Yijing
/ˌiː ˈdʒɪŋ/noun
The ancient Chinese classic of divination and philosophy commonly known in English as the Book of Changes or I Ching.
Did you know?The Yijing began as a system of divination using hexagrams, but later became one of the Confucian classics and was interpreted as a guide to cosmic transformation.
Etymological Timeline
Late 2nd–1st Millennium BCE
Old Chinese
易
“Change, alteration, or the process of transformation”
Late 2nd–1st Millennium BCE
Old Chinese
經
“Warp thread; by extension, a canonical text or classic”
Western Zhou period
Old Chinese
周易
“The Changes of Zhou, an early title for the divination classic”
Han Dynasty
Classical Chinese
易經
“The Classic of Changes; the received title of the work”
17th Century
English
I Ching
“Wade–Giles romanization of the Chinese title”
20th–21st Century
English
Yijing
“Pinyin romanization of 易經, used in modern scholarship”