The Taixuanjing is a divination guide composed by the Confucian writer Yang Xiong (53 BCE – 18 CE) in the decade prior to the fall of the Western Han dynasty. The first draft of this work was completed in 2 BCE; during the Jin dynasty, an otherwise unknown person named Fan Wang (范望) salvaged the text and wrote a commentary on it, from which our text survives today.
Content
The Taixuanjing is a divinatory text similar to, and inspired by, the I Ching. The I Ching is based on 64 binary hexagrams—characters composed of six horizontal lines, with each line either broken or unbroken. Meanwhile, the Taixuanjing is based on 81 ternary tetragrams—characters composed of four lines, with each line either unbroken, broken once, or broken twice. Like the I Ching, it may be consulted as an oracle by casting yarrow stalks or a six-faced die to generate numbers which define the lines of the tetragram, which is then looked up in the text.[further explanation needed]
A tetragram drawn without moving lines refers to the tetragram description, while a tetragram drawn with moving lines refers to the specific lines.
The monograms are:
the unbroken line ( ⚊) for heaven (天; tiān),
once broken line ( ⚋) for earth (地; dì),
twice broken line ( 𝌀) for man (人; rén).
Numerically the symbols can be counted as ⚊ = 0, ⚋ = 1, 𝌀 = 2, and grouped into sets of four to count from 0 to 80. This is clearly intentional as this passage from chapter 8 of the Taixuanjing points out the principle of carrying and place value.
Chinese
English
推玄筭：
家 一置一，二置二，三置三。
部 一勿增，二增三，三增六。
州 一勿增，二增九，三增十八。
方 一勿增，二增二十七，三增五十四
Push Profound Calculation:
First Part: one sets one, two sets two, three sets three.
Second Part: one doesn't add, two adds three, three adds six.
Third Part: one doesn't add, two adds nine, three adds eighteen.
Fourth Part: one doesn't add, two adds twenty-seven, three adds fifty-four.
Translation
An English translation by Michael Nylan was published in 1993.
Nylan, Michael (1993). The Canon of Supreme Mystery: A Translation with Commentary of the T'AI HSÜAN CHING. SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN0-7914-1395-0.
In the Unicode Standard, the Tai Xuan Jing Symbolsblock is an extension of the I Ching symbols. Their Chinese aliases most accurately reflect their interpretation; for example, the Chinese alias of code point U+1D300 is "rén", which translates into English as man and yet the English alias is "MONOGRAM FOR EARTH".[1]
Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2006-02-16), "M47.15 (Defect in names of Tai Xuan Jing symbols)", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 47, Sophia Antipolis, France; 2005-09-12/15
