Small Preponderance, Line 5

The fifth line of Small Preponderance (King Wen 62) is drawn as yin, the numeral six in the old divination manuals. James Legge's translation renders the line as dense clouds without rain, coming from the western border, the prince shooting an arrow and taking his quarry from a cave. The image sits inside a hexagram whose judgment as a whole concerns progress and attainment, but advantage in being firm and correct; small affairs may be undertaken but not great ones, as with a bird flying past that leaves its cry behind, for whom it is not fitting to ascend but only to descend, and there great good fortune, and this line supplies one stage of that larger reading rather than a complete statement on its own.

Structurally the line stands at the middle place of the upper trigram Zhen, thunder in Legge's readings of the eight trigrams, while the lower trigram of the hexagram is Gen, mountain in the same traditional set of images. The Great Symbolism of the hexagram reads thunder above a mountain; the superior man in his conduct exceeds a little in humility, in mourning exceeds a little in sorrow, and in expenditure exceeds a little in economy, and the fifth line takes its place inside that combined picture of Gen below and Zhen above.

Read on its own the line neither opens nor closes the hexagram's argument. It marks the point where Zhen is either forming (in the lower trigram) or completing itself (in the upper), and later interpreters treat its image, The Dense Clouds Without Rain, as the concrete case through which the hexagram's abstract judgment becomes visible in a single situation rather than a general principle.

As a divinatory line, six at the fifth place of Small Preponderance reads within the hexagram's overall concern with progress and attainment, but advantage in being firm and correct; small affairs may be undertaken but not great ones, as with a bird flying past that leaves its cry behind, for whom it is not fitting to ascend but only to descend, and there great good fortune. The line occupies a place that does not match its own nature in the classical doctrine that odd places favour a firm, yang line and even places favour a yielding, yin line. It is also one of the two central lines of the hexagram, the place classical reading treats as the most balanced regardless of the line's own character. Its own text, that dense clouds without rain, coming from the western border, the prince shooting an arrow and taking his quarry from a cave, is the particular fortune assigned to this one stage of the situation, not to the hexagram as a whole.

The fifth line corresponds by classical convention with the second line, and the two do not correspond here, since both lines share the same character. Read together with the trigram it belongs to, Zhen in the upper position of the figure, the line marks the ruling stage of the hexagram, the place classical reading treats as its centre of authority, one stage in the six stage movement the hexagram traces from its first line to its last.

A change at this line, from yin to its opposite, is the mechanism the tradition uses to move from one hexagram to another. Flipping the fifth line of Small Preponderance turns Zhen into Dui while the other trigram, Gen, stays as it is, which yields Small Preponderance's changing partner, Influence (King Wen 31), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.