Happy Chinese New Year! :)
The plastron of a turtle (=belly part of the turtle shell) has essentially 6 scutes (from head to tail, see attached image):
- gular
- humeral
- pectoral
(hinge)
- inguinal
- femoral
- anal
This reminds of the structure of hexagrams, with two pairs of trigrams on top of each other.
I know of the following references to turtles related to ancient Chinese oracles (based on Wikipedia and the like, please correct me where I am wrong or imprecise):
- Early plastromancy in the Shang Dynasty, i.e. earlier than about 1000 BCE, where turtle plastrons where heated punctually in order to produce cracks in the shell, which where then interpreted some ways of which the details are apparently unknown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone
- According to legend, the I Ching was created/discovered by Fu Xi after spotting the Yellow River Map and/or the Lo Shu Square on the back of a turtle that emerged from a river.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_River_Map
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lo_Shu_Square
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuxi
Are there more indications that would speak for or against early turtle oracles having influenced the I Ching?
As far as I understand the first written records about the I Ching are only a few centuries BCE and similarly for the legend of Fuxi, i.e. there is a huge historical gap to the Shang dynasty, or are there more indications in between?
One more incentive: Yin lines are called resp. drawn as broken lines and Yang lines as unbroken ones, which reminds of the breaking of a turtle shell under heat, even though the fractures usually had the shape of a T or the Chinese bǔ/pǔ.
Alain
The plastron of a turtle (=belly part of the turtle shell) has essentially 6 scutes (from head to tail, see attached image):
- gular
- humeral
- pectoral
(hinge)
- inguinal
- femoral
- anal
This reminds of the structure of hexagrams, with two pairs of trigrams on top of each other.
I know of the following references to turtles related to ancient Chinese oracles (based on Wikipedia and the like, please correct me where I am wrong or imprecise):
- Early plastromancy in the Shang Dynasty, i.e. earlier than about 1000 BCE, where turtle plastrons where heated punctually in order to produce cracks in the shell, which where then interpreted some ways of which the details are apparently unknown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone
- According to legend, the I Ching was created/discovered by Fu Xi after spotting the Yellow River Map and/or the Lo Shu Square on the back of a turtle that emerged from a river.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_River_Map
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lo_Shu_Square
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuxi
Are there more indications that would speak for or against early turtle oracles having influenced the I Ching?
As far as I understand the first written records about the I Ching are only a few centuries BCE and similarly for the legend of Fuxi, i.e. there is a huge historical gap to the Shang dynasty, or are there more indications in between?
One more incentive: Yin lines are called resp. drawn as broken lines and Yang lines as unbroken ones, which reminds of the breaking of a turtle shell under heat, even though the fractures usually had the shape of a T or the Chinese bǔ/pǔ.
Alain