Credits and sources

Classical text

IChingAsk presents a working text of the received Zhouyi in Traditional characters: the hexagram statements, six line statements per hexagram, the separate Use Nine and Use Six texts, and the Great Images from the Xiang commentary.

Textual decisions draw on Zhouyi zhengyi and its collation notes in Ruan Yuan’s Shisanjing zhushu, Wang Bi’s Zhouyi zhu, and Zhu Xi’s Zhouyi benyi. Modern scholarly editions support comparison and punctuation decisions; their translations, annotations, and page images are not reproduced here. Material variants remain recorded in the project’s source notes.

The Chinese Text Project and Chinese Wikisource provide useful public paths into the received text. They are navigation references, not a claim that any electronic transcription is the sole authority.

Modern English

The English renderings and explanations are written for IChingAsk. Reference works include James Legge’s The Yi King, Zhu Xi’s Zhouyi benyi, and Cheng Yi’s Zhouyi Chengshi zhuan. Familiar short English names follow the convention associated with Richard Wilhelm’s translation and Cary F. Baynes’s English rendering. Their prose is used for similarity checks, not as the site’s explanatory text.

Reading protocol

The changing-line rules follow Zhu Xi’s Yixue qimeng, especially Kao bian zhan. Joseph A. Adler’s translation, Introduction to the Study of the Changes, provides an English reference. This is one classical protocol; its inferences and interpretive limits are explained in the changing-lines guide.

Casting probabilities

The app draws lines with the conventional three-coin probabilities. The coin and yarrow comparison uses the probability distributions discussed by D. Robinson in Divination in Ancient China, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C.

Guides

Each guide lists the works it draws on and the scope of those references. Source attribution does not imply that an author or institution endorses IChingAsk.