Jiaoshi Yilin (焦氏易林; pinyin: Jiāo shì Yì lín (or just "Mr. Jiao's Many Thoughts on the Book of Changes") is a Chinese book of divination composed during the Western Han Dynasty. Modeled on the I Ching, the work was attributed to Jiao Yanshou (焦延寿, see :zh:焦赣), courtesy name Jiao Gan焦赣, who came from Liang 梁 (modern Shang Qiu 商丘, Henan) and was a tutor in the household of the Prince of Liang (early 1st century BCE). He was a scholar and official, reaching the rank of district magistrate in Xiao Huang 小黄 (near modern Kaifeng 开封, Henan). He was a student of the great Yi Jing scholar Meng Xi 孟喜 and passed on the traditions of his school to Jing Fang 京房. However, some scholars suspect that the book was composed later, perhaps in the late Western Han, perhaps even somewhat later. I am inclined to agree with those who attribute the book to Cui Zhuan (崔篆), a scholar and official who was active in the time of the Wang Mang interregnum (9 - 23 CE). Many of the verses seem oriented to the use of traveling merchants.

Yi Lin literally means a forest or grove of changes. The book consists of 4096 verses. The verses represent all the possible combinations of the sixty-four hexagrams of the Book of Changes (Yi Jing/I Ching), thus 64 X 64 = 4096. Many of the verses of the Yi Lin were apparently lost over time and only approximately 1500 verses are unique, with the remaining verses full or partial duplicates. The verses are most often two couplets of four characters each. Some verses are as short as three lines and some as long as eight. Many of the longer verses have orphaned couplets at the end that do not seem to fit with the first two couplets.

When divining using the Yi Jing the figure may be unchanging (hexagram 50 remains 50, for example), or can have one or more moving lines which change it into another hexagram (16, third and fourth, lines changing, becomes 8). In this edition of the Forest of Changes that would be described as 16 - 8, and the text is:

16 - 8

Even a ravenous tiger,

Will not eat a spiny hedgehog.

Yu the Great carved out the Dragon Gate.

Avoiding misfortune and eliminating calamity,

The people attain peace.

This verse has several typical elements of the Forest. For one, there is a bit of folk wisdom on tigers and hedgehogs. Then comes the reference to Yu the Great, tamer of floods and founder of the Xia Dynasty. The verse uses an image from Chinese mythology in which Yu is supposed to have carved out a mountain as part of his herculean labors changing the flood pattern of China.

Later diviners made use of various techniques to determine one or both of the hexagrams for an Yi Lin reading. These often included drawing trigram images from the world around them and the events they were inquiring about and using a system to associate hexagrams with each hour. The Song Dynasty Yi Jing scholar Shao Yong is said to have used the Forest of Changes as part of his system of Plum Blossom Numerology.

Dating the Text

The following items lend credence to at least portions of the text being written later than the lifetime of Jiao Yan Shou (1st century BCE), the purported author:

The Red Lord, mentioned in 28 - 34, is a mythological figure that became popular in the waning days of the Western Han, and is to be found in the so-called Han Apocrypha literature.

References to the Queen Mother of the West as a goddess to whom prayers for rescue are directed place the book at or near the end of the Western Han since an attitude toward her as a saving figure was not observed until that time (See Loewe, 1979).

At least one verse (45 - 42) points quite clearly to the story of Wang Zhao Jun. Most of the key events in her life were in the 30s BCE.

Although there have been many periods of flooding in China, one particularly heavy set of floods happened in 29 BCE. The large number of verses in the Forest about flood disasters lead me to believe it was written at a time when many floods were happening. Thus this is a very tenuous dating parameter, but it cannot be entirely excluded.

Read more...: Themes in the Forest  

《易林》又名《焦氏易林》，十六卷，旧题西汉焦赣撰。《四库全书》将之列于「子部术数类」。

《易林》源自于《周易》，每一卦各变为六十四卦，六十四卦变四千零九十六卦。《易经》共有卦爻辞450条，《易林》有4096占卦变之辞，卦爻辞较之增加十倍之多，各系以文辞，率皆四言韵语（偶有三言语），称为「林辞」。《易林》占辞内容丰富，博涉先秦典籍，具有较高的文学价值。清人更将《易林》说《诗》归之于《齐诗》。胡适也认为这书有趣味性，但「本身并没有思想史料的价值。」钱锺书在《管锥编》立《焦氏易林》专题，不谈作者，专论本书的文学价值。《易林》提到《姤》之《损》辞曰：「梦饭不饱，酒未入口；婴女虽好，媒雁不许。」钱举出《楞严经》「如人说食，终不能饱」与唐代寒山诗「说食不能饱，说衣不免寒」，并加以申论：「『梦饭』之造境寓意深于『说食』，盖『说食』者，自知未食或无食，而『梦饭』者，自以为食或可得而食也。」

《易林》未著录于《汉书·艺文志》，至《隋书·经籍志》始著录于「五行家」。《隋书》、《旧唐书》、《新唐书》各本「经籍志」皆载《焦氏易林》与《崔氏周易林》二书。作者众说纷纭，一般有四种说法：焦延寿、崔篆、许峻，另外清人顾炎武则以为是东汉后期著作。余嘉锡于《四库提要辨证》详考此书，认为是东汉王莽时崔篆所撰。胡适更认为《焦氏易林》与《崔氏易林》是同一部。

Read more...: 注释   参考书目