19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good translation of the Ma Wang Dui I Ching, October 18, 1999
This review is from: I Ching (Classics of Ancient China) (Paperback)
If you're interested in a translation of the MWD-text, and a comparison with the traditional received text, then you will like this book. From a sinological point of view it is interesting material, however, the book isn't written for diviners. It has no explanations of the symbols of the I Ching, not of the trigrams nor of the text. Shaughnessy told me he has never used the I Ching himself, but is purely interested in the old text and history of the book. And this translation shows this interest well.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A scholarly work not a popular text, March 27, 2004
A lot has happened in Chinese language scholarship in recent decades. (Would that I had more than a poor layman's appreciation of such endeavors!) Obvious are the changes in the transliterations into English. Gone is "Tao te Ching" for the now correct "Dao De Ching." (How I loved those t's pronounced like d's and their exotic appearance in print, now reduced to quaint nostalgia.)
Also changed is the I Ching, now properly known as Yijing, the "Classic of Changes" (formerly the "Book of Changes"). Note however that the publishers of this very fine volume have insisted on "I Ching" being in the title lest the uninitiated not realize that this book is about that enormously popular work of divination now at least 3,000 years old. As such the Yijing is one of the most venerable of all human writings and is of inestimable value for that reason alone.
The occasion for this book and for Professor Shaughnessy's translation and commentary is the discovery in 1973 of the Mawangdui manuscript which shed new light on the text of the Yijing. That manuscript dates from the second century B.C. However the original of the Yijing goes back to the days before works were written down. Ni, Hua Ching in his book The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth (1983) notes that "an ancient by the name of Fu Shi developed a line system to express the principle of appropriateness." Some time later around 1181 B.C. "the feudal lord, King Wen of the Shang Dynasty...provided a written explanation of these lines and hexagrams." (p. iii in the work cited)
Note well the use of the word "appropriateness." Although the Yijing is known primarily in the West as a book of divination, it is really a book about how one should behave and what one should expect in the face of the inevitable changes that dominate our lives. It is therefore in one sense a book of advice, advice to the high and the low, but especially to heads of state. It might be contrasted and compared to the Dao De Ching and to various volumes of advice from Sun Tzu's The Art of Warfare to Machiavelli's The Prince.
This particular book is not a popular work on the classic. Instead it is a meticulous scholar's work that presents the new textual discovery to the reader with both the Chinese characters and Shaughnessy's translation appearing on facing pages, noting omissions and puzzlements in the manuscript, etc. His commentary addresses the origins and development of the Yijing including the earlier commentaries by Confucius and others. This is a book for scholars and the most devoted students of the Yijing as well as Chinese history and culture.
I should also note that this is not a book about how to use the Yijing for fortune telling. There are many books that work well for that purpose including James Legge's I Ching: Book of Changes from 1964, which I have used. I might also mention Edward Albertson's I Ching for the Millions first published in 1969. One of the most respected books widely available is The I Ching or Book of Changes by C.F. Baynes and R. Wilhelm which was also first published in the sixties. Today no doubt there is an I Ching for "Dummies" or an "Idiots" guide that will work well for divination.
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