Excerpt from The Oldest Book of the Chinese, the Yh-King, and Its Authors, Vol. 1 The yh-king, the first in rank of the canonical books of China, was the result of a transformation in the twelfth cen tury of an older work made of documents very ancient in date, and which entitles it to be called the Oldest book of the Chinese. I came to that conclusion twelve years ago, and since that time the proofs on which it was based have grown stronger every year. The discrimination of its various strata and sources does away with the apparently insoluble meaning of the work, insolubility shown by the or more explanations which have been suggested in China, and the remarkable discrepancies appearing in the European render ings of the text. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.