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Shen (clam-monster)
Encyclopedia
In Chinese mythology
, the shen or chen is a shapeshifting
dragon
or sea monster
believed to create mirage
s.
Chinese classic texts
use the word shen to mean "a large shellfish" that was associated with funerals and "an aquatic monster" that could change its shape, which was later associated with "mirages".
, mussel
, or giant clam
such as the Pearl of Lao Tzu
. While early Chinese dictionaries treat shen as a general term for "mollusca
", the Erya
defines it as a large yao (珧) which means shellfish, clam, scallop, or mother-of-pearl. According to Shuowen Jiezi
, an early 2nd century CE Chinese dictionary
of the Han Dynasty
defines it a large ge (蛤), meaning clam, oyster, shellfish, or bivalve.
Chinese classics variously record that shen was salted as a food (in Zuozhuan), named a "lacquered wine barrel" used in sacrifices to earth spirits (in Zhouli), and its shells were used to make hoes (in Huainanzi
) and receptacles (in Zhuangzi
). They also record two shen-compounds
related with funerals: shenche "hearse" (Zhouli, Guo Pu
's commentary notes shen means large shell-like wheel rims) and shentan 蜃炭 (with "charcoal") "oyster-lime; white clay", which was especially used as mortar for mausoleum walls (Zuozhuan, Zhouli).
Wolfram Eberhard
(1968:292) describes the shen mussel as "a strange animal", and mentions the Zhoulis Zhangshen 掌蜃 "Manager of Shen", who was a special government official in charge of acquiring them for royal sacrifices and funerals. "It is not clear why these mussels were placed into the tombs," he admits, possibly either as a sacrifice to the earth god (compare shen 脤 below) or "the shell lime was used simply for a purifying and protective effect."
Edward H. Schafer
, who aptly translates shen or chen as "clam-monster", traces its linguistic evolution from originally designating a "large bivalve mollusc",
. It expressed its artistic nature by belching up bubbles and frothy clots. These foamy structures were sometimes worked into buildings. …The plastic exhalations of the clam-monster sometimes burst the film of surface tension and appeared to astonished mariners as stunning mansions adrift on the surface of the deep. (1989:395)
dialect, after 1000 (commentators say 10) years; a yan 燕 "swallow" transforms into a haige 海蛤 (with "sea") after 100 years; and a fulei 復絫, or fuyi 服翼 "bat", transforms into a kuige 魁蛤 (with "eminent") after it gets old. These kinds of legendary animal "transformations" – hua 化 "transform, change, convert, turn into; metamorphose; take the form of" (see the Huashu
) – are a common theme in Chinese folklore, particularly for dragons like the shen. The "dragon's transformations are unlimited", writes Visser (1913:126), and "it is no wonder that Chinese literature abounds with stories about dragons which had assumed the shape of men, animals, or objects.
The Yueling 月令 "Monthly Commands" chapter of the Liji (6, tr. Legge 1885 I:292, 297) lists sparrows and pheasants transforming into shellfish during the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar
. In (Shuangjiang) the last month of autumn, "[jue 爵, a phonetic loan character for que 雀 "sparrow"] Small birds enter the great water and become [ge 蛤] mollusks", and in (Lidong
) the first month of winter, "[zhi 雉 "pheasant"] Pheasants enter the great water and become [shen 蜃] large mollusks." While many other classical texts (e.g., Lüshi Chunqiu
, Yi Zhoushu, Huainanzi) repeat this seasonal legend about pheasants that transform in dashui 大水 "great (bodies of) water; flood", the Da Dai Liji and Guoyu
say they transform in the huai 淮 "Huai River
." According to Chinese folklore
(Visser 1913:69) swallows are a favorite food of both Chinese long 龍 and shen 蜃 dragons. Read (1934:301) explains, "Hence if people eat swallow's flesh they should not go out and cross a river (dragons will eat them if they do)."
Eberhard (1968:293) equates the shen 蜃 with the jiaolong
蛟龍 "flood dragon; crocodile" and compares tales of both these dragons attacking cattle in rivers. The 1596 CE Bencao gangmu Chinese materia medica
describes the shen or chen 蜃 under the jiaolong entry, with quotes from the Yueling and Lu Dian's Piya
.
The shape-changing shen is believed to cause a mirage
or Fata Morgana
. Shen- synonyms meaning "mirage" include shenlou 蜃樓 (with "multi-storied building", Schafer's 1989:396 "clam castle" or "high house of the clam-monsters"), shenqi 蜃氣 (with qi
"breath; pneuma"), shenqilou 蜃氣樓, haishishenlou 海市蜃樓 (with "sea city/market"), and shenjing 蜃景 (with "scenery"). In Japanese
vocabulary, shinkirō 蜃気楼 is the usual word for "mirage". Compare the association between the long 龍 "dragon" and "waterspouts", evident in words like longjuan 龍卷 (lit. "dragon roll") "waterspout" and longjuanfeng 龍卷風 ("dragon roll wind") "cyclone; tornado" (Visser 1913:220-224).
" or "signific" that suggests semantic field
. Shens standard 蜃 and antiquated 蜄 characters combine the chen 辰 "dragon (zodiac)
, duodecimal
5th of the 12 Earthly Branches
; period from 7-9 AM; time period; occasion; star; celestial body" phonetic with the chong 虫 "insect; reptile" radical.
A variety of other characters utilize this phonetic chen 辰 "5th; dragon", which the Wenlin says "may have depicted an ancient kind of hoe" in ancient oracle bone script
(cf. nou 耨 "hoe; rake"). Some etymologically significant examples include:
This chen 晨 or chenxing 辰星 "dragon star" is an asterism
in the traditional Chinese constellations, a morning star within the Azure Dragon that is associated with east and spring. Specifically, the "dragon star" is in the 5th and 6th lunar Twenty-eight mansions
, with its xin 心 "Heart
" and wei 尾 "Tail
" corresponding to the Western constellations
of Antares
and Scorpius
.
's Old Chinese
reconstructions) split between * "dragon" and * "thunder". The former words include aquatic shen < * 蜃 "large shellfish; sea dragon", celestial chen < * 晨 "dragon star", and possibly through dragon-emperor association, chen < * 宸 "imperial palace; mansion". The latter ones, reflecting the belief that dragons cause rainfall and thunder, include zhen < * 震 "thunder; shake", zhen < * 振 "shake; scare", and ting < *d'ieng 霆 "thunderbolt".
Schuessler (2007:184, 459, 611) provides more refined reconstructions and etymologies:
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 shen or chen is a shapeshifting
Shapeshifting
Shapeshifting is a common theme in mythology, folklore, and fairy tales. It is also found in epic poems, science fiction literature, fantasy literature, children's literature, Shakespearean comedy, ballet, film, television, comics, and video games...
dragon
Chinese dragon
Chinese dragons are legendary creatures in Chinese mythology and folklore, with mythic counterparts among Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Bhutanese, Western and Turkic dragons. In Chinese art, dragons are typically portrayed as long, scaled, serpentine creatures with four legs...
or sea monster
Sea monster
Sea monsters are sea-dwelling mythical or legendary creatures, often believed to be of immense size.Marine monsters can take many forms, including sea dragons, sea serpents, or multi-armed beasts. They can be slimy or scaly and are often pictured threatening ships or spouting jets of water...
believed to create mirage
Mirage
A mirage is a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. The word comes to English via the French mirage, from the Latin mirare, meaning "to look at, to wonder at"...
s.
Meanings
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 the word shen to mean "a large shellfish" that was associated with funerals and "an aquatic monster" that could change its shape, which was later associated with "mirages".
Large shellfish
The word used to mean a shellfish, or mollusk, identified as an oysterOyster
The word oyster is used as a common name for a number of distinct groups of bivalve molluscs which live in marine or brackish habitats. The valves are highly calcified....
, mussel
Mussel
The common name mussel is used for members of several families of clams or bivalvia mollusca, from saltwater and freshwater habitats. These groups have in common a shell whose outline is elongated and asymmetrical compared with other edible clams, which are often more or less rounded or oval.The...
, or giant clam
Giant clam
The giant clam, Tridacna gigas , is the largest living bivalve mollusc. T. gigas is one of the most endangered clam species. It was mentioned as early as 1825 in scientific reports...
such as the Pearl of Lao Tzu
Pearl of Lao Tzu
The Pearl of Lao Tzu is the largest known pearl in the world. It is not a gem-quality pearl, but is instead what is known as a "clam pearl" or "Tridacna pearl" from a giant clam. It measures 24 centimeters in diameter and weighs 6.4 kilograms...
. While early Chinese dictionaries treat shen as a general term for "mollusca
Mollusca
The Mollusca , common name molluscs or mollusksSpelled mollusks in the USA, see reasons given in Rosenberg's ; for the spelling mollusc see the reasons given by , is a large phylum of invertebrate animals. There are around 85,000 recognized extant species of molluscs. Mollusca is the largest...
", 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 it as a large yao (珧) which means shellfish, clam, scallop, or mother-of-pearl. According to 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...
, an early 2nd century CE Chinese dictionary
Chinese dictionary
Chinese dictionaries date back over two millennia to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, which is a significantly longer lexicographical history than any other language. There are hundreds of dictionaries for Chinese, and this article will introduce some of the most important...
of 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...
defines it a large ge (蛤), meaning clam, oyster, shellfish, or bivalve.
Chinese classics variously record that shen was salted as a food (in Zuozhuan), named a "lacquered wine barrel" used in sacrifices to earth spirits (in Zhouli), and its shells were used to make hoes (in Huainanzi
Huainanzi
The Huáinánzǐ is a 2nd century BCE Chinese philosophical classic from the Han dynasty that blends Daoist, Confucianist, and Legalist concepts, including theories such as Yin-Yang and the Five Phases. It was written under the patronage of Liu An, Prince of Huainan, a legendarily prodigious author...
) and receptacles (in Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States Period, a period corresponding to the philosophical summit of Chinese thought — the Hundred Schools of Thought, and is credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name,...
). They also record two shen-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...
related with funerals: shenche "hearse" (Zhouli, Guo Pu
Guo Pu
Guo Pu , courtesy name Jingchun , born in Yuncheng, Shanxi, was a Chinese writer.-Biography:Guo Pu was a Taoist mystic, geomancer, collector of strange tales, editor of old texts, and erudite commentator...
's commentary notes shen means large shell-like wheel rims) and shentan 蜃炭 (with "charcoal") "oyster-lime; white clay", which was especially used as mortar for mausoleum walls (Zuozhuan, Zhouli).
Wolfram Eberhard
Wolfram Eberhard
Wolfram Eberhard was a professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley focused on Western, Central and Eastern Asian societies.-Biography:...
(1968:292) describes the shen mussel as "a strange animal", and mentions the Zhoulis Zhangshen 掌蜃 "Manager of Shen", who was a special government official in charge of acquiring them for royal sacrifices and funerals. "It is not clear why these mussels were placed into the tombs," he admits, possibly either as a sacrifice to the earth god (compare shen 脤 below) or "the shell lime was used simply for a purifying and protective effect."
Edward H. Schafer
Edward H. Schafer
Edward Hetzel Schafer, was a leading historian of Tang Dynasty China. He wrote ground-breaking works such as The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A study of Tang exotics and The Vermilion Bird: T'ang images of the South. Schafer wrote his Ph.D...
, who aptly translates shen or chen as "clam-monster", traces its linguistic evolution from originally designating a "large bivalve mollusc",
Beginning as an unassuming marine invertebrate, the ch'en was later imagined as a gaping, pearl-producing clam, possibly to be identified with the giant clams of tropical seas, for instanceTridacna. Finally, by early medieval times, it had become a monster lurking in submarine grottoes, and was sometimes endowed with the attributes of a dragon – or, more likely, under influence, a nāga
Naga
Naga or NAGA may refer to:* Nāga, a group of serpent deities in Hindu and Buddhist mythology.-People:* Nayan / Nayar/Nair people of Kerala Society* Naga people, a diverse ethnic identity in Northeast India...
. It expressed its artistic nature by belching up bubbles and frothy clots. These foamy structures were sometimes worked into buildings. …The plastic exhalations of the clam-monster sometimes burst the film of surface tension and appeared to astonished mariners as stunning mansions adrift on the surface of the deep. (1989:395)
Aquatic dragon
Second, shen 蜃 meant the "clam-monster" that miraculously transformed shapes. The Shuowen jiezi defines ge 蛤 (using a graphic variant with the he 合 phonetic above the radical) as the "category of shen", which includes three creatures that transform within the sea. A que 雀 "sparrow" transforms into a ge 蛤, or muli 牡厲 "oyster" in QinQin (state)
The State of Qin was a Chinese feudal state that existed during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods of Chinese history...
dialect, after 1000 (commentators say 10) years; a yan 燕 "swallow" transforms into a haige 海蛤 (with "sea") after 100 years; and a fulei 復絫, or fuyi 服翼 "bat", transforms into a kuige 魁蛤 (with "eminent") after it gets old. These kinds of legendary animal "transformations" – hua 化 "transform, change, convert, turn into; metamorphose; take the form of" (see the Huashu
Huashu
The Huashu , or The Book of Transformations, is a 930 CE Daoist classic about neidan "internal alchemy", psychological subjectivity, and spiritual transformation...
) – are a common theme in Chinese folklore, particularly for dragons like the shen. The "dragon's transformations are unlimited", writes Visser (1913:126), and "it is no wonder that Chinese literature abounds with stories about dragons which had assumed the shape of men, animals, or objects.
The Yueling 月令 "Monthly Commands" chapter of the Liji (6, tr. Legge 1885 I:292, 297) lists sparrows and pheasants transforming into shellfish during the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar
Lunisolar calendar
A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures whose date indicates both the moon phase and the time of the solar year. If the solar year is defined as a tropical year then a lunisolar calendar will give an indication of the season; if it is taken as a sidereal year then the calendar will...
. In (Shuangjiang) the last month of autumn, "[jue 爵, a phonetic loan character for que 雀 "sparrow"] Small birds enter the great water and become [ge 蛤] mollusks", and in (Lidong
Lidong
The traditional East Asian calendars divide a year into 24 solar terms . Lìdōng or Rittō is the 19th solar term. It begins when the Sun reaches the celestial longitude of 225° and ends when it reaches the longitude of 240°. It more often refers in particular to the day when the Sun is exactly at...
) the first month of winter, "[zhi 雉 "pheasant"] Pheasants enter the great water and become [shen 蜃] large mollusks." While many other classical texts (e.g., Lüshi Chunqiu
Lüshi Chunqiu
The Lüshi Chunqiu is an encyclopedic Chinese classic text compiled around 239 BCE under the patronage of the Qin Dynasty Chancellor Lü Buwei...
, Yi Zhoushu, Huainanzi) repeat this seasonal legend about pheasants that transform in dashui 大水 "great (bodies of) water; flood", the Da Dai Liji and Guoyu
Guoyu (book)
The Discourses of the States or Guoyu is a classical Chinese history book that collected the historical records of numerous states from Western Zhou to 453 BC. Its author is unknown, but it is sometimes attributed to Zuo Qiuming, a contemporary of Confucius...
say they transform in the huai 淮 "Huai River
Huai River
The Huai River is a major river in China. The Huai River is located about mid-way between the Yellow River and Yangtze River, the two largest rivers in China, and like them runs from west to east...
." According to Chinese folklore
Chinese folklore
Chinese folklore includes songs, dances, puppetry, and tales. It often tells stories of human nature, historical or legendary events, love, and the supernatural, or stories explaining natural phenomena and distinctive landmarks.-Folktales:...
(Visser 1913:69) swallows are a favorite food of both Chinese long 龍 and shen 蜃 dragons. Read (1934:301) explains, "Hence if people eat swallow's flesh they should not go out and cross a river (dragons will eat them if they do)."
Eberhard (1968:293) equates the shen 蜃 with the jiaolong
Jiaolong
Jiaolong or jiao is a polysemous aquatic dragon in Chinese mythology. Edward H. Schafer describes the jiao.Spiritually akin to the crocodile, and perhaps originally the same reptile, was a mysterious creature capable of many forms called the chiao . Most often it was regarded as a kind of lung – a...
蛟龍 "flood dragon; crocodile" and compares tales of both these dragons attacking cattle in rivers. The 1596 CE Bencao gangmu Chinese materia medica
Materia medica
Materia medica is a Latin medical term for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing . The term 'materia medica' derived from the title of a work by the Ancient Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in the 1st century AD, De materia medica libre...
describes the shen or chen 蜃 under the jiaolong entry, with quotes from the Yueling and Lu Dian's Piya
Piya
The Piya was a Chinese dictionary compiled by Song Dynasty scholar Lu Dian . He wrote this Erya supplement along with his Erya Xinyi commentary...
.
A kind of crocodile shaped like a huge serpent. Horned like a dragon, with a red mane. Below the middle of the back it has scales inversely arranged. It lives on swallows. It spurts forth clouds of vapour in huge rings. It appears when it is going to rain. The fat and wax is made into candles which have a fragrant smoke noticeable 100 steps away, and ascend in layers in the air. TheYueh-Ling says the pheasant metamorphoses into a Ch'un [sic] when it enters the water. Lu Tien says that serpents and tortoises together produce tortoises but cohabitation of tortoises and pheasants produce Ch'un, although they are different animals they are moved by the same influences. Other records refer to its relationship to the clam. (43/5, Read 1934:315, cf. Visser 1913:76)
Mirage
Mirage
A mirage is a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. The word comes to English via the French mirage, from the Latin mirare, meaning "to look at, to wonder at"...
or Fata Morgana
Fata Morgana (mirage)
A Fata Morgana is an unusual and very complex form of mirage, a form of superior mirage, which, like many other kinds of superior mirages, is seen in a narrow band right above the horizon...
. Shen- synonyms meaning "mirage" include shenlou 蜃樓 (with "multi-storied building", Schafer's 1989:396 "clam castle" or "high house of the clam-monsters"), shenqi 蜃氣 (with qi
Qi
In traditional Chinese culture, qì is an active principle forming part of any living thing. Qi is frequently translated as life energy, lifeforce, or energy flow. Qi is the central underlying principle in traditional Chinese medicine and martial arts...
"breath; pneuma"), shenqilou 蜃氣樓, haishishenlou 海市蜃樓 (with "sea city/market"), and shenjing 蜃景 (with "scenery"). In 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...
vocabulary, shinkirō 蜃気楼 is the usual word for "mirage". Compare the association between the long 龍 "dragon" and "waterspouts", evident in words like longjuan 龍卷 (lit. "dragon roll") "waterspout" and longjuanfeng 龍卷風 ("dragon roll wind") "cyclone; tornado" (Visser 1913:220-224).
Characters
Most Chinese characters are written with a "phonetic" element that roughly indicates pronunciation with a "radicalRadical (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 "signific" that suggests semantic field
Semantic field
A semantic field is a technical term in the discipline of linguistics to describe a set of words grouped by meaning in a certain way. The term is also used in other academic disciplines, such as anthropology and computational semiotics.-Definition and usage:...
. Shens standard 蜃 and antiquated 蜄 characters combine the chen 辰 "dragon (zodiac)
Dragon (zodiac)
The Dragon , is one of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar, and the only animal that is legendary...
, duodecimal
Duodecimal
The duodecimal system is a positional notation numeral system using twelve as its base. In this system, the number ten may be written as 'A', 'T' or 'X', and the number eleven as 'B' or 'E'...
5th of the 12 Earthly Branches
Earthly Branches
The Earthly Branches provide one Chinese system for reckoning time.This system was built from observations of the orbit of Jupiter. Chinese astronomers divided the celestial circle into 12 sections to follow the orbit of Suìxīng . Astronomers rounded the orbit of Suixing to 12 years...
; period from 7-9 AM; time period; occasion; star; celestial body" phonetic with the chong 虫 "insect; reptile" radical.
A variety of other characters utilize this phonetic chen 辰 "5th; dragon", which the Wenlin says "may have depicted an ancient kind of hoe" in ancient 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...
(cf. nou 耨 "hoe; rake"). Some etymologically significant examples include:
- chen 晨 (with 日 "sun") "dragon star"
- zhen 震 (with 雨 "rain") "thunder; quake" (also a bagua trigramBagua (concept)The bagua are eight diagrams used in Taoist cosmology to represent the fundamental principles of reality, seen as a range of eight interrelated concepts. Each consists of three lines, each line either "broken" or "unbroken," representing yin or yang, respectively...
"The Arousing") - zhen 振 (with 扌"hand") "shake; stimulate"
- zhen 娠 (with "woman") "pregnant"
- shen 脤 (with 肉 "meat") "sacrificial meat"
This chen 晨 or chenxing 辰星 "dragon star" is an asterism
Asterism (astronomy)
In astronomy, an asterism is a pattern of stars recognized on Earth's night sky. It may form part of an official constellation, or be composed of stars from more than one. Like constellations, asterisms are in most cases composed of stars which, while they are visible in the same general direction,...
in the traditional Chinese constellations, a morning star within the Azure Dragon that is associated with east and spring. Specifically, the "dragon star" is in the 5th and 6th lunar Twenty-eight mansions
Twenty-eight mansions
The Twenty-eight Mansions , ', ' or ' are part of the Chinese constellations system. They can be considered as the equivalent to the zodiacal constellations in the Western astronomy, though the Twenty-eight Mansions reflect the movement of the Moon in a lunar month rather than the Sun in a solar year...
, with its xin 心 "Heart
Heart (Chinese constellation)
The Heart mansion is one of the Twenty-eight mansions of the Chinese constellations. It is one of the eastern mansions of the Azure Dragon.-Asterisms:...
" and wei 尾 "Tail
Tail (Chinese constellation)
The Tail mansion is one of the Twenty-eight mansions of the Chinese constellations. It is one of the eastern mansions of the Azure Dragon.- Asterisms :...
" corresponding to the Western constellations
Constellations
Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal of critical and democratic theory and successor of Praxis International. It is edited by Andrew Arato, Amy Allen, and Andreas Kalyvas...
of Antares
Antares
Antares is a red supergiant star in the Milky Way galaxy and the sixteenth brightest star in the nighttime sky . Along with Aldebaran, Spica, and Regulus it is one of the four brightest stars near the ecliptic...
and Scorpius
Scorpius
Scorpius, sometimes known as Scorpio, is one of the constellations of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for scorpion, and its symbol is . It lies between Libra to the west and Sagittarius to the east...
.
Etymologies
Carr (1990:144-145) etymologically hypothesizes that the chen < * 辰 phonetic series (using Bernhard KarlgrenBernhard Karlgren
Klas Bernhard Johannes Karlgren was a Swedish sinologist and linguist who pioneered the study of Chinese historical phonology using modern comparative methods...
's 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....
reconstructions) split between * "dragon" and * "thunder". The former words include aquatic shen < * 蜃 "large shellfish; sea dragon", celestial chen < * 晨 "dragon star", and possibly through dragon-emperor association, chen < * 宸 "imperial palace; mansion". The latter ones, reflecting the belief that dragons cause rainfall and thunder, include zhen < * 震 "thunder; shake", zhen < * 振 "shake; scare", and ting < *d'ieng 霆 "thunderbolt".
Schuessler (2007:184, 459, 611) provides more refined reconstructions and etymologies:
- shen < * 蜃 "'Clam, oyster' … 'some kind of dragon'."
- chen < * 辰 "The 5th of the Earthly branches, identified with the dragon … cf. 蜃 'some kind of dragon'", which might be an Austro-Asiatic language loan from Vietnamese trăn or Mon klan "python".
- chen < * 晨 or 辰 "Time when life begins to stir: (1) 'early morning' … (2) "start of growing/agricultural season in the 3rd month; heavenly bodies that mark that time' … 'heavenly body', 'time'."
- zhen < * 振 or 震 "('To stir, be stirring':) 'to shake, rouse, quake' … 'to alarm, fear', 'scared', 'thunder', 'move'".
- zhen < 娠 "'Pregnant', 'become pregnant' … is derived from 'to shake, rouse, excite' (e.g., a grasshopper from hibernation, i.e., coming to life), hence lit. 'start stirring, moving' (of an embryo)."