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This is a scholarly translation of the *Treatise on the Thwan* (Tuàn Zhuàn), one of the classical appendices to the *I Ching* (*Yijing*), traditionally attributed to Confucius as commentary on King Wén's explanations of the hexagrams. The text works through the first several hexagrams — Khien (Heaven), Khwän (Earth), Kun (Difficulty), Mäng (Inexperience), Hsü (Waiting), and Sung (Contention) — explaining how each hexagram's meaning arises from the symbolic attributes of its constituent trigrams and the placement of individual lines. The translator (James Legge, based on the scholarly apparatus) provides extensive footnotes that critically evaluate traditional interpretations, note where commentators like Kû Hsî overreach ("the sage is Heaven, and Heaven is the sage"), and push back against sensationalized readings such as McClatchie's sexual interpretation of Kun. A running argument in the notes is that the *I Ching*'s cosmological and ethical content — the interplay of Heaven and Earth, strength and docility, initiative and waiting — is philosophical and moral rather than mystical or obscene, with the "sage" functioning as an ideal of measured, responsive governance rather than a divine figure. The work is aimed at Western scholarly readers seeking a rigorous, annotated entry into classical Chinese divination literature, and it is distinctive for its comparative skepticism toward both native commentators and rival Western translators.

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