Key Sources & Further Reading

This page therefore sorts the material by what you might want. Each section says what the works are for as well as naming them.

The source sentence

The clause that started everything sits in one of the essays appended to the Book of Changes. For a translation of the appended commentaries themselves, the versions discussed on the Book of Changes pages of this site all include them: Wilhelm and Baynes give the traditional reading, and Richard John Lynn's translation gives them with the third-century commentary that treats the taiji as the unqualified.

It is worth reading the whole passage in which the clause appears, not the clause alone, because the surrounding sentences make clear that the immediate subject is the generation of the figures of a divination system rather than the origin of the cosmos.

The Song essay and its interpretation

The eleventh-century essay accompanying the diagram is very short and is translated in the standard anthologies. Wing-tsit Chan's A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy gives it with the principal commentary attached, and that volume remains the single most useful book in English for anyone working on Chinese philosophical terminology; it is old, it has been criticised, and nothing has replaced it.

For a detailed modern treatment, Joseph Adler's Reconstructing the Confucian Tao examines how the essay was appropriated and reinterpreted by the twelfth-century philosopher who made it orthodox, and it is precise about exactly the questions this section raises. Adler has also translated that philosopher's shorter introduction to the study of the Book of Changes, which is directly relevant.

For the philosopher's own voice, Daniel Gardner's selection from the classified conversations gives a good sense of how these concepts were discussed in teaching, and Wing-tsit Chan's translation of the anthology of Neo-Confucian writings compiled in the twelfth century shows what the tradition considered essential.

The dispute over the limitless

The exchange of letters about whether the term for limitless should be prefixed is partly translated in the anthologies, and the positions are summarised in the standard histories. The best entry point is Chan's source book together with the relevant chapters of the general histories listed below; the correspondence itself is technical and repays reading only after the positions are clear.

For the opposing school, Philip Ivanhoe's Readings from the Lu-Wang School of Neo-Confucianism gives translated selections, and Wing-tsit Chan's translation of the sixteenth-century conversations known in English as instructions for practical living shows where that line of thought ended up.

The martial classics

The short theoretical texts of the martial art are available in several translations, and the choice matters as much as it does elsewhere.

Barbara Davis's annotated translation of the classics is the most useful single volume: it gives the texts with a nineteenth-century commentary and discusses the manuscript history. Douglas Wile's work on the late Qing manuscripts is the essential scholarly treatment, establishing what the earliest documents actually say and when they were written; his companion volume on the art's antecedents collects earlier material. Louis Swaim's translations, published as part of larger practice manuals, are careful about terminology and are a good check on looser versions.

A caution specific to this literature. A great many published translations of these texts are made by practitioners without philological training and reproduce a received understanding rather than the Chinese. Since the texts are short and terse, the divergences are large.

Reference works and anthologies

Three general works will answer most incidental questions.

De Bary and Bloom's Sources of Chinese Tradition is the standard document collection and places each text in context. Fabrizio Pregadio's Encyclopedia of Taoism has entries on the terms, the diagrams and the practices, written by specialists, and is the fastest route to reliable information on the Taoist side. Livia Kohn's Taoism Handbook covers the same ground in longer essays.

Neo-Confucian metaphysics

Peter Bol's Neo-Confucianism in History explains what the movement was for socially and politically, which is the context that makes the metaphysics intelligible. A. C. Graham's study of the two eleventh-century brothers whose work preceded the synthesis is a model of careful philosophical exposition and shows where the vocabulary of pattern came from. For the philosophical content in itself, the relevant chapters of the general histories are adequate, and readers wanting more should go to Adler.

The Taoist side

Isabelle Robinet's article on the place and meaning of the term in Taoist sources is the key study, and it demonstrates that the term had a substantial Taoist history independent of the Confucian debate. Her books on internal alchemy and on the history of Taoism give the framework.

For the alchemical use of the cosmological scheme, Fabrizio Pregadio's annotated translation of the second-century alchemical classic is the practical entry point, since it explains the notation as it goes. His other studies of alchemy extend this.

The history of the diagram

This is a specialist question and the literature is largely in Chinese. In English, Robinet's article addresses it, and the introductions to the works listed above discuss the argument about whether the eleventh-century chart derives from a Taoist original. That argument began in China several centuries ago and continues; readers of Chinese will find modern scholarship on the diagram's antecedents, and the honest summary of the current position is that the question is open.

For the interlocking circle specifically, be careful with sources. A great deal of what is written about its antiquity is simply invented, and confident claims about Neolithic or Bronze Age origins should be treated as unsupported unless an actual object and a dated context are cited.

The history of the martial art

This field has a strong tradition of critical scholarship, which is worth knowing because it is not reflected in popular books.

Douglas Wile's volumes, already mentioned, are the foundation in English. Peter Lorge's general history of Chinese martial arts places the art in a long context and is sober about lineage claims. Meir Shahar's study of a famous monastery is not about this art at all, but it documents the same general process by which practices acquire retrospective philosophical and religious genealogies, and reading it is a useful inoculation. Stanley Henning's articles on martial arts historiography are short, pointed and specifically concerned with debunking invented lineages.

In Chinese, critical historical work on the art's origins began in the 1930s, when scholars examined the attribution of the art to a legendary Taoist figure and found no support for it. That literature is still the basis of serious discussion in Chinese.

Chinese-language sources

If you read Chinese, several things become much easier.

The Song essay and its principal commentary are printed together in many editions. The classified conversations of the twelfth-century synthesiser are available in modern punctuated editions and are the richest source on how these terms were actually used. Chen Lai's study of that philosopher's thought is a standard modern treatment. For the martial texts, the nineteenth-century manuscript transcriptions and the critical studies produced in the Republican period are the primary materials, and modern collections reprint them.

What to check in any Chinese work on this topic: whether it distinguishes the source clause from the Song interpretation, whether it dates the diagram, and whether it cites documents or repeats lineage narratives.

A suggested order, and cautions

For a reader starting from nothing: read the passage in the appended commentary first, in any reliable translation, so that you see how little there is. Then read the Song essay, which takes ten minutes. Then read Adler, for what was made of it. Then Robinet's article, for the Taoist parallel. Then, if the martial art interests you, Davis and Wile.

Three cautions. Popular books on this subject reproduce each other, and a claim repeated in twenty of them is not thereby supported. Any source that dates the interlocking diagram before the Song is unreliable on everything else it says. And a source that presents the martial art as derived from the philosophy has the sequence backwards, which usually indicates it is repeating tradition rather than examining it.

Key points

• The primary sources are very short: one clause, one brief essay, some letters, and a few martial manuals.
• Chan's source book remains the most useful single English volume for the philosophical vocabulary; Adler is the best modern study of the Song essay's reinterpretation.
• Robinet's article establishes that the term had an independent Taoist history alongside the Confucian debate.
• For the martial classics use Davis and Wile; many practitioner translations reproduce a received understanding rather than the Chinese.
• Claims about the interlocking diagram's antiquity are frequently invented, and should be treated as unsupported without a dated object.
• Critical Chinese scholarship on the martial art's origins dates from the 1930s and remains the basis of serious discussion.