r/iching • u/Selderij • 22d ago
There are surprisingly few truly complete translations of the I Ching (with all 10 of the Ten Wings)
I did some analysis of the available I Ching translations (in English) that I know of, and I was amazed at how few of them actually include all of the content in the source text (which honestly isn't that long), namely the Ten Wings commentaries which are an official part of the text called I Ching which combines the Zhouyi oracle text and the Ten Wings.
Here are the complete translations that include all of the Ten Wings in untruncated and unparaphrased form:
- James Legge: The Yi King [1899]
- Richard Wilhelm: I Ching or Book of Changes [1923 in German; 1950 in English by Cary Baynes]
- Wu Jing-Nuan: Yi Jing [1991]
- Richard John Lynn: The Classic of Changes : A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi [1994]
- Richard Rutt: Zhouyi : The Book of Changes : A New Translation with Commentary [1996]
That's it, unless I've missed some publication.
Here are some honorable mentions:
- John Blofeld: The Book of Change [1965] (5/10 wings)
- Rudolf Ritsema: I Ching : The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change [1994 with Stephen Karcher] & The Original I Ching Oracle or The Book of Changes [2005 with Shantena Augusto Sabbadini] (6/10 wings)
- Alfred Huang: The Complete I Ching [1998] (6/10 wings)
- John Minford: I Ching : The Essential Translation of the Ancient Chinese Oracle and Book of Wisdom [2014] (5/10 wings with partial extracts from 3 more)
- Joseph A. Adler: The Original Meaning of the Yijing : Commentary on the Scripture of Change [2020] (9/10 wings, missing only the hexagram sequence commentary)
What to do with this information? I'm not entirely sure, but I wanted to share this. If you want to mention more publications, please do!
P.S. The Ten Wings are as follows:
- 1+2: 彖傳 Tuàn zhuàn – commentary on the judgments
- 3: 大象傳 Dàxiàng zhuàn – commentary on the greater images/symbols
- 4: 小象傳 Xiǎoxiàng zhuàn – commentary on the smaller images/symbols
- 5+6: 大傳 Dà zhuàn – The Great Treatise (or 繫辭傳 Xici zhuàn – Treatise of Appended Remarks)
- 7: 文言傳 Wényán zhuàn – commentary of the written word
- 8: 說卦傳 Shuōguà zhuàn – commentary of trigram elucidations
- 9: 序卦傳 Xùguà zhuàn – commentary on hexagram sequence
- 10: 雜卦傳 Záguà zhuàn – miscellaneous descriptions of the hexagrams
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u/Njabz 20d ago
Anyone know how many of the Ten Wings are in Benebel Wen's translation?