The Yi Forest of Jiao Taoist Classics 焦氏易林

Authored by Jiao Yanshou (also known as Jiao Gan) of the Western Han Dynasty.

It was recorded as sixteen volumes in Bibliography of the Book of Sui.

The existing version has ten volumes. According to the postscripts at the end of the book, Chen Zhensun of the Southern Song Dynasty first obtained it in Putian in the Dinghai year of the Baoqing reign period (1227). Scholars including Peng Hua, Jiang En and Ma Pian of the Ming Dynasty successively engraved and published this book. Later, it was included in the Supplementary Daoist Canon during the Wanli reign period. The author Jiao Gan was a distinguished scholar of Zhouyi studies in the Han Dynasty.

The Yi Forest of Jiao

His academic thought was inherited from Meng Xi and passed down to Jing Fang, belonging to the omen-observing school of the image-number Zhouyi studies in the Han Dynasty, which focused on the theories of yin-yang disasters and changes. Taoism-influenced concepts are embodied in the textual content. The book discusses the changes of hexagrams and lines, stating that each hexagram can be transformed into sixty-four hexagrams, and the sixty-four hexagrams of the Zhouyi can be transformed into four thousand and ninety-six hexagrams. After each hexagram, several lines of tetrasyllabic or trisyllabic rhyming verses are attached to predict good fortune, misfortune, auspiciousness and adversity.

Its method of hexagram transformation is consistent with Zhu Xi’s remarks cited in Mei Zhe’s An Investigation into the Origin of the Ancient Zhouyi. This theoretical system is closely associated with the five elements theory in traditional Chinese philosophy. Some scholars argue that this book was forged by scholars of the Eastern Han Dynasty. It was also included in the Supplementary Daoist Canon, which is an extension of The Daozang.