This is a most remarkable book about the history and philosophy of one of the most remarkable books the world has ever seen: the Yijing (I Ching) or The Book of Changes, as it is usually translated into English. More precisely, the book covers the development of the Yijing “from the Shang dynasty to the present” (p. xii) and is to be considered the first of many volumes on Yijing scholarship. (Two, one on the globalization of the Yijing and one on the Qing exegesis of the Yijing, are already under way; p. 264 n. 3). To paraphrase a traditional reading of Lunyu 7.17, one hopes Richard J. Smith will have fifty more years with which to produce more excellent scholarship on the Yijing.

The book consists of an introduction, nine chapters, and a conclusion, along with comprehensive appendices and bibliographies. Smith's handling of the traditional accounts of the genesis and development of this famously complex document, and its almost three thousand years of commentarial tradition, is nothing short of impressive. The diachronic approach demonstrates how Yijing scholarship developed over time in interaction with different interpretative strategies and “schools,” effectively undermining the “not only inadequate but also misleading” (p. xi) view of the Yijing as a timeless, universal document (the book of wisdom approach). Also, because virtually all Chinese thinkers throughout the ages took an interest in one or more of the many aspects of the Yijing, be that ethics, metaphysics, numerology, or cosmology, Smith's work reads like an intellectual history of China, which argues “that the categories to which Chinese thinkers have traditionally been consigned are too narrow to accommodate the full range and richness of their ideas” (p. xiii). Smith shows how most Chinese thinkers were capable of incorporating diverse strands of thought in their interpretations of the Yijing, and how the traditional sharp division between xiangshu (images and numbers) and yili (meanings and principles) “schools” is difficult to maintain.

Building on existing Western scholarship as well as a stupendous amount of modern and traditional Chinese sources, Smith weaves together a fascinating story, to which he brings his own insightful analyses, comments, and vast knowledge of Chinese intellectual traditions, being equally at ease with archaeological texts of the Warring States period (475–221 bce) and Yan Fu's (1854–1921) diaries, not to mention much more recent developments in Yijing studies. For more than two thousand years, the Yijing was transmitted as a Confucian classic, which, as Smith shows, did not prevent men of (what we perhaps would characterize as) Daoist or Buddhist persuasions to appropriate the book, as, for example, happened with a number of Buddhist thinkers during the Tang dynasty (618–907).

Since the beginning of the Tang, the court appointed several imperial commissions to establish orthodox editions of the Yijing and the many commentaries that it inspired. Smith examines the philosophical and ideological emphases of these imperially sponsored editions, including the important Zhouyi zhezhong (A Balanced Compendium of the Zhou Changes) of 1715, which formed the basis of the early European translations. At the same time, Smith explores regionalism in Yijing studies (p. 112) and “syncretism, that is, the self-conscious reconciliation of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism” (p. 165). Chapters 5–7 (dealing with the Song through the Qing) critically examine the views of the editors of the Siku quanshu (Complete Collection of the Four Treasuries) on a large number of Yijing-related works and the underlying tensions between works of the Han Chinese dynasties (Song and Ming) and those of foreign dynasties (Yuan and Qing). Equally fascinating and rewarding is Smith's treatment of the modern period in chapter 8 and the last chapter, entitled “The Yijing as a Source of Cultural Pride and Inspiration.”

A brief review cannot do justice to a book of such complexity. Let me state that I do think—with Smith's present work—we are much closer to an answer to Joseph Needham's question, “why did it (i.e., the Yijing) show such extraordinary longevity and persistence?” than we have ever been (see Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 2 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956], 336–37). In conclusion, I can only concur with Edward Shaughnessy and Joseph Adler, cited on the back cover. This is a major contribution to Chinese studies in general and to the fields of Chinese intellectual history and religion in particular, and this reviewer is very much looking forward to the next installment.