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Yin-Yang
(Eum-Yang in Korean)

The early Han dynasty (207 B.C. - 9 A.D.) devoted itself to regaining the same level of central government as the previous Ch'in dynasty (221 B.C.-207 B.C.) and the Legalists had gained. This, along with the Legalists' attempts to standardize Chinese culture and philosophy, led the Han to attempt to unify all the rival schools of Chinese thought and philosophy. The Legalists had attempted to standardize Chinese thought by burning the books of rival schools and by making it a capital crime to speak of Confucius, Lao Tzu, or Mo Tzu. Rather than reject alternate ways of thinking, the Han attempted to fuse all the rival schools of thought into a single system.

The concepts of Yin-Yang and five elements are thought to have developed separately in ancient times and it is not until the Han Dynasty that we find them linked together in the school they retrospectively named Yin-Yang. Tsou Yen (305-204 B.C.), a principle thinker of this school, is credited with bringing the two concepts together, but the work attributed to him is lost. The ancients used the concepts for magic and divination. In the early Han period they were used to develop a sophisticated cosmology. The Five Elements are discussed in the Great Norm chapter of the Book of History but there is no comparable discussion on Yin-Yang. These concepts appear in the later texts as 'given' ideas that are then developed as ways of 'explaining' all phenomena. Yet they are not discussed together in any of the Confucian or Taoist Classics of an early date.

The Yin-Yang ideas of Tsou Yen were developed further by Tung Chung-Shu (179-104 B.C.) and the compilers of the appendices (wings) of the I Ching. Tung built up a body of correspondence that related the complementary principles of Yin-Yang to all phases of creation. Yin was related to the ideas of female, moon, cold, water, earth, autumn, and winter. It is also nourishes and sustains the 'myriad things'. Yin and Yang continue to succeed each other and as each 'force' reaches its extreme it becomes the other, thus producing a never ending cycle. This constant progression was used to explain the process of growth and change in the natural world.

The appendices of the I Ching expanded and developed the Yin-Yang concept into a comprehensive cosmology. The first two hexagrams Ch'ien (heaven) and K'un (earth) were equated with Yang and Ying respectively. These forces then assumed a metaphysical dimension and heaven and earth, where male and female become the 'creators and sustainers' of all the other hexagrams. The sixty-four hexagrams come to represent all possible situations and changes in the universe. The study of the hexagrams, and their interpretations, enabled a scholar to understand the activities of the universe, which, once expanded, reveal the endless process of universal change. All things and all changes can be described in terms of Yin-Yang activity and this is then developed further by the concept of the five elements.

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Subtopics:  NEXT | Preface  Five Classics  Other Concepts  Opposites  Interrelationship of Yin-Yang  Symbols

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