Shen (Chinese religion)

Shen (Chinese religion)
Shen
Chinese name
Chinese
Japanese name
Kanji
Hiragana 1. かみ
2. しん
Korean name
Hangul
Hanja
Vietnamese name
Quốc ngữ thần
Hán tự

Shen (Chinese: ; pinyin: shén; Wade–Giles: shen; literally "spirit; god; awareness, consciousness") is a keyword in Chinese philosophy, Chinese religion, and Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Contents

Pronunciation

Shén (in rising 2nd tone) is the Modern Standard Chinese pronunciation of 神 "spirit; god, deity; spiritual, supernatural; awareness, consciousness etc". Reconstructions of shén in Middle Chinese (ca. 6th-10th centuries CE) include dź'jěn (Bernhard Karlgren, substituting j for his "yod medial"), źiɪn (Zhou Fagao), ʑin (Edwin G. Pulleyblank, "Late Middle"), and zyin (William H. Baxter). Reconstructions of shén in Old Chinese (ca. 6th-3rd centuries BCE) include *djěn (Karlgren), *zdjien (Zhou), *djin (Li Fanggui), *Ljin (Baxter), and *m-lin (Axel Schuessler).

Although the etymological origin of shen is uncertain, Schuessler (2007:458) notes a possible Sino-Tibetan etymology; compare Chepang gliŋh "spirit of humans".

Chinese shen 神 "spirit; etc." is a loanword in East Asian languages. The Japanese Kanji 神 is pronounced shin (しん) or jin (じん) in On'yomi (Chinese reading), and kami (かみ), (こう), or tamashii (たましい) in Kun'yomi (Japanese reading). The Korean Hanja 神 is pronounced sin (신).

The Zihui dictionary notes that 神 had a special pronunciation shēn (level 1st tone, instead of usual 2nd shén) in the name Shen Shu 神荼, one of two "gods of the Eastern Sea", along with Yu Lu 鬱壘.

In the Vietnamese language, it is referred to as thần.

Semantics

Shen 神's polysemous meanings developed diachronically over three millennia. The Hanyu dazidian, an authoritative historical dictionary, distinguishes one meaning for shēn 神 "Name of a deity (神名)" and eleven meanings for shén 神, translated below.

  1. Celestial gods/spirits of stories/legends, namely, the creator of the myriad things in heaven and earth and the supreme being. (传说中的天神,即天地万物的创造者和主宰者.)
  2. Spirit; mind, mental faculties; consciousness. Like: concentrated attention; tire the mind; concentrate one's energy and attention. (精神.如: 凝神; 劳神; 聚精会神.)
  3. Expression, demeanor; consciousness, state of mind. (表情; 神志.)
  4. Portrait, portraiture. (肖像.)
  5. Magical, supernatural, miraculous; mysterious, abstruse. Like: ability to divine the unknown, amazing foresight; highly skilled doctor; genius, masterpiece. (神奇; 玄妙. 如: 神机妙算; 神医; 神品.)
  6. Esteem, respect; valuable, precious. (尊重; 珍贵.)
  7. Rule, govern, administer. (治理.)
  8. Cautious, careful, circumspect. (谨慎.)
  9. Display, arrange, exhibit. (陈列.)
  10. Dialect. 1. Dignity, distinction. (威风.) 2. Entrancement, ecstasy. (入神.) 3. Clever, intelligent. (聪明.)
  11. Surname, family name. (姓.)

This dictionary entry for shen lists early usage examples, and many of these 11 meanings were well attested prior to the Han Dynasty. Chinese classic texts use shen in meanings 1 "spirit; god", 2 "spirit, mind; attention", 3 "expression; state of mind", 5 "supernatural", and meaning 6 "esteem". The earliest examples of meaning 4 "portrait" are in Song Dynasty texts. Meanings 7-9 first occur in early Chinese dictionaries; the Erya defines shen in meanings 7 "govern" and 8 "cautious" (and 6, which is attested elsewhere), and the Guangya defines meaning 9 "display". Meaning 10 gives three usages in Chinese dialects (technically "topolects", see Fangyan). Meaning 11 "a surname" is exemplified in Shennong ("Divine Farmer"), the culture hero and inventor of agriculture in Chinese mythology.

The Chinese language has many compounds of shen. For instance, it is compounded with tian 天 "sky; heaven; nature; god" in tianshen 天神 "celestial spirits; heavenly gods; deities; (Buddhism) deva", with shan 山 "mountain" in shanshen 山神 "mountain spirit", and hua 話 "speech; talk; saying; story" in shenhua 神話 "mythology; myth; fairy tale". Several shen "spirit; god" compounds use names for other supernatural beings, for example, ling 靈 "spirit; soul" in shenling 神靈 "gods; spirits, various deities", qi 祇 "earth spirit" in shenqi 神祇 "celestial and terrestrial spirits", xian 仙 "Xian (Taoism), transcendent" in shenxian 神仙 "spirits and immortals; divine immortal", guai 怪 "spirit; devil; monster" in shenguai 神怪 "spirits and demons; gods and spirits", and gui 鬼 "ghost, goblin; demon, devil" in guishen 鬼神 "ghosts and spirits; supernatural beings".

Wing-Tsit Chan distinguishes four philosophical meanings of this guishen: "spiritual beings", "ancestors", "gods and demons", and "positive and negative spiritual forces".

In ancient times shen usually refers to heavenly beings while kuei refers to spirits of deceased human beings. In later-day sacrifices, kuei-shen together refers to ancestors. In popular religions shen means gods (who are good) and demons (who are not always good). In Neo-Confucianism kuai-shen may refer to all these three categories but more often than not the term refers to the activity of the material force (ch'i). Chang Tsai's dictum, "The negative spirit (kuei) and positive spirit (shen) are the spontaneous activity of the two material forces (yin and yang)," has become the generally accepted definition. (1963:790)

The primary meaning of shen is translatable as English "spirit, spirits, Spirit, spiritual beings; celestial spirits; ancestral spirits" or "god, gods, God; deity, deities, supernatural beings", etc. Shen is sometimes loosely translated as "soul", but Chinese hun and po distinguishes hun 魂 "spiritual soul" and po 魄 "physical soul". Instead of struggling to translate shen 神, it can be transliterated as a loanword. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.) defines shen, "In Chinese philosophy: a god, person of supernatural power, or the spirit of a dead person."

Shen plays a central role in Christian translational disputes over Chinese terms for God. Among the early Chinese "god; God" names, shangdi 上帝 or di was the Shang term, tian 天 was the Zhou term, and shen was a later usage (see Feng Yu-Lan 1952:22–6, 30–1). Modern terms for "God" include shangdi, zhu 主, tianzhu 天主 (esp. Catholics), and shen 神 (esp. Protestants).

Graphics

The character 神 for shen exemplifies the most common class in Chinese character classification: xíngshēngzì 形聲字 "pictophonetic compounds, semantic-phonetic compounds", which combine a radical (or classifier) that roughly indicates meaning and a phonetic that roughly indicates pronunciation. In this case, 神 combines the "altar/worship radical" 礻or 示 and a phonetic of shēn 申 "9th Earthly Branch; extend, stretch; prolong, repeat". Compare this phonetic element differentiated with the "person radical" in shen 伸 "stretch", the "silk radical" in shen 紳 "official's sash", the "mouth radical" in shen 呻 "chant, drone", the "stone radical" in shen 砷 "arsenic", the "earth radical" in kun 坤 "soil", and the "big radical" in yan 奄 "cover". (See the List of Kangxi radicals.)

Chinese shen 申 "extend" was anciently a phonetic loan character for shen 神 "spirit". The Mawangdui Silk Texts include two copies of the Dao De Jing and the "A Text" writes shen interchangeably as 申and 神: "If one oversees all under heaven in accord with the Way, demons have no spirit. It is not that the demons have no spirit, but that their spirits do not harm people." (chap. 60, tr. Mair 1990:30). The Shuowen Jiezi defines shen 申 as shen 神 and says that in the 7th lunar month when yin forces increase, bodies shenshu 申束 "bind up".

The earliest written forms of shen 神 "spirit; god" occur in Zhou Dynasty Bronzeware script and Qin Dynasty Seal script characters (compare the variants shown on the Chinese Etymology link below). Although 神 has not been identified in Shang Dynasty Oracle bone script records, the phonetic shen 申 has. Paleographers interpret the Oracle script of 申 as a pictograph of a "lightning bolt". This was graphically differentiated between dian 電 "lightening; electricity" with the "cloud radical" and shen 神 with the "worship radical", semantically suggesting both "lightning" and "spirits" coming down from the heavens.

References

  • Chan, Wing-Tsit. 1963. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton University Press.
  • Fung Yu-Lan. 1952. A History of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. I. The Period of the Philosophers, tr. Derk Bodde. Princeton University Press.
  • Mateer, C.W. 1901–2. "The meaning of the word shen," Chinese Recorder 3.2:61–72, 107–16, 3.3:71–79, 123–32.
  • Mair, Victor H. 1990. Tao Te Ching: The Classic Book of Integrity and the Way, by Lao Tzu; an entirely new translation based on the recently discovered Ma-wang-tui manuscripts. Bantam Books.
  • Schuessler, Axel. 2007. ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese. University of Hawaii Press.

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать реферат

Look at other dictionaries:

  • SHEN —    a term for SPIRITS in Chinese RELIGION …   Concise dictionary of Religion

  • Chinese dragon — Chinese name Traditional Chinese 龍 …   Wikipedia

  • Chinese terms for God — Chinese terms for God, especially a Supreme God , have produced many variations for the title. The oldest records of the term Westerners translate as God , Most High God , Greatest Lord appear to exist in the earliest documents of Chinese… …   Wikipedia

  • Shen — can refer to:*Shen (Chinese spirit; god ) 神, a central word in Chinese philosophy, religion, terms for God, and Traditional Chinese Medicine. *Shen (clam monster) 蜃, a shapeshifting Chinese dragon believed to create mirages * Shen, an… …   Wikipedia

  • Religion in China — Three laughs at Tiger Brook , Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism are one, a litang style painting portraying three men laughing by a river stream, 12th century, Song Dynasty …   Wikipedia

  • Chinese folk religion — Statue of a Taizu deity (deified important ancestor) inside a temple in Maoming, Guangdong …   Wikipedia

  • Chinese mythology — Nine Dragons handscroll section, by Chen Rong, 1244 CE, Chinese Song Dynasty, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Chinese mythology (中國神話) is a collection of cultural history, folktales, and religions that have been passed down in oral or written… …   Wikipedia

  • shen — (as used in expressions) Ho shen Shen hsi Shen yang Shen Yanbing Shen Dehong * * * ▪ Chinese religion Pinyin  Shen        (Chinese: “spirit”), in indigenous Chinese religion, a beneficent spirit of the dead; the term is also applied to deified… …   Universalium

  • Chinese culture — For culture in mainland China after 1949, see Culture of the People s Republic of China. A Chinese opera (Beijing opera) performance in Beijing. Chinese culture is one of the world s oldest and most complex.[1] …   Wikipedia

  • Chinese alchemy — Chinese alchemy, a part of the larger tradition of Taoism, centers on the tradition of body spirit cultivation that developed through the Chinese understandings of medicine and the body. These Chinese traditions were developed into a system of… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”