It has been suggested that this article be merged with Earthly Branches and Sexagenary cycle to Chinese cyclical signs. (Discuss) Proposed since July 2024. |
The ten Heavenly Stems (or Celestial Stems[1]) are a system of ordinals indigenous to China and used throughout East Asia, first attested c. 1250 BCE during the Shang dynasty as the names of the ten days of the week. They were also used in Shang-era rituals in the names of dead family members, who were offered sacrifices on the corresponding day of the Shang week. Stems are no longer used as names for the days of the week, but have acquired many other uses. Most prominently, they have been used in conjunction with the associated set of twelve Earthly Branches in the compound sexagenary cycle, an important feature of historical Chinese calendars.[2]
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Hangul | 천간 | ||||||||||||||||
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Origin
editThe Shang people believed that there were ten suns, each of which appeared in order in a ten-day cycle (
Jonathan Smith has proposed that the heavenly stems predate the Shang and originally referred to ten asterisms along the ecliptic, of which their oracle bone script characters were drawings; he identifies similarities between these and asterisms in the later Four Images and Twenty-Eight Mansions systems. These would have been used to track the moon's progression along its monthly circuit, in conjunction with the earthly branches referring to its phase.[4]
The literal meanings of the characters were, and are now, roughly as follows.[5] Among the modern meanings, those deriving from the characters' position in the sequence of Heavenly Stems are in italics.
Heavenly Stem |
Meaning | |
---|---|---|
Original meaning | Modern | |
turtle shell | first (book I, person A etc.), methyl group, helmet, armor, words related to beetles, crustaceans, fingernails, toenails | |
fish-guts | second (book II, person B etc.), ethyl group, twist | |
fishtail[6] | third, bright, fire, fishtail (rare) | |
nail | fourth, male adult, robust, T-shaped, to strike, a surname | |
halberd | (not used) | |
threads on a loom[7] | self | |
evening star | age (of person) | |
to offend superiors[8] | bitter, piquant, toilsome | |
burden[9] | to shoulder, to trust with office | |
grass for libation[10] | (not used) |
Current usage
editThe Stems are still commonly used nowadays in East Asian counting systems similar to the way the alphabet is used in English. For example:
- Korea and Japan also use heavenly stems on legal documents in this way. In Korea, letters gap (
甲 ) and eul (乙 ) are consistently used to denote the larger and the smaller contractor (respectively) in a legal contract, and are sometimes used as synonyms for such; this usage is also common in the Korean IT industry. - Chinese mathematician Li Shanlan developed a system using the heavenly stems and terrestrial branches to represent English letters in advanced mathematics. In Li's system, the first ten letters (a-j) are represented by the heavenly stems, the next twelve letters (k-v) are represented by the terrestrial branches, and the final four letters (w-z) are represented by
物 ("matter"),天 ("heaven"),地 ("earth"), and人 ("human"), respectively.[11] The radical '口 ' (the 'mouth' radical) may be added to the corresponding heavenly stem, terrestrial branch, or any of '物 ', '天 ', '地 ', and '人 ' to denote an upper-case letter (e.g. a=甲 , A=呷 , d=丁 , D=叮).[12] - Choices on multiple choice exams, surveys, etc.
- Organic chemicals (e.g. methanol:
甲 醇 jiǎchún; ethanol:乙 醇 yǐchún). See Organic nomenclature in Chinese. - Diseases (Hepatitis A:
甲 型 肝炎 jiǎxíng gānyán; Hepatitis B:乙 型 肝炎 yǐxíng gānyán) - Sports leagues (Serie A:
意 甲 yìjiǎ) - Vitamins (although currently, in this case, the Latin letters are usually used)
- Characters conversing in a short text (
甲 speaks first,乙 answers) - Students' grades in Taiwan: with an additional Yōu (
優 "Excellence") before the first Heavenly Stem Jiǎ. Hence, American grades A, B, C, D and F correspond to優 ,甲 ,乙 ,丙 and丁 (yōu, jiǎ, yǐ, bǐng, dīng). - In astrology and Feng Shui. The Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches form the four pillars of Chinese metaphysics in Qi Men Dun Jia and Da Liu Ren.
See also
editNotes
edit- ^ "Heavenly Stems"
- ^ Smith (2011).
- ^ David N. Keightley, "The Quest for Eternity in Ancient China: The Dead, Their Gifts, Their Names" in Ancient Mortuary Traditions of China ed. by George Kuwayama. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1987, pp. 12–24.
- ^ Smith, Jonathan M. (2011). "The Di Zhi
地 支 as Lunar Phases and Their Coordination with the Tian Gan天 干 as Ecliptic Asterisms in a China before Anyang". Early China. 33: 199–228. doi:10.1017/S0362502800000274. S2CID 132200641. Retrieved January 29, 2022. - ^ William McNaughton. Reading and Writing Chinese. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1979.
- ^ Wenlin Dictionary: Picture of a fish tail.
- ^ Wenlin Dictionary:
己 may have depicted thread on a loom; an ancient meaning was 'unravel threads', which was later written紀 jì.己 was borrowed both for the word jǐ 'self', and for the name of the sixth Heavenly Stem (天 干 ). - ^ Wenlin Dictionary: "The seal has 𢆉 'knock against, offend' below, and 亠 above; the scholastic commentators say: to offend (亠 = )
上 the superiors" - ^ Wenlin Dictionary:
壬 rén depicts "a 丨 carrying pole supported一 in the middle part and having one object attached at each end, as always done in China" —Karlgren (1923). (See扁 担 biǎndan). Now the character任 rèn has the meaning of carrying a burden, and the original character壬 is used only for the ninth of the ten heavenly stems (天 干 ). - ^ Wenlin Dictionary: 癶 "stretch out the legs" +
天 ; The nicely disposed grass, on which the Ancients poured the libations offered to the Manes - ^ [1] (pages 147 and 148)
- ^ [2] (pages 147 and 148)
Bibliography
edit- Allan, Sarah (1991). The shape of the turtle: myth, art, and cosmos in early China. Albany NY: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-0459-1.
- Barnard, Noel (1986). "A new approach to the study of clan-sign inscriptions of Shang". In Kwang-chih Chang (ed.). Studies of Shang archaeology : selected papers from the International Conference on Shang Civilization. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 141–206. ISBN 978-0-300-03578-0.
- Tsien, Tsuen-hsuin; Kwang-chih Chang (1978). "T'ien kan: a key to the history of the Shang". In David Roy (ed.). Ancient China : studies in early civilization. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. pp. 13–42. ISBN 978-962-201-144-1.
- Chang Tai-Ping (1978). "The role of the t'ien-kan ti-chih terms in the naming system of the Yin". Early China. 4: 45–48. doi:10.1017/S0362502800005897. S2CID 161397647.
- Keightley, David (2000). The ancestral landscape: time, space, and community in late Shang China, ca. 1200-1045 B.C. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, Center for Chinese Studies. ISBN 978-1-55729-070-0.
- Norman, Jerry (1985). "A note on the origins of the Chinese duodenary cycle". In Graham Thurgood (ed.). Linguistics of the Sino-Tibetan area : the state of the art : papers presented to Paul K. Benedict for his 7lst birthday. Canberra: Australian National University. pp. 85–89.
- Pulleyblank, E. G. (1995). "The ganzhi as phonograms". Early China News. 8: 29–30.
- Smith, Adam (2011). "The Chinese sexagenary cycle and the ritual origins of the calendar". In John Steele (ed.). Calendars and years II : astronomy and time in the ancient and medieval world (PDF). Oxford: Oxbow. pp. 1–37. ISBN 978-1-84217-987-1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-08-13. Retrieved 2011-06-10.
External links
edit- "Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches". Hong Kong Observatory. Archived from the original on 2020-06-21. Retrieved 2018-11-04.