tian

 

Tian (Chinese: 天; pinyin: tiān; Wade-Giles: t'ien; literally "heaven, heavens; god, gods") is one of the oldest Chinese terms for God and a keyword in Chinese mythology, philosophy, and religion. During the Shang Dynasty (17th-11th centuries BCE) the Chinese called god Shangdi (上帝 "lord on high") or Di ("lord"), and during the Zhou Dynasty (11th-3rd centuries BCE) Tian "heaven; god" became synonymous with Shangdi.

In the Chinese philosophical system of Daoism, Tian is often translated as "Heaven" and is mentioned in relationship to its complementary aspect of Di (地), which is most often translated as "Earth". These two aspects of Daoist cosmology are representative of the dualistic nature of Daoism. They are thought to maintain the two poles of the Three Realms of reality, with the middle realm occupied by Humanity (人 Ren).

Characters

Tian's modern Chinese character 天 combines da 大 "great; large" and yi 一 "one", but some of the original characters in Shang oracle bone script and Zhou bronzeware script anthropomorphically portray a large head on a great person (see the Richard Sears hyperlink below). The oracle and bronze ideograms for da 大 depict a stick figure person with arms stretched out denoting "great; large". The oracle and bronze characters for tian 天 emphasize the cranium of this "great (person)", either with a square head (oracle), round or disk-shaped head (bronze), or head marked with one or two lines (oracle and bronze). Since Shang scribes cut oracle inscriptions on bone or shell, their characters often have straight lines where later bronze inscriptions have curved lines. Schuessler (2007:495) notes the bronze graphs for tian showing a person with a round head resemble those for ding 丁 "4th Celestial stem", and suggests "The anthropomorphic graph may or may not indicate that the original meaning was 'deity', rather than 'sky'."

Besides the usual 天, tian "heaven" has several graphic variants like 兲 (written with 王 "king" and 八 "8") and the Daoist coinage 靝 (with 青 "blue" and 氣 "qi", i.e., "blue sky").

Origins

The sinologist Herrlee Creel, who wrote a comprehensive study on "The Origin of the Deity T'ien" (1970:493-506), gives this overview.

For three thousand years it has been believed that from time immemorial all Chinese revered T'ien 天, "Heaven," as the highest deity, and that this same deity was also known as Ti 帝 or Shang Ti 上帝. But the new materials that have become available in the present century, and especially the Shang inscriptions, make it evident that this was not the case. It appears rather that T'ien is not named at all in the Shang inscriptions, which instead refer with great frequency to Ti or Shang Ti. T'ien appears only with the Chou, and was apparently a Chou deity. After the conquest the Chou considered T'ien to be identical with the Shang deity Ti (or Shang Ti), much as the Romans identified the Greek Zeus with their Jupiter. (1970:493)

Creel refers to the historical shift in ancient Chinese names for "god"; from Shang oracles that frequently used di and shangdi and rarely used tian to Zhou bronzes and texts that used tian more frequently than its synonym shangdi.

First, Creel analyzes all the tian and di occurrences meaning "god; gods" in Western Zhou era Chinese classic texts and bronze inscriptions. The Yi Jing "Classic of Changes" has 2 tian and 1 di; the Shi Jing "Classic of Poetry" has 140 tian and 43 di or shangdi; and the authentic portions of the Shu Jing "Classic of Documents" have 116 tian and 25 di or shangdi. His corpus of authenticated Western Zhou bronzes (1970:464-475) mention tian 91 times and di or shangdi only 4 times. Second, Creel contrasts the disparity between 175 occurrences of di or shangdi on Shang era oracle inscriptions with "at least" 26 occurrences of tian. Upon examining these 26 oracle scripts that scholars (like Guo Moruo) have identified as tian 天 "heaven; god" (1970:494-5), he rules out 8 cases in fragments where the contextual meaning is unclear. Of the remaining 18, Creel interprets 11 cases as graphic variants for da "great; large; big" (e.g., tian i shang 天邑商 for da i shang 大邑商 "great settlement Shang"), 3 as a place name, and 4 cases of oracles recording sacrifices yu tian 于天 "to/at Tian" (which could mean "to Heaven/God" or "at a place called Tian".

The Shu Jing chapter "Tang Shi" (湯誓 "Tang's Speech") illustrates how early Zhou texts used tian "heaven; god" in contexts with shangdi "god". According to tradition, Tang of Shang assembled his subjects to overthrow King Jie of Xia, the infamous last ruler of the Xia Dynasty, but they were reluctant to attack.

The king said, "Come, ye multitudes of the people, listen all to my words. It is not I, the little child [a humble name used by kings], who dare to undertake what may seem to be a rebellious enterprise; but for the many crimes of the sovereign of Hsiâ [Xia] Heaven has given the charge [tianming, see Compounds below] to destroy him. Now, ye multitudes, you are saying, 'Our prince does not compassionate us, but (is calling us) away from our husbandry to attack and punish the ruler of Hsiâ.' I have indeed heard these words of you all; but the sovereign of Hsiâ is an offender, and, as I fear God [shangdi], I dare not but punish him. Now you are saying, 'What are the crimes of Hsiâ to us?' The king of Hsiâ does nothing but exhaust the strength of his people, and exercise oppression in the cities of Hsiâ. His people have all become idle in his service, and will not assist him. They are saying, 'When will this sun expire? We will all perish with thee.' Such is the course of the sovereign of Hsiâ, and now I must go and punish him. Assist, I pray you, me, the one man, to carry out the punishment appointed by Heaven [tian]. I will greatly reward you. On no account disbelieve me; -- I will not eat my words. If you do not obey the words which I have spoken to you, I will put your children with you to death; -- you shall find no forgiveness." (tr. Legge 1865:173-5)

Having established that Tian was not a deity of the Shang people, Creel (1970:501-6) proposes a hypothesis for how it originated. Both the Shang and Zhou peoples pictographically represented da 大 as "a large or great man". The Zhou subsequently added a head on him to denote tian 天 meaning "king, kings" (cf. wang 王 "king; ruler", which had oracle graphs picturing a line under a "great person" and bronze graphs that added the top line). From "kings", tian was semantically extended to mean "dead kings; ancestral kings", who controlled "fate; providence", and ultimately a single omnipotent deity Tian "Heaven". In addition, tian named both "the heavens" (where ancestral kings and gods supposedly lived) and the visible "sky".

Meanings

The semantics of tian developed diachronically. The Hanyu dazidian, an historical dictionary of Chinese characters, lists 17 meanings of tian 天, translated below.

1. Human forehead; head, cranium. 人的額部; 腦袋.
2. Anciently, to tattoo/brand the forehead as a kind of punishment. 古代一種在額頭上刺字的刑罰.
3. The heavens, the sky, the firmament. 天空.
4. Celestial bodies; celestial phenomena, meteorological phenomena. 天體; 天象.
5. Nature, natural. A general reference to objective inevitability beyond human will. 自然. 泛指不以人意志為轉移的客觀必然性.
6. Natural, innate; instinctive, inborn. 自然的; 天性的.
7. Natural character/quality of a person or thing; natural instinct, inborn nature, disposition. 人或物的自然形質; 天性.
8. A reference to a particular sky/space. 特指某一空間.
9. Season; seasons. Like: winter; the three hot 10-day periods [following the summer solstice]. 時令; 季節. 如: 冬天; 三伏天.
10. Weather; climate. 天氣; 氣候.
11. Day, time of one day and night, or especially the time from sunrise to sunset. Like: today; yesterday; busy all day; go fishing for three days and dry the nets for two [a xiehouyu simile for "unable to finish anything"]. 一晝夜的時間, 或專指日出到日落的時間. 如: 今天; 昨天; 忙了一天; 三天打魚, 兩天曬網.
12. God, heaven, celestial spirit, of the natural world. 天神, 上帝, 自然界的主宰者.
13. Heaven, heavenly, a superstitious person's reference to the gods, Buddhas, or immortals; or to the worlds where they live. Like: go to heaven ["die"]; heavenly troops and heavenly generals ["invincible army"]; heavenly goddesses scatter blossoms [a Vimalakirti Sutra reference to "Buddha's arrival"]. 迷信的人指神佛仙人或他們生活的那個世界. 如: 歸天; 天兵天將; 天女散花.
14. Anciently, the king, monarch, sovereign; also referring to elders in human relationships. 古代指君王; 也指人倫中的尊者.
15. Object upon which one depends or relies. 所依存或依靠的對象.
16. Dialect. A measure of land [shang, about 15 acres]. 方言. 垧.
17. A family name, surname. 姓.

The Chinese philosopher Feng Youlan differentiates five different meanings of tian in early Chinese writings:

(1) A material or physical T'ien or sky, that is, the T'ien often spoken of in apposition to earth, as in the common phrase which refers to the physical universe as 'Heaven and Earth' (T'ien Ti 天地).
(2) A ruling or presiding T'ien, that is, one such as is meant in the phrase, 'Imperial Heaven Supreme Emperor' (Huang T'ien Shang Ti), in which anthropomorphic T'ien and Ti are signified.
(3) A fatalistic T'ien, equivalent to the concept of Fate (ming 命), a term applied to all those events in human life over which man himself has no control. This is the T'ien Mencius refers to when he says: "As to the accomplishment of a great deed, that is with T'ien" ([Mencius], Ib, 14).
(4) A naturalistic T'ien, that is, one equivalent to the English word Nature. This is the sort of T'ien described in the 'Discussion on T'ien' in the [Hsün Tzǔ] (ch. 17).
(5) An ethical T'ien, that is, one having a moral principle and which is the highest primordial principle of the universe. This is the sort of T'ien which the [Chung Yung] (Doctrine of the Mean) refers to in its opening sentence when it says: "What T'ien confers (on man) is called his nature." (1952:31)

The Oxford English Dictionary enters the English loanword t'ien (also tayn, tyen, tien, and tiān) "Chinese thought: Heaven; the Deity." The earliest recorded usages for these spelling variants are: 1613 Tayn, 1710 Tien, 1747 Tyen, and 1878 T'ien.

Pronunciations

The modern Standard Mandarin pronunciation of 天 "sky, heaven; heavenly deity, god" is tiān in level first tone. The character is read as Standard Cantonese tin1; Taiwanese thiN1 or thian1; Vietnamese yêu or thiên; Korean cheon or ch'ŏn (천); and Japanese ten in On'yomi (borrowed Chinese reading) and ame or sora in Kun'yomi (native Japanese reading).

Tiān 天 reconstructions in Middle Chinese (ca. 6th-10th centuries CE) include t'ien (Bernhard Karlgren), t'iɛn (Zhou Fagao), tʰɛn > tʰian (Edwin G. Pulleyblank), and then (William H. Baxter). Reconstructions in Old Chinese (ca. 6th-3rd centuries BCE) include *t'ien (Karlgren), *t'en (Zhou), *hlin (Baxter), and *thîn (Schuessler).

Etymologies

For the etymology of tian, Schuessler (2007:495) says, "Because the deity Tiān came into prominence with the Zhou dynasty (a western state), a Central Asian origin has been suggested." He cites the Mongolian word tengri "sky, heaven, heavenly deity" or the Tibeto-Burman words Adi taleŋ and Lepcha tǎ-lyaŋ "sky". Schuessler (2007:211) also suggests a likely connection between Chinese tiān 天, diān 巔 "summit, mountaintop", and diān 顛 "summit, top of the head, forehead", which have cognates such as Naga tiŋ "sky".

Compounds

Tian is the component in hundreds of Chinese compounds. Some significant ones include:

• tianming (天命 "Mandate of Heaven") "divine mandate, God's will; fate, destiny; one's lifespan"
• tianzi (天子 "Son of Heaven"), an honorific designation for the "Emperor; Chinese sovereign" (Tianzi accounts for 28 of the 140 tian occurrences in the Shi Jing above.)
• tianxia (天下, lit. "all under heaven") "the world, earth; China"
• tiandi (天地, lit "heaven and earth") "the world; the universe"

References

• Chang, Ruth H. 2000. "Understanding Di and Tian: Deity and Heaven From Shang to Tang." Sino-Platonic Papers 108:1-54.
• Creel, Herrlee G., 1970. The Origins of Statecraft in China. The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-12043-0
• Fung Yu-Lan. 1952. A History of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. I. The Period of the Philosophers, tr. Derk Bodde. Princeton University Press.
• Legge, James. 1865. The Chinese Classics, Vol. III, The Shoo King. Oxford University Press.
• Schuessler, Axel. 2007. ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese. University of Hawaii Press.

External links

• "Shang Di (High Lord) and Tian (Sky): Their Identity and Relationship", Sarah Allan
• Oracle, Bronze, and Seal characters for 天, Richard Sears

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