ↗10
PAIRS AND CONTRASTS
Miscellaneous Hexagrams
杂卦传 · Zá Guà
Qian is firm, Kun yielding; Bi is joyful, Shi troubled.乾刚坤柔，比乐师忧。
Thinking through contrasts
Short paired statements distill differences between hexagrams. Where the Sequence tells a continuous story, the Miscellaneous Hexagrams work more like a conceptual index, drawing attention to contrasts, complements, and alternative connections.
Read the Chinese source ↗Sources and further reading.
This page is an introduction to all ten sections, not a full translation of their complete texts. The short quotations are newly translated for this edition. The Chinese edition cites:
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Chinese Philosophy of Change — the layered text and its philosophical interpretation.
- University of Copenhagen: Yijing — the core text, the Ten Wings, and their dating.
- Beijing Normal University, Institute of Yijing Studies — Confucius and later Confucian traditions of interpretation.
- Peking University: political thought in the Mawangdui commentaries — human affairs, adversity, and government through virtue.