
The 900-800BC hexagram 50 dagger-axe

履虎尾不咥人亨
Lü 履: to step on (something); to walk; to proceed. The Mawangdui text has li 禮, ‘rules of conduct’, which reminds of the Xugua 序卦 line about H10: 物畜然後有禮故受之以履: “When beings thus have 禮, 履 will be accepted and practiced.” In the Image text of hexagram 34 lü 履 is also paired with li 禮: 君子以非禮弗履: “without li 禮 the junzi will not lü 履.” On bronze inscriptions the character mei 眉 is sometimes read as 履, for instance by Li Feng in his translation of the Sanshi pan 散氏盤 inscription (集成10176) , where he reads 眉/履 as ‘surveying’:
用夨撲散邑,廼即散用田。眉(履)自瀗涉,以南至於大沽…
Because Ze attacked the settlements of San, [the officials of Ze] then arrived in San to use land [as compensation]. Surveying: Cross the Xian River to the south and arrive at the Great Pond…
-Li Feng, ‘Literacy and the Social Contexts of Writing in the Western Zhou’, in Li Feng and David Prager (eds.), Writing & literacy in early China: studies from the Columbia early China seminar, p. 289
My good friend Ruud Nederveen made a website where you can consult the Yijing and read the text from Wilhelm’s translation. You might think, aren’t there enough of these websites already? But Ruud’s site gives extra goodies that you will not find on other sites. When you consult the Yijing online on his site there are several features that makes this website different from others (in a good way):
I’d say give it a try and see how it works for you. There is also the option for a paid subscription which enables you to log your Yijing sessions. You can also look up hexagrams without consulting the Yijing online. And there is more because so many items are clickable! Last but not least: I am very fond of the large singing bowl at the end of each page. Click on it and it will start to play.
Highly recommended for any user of the Yijing, especially those users who want to do more with the structure of the hexagram and trigrams.