Shen (Chinese religion)
Encyclopedia
Shen is a keyword in Chinese philosophy
, Chinese religion
, and Traditional Chinese Medicine
.
) 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), kō (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.
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".
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).
: 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.
Chinese philosophy
Chinese philosophy is philosophy written in the Chinese tradition of thought. The majority of traditional Chinese philosophy originates in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era, during a period known as the "Hundred Schools of Thought", which was characterized by significant intellectual and...
, Chinese religion
Chinese religion
Chinese religion may refer to:*Religion in China*Religion in Republic of China*Chinese folk religion*East Asian religions...
, and Traditional Chinese Medicine
Traditional Chinese medicine
Traditional Chinese Medicine refers to a broad range of medicine practices sharing common theoretical concepts which have been developed in China and are based on a tradition of more than 2,000 years, including various forms of herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage , exercise , and dietary therapy...
.
Pronunciation
Shén (in rising 2nd toneTone number
A tone number is a numeral used in a notational system for marking the tones of a language. The number is usually placed after the romanized syllable. Notice that a number may have very different meanings in different contexts since the systems may have developed independently.Other means of...
) is the Modern Standard Chinese pronunciation of 神 "spirit; god, deity; spiritual, supernatural; awareness, consciousness etc". Reconstructions of shén in Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...
(ca. 6th-10th centuries CE) include dź'jěn (Bernhard Karlgren
Bernhard Karlgren
Klas Bernhard Johannes Karlgren was a Swedish sinologist and linguist who pioneered the study of Chinese historical phonology using modern comparative methods...
, substituting j for his "yod medial"), źiɪn (Zhou Fagao), ʑin (Edwin G. Pulleyblank
Edwin G. Pulleyblank
Edwin George Pulleyblank FRSC is a sinologist and professor emeritus of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia...
, "Late Middle"), and zyin (William H. Baxter). Reconstructions of shén in Old Chinese
Old Chinese
The earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at a site near modern Anyang identified as Yin, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1200 BC....
(ca. 6th-3rd centuries BCE) include *djěn (Karlgren), *zdjien (Zhou), *djin (Li Fanggui
Li Fanggui
Li Fang-Kuei was a Chinese linguist. He resided in the United States after 1938.-Biography:Li was one of the first Chinese to study linguistics outside China. Originally a student of medicine, he switched to linguistics when he went to the United States in 1924. He gained a BA in linguistics at...
), *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
Chepang
Chepang is the commonly used name given to an indigenous ethnic group living in central and southern Nepal.The language is also known as Chepang but is called Chyo-bang by the people themselves. Some Bahun Chettri castes call these people the "Praja" meaning "political subjects"...
gliŋh "spirit of humans".
Chinese shen 神 "spirit; etc." is a loanword in East Asian languages. The Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
Kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
神 is pronounced shin (しん) or jin (じん) in On'yomi (Chinese reading), and kami (かみ), kō (こう), or tamashii (たましい) in Kun'yomi (Japanese reading). The Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
Hanja
Hanja
Hanja is the Korean name for the Chinese characters hanzi. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation...
神 is pronounced sin (신).
The Zihui
Zihui
The Zìhuì is a Chinese dictionary, edited by Mei Yingzuo during the late Ming Dynasty and published in 1615, the forty-third year of the Ming Wanli Emperor. The work is divided into 14 fascicles and contains a total of 33,179 Chinese characters. It was the first dictionary to introduce the...
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
Vietnamese language
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
, 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.- 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.)
- 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.)
- Expression, demeanor; consciousness, state of mind. (表情; 神志.)
- Portrait, portraiture. (肖像.)
- 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.)
- Esteem, respect; valuable, precious. (尊重; 珍贵.)
- Rule, govern, administer. (治理.)
- Cautious, careful, circumspect. (谨慎.)
- Display, arrange, exhibit. (陈列.)
- Dialect. 1. Dignity, distinction. (威风.) 2. Entrancement, ecstasy. (入神.) 3. Clever, intelligent. (聪明.)
- 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
Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...
. Chinese classic texts
Chinese classic texts
Chinese classic texts, or Chinese canonical texts, today often refer to the pre-Qin Chinese texts, especially the Neo-Confucian titles of Four Books and Five Classics , a selection of short books and chapters from the voluminous collection called the Thirteen Classics. All of these pre-Qin 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
Song Dynasty
The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
texts. Meanings 7-9 first occur in early Chinese dictionaries; the Erya
Erya
The Erya is the oldest extant Chinese dictionary or Chinese encyclopedia. Bernhard Karlgren concluded that "the major part of its glosses must reasonably date from" the 3rd century BC....
defines shen in meanings 7 "govern" and 8 "cautious" (and 6, which is attested elsewhere), and the Guangya
Guangya
The Guangya was an early 3rd century CE Chinese dictionary, edited by Zhang Yi during the Three Kingdoms period. It was later called the Boya owing to naming taboo on Yang Guang , which was the birth name of Emperor Yang of Sui.Zhang Yi wrote the Guangya as a supplement to the centuries older...
defines meaning 9 "display". Meaning 10 gives three usages in Chinese dialects (technically "topolects", see Fangyan
Fangyan
The Fāngyán , edited by Yang Xiong, was the first Chinese dictionary of dialectal terms. The full title is Yóuxuān shǐzhĕ juédài yǔ shì biéguó fāngyán "Local speeches of other countries in times immemorial explained by the Light-Carriage Messenger," which alludes to a Zhou Dynasty tradition of...
). Meaning 11 "a surname" is exemplified in Shennong
Shennong
Shennong , which names mean "Divine Farmer", but also known as the Emperor of the Five Grains , was a legendary ruler of China and culture hero reputed to have lived some 5,000 years ago...
("Divine Farmer"), the culture hero
Culture hero
A culture hero is a mythological hero specific to some group who changes the world through invention or discovery...
and inventor of agriculture in Chinese mythology
Chinese mythology
Chinese mythology is a collection of cultural history, folktales, and religions that have been passed down in oral or written tradition. These include creation myths and legends and myths concerning the founding of Chinese culture and the Chinese state...
.
The Chinese language has many compounds
Compound (linguistics)
In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...
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
Deva (Buddhism)
A deva in Buddhism is one of many different types of non-human beings who share the characteristics of being more powerful, longer-lived, and, in general, living more contentedly than the average human being....
", 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)
Xian (Taoism)
Xian is a Chinese word for an enlightened person, translatable in English as:*"spiritually immortal; transcendent; super-human; celestial being"...
, 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
Wing-tsit Chan
Professor Wing-tsit Chan was one of the world's leading scholars of Chinese philosophy and religion, active in the United States....
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
Hun and po
Hun and po are types of souls in Chinese philosophy and religion. Within this ancient soul dualism tradition, every living human has both a hun spiritual, ethereal, and yang soul that leaves the body after death and a po corporeal, substantive, and yin soul that remains with the corpse...
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
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
(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
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 literature as Shangdi...
. Among the early Chinese "god; God" names, shangdi
Shangdi
Shangdi , also known as Di in Oracle Bone Inscription and Thirteen Classics, refers to the supreme god or a divine power regarded as the spiritual ultimate by the Chinese people from the Shang Dynasty. He controlled victory in battle, harvest, the fate of the kingdom, and the weather...
上帝 or di was the Shang term, tian
Tian
Tian is one of the oldest Chinese terms for the cosmos and a key concept in Chinese mythology, philosophy, and religion. During the Shang Dynasty the Chinese called god Shangdi or Di , and during the Zhou Dynasty Tian "heaven; god" became synonymous with Shangdi...
天 was the Zhou term, and shen was a later usage (see Feng Yu-Lan
Feng Youlan
Feng Youlan or Fung Yu-Lan was a Chinese philosopher who was important for reintroducing the study of Chinese philosophy.-Early life, education, & career:...
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 classificationChinese character classification
All Chinese characters are logograms, but there are several derivative types. These include a handful which derive from pictograms and a number which are ideographic in origin, but the vast majority originated as phono-semantic compounds . In older literature, Chinese characters in general may be...
: xíngshēngzì 形聲字 "pictophonetic compounds, semantic-phonetic compounds", which combine a radical
Radical (Chinese character)
A Chinese radical is a component of a Chinese character. The term may variously refer to the original semantic element of a character, or to any semantic element, or, loosely, to any element whatever its origin or purpose...
(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
Mawangdui Silk Texts
The Mawangdui Silk Texts are texts of Chinese philosophical and medical works written on silk and found at Mawangdui in China in 1973. They include some of the earliest attested manuscripts of existing texts such as the I Ching, two copies of the Tao Te Ching, one similar copy of Strategies of the...
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
Shuowen Jiezi
The Shuōwén Jiězì was an early 2nd century CE Chinese dictionary from the Han Dynasty. Although not the first comprehensive Chinese character dictionary , it was still the first to analyze the structure of the characters and to give the rationale behind them , as well as the first to use the...
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
Zhou Dynasty
The Zhou Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty. Although the Zhou Dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the Ji family lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as...
Bronzeware script
Bronzeware script
Chinese Bronze inscriptions are writing in a variety of Chinese scripts on Chinese bronze artifacts such as zhōng bells and dǐng tripodal cauldrons from the Shāng dynasty to the Zhōu dynasty and even later...
and Qin Dynasty
Qin Dynasty
The Qin Dynasty was the first imperial dynasty of China, lasting from 221 to 207 BC. The Qin state derived its name from its heartland of Qin, in modern-day Shaanxi. The strength of the Qin state was greatly increased by the legalist reforms of Shang Yang in the 4th century BC, during the Warring...
Seal script
Seal script
Seal script is an ancient style of Chinese calligraphy. It evolved organically out of the Zhōu dynasty script , arising in the Warring State of Qin...
characters (compare the variants shown on the Chinese Etymology link below). Although 神 has not been identified in Shang Dynasty
Shang Dynasty
The Shang Dynasty or Yin Dynasty was, according to traditional sources, the second Chinese dynasty, after the Xia. They ruled in the northeastern regions of the area known as "China proper" in the Yellow River valley...
Oracle bone script
Oracle bone script
Oracle bone script refers to incised ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in Bronze Age China...
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.
External links
- 神 Seal and Bronze Characters, Chinese Etymology
- What Is Shen (Spirit)?, Subhuti Dharmananda