Translations of the
Yi jing
into western languages have been biased towards the
yili
('meaning and pattern') tradition, whereas studies of the
xiangshu
('image and number') tradition - which takes as its point of departure the imagery and numerology associated with divination and its hexagrams, trigrams, lines, and related charts and diagrams - has remained relatively unexplored. This major new reference work is organised as a Chinese-English encyclopedia, arranged alphabetically according to the
pinyin
romanisation, with Chinese characters appended. A character index as well as an English index is included. The entries are of two kinds: technical terms and various other concepts related to the 'image and number' tradition, and bio-bibliographical information on Chinese
scholars. Each entry in the former category has a brief explanation that includes references to the origins of the term, cross-references, and a reference to an entry giving a more comprehensive treatment of the subject.