Zhou Yi

Each hexagram has its own name, characteristics, and meaning.

The earliest layer of the text, the one that assigns those properties, is called the Zhou Yi, the Changes of Zhou.

Tradition credits it to King Wen, revered as the founding father of the Zhou dynasty, and to his son, Zhou Gong, the Duke of Zhou.

Commentaries kept being added for centuries, and the latest of them most likely date to the Han dynasty, a few hundred years after Confucius's death.

The remainder of the explanation for gen is statements and commentary regarding each of the six lines in the hexagram.

Those are used to analyze what the divination session determines to be changing lines.

But more relevant to 14.26 are the layers of text above the Da Xiang, including the original stratum of text we mentioned earlier, called the Zhou Yi, and another layer of moral reasoning called the Tuan Zhuan, or the Commentary on the Judgments.

Here's the description from the oldest layer, the Zhou Yi.

The Zhou period is also famous for the works of literature it produced.

The Zhou Yi, which acts as the core of the I Ching, a text used to understand the will of heaven, which also became a philosophical work, was composed at this time, legendarily ascribed to the brother of Wu, the first Zhou king.

The poems included in the Classic of Poetry, one of the Five Classics later attributed to Confucius, were also composed during the Western Zhou.

Confucianism in general, in the sense of a philosophy that promotes social order and self-improvement, became a dominant belief, though it was suppressed during the Qin dynasty that followed the Zhou.