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Arrival of the I Ching in Europe

avonasac

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Hello,

After some research, I realized that I Ching had arrived in Europe from the 18th century. Are there traces of its presence in Europe during the Middle Ages? At least concerning the use of the symbols of Yin and Yang?

Thank you for your answers,
 

surnevs

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Hello,

After some research, I realized that I Ching had arrived in Europe from the 18th century. Are there traces of its presence in Europe during the Middle Ages? At least concerning the use of the symbols of Yin and Yang?

Thank you for your answers,
Before the 18th Century: ".....The first European translation from Zhouyi was included in Confucius Sinarum philosophus, a magnificent folio volume dedicated to Louis XIV and published at Paris in 1687. This book was edited by the Flemish Jesuit Philippe Couplet (1623-92), one of the first generation of French-speaking missionaries. He had worked in China since 1658....." (Richard Rutt, The Book of Changes - ZhouYi, Ch. 4, Routledge 2002).
It should though be strange if it shouldn't been known before that time as the Silk Road, according to Wikipedia, was used since the 2'Century BCE.
 
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surnevs

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- don't know about the relevance of this in connection with medieval Europe, but Richard Wilhelm seems to have found more than one parallel between passages in the I and the New Testament... The Yin/Yang and the Ultimate Supreme isn't (as I see it) directly connected with the received text of the I Ching ie. the text from around the 1' millennium BCE.
Laozi is said to have travelled westward, leaving behind the Daodejing as I understand it linked with Daoism and the concept of the Great Ultimate / Yin-Yang, around the sixth century B.C.E., according to Chinese sources *. An interesting question comes to me in this whole thing: did he (if not he, like some claims, is utter mythological) influence the philosophy in the Near-East region ? Because, if so, then the Yin Yang concept would have been known long before, and maybe into medieval Europe though maybe under different viewpoints or terms.
(something like that - subtract the timespan... :rolleyes: )

*) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/laozi/
 

surnevs

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- I don't understand Italian or Latin, but the Vatican Library has published material amongst which maybe something could be found, for those understanding these languages...
 

IrfanK

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Hello,

After some research, I realized that I Ching had arrived in Europe from the 18th century. Are there traces of its presence in Europe during the Middle Ages? At least concerning the use of the symbols of Yin and Yang?

Thank you for your answers,
Check out a book called The I Ching: A Biography, it has all the stories, at least the ones that remain in history, about Europeans' coming to terms with the I Ching. I'm not sure that it goes back as far as the middle ages, though. Certainly later on the Jesuits spent a lot of time studying it. They were fascinated with 15. They thought it contained the fundamental teachings of Christianity.
 

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