The I Ching or Book of Changes Read Online Free PDF Page A

distortion of a text? In the case of Richard Wilhelm’s version of the I Ching , the answer is simple and ready to hand. However many other translations of this book may appear, and whatever their excellence, Wilhelm’s will remain unique, both by reason of his relation to the I Ching and because of the background out of which his translation grew. Unlike any other translator of this ancient work, he did not envisage the learned world as his only audience, and therefore addressed himself to the difficult task of making the I Ching intelligible to the lay reader. He wished to bring this first philosophy, this first effort of men to place themselves in the cosmos, out of the domain of specialists in philology and to put it into the hands of individuals anywhere who, like the authors of the I Ching , are concerned with their relation to the universe and to their fellow men.
    No less unique than this purpose of Wilhelm’s with regard to his translation were the circumstances that enabled him to carry it out. Long residence in China, mastery of both the spoken and the written language, and close association with the cultural leaders of the day, made it possible for him to understand the Chinese classics from the standpoint of the Chinese themselves. In translating the I Ching he was guided by a scholar of the old school, one of the last of his kind, who knew thoroughly the great field of commentary literature that has grown up around the book in the course of the ages.
    Quite naturally also, it was Wilhelm’s particular wish to have his translation appear in English, widening by so much the circle of its readers. It is clear that in desiring thus to make available to many people the wisdom that he himself had found in the I Ching , Wilhelm presupposed in his readers a degree of spiritual integrity that, together with the essential dignity of the book, would preclude the use of the oracle for trivial purposes, or its exploitation by charlatans of whatever type. Time alone will show whether his faith was justified.
    I was studying analytical psychology in Zurich when Dr. Jung asked me to undertake the rendering of the German version into English. The translation was to have had Wilhelm’s supervision; this, it was thought, would compensate my ignorance of Chinese. But his death in 1930 came long before I was ready to submit a manuscript to him. As I proceeded with the translation, I found that one very real compensation for my lack of Chinese remained, namely, the access to its philosophy afforded me through my growing knowledge of the work of Jung. This gave me a key to the archetypal world of the I Ching .
    The second world war and attendant circumstances beyond my personal control brought many long interruptions to my undertaking. But in the end the delays worked wholly to the advantage of the translation. Shortly after the manuscript had gone to press, Dr. Hellmut Wilhelm, who like his father has devoted much time to the study of the I Ching , left his home in Peiping to continue his work in sinology in the United States. I had already had expert advice from him by letter, and had always hoped that by some unexpected turn of fate it would be possible for him to criticize my translation, since he alone knew his father’s work sufficiently well to take the latter’s place. It was now my great good fortune to go over the proofs with him while he checked the translation against the Chinese text—using the very volumes that had accompanied Richard Wilhelm “on many a journey, halfway round the globe.”
    With Dr. Wilhelm’s arrival, a question arose as to whether it would be wise to rewrite certain passages of the translation to conform them to findings of modern scholarship that were not available to Richard Wilhelm when he did his work. Dr. Wilhelm decided that the book should be left as his father wrote it, because in no instance was the proposed change of more than minor importance with respect to the work as a