This is Gua 14 ䷍ in the Yi Jing, titled “Great Harvest.” It is composed of ☲ Lí Fire above ☰ Qián Heaven.
大有
dà yǒu
Great possession; abundance; substantial presence.
Meaning
1. Quantitative Abundance: Richness; plenty; having much of a resource.
2. Substantial Presence: A commanding, undeniable, or powerful existence.
3. Systemic Capacity: The capacity to gather, sustain, and distribute resources or influence in a publicly consequential way; acting as a center of gravity for wealth/resources.
Grammar and usage
- Predicate: To possess greatly; to be richly endowed with [X].
- Attributive: Substantial; abundant; great.
- Noun-phrase: Great abundance; the condition of having much.
Distinctions
- vs. 豐 (fēng): While both denote abundance, 豐 often implies ripeness or overflowing, whereas 大有 emphasizes the scale and fact of possession.
- vs. 富 (fù): 富 is typically tied to material wealth; 大有 remains open to non-material abundance (e.g., virtue, power).
- vs. 多 (duō): 多 is a simple quantifier (many/much); 大有 implies a qualitative weight or a consequential state of having.
Translator notes
Determine whether the modifier 大 refers to the amount possessed (quantitative) or the significance of the possession (qualitative).
- In private or material contexts, "richly endowed" or "abundant" is typically appropriate.
- In contexts involving governance, cosmology, or social hierarchy, consider terms reflecting "central capacity," "vast resources," or "consequential abundance."
Decontextualized translator aid. This page describes plausible lexical range; it does not choose what the term means in a particular passage.