Jesuit Interpretations of the Yijing - Chao Center for Asian Studies ...

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During the past three thousand years or so, the Yijing or Classic of Changes has
gradually become a global property. By stages, in a process that is still rather poorly
understood, the Changes gradually spread from China to other realms of East Asia--
notably Japan, Korea, Annam (Vietnam) and Tibet. The Jesuits brought knowledge of the
classic to Europe during the eighteenth century, and from there it travelled to the
Americas, finding a particularly receptive audience in the United States from the 1960s
onward. A recent annotated bibliography on the Yijing lists more than 500 books and
dissertations and about the same number of articles related to the Changes in English
alone. 4 Meanwhile, in Asia itself, the work continues to flourish, even on the Chinese
Mainland, where an Yijing-fever (Yijing re) erupted in the 1980s and continues to this
day. Every year for the past two decades or so, literally thousands of books, articles,
essays and conference papers have been written on the Changes in dozens of different
languages. How do we account for the remarkable transnational spread and enduring
popularity of this document, both East and West
Clearly the "globalization" of the Yijing was in part the product of its alluring
"special features" (tese, tezhi, etc.): its exalted position as "the first of the [Chinese]
classics;" its challenging basic text; its elaborate numerology and other forms of
symbolic representation; its utility as a tool of divination; its philosophically
sophisticated commentaries; its psychological potential (as a means of attaining selfknowledge);
and its reputation for a kind of encyclopedic comprehensiveness. The spread
of the Yijing was also facilitated by the self-concious strategies employed by those who
sought to use it in various environments for their own political, social, intellectual or
evangelical purposes. In the process the Changes invariably became "domesticated," but
not always in ways that its advocates might have originally envisioned. 5
The Jesuit approach to the Yijing provides a particularly interesting glimpse into
the process of globalization--first, because it involved not only the transmission of the
Chinese classic to the West but also the transmission of the Bible to China through the
Changes (and other canonical writings); and second, because the Jesuit strategy had
certain striking unintended consequences. That is, although the Jesuits developed certain
positive interpretive strategies that appealed to kindred spirits both in China and Europe,
by engendering a powerful negative reaction in each place, they also helped to shape in
significant ways alternative approaches to the Yijing.
Before exploring the specific contributions of the Jesuits, and the later history of
their "biblical" approach to the classic, it may be useful to consider the question of
cultural transmission in a somewhat broader context. Let me begin by discussing with
specific examples some of the distinctive characteristics of the Changes that almost
certainly affected the way it was received and understood, both in East Asia and the
West.
The "Special Characteristics" of the Yijing
One of the most distinctive features of the Yijing is its cryptic "basic text,"
consisting of sixty-four divinatory symbols known as hexagrams (gua). [FIGURE 1 (a
4 See Edward Hacker, Edward, Steve Moore and Lorraine Patsco, eds. I Ching: An Annotated
Bibliography, London, New York, etc.: Taylor and Francis, 2002.
5 Cf. J.A.G. Roberts, China to Chinatown: Chinese Food in the West. London: Reaktion, 2002, which
insightfully discusses the "globalization" of Chinese food.