Cutting through hexagram 23 – Harmen’s Dagboek. One of those splendidly detailed articles from Harmen I need to read over and over again. One thing that leaps to the eye: he mentions that one component of the hexagram name (as it appears in the received text) is itself used as a loan for three characters that all mean ‘a place at the foot of a hill or mountain.’
Now, I’m well aware that it’s almost certainly anachronistic to find references to a hexagram’s component trigrams in its name. But I console myself with that ‘almost’.
Hi Hilary, yes, it certainly is anachronistic. But who cares? The nice thing of this kind of research is that it opens up a whole new can of worms – sorry, I mean symbols. Things you can use in your daily practice as a diviner.
So, who’s the first one to apply the symbol of a radish in his next divination of hexagram 23, line 6?
Excellent article, Harmen, as always.
As for the trigrams, perhaps is not that anachronistic as most of academia thinks of it when it comes to the Yijing timeline. Just yesterday I finished reading an article on jade ‘congs’ in “Chinese Jades” (“Colloquies on Art & Archeology in Asia No.18” (Percival David Foundation)) where I was shocked to learn that some archeologist think that the roots of the Bagua’s predate the Liangzhu culture and may go as far back as 7000 B.C. or more.
See above re-‘almost’ 😉
I think I might pass on the giant radish for now.
Hi Harmen
You mention in the beginning of your great article, that the name of hexagram 23 means cut/carve and also indicate a sound … my first association was TIMBEEEEER 🙂
I presume, that beds, waggons and huts were made of timber?
Cutting timber into planks using an axe is a dangerous work, because it’s easy to cut oneself in the legs, when the work is done out in the forrest. Only line 5 looks different in this connection, but is obvious when looking at the hexagram, where the 6th line is the line and the 5th line is the fish 🙂
I did not say or mean that å‰ indicates ‘a sound’, merely the component å½” indicates the pronunciation of the character. It is possible that the character served as a onomatopoeia, but normally characters with this function are used doubled (like in the third line of hexagram 29). Grammatically speaking your ideas do not fit the text of the Yijing, and I don’t see how line 6 is ‘the line’, line 5 ‘is the fish’ nor do I see the connection with your assumptions – there is nothing ‘obvious’ in it (there hardly are ‘obvious’ things in the Yi). But that’s the nice thing about the Yi: everyone finds their own images in it.