Origins of the Yin Yang symbol

[silatman]

I am searching for the definitive answer for the first time that the Yin Yang was used.
Doing Google searches results in thousands of poeople saying that they are the ones that first used the symbol.
Obviously someone did but does anybody REALLY know who it was?
I tend to believe that it was first used in China about the forth century by the taoist religion.
Can anybody set me straight?

 

[silatman]

38 views and no one knows the answer.
Thought I would put it up the top again to see if somebody can help me.

 

[Xue Sheng]

I just saw this post and I am no where near my bookshelf at this time. I may have something more on it in one of my books at home. Actually I know I have more on it, but I am not sure I can give you a definitive date as to when it was first used. I will get back to you, but this is what I can remember.

First the Yin Yang symbol is called a Taiji or taiji tu. I believe it translates as literally "diagram of the supreme ultimate. Also not to be confused with taijiquan.

I do believe it is Taoist in origin but it does/did not always look like my avatar.

I believe it is in existence in during the Warring States Period (475–221 BC) and it does appear in the I Ching. And if the I Ching came from Lao Tzu, then that would be sometime between 600BC and 200BC. Not that he lived that long but you have claims of his birth as early as 600BC and his death as late as 200BC

 

[pete]

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http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/yinyang.htm




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[Kembudo-Kai Kempoka]

Good luck finding the first usage. Some iconographs predate record-keeping. I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts this be one of them.

D.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Good luck finding the first usage. Some iconographs predate record-keeping. I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts this be one of them.

D.

I agree

First usage will be hard if not impossible to find. The best I think that can be found would be earliest recorded usage. This very likely may be the warring states period which may be the first usage but I doubt that is the case.

 

[Steel Tiger]

Here is a little paragraph that might help.

"In the picture above, the white area represents ch'i, or heaven; the dark area is the
image, or earth; the dividing line is the Law, or principle. In the quote from the I Ching,
"sage" referes to Fu Hsi who created the eight trigrams, the t'ai chi symbol. The
above symbol is a curved prepresentation of the sages's Yellow River Map and the Lo
River Writing. It was molded into cyclic fashion from its originally linear representation
because the the straight line is blocked at both extremes. This circling enables
the peak of yin to produce yand and vice versa. The two principles of yin and yang
never separate from each other, but rather each follows the other - smoothly and
endlessly. There are no other world factors than the ch'i, law, and image. Neither
man nor the myraid creatures deviate from these three principles."
- Cheng Man-ch'ing, Cheng Man-ch'ing: Master of Five Excellences, 1995, p. 158.


It should also be noted that the Taiji has looked quite different at times with three and even four divisions. In Korea the three part version is quite common.

 

[Steel Tiger]

oops! Sorry left out the Taiji at the top of the quote from Chen Man-Ching.

 

[CuongNhuka]

Daoism used it first. First there was void, then there was a perfect melding of yin (negitive) and yang (positive), then a differation causing the 8 trigrams, then they combined in set patterns to create the 64 hexagrams. These combined to make existnece. Does this help, or would you like the Chinese names?

 

[Xue Sheng]

Sorry, I can't come up with a definitive date of first use. It is very likely Taoist in origin and it does come from Wuji (nothingness) but beyond the dates I first posted I can find nothing.

CuongNhuka gave you a good rough outline; if you want more detail into that I am sure he or I (or someone else on MT) could provide it.

 

[Ninjamom]

Check out the link that Pete gave on Chinese Fortune Calendar. It explains the origin as being a calendar, long before yin and yang were adopted into daoism or had any philosophical meaning at all.

Take an 8-ft tall pole and stick it into the ground, pointing at the sun at the summer solstice. Draw concentric circles around the center of the pole, and use the circles as a graph to mark the length of the shadow of your pole, each day at midday, for a whole year. Darken in the section of your graph representing the shadows. The pattern formed will be a yin/yang symbol. The dark (shadow) part represents 'yin' and the light sunlit part represents 'yang'. The longest shadow will occur at the winter solstice, which is the beginning of the time when the days get longer, so in yin/yang calendars this was marked with a small light (yang) circle. The shortest shadow occurs at the summer solstice, and was similarly marked with a smalldark (yin) circle.

The Chinese calendar used two measurement systems: a solar calendar of 365.25 days, and a lunar calendar. The symbol gets its name from this fact ('yin' means 'moon', while 'yang' means 'sun'). The calendar was used to let farmers know the seasons (when to plant, harvest, when the rains would come, etc.). Gradually, a type of zodiac became associated with it. This started some of the more 'mystical' meanings of yin/yang. Overall, it kept the meaning most closely associated with the calendar: a balance between opposite elements, one changing into the other, and each containing the seed or the start of the other.

 

[silatman]

Thank you.
I knew that somebody here would know.