This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
After being lost for thousands of years, the relationship between Chinese characters and the Yijing has come back into people’s view. The major work The Zhouyi and Chinese Characters by Professor Chang Bingyi, a renowned master of Yijing studies, is a representative work of recent years on the relationship between Chinese characters and the Yijing. Below is the introduction to this work:
It is said: “What is above form is called the Dao; what is below form is called the vessel.” The great Song-dynasty Confucian Zhang Zai explained: “What is above form refers to that which has no physical body; what is below form refers to that which has a physical body.” Evidently, this is the ancients’ division of the material world into two modes of existence, a great and scientific proposition. The so-called “Dao” actually refers to the laws of natural change that people cannot perceive, which fundamentally form and control the matter of “what is below form” (that is, the “vessel”). Hence Laozi said: “The Dao is the hidden depth of the myriad things.” It is precisely because of the establishment of the classical theory of the primary–secondary relationship and dialectical unity of the “Dao” and the “vessel” that the splendid culture of ancient China was formed.
The Western culture (modern science) we are familiar with is an entity-based method of cognition, emphasizing in-depth study from outside of things’ spatial position, form and structure, and their relations of mass, quantity, energy and properties. The ancient Chinese sages, by contrast, emphasized exploring the dynamic functional structure of things through modes of motion unlimited in time and space and through their interactions. The Western way of thinking focuses on the state of things themselves and is based on experimental science; its features are local and static, so it gives little consideration to the necessary connections between things. The Eastern way of thinking focuses on the mutual relations of things and the developmental process of their relative stability; its features are systematic, holistic and dynamic. Western science emphasizes the fine division of disciplines but lacks methods of induction and synthesis. Alvin Toffler says in Science and Change: “One of the most highly developed skills in contemporary Western civilization is dissection: the split-up of problems into their smallest possible components. We are good at it. So good, we often forget to put the pieces back together again.” Of course, “this method of dissection and analysis has enabled Western science to achieve a great many admirable successes, such as the elementary-particle physics of physics and Western medicine. But what an elementary particle is has still not been found. Interestingly, all elementary particles have particles and antiparticles, and all have kinetic energy and binding energy. That is to say? We are back to the yin–yang structure spoken of by traditional Chinese culture.” (Zhao Dingli, Eastern Space-Time and Future Science)
Although Western medicine has achieved brilliant successes, it begins its study only from the “below form” after fertilization, and has never touched the mystery and origin of life, let alone the noumenon above form. Chinese medicine, however, holds: “Man is born on earth, but his life hangs upon heaven; when the qi of heaven and earth unite, it is called man.” That is to say, the source of life is what matters most. Interestingly, the discovery by modern science of the sixty-four genetic codons coincides exactly with the ancient sixty-four hexagrams and the opposition of all their images. Not only that, in the theory of the “three channels and seven chakras” of the body-and-mind cultivation of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism, the heart chakra has eight channels, the throat chakra sixteen, the crown chakra thirty-two and the navel chakra sixty-four. The author believes that the closely matching rhythmic relationship between heaven and humanity will be a major research topic of the twenty-first century!
To sum up, the theory of the primary–secondary relationship and dialectical unity of what is above form and what is below form is the essence of the great Changes. Therefore the first part of the Zhouyi concerns the beginning of transformation through qi and starts with Qian and Kun; the second part concerns the beginning of transformation into form and starts with Xian and Heng, from which human relationships emerge.
Chinese culture all derives from the Zhouyi, and this is especially evident in Chinese medicine and Chinese characters. As stated above, Western medicine is a branch of the “vessel,” while Chinese medicine is a branch of the “Dao.” Western medicine emphasizes anatomy and observation under the microscope; Chinese medicine emphasizes the whole, and in speaking of the five zang and six fu organs it cannot do without “qi,” and “qi” is something without form or image. Where there is the Dao, there naturally is the vessel. The Dao and the vessel have never been separate. However, the Dao is the root and the vessel the branch, so the Dao endures forever while the vessel is easily destroyed. Thus we will naturally find that although the Hundred Schools of ancient times arose with differing doctrines, they were almost unanimous in their view of the Dao and the vessel, and in particular they all paid great attention to the mysteries of the Dao and of qi.
That Chinese characters originated from the trigrams and hexagrams of the Changes and the heavenly stems and earthly branches is beyond doubt. Not only that, Chinese characters are also a model of Yijing thinking and of the union of the Dao and the vessel. The formation of Chinese characters and their laws all reflect the characteristic thinking of the trigrams, stems and branches, yin and yang and the Five Phases. It can be said that Chinese characters are the symbol of ancient Chinese civilization and the crystallization of human civilization. These square characters, which Westerners regard as mysterious and profound, have as long a history and are as broad and profound as the history of Chinese civilization itself.
As everyone knows, the world’s primitive scripts all evolved from pictures into pictographic scripts and then further into systems of symbols. If we trace all the pictographic scripts of the ancient civilizations of the world, such as the cuneiform of Babylon, the wedge-shaped script of Mesopotamia, the hieroglyphs of Egypt and the pictographic script of India, though they all flourished for thousands of years, they finally all perished by the Middle Ages and became relics of history. Only China’s Chinese characters, through vast changes of the world, frequent changes of dynasty, and even the rule of the Central Plains by foreign peoples, have never been seen to perish. What is the reason for this? As Mr. Xiao Qihong says in his book Chinese Characters Connect with the Yijing: “China’s Chinese characters broke through the limitations of the stage of pictorial writing and developed into a scientific and complete giant system of symbols, handed down in one unbroken line for more than five thousand years to the present. This is because, in fulfilling their historical mission of ‘giving names to the hundred things,’ Chinese characters formed an internal connection with the Yijing symbols that were the hub of Chinese prehistoric culture. In other words, the invention of Chinese characters enabled the symbolic system of Chinese Yijing studies to make the transition from abstract mathematical symbols, the names of trigrams and lines, to concrete written symbols for the names of things, the symbols of Chinese characters. The trigram symbols of Chinese Yijing studies are a kind of image: what governs is principle, what makes principle clear is image, what stands in opposition is number, what flows is qi. This is the rational core of Chinese Yijing studies. The invention of Chinese characters produced symbols that could be combined with language, that could write the names of concrete things and express the principles of the objects so named. Therefore Chinese characters are not only written symbols recording the Chinese language, but also holographic signs carrying ancient scientific knowledge and cultural concepts. Chinese characters are a set of Yijing symbols.” “The theory of Chinese characters as Yijing symbols has a simple and strict formula for determining the Yijing image of a character; all Chinese characters are analyzed by one standard and model in the grand view of the Yijing, and every explanation is a layer-by-layer deduction of the Dao above form and the vessel below form.” Mr. Xiao also made a profound analysis of the meaning of the yin–yang facing and turning away of the form and sound of Chinese characters: “The study of Chinese characters as Yijing symbols holds that ‘the same form means the same lineage, the same sound means the same meaning.’ Both the form and the sound of a character are regarded as images. Form is the yang side of the image, and sound is the yin side. Between characters there are relationships of dividing one into two, of the unity of opposites, of being each other’s root and of layered expansion; what this expresses is a structural model of the diagram of the sequence of the Eight Trigrams. The theory of Chinese characters as Yijing symbols covers a very broad range, and many questions still require special explanation. But from the logical connection between the ancient Yijing model and Chinese characters as a whole, it derives an overall framework sufficient to prove that Yijing symbols and character symbols are interconnected.”
The methods of creating Chinese characters are rooted in the principles of the Changes, and their structural patterns are all reflections of the concepts of yin and yang and the Five Phases. In the final analysis, the structural pattern of Chinese characters is the pattern of the Changes. Therefore the structural model of Chinese characters, their union of form and sound, their intellectual content and their scientific laws make up a linguistics and philology that developed under the comprehensive influence of the principles and currents of thought of the Changes. As Xiao Qihong says: “The foundation of today’s Chinese language was handed down from the language of the Yellow Emperor’s time five thousand years ago; its basic vocabulary and ways of forming words have remained essentially the same through all changes. Therefore the theory of the Changes is the cornerstone of Chinese language theory.” (Chinese Characters Connect with the Yijing, Chapter 3, Section 7)
In short, under the comprehensive influence of Yijing thinking, Chinese characters became an ideographic and phonetic script in which the Dao and the vessel are merged, yin and yang are united, the five constants are unified, form, meaning and image are one, and image and number return to one.
If we count from Fuxi’s drawing of the trigrams to express meaning, Chinese characters have a history of seven thousand years; if we count from Cangjie’s creation of characters in the time of the Yellow Emperor, they have a history of five thousand years.
Although Chinese characters originated from Yijing thinking, the Yijing is not the same as Chinese characters. “The trigram and line symbols of the Yijing have become a cosmic equation able to express the principles of all the changes of the myriad things of the universe. Between it and writing there is still a window’s separation: it takes the trigram shapes as images, and these images carry a set of scientific principles that can be expressed in any language; they do not fixedly represent the name of each thing and have no direct connection with the names of things. Therefore they cannot write language and are not yet writing. But they have already reached the edge of the realm of writing and gave a clear hint toward the invention of writing.” (Xiao Qihong, Chinese Characters Connect with the Yijing, Chapter 4) When Fuxi drew the trigrams, “all the capable deeds under heaven were complete,” and “through ease and simplicity the principles of the world are grasped!” Thereupon Cangjie created Chinese characters on this basis. So it is beyond doubt that Yijing thinking is the root of Chinese characters.
Although the Yijing is not the same as Chinese characters, there are also traces of primitive characters in the trigram images, which reflects the real situation of the pioneering period in high antiquity when the trigrams of the Changes and written language were still undifferentiated.
Since ancient times, most scholars have held that the origin of Chinese writing is extremely ancient, and it is generally accepted that Chinese characters are a product of primitive society. As for the specific date, opinions vary. Some say they are based on the Eight Trigrams, some say they originated from the Yellow River Chart and the Luo River Writing, and some say they began with knotted cords for keeping records. In any case, the ancients mostly held that the Eight Trigrams were drawn by Fuxi and were the beginning of writing, symbols for recording events and things in high antiquity. The “Great Commentary” of the Changes states clearly: “In ancient times, when Baoxi ruled the world, he looked up and observed the images in the heavens, looked down and observed the patterns on the earth. He observed the markings of birds and beasts and what was suited to the land. Near at hand he took from his own body, far off he took from things. Thereupon he first made the Eight Trigrams, in order to communicate with the virtue of the spirit-like and to classify the conditions of the myriad things.” “The Yellow River brought forth the Chart, the Luo River brought forth the Writing, and the sage took them as his model.” The sage is Fuxi. The Song-dynasty Yijing scholar Yang Chengzhai said in his Commentary on the Changes that the phrase “to classify the conditions of the myriad things” shows that the Eight Trigrams had the function of writing. The great Song Neo-Confucian master Cheng Yi went further and put forward the famous view that Chinese characters are a set of Yijing symbols. Yang Chengzhai pointed out: “The trigram is its name; the strokes are not the trigram, but the first writing created by Fuxi.” (Chengzhai’s Commentary on the Changes)
Talks on Seal Studies says: “Fuxi, on the basis of drawing the Eight Trigrams, made the dragon script; Shennong, on the basis of the auspicious grain, made the ear-of-grain script; the Yellow Emperor, seeing auspicious clouds, made the cloud script.” Li Puyuan’s Introduction to the History of Chinese Art says: “The oldest writing of China is the Eight Trigrams.” “Writing may have originated from the Eight Trigrams, and painting too may have originated from the Eight Trigrams.” Even the great Western scientist Leibniz said: “The diagram of the sixty-four hexagrams gave an important hint for the invention of a universal writing.” The former Indian Prime Minister Nehru once admonished his daughter: “There is a great country in the world, every one of whose characters is a beautiful poem and a beautiful painting. You must study it well. The country I am speaking of is China.”
1. The Eight Trigrams Are the Source of Chinese Characters
The earliest writing came from pictures, that is, the primitive state of writing. But a mere picture is not necessarily writing; only when pictures are combined with language does true writing arise. For example, draw a mountain and read it as the character for mountain; draw water and read it as the character for water. When everyone does this and it becomes established by convention, writing is formed. Therefore the fundamental difference between writing and pictures is that writing is pictures with syllables.
