Images and elephants 象

[Tony_L]

This is not really a question about a reading but about the meaning of a Chinese character.

Wilhelm typically includes the "Image" in his text on each hexagram.
The Chinese character for shape or image is 象, xiang, which also means "elephant."

Does anyone know why the Image should also mean an elephant?
What is the connection? Is there any divinatory relevance? (That seems unlikely unless one is reading for a zookeeper).

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Tony

[sparhawk]

The Chinese character for shape or image is 象, xiang, which also means "elephant."

Does anyone know why the Image should also mean an elephant?
What is the connection? Is there any divinatory relevance? (That seems unlikely unless one is reading for a zookeeper).


Hi Tony,

As far as I know, there is no divinatory relevance to the character. You must think like somebody living three thousand years ago. The etymology is more of a mental association between what such a big animal would represent in front of you. It also means "ivory" and carved figures from it, hence "image, resemble." Ivory is an obvious derivation from the image of an elephant. Take a look here (http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterASP/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E8%B1%A1) and see some of the old Bronze Characters.

[Tony_L]

Luis,

Thanks. The link was very helpful.

Tony

[charly]

...The Chinese character for shape or image is 象, xiang, which also means "elephant."...
Tony:

I was said that xiang was at the begining the sketch of an ELEPHANT, that later was used for meaning IVORY, goten fron the elephant tusks, used for carving all sort of shapes, then SHAPE / IMAGE.

I believe that it has many associations with the spiritual world. Elephants are known for being memorious and reverent. It is curious that in most of the early characters the sketched elephant is not standing in his feet.

May be sign that the elephant was not alive but dead, meaning IVORY. Was ivory carving the main use of the elephant, before they were used at war or as work force?

...It is hard to believe that four thousand years ago elephants roamed where Beijing now stands, but the largest land animals on earth now survive in China only in a few small enclaves on the Burmese border. Elephants were the victims of both human persecution and of climate change. The great sage Mencius wrote of how the Duke of Zhou in around 1000 BC “drove the tigers, leopards, rhinoceroses and elephants far away, and the world was greatly delighted...
From: THE RETREAT OF THE ELEPHANTS, AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF CHINA
By Mark Elvin
http://www.gbcc.org.uk/29article4.htm

Maybe the best elephant was the dead elephant.

From ancient times to our days, an important source of ivory for carving were fossil skeletons of syberian mammots, maybe the character xiang represented a mammoth skeleton > IVORY and the stuff made carving it > SHAPE/ IMAGE.

Yours,

Charly

[Tony_L]

Thanks for all this interesting information. I like the notion that elephants and the shapes of the hexagrams are related (at least in etymology). The Wings contain the phrase 象 曰 which could be translated "the image says" but I kind of like the literal translation "the elephant speaks". These elephants apparently have a lot to tell us.

Maybe it's stretching matters but I did a search and found a photo of an elephant's graveyard. The bones do bear some resemblance of a yijing hexagram:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/white-phant/2287504757/

[listener]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2156879506171265721&q=elephant+painting&total=331&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2156879506171265721&q=elephant+painting&total=331&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0)

[hilary]

Elephants and images...

have creative and destructive power... move great weights... convey messages as if by magic... store knowledge safely for many years...

[frank_r]

Amazing the drawings of these Elephants. I didn't knew this was possible.

[Tony_L]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2156879506171265721&q=elephant+painting&total=331&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2156879506171265721&q=elephant+painting&total=331&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0)


Now that I've seen the video, it's clear that an elephant rather than King Wu originally wrote the Zhouyi.

[sparhawk]

Now that I've seen the video, it's clear that an elephant rather than King Wu originally wrote the Zhouyi.

I'll second that! :D

[charly]

... it's clear that an elephant rather than King Wu originally wrote the Zhouyi.
Tony:

Of course, but Master-Elephant wrote only the less early part of the YI, more ancient were the written parts from Master-Boar, maybe the same Muddy-Pig that used to go all accross the YI, sometimes seen as a demon.

Yours,

Charly

_________________________
Elephants were related to the supernatural, as it's proved by the Elephants' Graveyard Myth, for more information ask Tarzan.

[hilary]

The original, shorter version, was written by a frog.
'Dragon underwater. Please leave it there; some of us are trying to get some rest. Thank you.'

(Some textual corruption creeps into the Muddy Pig's version, understandably.)

By the way,
...an elephant rather than King Wu...
contains a hidden assumption about King Wu.

[charly]

The original, shorter version, was written by a frog ...
Hilary:

I"m amazed!

May be the same frog that became King?

Yours,

Charly

[charly]

...
From ancient times to our days, an important source of ivory for carving were fossil skeletons of syberian mammots, maybe the character xiang represented a mammoth skeleton > IVORY and the stuff made carving it > SHAPE/ IMAGE.
...
About frozen siberian mammoths:
Frozen Mammoths
...intriguing accounts of animals buried and preserved whole in the frozen wastes of northern Siberia and Alaska. Unlike the other fossil graveyards where only broken bones are found in confusion, the vast cemetery of the north teems with complete animals, wolves, bears, elephants, rhinoceroses, and the woolly mammoths with their beautiful tusks of ivory (Whitley 1910)... There are many of these animals preserved with their bones fresh and not at all mineralized, and, since Roman times, ivory "mining" has been a steady and lucrative trade (Farrand 1961; Lippman 1962)... The Chinese, renowned for their ivory carving, use mammoth tusks from Siberia, and it is estimated that northern Siberia has provided more than half the world's ivory for such items as billiard balls and piano keys.
I.T.Taylor: Science and Geology
from: http://www.creationism.org/books/TaylorInMindsMen/TaylorIMMd04.htm


Charly

[charly]

Elephants were related to the supernatural, as it's proved by the Elephants' Graveyard Myth, for more information ask Tarzan.
Somebody remembers having heard the cry of Tantor at the begining of Tarzan radio serials?

Something for the the memory:

http://www.johncolemanburroughs.com/mag/tzrom1h6.jpg
From: http://www.johncolemanburroughs.com/mag/1196.html

Charly

[auriel]

The Elephant in Medieval Heraldry
The elephant is seen, not only as a beast [of burden], but also as a symbol of Christ's redemption of the human race. The animal, according to [legend], is supposed to sleep standing, leaning against a tree. Hunters sever the [tree] trunk, and he falls helpless to the ground, until a small elephant approaches and pulls him up with his trunk.
The foe of the elephant was the dragon, who devoured newly-born elephants, and, like the elephant, Adam and Eve had their dragon, the tempter, for the foe. They eat of the forbidden friut and are lost. They are redeemed by Christ, as also the young elephant, "through a tree" succors those who have fallen.
In the medieval mind, then, the elephant [is a dragon slayer and] suggested the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and did not merely symbolise strength.

[turtlfur]

The Yijing is a symbolic world that is made up of xiang, or images. The images are reproductions of the alchemical process that happens between heaven and earth. Through these images, we can directly connect to this process, and come to a greater understanding of the inner workings of the universe. The character for image, xiang, (象), also means elephant, or ivory carving, and is itself a picture of an elephant. It is possible that the meanings of “image, symbol, model, or form” that have been ascribed to xiang derive from the use of the elephant tusks as material for carving artistic or literal representations of things.

Another theory is put forth by Han Fei, in his 'Interpretation of Lao-zu': “Men seldom see a live elephant, but finding the skeleton of a dead elephant they rely on their picturing of it to imagine it alive. Therefore everything everything people use to get the idea of or imagine is called a hsiang.” 1This idea is reminiscent of a Paleontologist's work with dinosaur bones. The bones of ancient creatures long extinct are assembled and marveled over, yet they are only bones, and it is up to the Paleontologist to imagine what the living dinosaur actually looked like. A.C. Graham, commenting on the above quotation, put it in this way: “This suggests that the hsiang is like a skeleton to be fleshed out, a structure rather than a delineated image. According to the Appendices the diagrams were invented in order to display these structures.” 2 This interpretation of the character xiang is very appropriate to Yijing study, because it hones in on the root meaning of images as concrete manifestations of an elusive and energetic phenomenon. (The elephant is no longer alive, but the idea of the living elephant exists, hidden in the holographic reality of its bones).


-this is from my current work that is in progress about the DaXiang.....the reference is A.C. Graham's Disputers of the Tao........:bows:

[hilary]

-this is from my current work that is in progress about the DaXiang...
Oh...? Please say more!

I like the idea of gua as skeleton-xiang.

[heylise]

The Yijing is a symbolic world that is made up of xiang, or images. The images are reproductions of the alchemical process that happens between heaven and earth. Through these images, we can directly connect to this process, and come to a greater understanding of the inner workings of the universe.
...
-this is from my current work that is in progress about the DaXiang.....

I really really like this!! Never read a better description of how hexagrams feel to me.

LiSe