YIII-KING, an ancient Chinese book. The annotation of Confucius to the ancient work Yih-King, states that Fu-he got tho idea of his diagrams from a figure on the back of a dragon horse ' which issued from a river. The same annotation states that, before Fu-lie invented tile Eight Diagrams, he observed the configurations and appeamnces in the heavens and tho earth, and the marks on birds and beasts; also that he derived information from his own person and from things around him. These terse passages of an ancient author are, when taken literally, apt to give a ridiculoua air to the Eight Diagrams. But a little examination shows the ineaning to be that Fuh-he constructed the Eight Diagrams only after a careful and extensive survey of nature and its varied phenomena, as exhibited in the depart ments which we call astronomy, rneteorology,_ physical geography, and. natural history, and after reflection on his own nature, physical and mental, and on the nature of men genemlly as manifested in the events of the social life around him. The Eight Diagrams formed, in fact, an illustrative figure intended to elucidate Fuh-he's theory of the universe, a theory adopted after careful reflection on all animate and inanimate nature without hia ken. They aro in so far undoubtedly the foundation of Chinese philosophy, but it must not be assumed that learned Chinese conceive any occult power to lie in thou. Much
in the same way we might say that the Literary Prince, having been imprisoned (while he was still a vassal of the dynasty he overthrew) by his jealous suzerain, during tho years B.C. 1144, 1143, 1142, made in the seclusion a different arrangement of the Eight Diagrams ; and he, with one of his sons, Chow-kung, who laboured after the establishment of the family 111 the sovereignty, gave permanency to their joint development of the national philosophy, by attach ing a few words of explication to each of the sixty-four doubled diagrams. Fuh-he's diagrams, as re-arranged, together with the short explica tions of the first monarch of the Chow dynasty and his son, form the basis or text of the first of the Chinese Sacred Books, the Yih-king. After an interval of six centuries, Confucius SCCU13 to have used the Yih-king fmming his own philo sophical views.
YIN and Yang, with the Chinese, the male and the female principle. These are represented above the entrance doors of dwelling-houses, as charms to ward off calamities. They are also represented on the flag flying at the mainmast of the imperial war junks.—Gray, ii. pp. 44, 247.