Revolution and Change

Revolution and Change describes transformation as a serious act whose legitimacy cannot be assumed in advance: people suspect change, so it must answer a demonstrated need, proceed with firm correctness, and win belief through its accomplished results. The hexagram’s own history echoes this concern, as later appendixes and editorial arrangements altered how readers encountered the older Text.

Meaning and Conditions of Change

The name Ko derives from a character originally used for an animal’s or bird’s skin, whether from a living creature or a dead one; at an early stage it also acquired the meaning of changing. The commentary does not pursue the linguistic transition in detail. Instead, it applies the idea to changes called for in the condition of a country, potentially on the greatest scale. The question is not simply whether change occurs, but when it becomes necessary and in what spirit it should be carried out.

The hexagram’s judgment sets a demanding test. Change is believed only after it has been accomplished; once its effects are evident, the prospect is great progress and success, with advantage in firmness and correctness and the disappearance of regret. That outcome does not license rash action. Because people generally regard change with suspicion and dislike, necessity must first be proved, and conduct throughout the transformation must remain firm and correct.

The Lines and the Timing of Action

The first line presents its subject as bound with the skin of a yellow ox. The commentary reads this as change attempted too early: the line has no proper correlate or helper above it, and its subject is therefore unable to act. The image makes premature reform not merely unwise but practically immobilized; intention alone cannot supply the right time or support.

The second line gives a contrasting possibility. It counsels making changes after time has passed, and says that action then will be fortunate and without error. The commentary notes that the line is weak but correctly placed, occupies the centre of the trigram Lî, associated with brightness and intelligence, and has a proper correlate in the strong fifth line. Patience is thus not an absolute refusal to act: once the timing and supporting relations are right, change can proceed.

At the opposite end of the sequence, the sixth line distinguishes the superior man’s transformation from mere outward compliance. The superior man changes as a leopard changes its spots, while small men change their faces and show obedience. Even after change has taken hold, going forward would lead to evil; good fortune lies in abiding firm and correct. The ending therefore limits the impulse to keep advancing: a transformation can be established without making further movement beneficial.

Text, Appendixes, and the History of Interpretation

The book’s account of change also depends on distinguishing the older Text from its later Appendixes. The translator dates the Text to King Wen in 1143 BC and the line texts associated with the Duke of Zhou to between thirty and forty years later. Even if the Appendixes were Confucius’s work, they could not have been composed earlier than 483 BC—about 660 years after the portion attributed to King Wen and nearly 630 years after the Duke of Zhou’s contribution. The translator consequently rejects treating Text and Appendixes as one work in the proper sense, arguing that the intervening centuries could have altered how thinkers understood the method and meaning of the Yî.

The distinction was obscured in common editions that broke up five Appendixes, in the usual reckoning, and printed them alongside the Text. The translator argues that this arrangement mixed incongruous ideas and made it harder for foreign readers to grasp the meaning. By contrast, the imperial Khang-hsî edition printed the two parts separately. Native scholars, the account observes, generally recognized the difference in their dates, though few dared question either their status as a homogeneous whole or the attribution of all the Appendixes to Confucius. The translator also defends the value of native commentaries, while noting that reverence for Confucius could discourage critics from acknowledging contradictions or unwise interventions in the Appendixes.

Preservation and Editorial Authority

The Yî survived the Qin book burning of 213 BC because it was classified as a book of divination. Li Si’s memorial advising the ruler to consign old books to the flames exempted works on medicine, divination, and husbandry, and the Yî fell within that protected category. Its survival, therefore, was bound to a practical classification that spared it while much ancient Chinese literature was lost.

By the beginning of the Common Era, Liu Xin’s catalogue of the imperial library listed works on the Yî and its Appendixes by thirteen authors or schools, comprising 294 portions. The later imperial edition of 1715 quoted 218 scholars whose commentaries ranged from the second century BC to the seventeenth century. The translator presents that total as only a fraction of those who had tried to interpret the book, underscoring how its meaning accumulated through generations of disputation and study.

The Khang-hsî editors’ work was especially consequential: their numerous discussions and considered decisions, preserved in the great imperial edition first published in 1715, helped raise interpretation of the Yî toward a science. The history of Revolution and Change thus carries a parallel in its own transmission. The hexagram insists that transformation requires proven necessity and disciplined judgment; the book’s textual history shows how preservation, separation, arrangement, and commentary likewise shaped what could be understood.