I Ching/ Yì Jīng; The Book of Changes

The Classic of Changes (I Ching / Yìjīng / 易經) is one of the oldest and most enduring texts in the Chinese literary tradition, and one of the oldest books on record. The trigrams and method are classically attributed to the culture hero and legendary emperor Fu Xi (c. 2800 BCE), who also invented fishing, hunting, music, writing, laws, and the calendar. Around 1000 BCE, King Wen of Zhou combined them into the 64 hexagrams and wrote the core judgements, followed by his son the Duke of Zhou, who wrote the line texts in the following century. The appendices, or Ten Wings, are traditionally attributed to the philosopher Confucius, though Legge's commentary throws significant doubt on this attribution.Consulted for millennia as an oracle, a philosophical framework, and a guide to the patterns underlying human experience and the natural world, the Yìjīng has for millennia shaped the Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions, as well as Chinese literature, art, medicine, and statecraft.James