Yih-King

   The first of the nine authoritative works on Confucianism. The name means ‘Book of Changes’. The author was a certain Wen Fang, the founder of the Chou dynasty, who reigned about 1122 BC. The work explains all the phenomena of cosmology, nature, and human existence by diagrams made up of straight lines arranged horizontally. These were said to have been invented by Fu Hsi in the third millennium BC. Of the explanatory essays, half were written by Wen Fang, and the remainder by his son Chou. The original signification of these sixty-four diagrams must have been esoteric and magical and they are associated with the origin of the Yang (the undivided line or male principle) and the Yin (the divided line or female principle). The appendices include the ideas of Confucius himself on these subjects. The following work is the Shu-King.