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I Ching Hexagrams

The Well

JING
Jing

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Origin 1000 BCE to 350 BCE

King Wen hexagram 48, The Well (Jing), places Water above Wind and wood: the image of the wooden bucket or the plant drawing water up from the deep well that nourishes the town. The well is the constant, inexhaustible source from which all draw, an emblem of the fundamental, unchanging needs and social bonds of human life. Its Judgment says that the town may be changed but the well cannot be changed; it neither decreases nor increases, and people come and go and draw from it; but if the rope does not go all the way down, or the jug breaks, that is misfortune. Its Image counsels the superior person to encourage the people at their work and exhort them to help one another. As a reading it points to the deep, reliable sources of nourishment in life and community, teaching that one must reach all the way to them and take care not to spoil the effort at the last.

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
Attributions
Trigram Pairing
Water over Wind 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
A Bronze Age well: the town may be changed but the well cannot; if the rope does not reach the water or the jug breaks, that is misfortune. The imagery is concrete enough that Wilhelm, Legge and the manuscript-based translations converge here more closely than almost anywhere else in the book. 4Tradition: Zhou Yi, the Western Zhou divination core
Identity
King Wen Number
48 1
Native Name
Jing 1
Order
Position in the Sequence
38 2Tradition: Xiantian (Earlier Heaven) arrangement of Shao Yong
Position in the Sequence
48 2Tradition: King Wen sequence, the received order
Learn More
A Well, and the Town That Changes Around It

Hexagram 48 is named for an object, and that is unusual enough to be significant. Along with hexagram 50, the Cauldron, it is one of only two figures in the book named after a manufactured thing, and the two sit close together in the sequence.

The judgement is one of the most quoted passages in the I Ching, and it survives translation well because it is concrete: the town may be changed, but the well cannot be changed. It neither decreases nor increases. People come and go and draw from the well. If the rope does not reach the water, or if the jug breaks, that is misfortune.

Everything about that is practical. A Bronze Age well was the fixed asset a settlement was built around, it outlasted the buildings, and a broken jug or a short rope was a real and ordinary disaster. The philosophical reading, an unchanging source available to all, which people must have the means to reach, follows naturally from the image, and the Ten Wings develop it at length. But the image came first, and it came from somebody who had drawn water.

The line texts track the well's condition: muddy and undrinkable, leaking so that only fishes use it, cleaned but not drunk from, lined with stone, a cold clear spring, and finally drawn up without hindrance. That progression from silted to serviceable is the hexagram's argument, and it is one of the clearest cases in the book of the six lines forming a single continuous account rather than six separate omens.

The pairing with the Cauldron is not accidental. A well supplies; a cauldron transforms what is supplied. Between them the two object-hexagrams cover the whole business of sustaining a settlement, which is a reasonable indication of what the compilers thought worth naming a figure after.

Maintenance, and the Rope Not Reaching

In practice hexagram 48 is read for resources that exist but are not currently being used, and for the work of restoring access to them.

The third line carries the reading most often: the well is cleaned, and nobody drinks from it. Wilhelm adds that this is the heart's sorrow, and that the well could be drawn from, if the king were clear-minded, good fortune might be enjoyed in common. That is a description of a real and specific frustration: something has been made good and nobody has noticed. Querents recognise it immediately.

The other reliable reading is the rope. The judgement's warning is not that the water is absent but that the means of reaching it may be inadequate, and a great many situations that produce this hexagram involve a querent who has the resource and lacks the apparatus, the contact, the tool, the qualification, the vocabulary.

The hexagram is also read for what is common rather than owned. A well serves a settlement; it is not private property; and readings that treat it as personal supply lose the collective sense that the judgement plainly carries.

Translations converge here more than almost anywhere else in the book, and for the reason already given: the imagery is concrete. Where the Zhou Yi talks about wells, ropes and jugs, Wilhelm, Legge and the later manuscript-based versions say very nearly the same thing.

That convergence is itself an argument for reading the concrete hexagrams closely. A reader who wants to know what the Zhou Yi is actually like, without having to adjudicate between translators, could do worse than start here and at the Cauldron rather than at the first two figures, where nearly every word is contested.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Corresponds To

Channel of The Wavelength, Human Design Channels

Channel of The Wavelength bridges Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm, and Hexagram 48, The Well, per its own iching-correspondence fact; this edge names the 48 side.

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

Gene Key 48, From Inadequacy to Wisdom, corresponds to Hexagram 48, The Well, per its own iching-correspondence fact.

Source Gene Keys: Embracing Your Higher PurposeRichard Rudd
The Well of Depth, Human Design Gates

Human Design Gate 48, The Well Of Depth, corresponds to Hexagram 48, The Well, per its own iching-correspondence fact.

Source The Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower)

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

Great Preponderance, Line 4, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
Obstruction, Line 2, Hexagram Lines
Pushing Upward, Line 5, Hexagram Lines
The Abysmal, Line 3, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
The Gentle, Line 6, Hexagram Lines
Waiting, Line 1, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
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, 1996Hexagram 48, on the judgement and the line textsView the Source
The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Richard Wilhelm (trans.); Cary F. Baynes (English trans.), Princeton University Press, 1980Hexagram 48, the Judgement
Quote, Hexagram 48, the Judgement
The town may be changed, but the well cannot be changed.
View the Source
The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi King
James Legge (trans.), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1882Legge's rendering of the forty-eighth hexagramView the Source

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