The Classic of Changes in Cultural Context: A Textual Ar ...

In the classic itself, too, the interest of using this 110 structure in hexagrams, such as notably 111110, is in the point of breaching (jue ) integrity of enclosing containments—in operations such as damming and irrigation—or jade rings with singular openings, useful as earrings or pendants ( jue ). This structure’s texts (#43, Guai 111110, and #44, Gou 011111) prominently feature fruit, fish in water containers, water containers without fish, skin disease due to immersion in water, melon wrapped in willow leaves, and so on—deliberately permuting images of container/content relations. Topological features capable of modeling such relations make the Dui trigram an object of fascination in the design toolkit of ancient Chinese text drafters. And the expression kuai le (“joyous”) draws on this guai component, with heart radical, emphasizing humorous splitting open or cracking up.

Interest in modeling splitting, evidenced in uproarious laughing in the graphic elements of Dui 110, is quite typical in mythological thought, as one can see by comparing analysis of laughter in South American myths by Lévi-Strauss in Mythologiques,showing its relation to container/content logic, including breaching operations. The element of explosive splitting in the build of the character, showing someone with upturned face and opened mouth, is comparable to the table constructed by Lévi-Strauss treating myths in the first movement of “A Short Symphony,”⁵ differentiating upper and lower axes and featuring signifiers such as farting, hearing too much, chewing noisily, laughing, and groaning. This strand of mythical network bears upon key points of narrative and tradition (discovery of the bird nester in the tree, origin of ancestral language, etc.) in the region’s mythologies. As would be obvious to anyone taking a careful look at Lévi-Strauss’s analysis alongside ancient Chinese material, structural modes of mythical thought and its operation are also evident in how archaic Chinese invented their written language, manipulated their genealogies, ruled their states, composed their texts, and designed their topologies, as seen in the Changes of the Zhou. Demonstration of this assertion’s validity awaits investigations begun in the remaining pages of this book. I will simply state such analysis still remains critically wanting in the field of archaic Chinese texts.