谈《周易》爻题的形成时间及相关诸问题

从《左传》有关记载、《周易》有关传文和以往出土的有关战国竹书综合考究,推断《周易》爻题的形成是在公元前 500年后的孔子晚年或再稍晚一点的时间;《周易》与其前筮书的最大区别是有爻辞;爻题的从无到有,是由开始多用或沿用其他种类的筮书、筮占方法而走向独尊《周易》的发展特点决定的;爻题体现着蓍与爻、卦的联系,表示爻的时位与方位,提示如何积爻成卦,具有多种含义与作用。

On the formation time of Yao ti and some issues related to it

From the accounts related in Zuo zhuan (the Spring and Autumn Annals),Commentaries in Zhouyi, and sources copied on the bamboo slips of the Warring States period excavated or collected, this paper infers that the formation of the Yao ti should have taken its shape around 500 B. C. when Confucius was at his old age or later. The most distinctive feature of Zhouyi is marked by the remarks affiliated to the hexagrams and lines. From the simultaneous use of many other divinatory books to the sole reverence to Zhouyi,Yao ti was gradually adopted and stressed. Yao ti indicates the correlation between the process of divination by stalks and the formation of a hexagram and its lines, identifies the spatial and temporal positions of a line, and exposes how a hexagram is formed by the accumulation of the lines, and thus possessing various implications and functions.