SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS Number 192 September, 2009 In and Outside the Square: The Sky and the Power of Belief in Ancient China and the World, c. 4500 BC – AD 200 Volume III: Terrestrial and Celestial Transformations in Zhou and Early-Imperial China by John C. Didier Victor H. Mair, Editor Sino-Platonic Papers Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305 USA [email protected] www.sino-platonic.org SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS is an occasional series edited by Victor H. Mair. The purpose of the series is to make available to specialists and the interested public the results of research that, because of its unconventional or controversial nature, might otherwise go unpublished. The editor actively encourages younger, not yet well established, scholars and independent authors to submit manuscripts for consideration. 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Didier, “In and Outside the Square,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 192, vol. 3 (September, 2009) Chapter 1: Transitions through the Western Zhou, c. 1045–771 BC The Meaning of Tian 天, “Heaven” When the Zhou took over from the Shang in approximately 1045 BC their greatest task was to convince those loyal to the Shang now to allow the Zhou royal house to lead them. One of the ways to do this was to equate their generic godhead Tian with the similarly generic Shang god Di. Working in the Han, Xu Shen catalogued Tian 天 under the section of characters deriving from the basic character yi 一. Xu reasoned that, Tian is dian 顛 (“top”), the highest and unexceeded. It derives from the characters yi 一, “one,” and da 大, “big.”1 Xu saw the top line as yi and the remainder of the character as da. Obviously, he considered the superior line to impart graphically the abstract concept of “above” or “atop”: heaven is what is above what is big, the latter of which presumably referred to the earth. Xu further considered that both graphically and phonetically tian, “heaven,” i.e., what is on top of all else, and dian, “summit” or “top,” were intimately related. The phonetics, according to later pronunciations, indeed are close.2 However, Xu did not explain how or why dian could explain etymologically that tian means something similar to specifically the “top” that dian denotes. That is, if dian is being compared to tian as a phonetically related character, then, we must ask of Xu, by what logic did tian derive its meaning from dian? There seems to be no answer. In fact, the specious attraction of the tidy explanation whereby “heaven” is explained as “above,” and “above” is explained by indicating a line attached to the top of a character meaning “big” and which apparently has been 1 Quoted in Zhou Fagao, Jinwen gulin (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1974): 29. 2 Axel Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007): 211, 495. 1 John C. Didier, “In and Outside the Square,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 192, vol. 3 (September, 2009) considered arbitrarily to refer cryptically to what is the greatest thing of all below heaven, the earth, should remain just that, specious only.3 On deeper consideration Xu’s etymology does not hold water. For one thing, what Xu did not note and to some degree could not have known is that the archaic character for tian took several forms, in both oracle-bone and bronze scripts. The most common among the many such forms are displayed in Table 1. We note immediately that in place of the single line of yi is often found either a set of two horizontal lines or, filling in the verticals connecting them, a box — our familiar rectangle or square — or a circle (the latter surely having been, in bronze graphs, a shortened form of the square). We will return to these forms further below. But most troubling about Xu Shen’s etymology for tian is that the earliest uses of the character had nothing to do with “top” or “above.” For the Shang, who, as far as we know, invented the character, what we now call tian (1) was the name of a place where the Shang king hunted, (2) seems to have been a given name, and (3) was loaned at times to replace the Sinitic form for da 大, “big.”4 Still, later scholars have mostly agreed with Xu’s etymology of tian, adding explanations to round out an understanding of how the character meant “heaven” in both the spiritual and physical senses. Wang Guowei, for instance, added that, “Tian originally indicated the top of a person (the head). Therefore, it resembles a person’s form.”5 Considering the circular- and square-topped forms of the character, he also proffered that this enlarged cap was intended to exaggerate the human form, presumably to clarify that this was its real-world referent. This follows Xu closely, departing only in specifying the nature of the thing being capped to indicate 6 “above” or “top” (i.e., a person rather than the earth). 3 Xu also explained somewhat nonsensically that, “Heaven (tian) is great (da), earth is great, and humanity is great” (quoted in Zhou [1974]: 29). This is a stretch, for if all of heaven, earth, and humanity are equally great, then how could heaven (tian) then necessarily be above what is da, “great,” which includes heaven (tian)? 4 See its uses in Yao Xiaosui and Xiao Ding, eds., Yinxu jiagu keci leizuan (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988; hereafter LZ): 84–85. 5 Zhou (1974): 30. 6 Schuessler has largely followed Xu’s phonetic-semantic derivation for tian (2007: 495). 2 John C. Didier, “In and Outside the Square,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 192, vol. 3 (September, 2009) As we know from the chapters of the preceding volume, indeed the superior square, or its ellipted forms, i.e., the circle and the two lines, indicated in Shang Sinitic Ding, Di, and tens of other graphs the meanings of “top,” “above,” and, apparently in its root usage, the square formed from stars at the NCP and, by extension, on the one hand stars of the heavens and on the other the spirits that resided at the NCP and the apparati on earth among humans that were devised to communicate with them. However, in the Shang the graph for tian was not employed to indicate any such meanings. Thus, the Shang graph for tian could not have developed according to Xu’s etymology of graphs or graphic components. Table 1. Sinitic Forms of the Chinese Graph Tian 天 (approximations)7 Period I, early Period I Period I Period I Period I Late period, bronze All periods All periods 7 Sources: Gao Ming, Gu wenzi leibian (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980): 28; Zhou Fagao (1974): 24–27; idem, Jinwen gulin bu (Nangang: Zhongyang yanjiu yuan, Lishi-yuyan yanjiusuo, 1982): 93; and LZ: 84. 3 John C. Didier, “In and Outside the Square,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 192, vol. 3 (September, 2009) In the West the most influential theorist of tian’s etymology was Herrlee Creel.