Where to find THE original "Zhouyi" / Book of Changes?

[jadecyra]

Hello,
I'm new to Open Space and the forums, so I'm actively searching for this myself within this site.. I am looking for THE original text of the Zhouyi / Book of Changes - - the very first one, written thousands of years ago. Where does this exist? I'm having trouble with internet searches for this.. I am not looking for translations or commentary; simply, THE text, unchanged from the way it was originally written.
Does this exist somewhere in book form, in a museum, perhaps in a pdf doc.?!???!!

Thanks!!!

 

[Liselle]

I think people agree there is no such thing.

Here's something Hilary said about it in a conversation that took place in comments to one of her blog posts:

With 'confluence' I was thinking of rivers. It's an either liberating or exasperating thing about the Yi's (pre)history, depending on how you look at things. With all the literature I'd studied before, there might be variant versions of the text around nowadays, but if you went back in time far enough you could trace your way up the various prongs of the fork, as it were, and find a single original. Even if the original didn't physically exist now, you knew it had existed. Whereas with Yi, it's the other way round. Nowadays there's one text, but the further up-river you walk towards its source, the more multiple and diverse it becomes, breaking up into lots of little tributaries and divergent variant manuscripts - and if we went far enough back, we'd find a host of tributary oral traditions rising out of the bedrock.

 

[jadecyra]

I think people agree there is no such thing.

Here's something Hilary said about it in a conversation that took place in comments to one of her blog posts:

Then how are people doing commentary/translations into other languages etc.. What is their source material - just previous translations? How can this be the case?

 

[hilary]

The 'received text' people translate from nowadays (unless they specify they're using a different source) is here:

Yijing Dao - 1935 Harvard-Yenching Zhouyi

Yijing Dao - Calling Crane in the Shade: A website dedicated to reviews of books on the Yijing or I Ching, the ancient Chinese oracle known as the Book of Changes, but also containing a complete 'Introduction to Yijing' for beginners, an accurate transcription of the 1935 Harvard-Yenching...

www.biroco.com

 

[surnevs]

- and this, Harvard-Yenching Zhouyi edition, has been translated to Pinyin / English Word by word:
% See attached PDF here.

 

[hilary]

Here's the actual Richter file that Svenrus' pdf links to: