The Zhouyi, Bronze Age progenitor to the Yijing (I Ching), or Book of Changes, was a divination manual created and utilized by the early rulers of the Zhou dynasty (founded 1046 BCE). This new translation dispenses with 20th century attempts to discredit tradition and endeavors to recover the context of its early Zhou dynasty origins. As such, interpretation of its language is based strictly upon pre-Confucian sources to avoid the anachronistic readings that accrued to the text in its evolution from a book of divination to a book of philosophy. For the first time in the book's translation history, its judgment and line texts have been clearly labeled according to their content - either omen, counsel, or prognostication - in order to clarify their divinatory function. Furthermore, each hexagram is accompanied by a line-by-line commentary providing detailed background for the situations presented in the texts and explicating metaphorical language and technical syntax. The general public will appreciate the narrative cohesion of the commentaries, while the specialist will welcome the appended Chinese text. Finally, the book also provides the reader with explanations of the myth, legend, and history in the formative stages of the Zhouyi's creation and gives comprehensive information on how to cast the oracle and interpret the resulting reading.

Modern research has revealed the Book of Changes to be a royal divination manual of the Zhou state (500100 BC). This new translation synthesizes the results of modern study, presenting the work in its historical context. The first book to render original Chinese rhymes into rhymed English.

The Zhou Changes, better known in the West as I Ching, is one of the masterpieces of world literature. This book, the climax of more than forty years of research in Chinese archaeology, explores the text’s origins in the oracle-bone and milfoil divinations of Bronze Age China and how it transformed over the course of the Zhou dynasty into the first of the Chinese classics. The book provides an in-depth survey of the theory and practice of divination to demonstrate how the hexagram and line statements of the text were produced and how they were understood at the time.

Approximately 1045 BCE the ruler of an independent province on the frontier of ancient China named Ji Fa defeated the reigning Emperor Di Xin's vast forces to found China's 3rd dynasty, the Zhou. The rise of the Zhou with their military, scientific, cultural, and economic superiority and their triumph over the Shang dynasty is the subject of this novel.For the most part, Ji Fa's conquest was made possible by three extraordinary men: (1) Ji Chang- Ji Fa's father, primary author of the world's oldest book, founder of the world's first public school system and citizen's college, the Thomas Jefferson of his age; (2) Ji Dan (Zhougong)- Ji Fa's younger brother, a political and administrative genius, significant contributor to the oldest book, the Ben Franklin of his age; (3) Lu Shang (Taigong)- an immigrant to Zhou, China's greatest military leader, the Robert E. Lee of his age. These three men are still today considered among China's most revered heroes, as they were by the great sage himself, Confucius, five centuries later. Indeed, much of what has become Chinese culture as now known originated, not with Confucius, but with Ji Chang and Ji Dan, whom Confucius admired greatly.The I Ching (The Book of Changes) was written by Ji Chang during a seven year captivity by the last Shang emperor, an atrocity that contributed crucially to the downfall of the Shang. After the Zhou conquest, Ji Dan added significantly to the book even during a post-conquest period of terrific instability and authored several other ancient volumes that have had vast influence on Chinese society and thought. Except for an appendix added by Confucius and other miscellaneous latter day scribbling, The Book of Changes has come to us through the ages just as the two leaders wrote it.The story of their conquest concerns itself with conflicts of values: morality versus practicality, independence versus social propriety, self-restraint versus the exercise of power, and so on. This period is prior to Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, even Judaism (perhaps even Hinduism). Viewing the world from 3,000 years ago as China emerged from the stone age, some of our most respected modern attitudes become suspect. Through their eyes nature and primitivism were a lifelong threat, virtue and social propriety were a practical necessity, and ritual and sacrifice was vital to cultural progress. Indeed, as modern China increasingly considers itself in "exceptionalist" terms, the Zhou concept of "tianxia" (all under heaven) is being proffered by Chinese thinkers as an alternative to the current, prevailing "nation state" model of civilization [Banyan: "Nothing New Under Heaven." The Economist, Vol. 399, No. 8738 (6-18-2011), p.50].The drama of the story arises from the contrast between Ji Chang, one of China's finest men, and the corrupt and decadent Shang Emperor, Di Xin, one of China's worst (whose depravity, incidentally, pales in comparison to well known latter day despots). This contrast is extended to the men around the two leaders and ultimately to their cultures as a whole as the characters are swept into the maelstrom of civil war.

Examines the original composition of China's oldest books, the Classic of Changes, the Venerated Documents, and the Classic of Poetry, and attempts to restore their original meanings.

A funny, witty presentation of China's Daoist traditions.

Modern research has revealed the Book of Changes to be a royal divination manual of the Zhou state (500100 BC). This new translation synthesizes the results of modern study, presenting the work in its historical context. The first book to render original Chinese rhymes into rhymed English.

This second volume of the ongoing annotated translation of Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Shi chi(The Grand Scribe's Records), widely acknowledged as the most important early Chinese history, contains the "basic annals" of five early Han-dynasty emperors. The annals trace the first century of Han rule (206 BC to ca. 100 BC) in a year-by-year account that focuses on imperial activities. In The Grand Scribe's Records, Ssu-ma Ch'ien revitalised the style of the annals he had written for previous rulers. Here are accounts of the peasant who founded the dynasty, Liu Pang, a man noted as much for his licentiousness as he was his ruthless political instinct, and of his cruel wife, Empress Lÿ, who murdered her chief rival for Liu Pang's affections in the most gruesome manner. The annals of two relatively undistinguished emperors follow. The volume concludes with Ssu-ma's depiction of perhaps the greatest ruler of the Han, Emperor Wu, told within the context of his delusive attempts to find a means to achieve immortality. When completed this translation will bring all 130 chapters of the Shih chi into English. Volumes 1 and 7 were published by Indiana University Press in 1994.

This volume shows the influence of the Sage's teachings over the course of Chinese history--on state ideology, the civil service examination system, imperial government, the family, and social relations--and the fate of Confucianism in China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as China developed alongside a modernizing West and Japan. Some Chinese intellectuals attempted to reform the Confucian tradition to address new needs; others argued for jettisoning it altogether in favor of Western ideas and technology; still others condemned it angrily, arguing that Confucius and his legacy were responsible for China's feudal, ''backward'' conditions in the twentieth century and launching campaigns to eradicate its influences. Yet Chinese continue to turn to the teachings of Confucianism for guidance in their daily lives.

The Mandate of Heaven was originally given to King Wen in the 11th century BC. King Wen is credited with founding the Zhou dynasty after he received the Mandate from Heaven to attack and overthrow the Shang dynasty. King Wen is also credited with creating the ancient oracle known as the Yijing or Book of Changes. This book validates King Wen's association with the Changes. It uncovers in the Changes a record of a total solar eclipse that was witnessed at King Wen's capital of Feng by his son King Wu, shortly after King Wen had died (before he had a chance to launch the full invasion). The sense of this eclipse as an actual event has been overlooked for three millennia. It provides an account of the events surrounding the conquest of the Shang and founding of the Zhou dynasty that has never been told. It shows how the earliest layer of the Book of Changes (the Zhouyi) has preserved a hidden history of the Conquest.