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I Ching Hexagrams

Modesty

CHYEN
Qian

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Origin 1000 BCE to 350 BCE

King Wen hexagram 15, Modesty (Qian), places the Earth above the Mountain: the mountain, which is naturally high, resting humbly beneath the earth, an image of true greatness that makes itself low. It describes modesty, the balancing power that brings the high down and lifts the low up, and which alone allows one to carry a great work through to completion. Its Judgment says modesty creates success, and that the superior person carries things through to the end: humility is not weakness but the quality that ensures lasting achievement. Its Image counsels the superior person to reduce what is too much and augment what is too little, weighing things and making their portions even. As a reading it praises humility and self-effacement, teaching that a modest, unassuming attitude wins goodwill, avoids the resentment that greatness provokes, and enables one to complete difficult undertakings that pride would ruin.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1000 BCE to 350 BCE 1Tradition: Zhou Yi, the Western Zhou divination core
Origin Period
1924 to 1950 2Tradition: Wilhelm-Baynes I Ching (1950)
Origin Period
400 BCE to 100 BCE 3Tradition: Zhou Yi and the Ten Wings
Origin Period
This hexagram's dating spans three distinct historical layers: the divinatory judgment text of the Zhouyi core, composed in the early Western Zhou around 1000 BCE and recovered in the Mawangdui silk manuscripts; the Ten Wings commentary tradition that gave the hexagrams their later philosophical reading, compiled across the Warring States and Han periods by around 400 BCE; and the English title used here, coined in Richard Wilhelm's 1924 German translation and carried into English by Cary Baynes. 2
Attributed Author / Compiler
By tradition: the hexagram statements to King Wen of Zhou, the line statements to the Duke of Zhou, and the Ten Wings to Confucius. 3Tradition: Zhou Yi and the Ten Wings
Attributed Author / Compiler
No named author. The core is a Western Zhou compilation with no compiler on record, and the ascription of the Ten Wings to Confucius was already being questioned inside the Chinese tradition by the eleventh century and is defended by no current scholarship. 3
Language
Classical Chinese 4
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Modesty. Wilhelm gives Modesty and Legge Humility, and the tradition explains the figure's uniquely favourable six lines by saying that modesty is the one disposition that cannot be overdone. 5Tradition: Wilhelm-Baynes I Ching (1950)
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Qian read concretely rather than as a virtue. Some translators of the Bronze Age stratum connect the word to a burrowing creature and read the figure as being about keeping low, which is a serious minority position among translators rather than a curiosity. 4Tradition: Zhou Yi, the Western Zhou divination core
Identity
King Wen Number
15 1
Native Name
Qian 1
Attributions
Trigram Pairing
Earth over Mountain 1
Order
Position in the Sequence
15 2Tradition: King Wen sequence, the received order
Position in the Sequence
56 2Tradition: Xiantian (Earlier Heaven) arrangement of Shao Yong
Learn More
The One Hexagram with No Bad Lines

Hexagram 15 has a property no other hexagram in the book has, and it is frequently noted: every one of its six line texts is favourable. There is no warning line, no line of regret, no top line where the condition overreaches and turns. In a text whose characteristic move is to show how any good thing goes wrong at its extreme, that is a striking exception.

The traditional explanation is thematic. Modesty, or Humility, is the one disposition that cannot be overdone, because excess of it would be a contradiction in terms. Whether the compilers reasoned that way is unknowable, but the observation about the lines is a fact about the text rather than an interpretation of it, and it is worth knowing.

The name Qian, unrelated to the Qian of hexagram 1, and written with a different character, is rendered Modesty by Wilhelm, Humility by Legge, and more concretely by later translators, some of whom connect it to a word for a mole or a burrowing creature and read the hexagram as being about keeping low rather than about a virtue at all. That reading belongs to the school that treats the Zhou Yi as a Bronze Age omen collection, and it is a serious minority position among translators rather than a curiosity.

The image given in the Ten Wings is a mountain inside the earth: the highest thing, positioned below the surface. Whatever one thinks of the commentary as history, that is a very good image, and it carries the hexagram's argument more efficiently than any of the English names for it do.

Modesty with an Army in It

The favourable reading of hexagram 15 is not the mild thing its English name suggests, and the fifth and sixth lines are where that becomes obvious.

The fifth line speaks of not boasting of wealth and yet being able to attack, and the sixth of modesty that makes itself felt, with armies set in motion to discipline one's own city and country. Wilhelm keeps both. These are not counsels of self-effacement. They describe a person whose position is strong enough that they do not need to advertise it, and who can act decisively without having first made claims.

That is the hexagram's real content and it is much more interesting than humility in the devotional sense. The advice is about not spending capital on display: keep the resources unannounced, and they remain available.

In reading practice the figure is generally taken as confirmation that a low profile is correct, that the querent's position is better than it looks, and that claiming credit now would cost more than it returns. It is also one of the most reliably encouraging results a consultation can produce, for the structural reason given already, there is no line in it that goes wrong.

Translations diverge here mainly on register. Wilhelm's superior person, Legge's man of virtue and Rutt's flatter rendering describe the same behaviour with very different amounts of moral scaffolding, and a reader comparing them will learn more about translation than about the hexagram. That is not wasted effort: knowing how much of a reading comes from the translator is most of what distinguishes careful use of this book from credulous use of it.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Corresponds To

Channel of Rhythm, Human Design Channels

Channel of Rhythm bridges Hexagram 5, Waiting, and Hexagram 15, Modesty, per its own iching-correspondence fact; this edge names the 15 side.

Source The Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower)
Embracing Extremes, Human Design Gates

Human Design Gate 15, Embracing Extremes, corresponds to Hexagram 15, Modesty, per its own iching-correspondence fact.

Source The Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower)
From Dullness to Florescence, Gene Keys

Gene Key 15, From Dullness to Florescence, corresponds to Hexagram 15, Modesty, per its own iching-correspondence fact.

Source Gene Keys: Embracing Your Higher PurposeRichard Rudd

Disciplines That Use This

I Ching, Disciplines

The sixty four hexagrams of the Zhou Yi.

Source Zhouyi: The Book of ChangesRichard Rutt (trans.)

Originates in Language

Classical Chinese, Languages
Source Zhouyi: The Book of ChangesRichard Rutt (trans.)

Reached by Changing Lines

Darkening of the Light, Line 1, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
Keeping Still, Line 6, Hexagram Lines
Obstruction, Line 5, Hexagram Lines
Pushing Upward, Line 2, Hexagram Lines
Small Preponderance, Line 4, Hexagram Lines
The Receptive, Line 3, Hexagram Lines
Sources
1. I Ching: The Classic of Changes, translated with an introduction and commentary, the first English translation of the newly discovered second-century BC Mawangdui texts
Edward L. Shaughnessy (trans.), Ballantine Books, 1996On the dating and composition of the Zhou Yi core
2. Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and Its Evolution in China
Richard J. Smith, University of Virginia Press, 2008On Shao Yong's xiantian ordering of the sixty-four hexagramsView the Source
3. The Five "Confucian" Classics
Michael Nylan, Yale University Press, 2001On the authorship question and the critique of the traditional ascriptionsView the Source
4. Zhouyi: The Book of Changes
Richard Rutt (trans.), Curzon Press, 1996On the name of the fifteenth hexagramView the Source
5. The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Richard Wilhelm (trans.); Cary F. Baynes (English trans.), Princeton University Press, 1980Hexagram 15, the Judgement, the Image and all six line textsView the Source

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