Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 16.djvu/77

 to speak of the Fû-hsî trigrams, and passes from them to those of king Wăn in paragraph 8. That and the following two are very remarkable; but before saying anything of them, I will go on to the 14th, which is the only passage that affords any ground for saying that there is a mythology in the Yî. It says:—

'undefined is (the symbol of) heaven, and hence is styled. undefined is (the symbol of) earth, and hence is styled. undefined (shows) the first application (of  to  ), resulting in getting (the first of) its male (or undivided lines), and hence we call it the oldest son. undefined (shows) a first application (of  to  ), resulting in getting (the first of) its female (or divided lines), and hence we call it the oldest daughter. undefined (shows) a second application (of  to  ), and   a second (of   to  ), resulting in the second son and second daughter. In undefined and undefined we have a third application (of  to   and of   to  ), resulting in the   and  .'

From this language has come the fable of a marriage between  and , from which resulted the six other trigrams, considered as their three sons and three daughters; and it is not to be wondered at, if some men of active and ill-regulated imaginations should see Noah and his wife in those two primary trigrams, and in the others their three sons and the three sons' wives. Have we not in both cases an ogdoad? But I have looked in the paragraph in vain for the notion of a marriage-union between heaven and earth.

It does not treat of the genesis of the other six trigrams by the union of the two, but is a rude attempt to explain their forms when they were once existing. According to the idea of changes,  and   are continually varying their forms by their interaction. As here represented, the

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