The I Ching, or The Book of Changes, is one of the most important books in the history of Oriental culture. It was one of the Five Classics edited by Confucius, who is reported to have wished he had fifty more years of life to study it. The book has retained its significance and has been used by Confucianists and Taoists alike, by learned literary scholars and street shamans. The I Ching is a manual of divination, founded upon what modern scholars have called the synchronistic concept of the universe.This concept maintains that all things happening at a certain time have certain characteristic features which can be isolated, so that in addition to vertical causality, one may also have horizontal linkages. The I Ching is believed to be one of the few divination manuals to survive into the modern era, and it is typographically interesting as perhaps the most developed, most elaborate system that is known in detail. In philosophy, it marks a stage in the development of human thought, and has become important to the understanding of certain cultural developments in the Western world.This edition presents the standard English translation by the great Sinologist James Legge, prepared for the Sacred Books of the East series. It contains the basic text attributed to King Wan and the Duke of Chou, the ten appendices usually attributed to Confucius, a profound introduction by Legge, and exhaustive footnotes explaining the text for a Western reader.
