I CHING - Y-King. Antiquissimus Sinarum liber quem ex Latina interpretatione. Edited by Julius Mohl and translated by Jean-Baptiste Régis. Stuttgart and Tubingen: J.G. Cotta, 1834 and 1839.

Pristine copy, uncut in original wrappers, of the first typographic printing in any language of a foundational text of Chinese culture—as well as modern calculus. The I Ching, or Book of Changes, potentially dates back as far as the 10th century BCE. Beginning life as a divination text based on the interpretation of 64 possible hexagrams, the text developed a series of philosophical commentaries which came to be considered one of the Five Classics of Confucianism, as well as influential to Taoism, Buddhism, and—upon its transmission to Europe—Western science and mathematics.

The I-Ching came to the attention of European readers by way of the Jesuit missionaries in China. The French mathematician Joachim Bouvet's correspondence with Gottfried Leibniz, to whom he sent an image of Shao Yong's binary organization of the I-Ching's hexagrams ("Former Heaven Chart"), was especially fateful. It inspired Leibniz's work on the idea of a "universal language" which would eventually result in his development of calculus. One of Bouvet's colleagues in China was Jean-Baptiste Régis, who made this translation with several of his colleagues; the manuscript languished for a century until its publication in this edition by Julius Mohl. The I-Ching has continued to inspire work in both the arts and science, and in and outside of China, into the present era. This copy is bound, as often, without the half-title mentioned by Cordier. Cordier 1372.

Two volumes, octavo (200 x 122mm). 4 folding plates (light offsetting). Original blue paper wrappers with title in manuscript on taupe spine label, volume 2 unopened (vol. 2 spine discreetly repaired, some sunning, remains of sticker on upper wrapper). Provenance: booklabel of Friedrich Klincksieck, Paris.