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Arthur Waley «Book of Changes»

charly

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Many years that Steve Marshall put in his site a pdf copy of the thought provoking study of A. Waley originally published by the Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities.

Now the complete bulletin (BMFEA, nº 5, 1933) is available in a searchable pdf with an acceptable OCR, although not error-free, in «Archive.org».

Say that, with some work, everybody can edit a text for quoting.

For people interested in what did Waley say about a given hexagram, can be of some use the following list of hexagrams in Waley's article:


H.1 > page:141
H.2 > page:141
H.3 > page:124
H.4 > page:130
H.5 > page:127
H.6 > page:126
H.7 > page:127
H.8 > page:126
H.9 > pages:125 to 126
H.13 > page:139
H.14 > pages:125 to 126
H.17 > pages:125 to 126
H.18 > page:132
H.20 > pages:125 to 126 / 132 to 134
H.21 > page:129
H.22 > page:132
H.25 > page:131
H.27 > page:134
H.28 > page:129
H.29 > pages:135 to 136 / 139 to 140
H.31 > page:123
H.32 > pages:136 to 137
H.33 > page:124
H.34 > page:125
H.35 > pages:137 to 138
H.36 > page:127
H.38 > pages:138 to 139
H.39 > page:123
H.40 > page:124
H.40 > page:126
H.49 > pages:125 to 126
H.51 > page:122
H.52 > page:134
H.53 > page:128
H.54 > page:129
H.57 > pages:124 / 126
H.58 > page:138
H.61 > page:129
H.63 > page:139
H.64 > page:124 to 126 / 139

Thanks to Steve and to Archive.org.

Charly
____________________
The list can be not error free. Nobody's perfect!
Ch.
 
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charly

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Editable text on H.35 in Waley's article, pages 137/138. Between brackets was added a modern phonetic in pinyin

_______________ Arthur WALEY «Book of Changes» QUOTE _______________​
« ... § 35 is headed [yin4]. I suggest that this stands for [yin4]'to insert'.

康侯用錫馬蕃庶。
[kang1 hou2 yong4 xi1 ma3 fan2 shu4 .]
晝日三接
[zhou4 ri4 san1 jie1]
受茲介福。于其王母。
[shou4 zi1 jie4 fu2 . yu2 qi2 wang2 mu3 .]

It has already been recognized by Ku Chieh-kang 1) that K'ang Hou is a proper name and refers to the brother 2) of the first Chou emperor; Ku, however, regards the second line as unintelligible. I would translate:

'The lord of K'ang caused his gift-horses to multiply exceedingly. He coupled (the stallion with the mares) three times in a morning. He received this «delimitated» [jie4] blessing from his royal mother.'

The commentators tell us that [jie4] simply means great. This is what they invariably say when a word belongs to the old ritual vocabulary, the clue to which had been lost. I suggest that [jie4] denotes the magic which renders spaces intact by 'bordering' them with protective signs. Such is the purpose of border-patterns (spirals, key-patterns) on early works of art. A chieh fu 介福 [jie4 fu2] is a blessing which has been either directly or symbolically 'bordered' in this way.

A pestilence may also be 'bordered', so that it does not spread, cf. § 58 介疾有喜 [jie4 ji2 you3 xi3] 'If you chieh the disease, all will be well.' The meaning of [yin4] 'inserting' will be apparent to anyone who has ever lived on a farm.

_______________

1) Ku Shih Pien, p. 17.
2)Prince of Wei, Lord of K'ang. See Chavannes, Memoires Historiques, I, 246.
... »
_______________________ End of Quote _______________________​

I wonder why did Waley add «the stallion with the mares». If it was for clearing the sense, avoiding that readers could eventually think that was Kan Hou in person that coupled three times in a morning, or if it was for pointing to a possible double entender, that it should not pass unnoticed!

But that's another story !

All the best,

Charly

P.D. get pdf from archive.org here:
There are other formats.

Ch.
 
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