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[Abstract] This article examines the Jesuit translation and interpretation of the Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) from the historical and cultural perspective. The Jesuits dissected Chinese characters for religious interpretation, equated the trigrams and hexagrams with Christian conceptions, and linked Chinese cultural heroes with biblical figures in order to establish compatibility between the Yijing and the Bible. Although the Jesuit hermeneutical strategy described as "Figurism" failed in the end, this interpretive approach was part of a long tradition of Yijing exegesis, textual transmission, and cultural transformations, which sheds new light on questions of cross-cultural exchanges and understanding.
[Keywords] The Yijing, Jesuits, translation, interpretation, Figurism
Introduction
The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes, ШШ) began as a divination manual about three thousand years ago in ancient China, but it evolved to become "the first of the [Chinese] classics." With its philosophical sophistication, psychological potential, and encyclopedic comprehensiveness, it has had unrivalled prestige in China since ancient times. As Steve Moore puts it: "If the importance of books is measured by the numbers of their readers, the amount of commentary written on them, the quantity of editions and translations...then surely two would appear far ahead of the rest of the field. One, of course, is the Christian Bible. The other, though it may surprise readers brought up in Western traditions of literature and learning (and especially those who regard it as little more than a fortune-telling book), is the I Ching, or "Book of Changes'" (Hacker et al., 2002, p. XIII). Virtually every aspect of traditional Chinese culture was touched by the Yijing, from language, literature, art, and music, to philosophy, religion, politics, military affairs, social life, mathematics, medicine, and science.
In part because of its great prestige in China, the historical and cultural influence of the Yijing extended well beyond the ever-shifting borders of the Middle Kingdom. Indeed, during the past thousand years or so, the work gradually became a global property. By stages, the Changes spread from China to other areas of East Asia, notably Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The Jesuits brought knowledge of the classic to Europe during the eighteenth century, and from there it travelled to the Americas, finding a particularly receptive audience in the United States from the...