or I Ching
(Chinese; " Book of Changes ")
Ancient Chinese text, one of the Five Classics of Confucianism.
The main body of the work, traditionally attributed to Wenwang , contains a discussion of the divinatory system used by wizards in the Zhou dynasty . A supplementary section of "commentaries," believed to date from the Warring States period (475221 BC), is a philosophical exposition that attempts to explain the world and its ethical principles. The book's cosmology, which involves humans and nature in a single system, has made it universally popular.