Title

An Occult Bamboo Tablet for Ancient Fortune Tellers: A Tentative Interpretation of the “Shifa” (Divinatory Methods)

Author

Lee Yee-yen

Genre

Feature Article

Pages

157-198

Download

PDF

Language

Chinese

Key words

Tsing Hua Bamboo Manuscripts, “Shifa”, Book of Changes, “Shuogua Zhuan”, numerical divination

Abstract

The recently published annotation of the “Shifa” 筮法, which appeared in the Tsing Hua Bamboo Manuscripts (Tsing Hua jian 清華簡), indicates that during the Warring States there existed in the south (the area influenced by Chu 楚 culture) a long-standing tradition of divinatory art (zhanbu 占卜) based on the eight trigrams (bagua 八卦). The fortune telling practice described in the text used four of the trigrams, which were each comprised of three numerical strokes (shuzi yao 數字爻). This article argues that while this tradition bares some resemblance to that of the Book of Changes (Zhouyi 周易), its origin is actually much older. For this reason, the Book of Changes’ “Shuogua zhuan” 說卦傳 commentary is not useful for interpreting the “Shifa”, as is conventionally claimed.