Chin / Progress

above: Li The Clinging, Flame
below: K'un The Receptive, Earth

The second [six], divided, shows its subject with the appearance of advancing, and yet of being sorrowful. If he be firm and correct, there will be good fortune. He will receive this great blessing from his grandmother.

Line 2 is weak, and its correlate in 5 is also weak. Its subject therefore has still to mourn in obscurity. But his position is central and correct, and he holds on his way, until success comes ere long. The symbolism says he receives it 'from his grandmother'; and readers will be startled by the extraordinary statement, as I was when I first read it. Literally the Text says 'the king's mother'. P. Regis (also tries) to give the name a historical reference; - to Thai-Kiang, the grandmother of King Wan; Thai-Zan, his mother; or to Thai-sze, his wife, and the mother of King Wu and the Duke of Kau, all famous in Chinese history, and celebrated in the Shih. But 'king's father' and 'king's mother' are well-known Chinese appellations for 'grandfather' and 'grandmother' This is the view given on the passage by Khang-tze, Ku Hsi, and the Khang-hsi editors, the latter of whom, indeed, account for the use of the name, instead of 'deceased mother', which we find in hexagram 62, by the regulations observed in the ancestral temple. These authorities, moreover, all agree in saying that the name points us to line 5, the correlate of 2, and 'the lord of the hexagram'. Now the subject of line 5 is the sovereign, who at length acknowledges the worth of the feudal lord, and gives him the great blessing. The 'New Digest of Comments on the Yi (1686)', in its paraphrase of the line, has, 'he receives at last this great blessing from the mild and compliant ruler.' I am not sure that 'motherly king' would not be the best and fairest translation of the phrase.

Canon McClatchie has a very astonishing note on the name, which he renders 'Imperial Mother' (p. 164): - 'That is, the wife of Imperial Heaven (Juno), who occupies the "throne of the diagram", viz. the fifth stroke which is soft and therefore feminine. She is the Great Ancestress of the human race. See Imp. Ed. vol. iv, Sect v, p. 25, Com.' Why such additions to the written word?