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I. Various terms for the Elements:

The modern work Chang-huang t`u-shu pien1 states that in the Yiking the Five Elements are named ### Wu-wei, Five Positions,2 in historical works ### Wu-tsai, Five Materials, in chronicles or essays ### Wu-wu, Five Things, and in medical works ### Wu-yün, Five Revolutions. Mayers (Manual p. 313) gives some more terms: ### Wu-chieh, FiveSections, ### Wu-mei, Five Excellencies, and ### Wu-ch`i, Five Fluids. They are descriptive of the elements under various aspects, as substances formed of matter, as fluids or vapours, as moving and revolving, or as keeping certain positions. But by far the commonest expression is ### Wu-hsing, on the meaning of which the Chinese and foreign authorities are agreed. ### hsing is "to act" and "to move," the Wu-hsing are, therefore, the five essences which are always active and in motion. Mayers (loc. cit.) calls them the primordial essences or perpetually active principles of nature. The term is all but equivalent to ### Wu-yün, the Five Revolutions.

Notes

1. ###

2. The utterances of the Yiking are very obscure and I doubt whether they really refer to the elements.

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IATHPublished by The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, © Copyright 2003 by Anne Kinney and the University of Virginia