Tag: Zhouyi 周易

No Harm = No Data

What use, possibly, are the Changes to us today, derived as they are from Neolithic oral mnemonic tech (poetics) that crystallized into a number of forms in writing (oracle bones, bamboo books, silk scrolls) as the Neolithic shaded into the Bronze and then Iron Ages, and that come to us in fragmentary and radically incomplete form via a welter of proliferating interpretations and commentaries and rewritings and translations?

Well, it’s always useful to be reminded that you never want to give yourself away…

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Pujiang Park | Lines 12 & 18 | Desiring-machines

An interesting question of interpretation and translation arises when considering the first hexagram that I threw for this trip: number 27. Minford, in his Bronze Age Oracle section, renders the hexagram as “breasts” while Rutt, in his Zhouyi, translates it as “molars.”

“the corners of the mouth (providing nourishment),” or “nourishing” (huang) or open quotation “jaws of it all” (Hinton). Today the character 頤 / 颐 yí in a literary context means “chin, cheek” as a noun or “to “nourish” or “take good care of one’s health” (Pleco).

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