Shen (Chinese religion)

Shen (Chinese: 神かみ; pinyin: shén) is a Chinese word with senses of deity, god or spirit. The Japanese equivalent is shin, as in Shinto. This single Chinese term expresses a range of similar, yet differing, meanings.

The first meaning is a generic word for deities which are intimately involved in the affairs of the world, or spirits, such as dead ancestors. Spirits generate entities like rivers, mountains, thunder, and stars.

A second meaning of shen refers to the human spirit or psyche that is seen in the body as luster or vigor and in the mind as vitality and enthusiasm; it is the basic power or agency within humans that accounts for life, and in order to further life to its fullest potential, the spirit (Shen) is transformed to actualize potential (Jing 精せい ).

A third understanding of shen describes an entity as supernatural in the sense of inspiring awe or wonder because it combines categories usually kept separate, or it cannot be comprehended through normal concepts.

In the traditional Chinese theory of sanbao, shen is associated with the yang side of yin and yang and Jing is yin in comparison (Heaven and Earth; Earth tied to jing in particular in traditional Chinese medicine). Heaven is the origin of the spiritual aspect of humanity and provides ongoing spiritual influences, and therefore, it is associated with the heart, while Earth is the origin of the physical aspect of humankind/nature and is traditionally related to our kidneys or lower dantian. The ongoing harmonious interaction of Heaven and Earth creates qi in this case human and therefore is associated with the spleen, stomach and liver in the middle Jiao, which is essential to create balance and harmony of yin and yang, therefore maintaining a good standard of health and creating life.

It is said in the classics that the human is the best creation of Heaven and Earth. In traditional Chinese medicine, Taoist, Buddhist, and Chinese folk religious tradition, the balance of yin and yang is important to provide external harmony and internal health within life, thereby preventing injury, illness, or harm to body, mind, spirit, or the environment.

Pronunciation

Main article: Chinese gods and immortals

Shen
The character as it was carved on bronze inscriptions in the Western Zhou period (11th–8th centuries BC)
Chinese name
Chinese	神かみ
Literal meaning	god, deity
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Wade–Giles shen IPA [ʂə̌n] Yue: Cantonese Jyutping san4 Southern Min Hokkien POJ sîn Middle Chinese Middle Chinese ʑiɪn Old Chinese Baxter–Sagart (2014) /*Cə.li[n]/ Zhengzhang /*hlin/
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese alphabet	thần
Chữ Hán	神かみ
Korean name
Hangul	신
Hanja	神かみ
Transcriptions Revised Romanization sin
Japanese name
Kanji	神かみ
Hiragana	1. かみ 2. しん
Transcriptions Revised Hepburn 1. kami 2. shin

Shén (in rising 2nd tone) is the Modern Standard Chinese pronunciation of 神かみ "god, deity; spirit, 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).

Ming dynasty Water and Land Ritual painting of military and nature spirits.

Although the etymological origin of shen is uncertain, Schuessler notes a possible Sino-Tibetan etymology; compare Chepang gliŋh "spirit of humans".

The Chinese shen 神かみ "spirit; etc." is also present in other East Asian languages. The Japanese Kanji 神かみ 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 神かみ is pronounced sin (신).

The Zihui dictionary notes that 神かみ had a special pronunciation shēn (level 1st tone, instead of usual 2nd shén) in the name Shen Shu 神かみ荼, one of two "gods of the Eastern Sea", along with Yu Lu 鬱うつ壘るい.

In the Vietnamese language, it is pronounced as thần.

Ming dynasty painting of the canonization of Li Zhong as part of the Heavenly Pantheon under the Jade Emperor.

Semantics

Shen's polysemous meanings developed diachronically over three millennia. The Hanyu dazidian, an authoritative historical dictionary, distinguishes one meaning for shēn ("a deity (神かみ名めい)) and eleven meanings for shén 神かみ translated below:

1. Celestial god(s)/spirit(s) of stories/legends, namely, the creator of the myriad things in heaven and earth and the supreme being. (传说中ちゅう的てき天神てんじん,即そく天地てんち万物的创造者和主宰者.)
2. Spirit; mind, mental faculties; consciousness. Like: concentrated attention; tire the mind; concentrate one's energy and attention. (精神せいしん.如: 凝しこり神しん; 劳神; 聚精会かい神しん.)
3. Expression, demeanor; consciousness, state of mind. (表情ひょうじょう; 神かみ志こころざし.)
4. Portrait, portraiture. (肖像しょうぞう.)
5. Magical, supernatural, miraculous; mysterious, abstruse. Like: ability to divine the unknown, amazing foresight; highly skilled doctor; genius, masterpiece. (神かみ奇き; 玄妙げんみょう. 如: 神かみ机つくえ妙みょう算さん; 神かみ医い; 神品しんぴん.)
6. Esteem, respect; valuable, precious. (尊重そんちょう; 珍ちん贵.)
7. Rule, govern, administer. (治ち理り.)
8. Cautious, careful, circumspect. (谨慎.)
9. Display, arrange, exhibit. (陈列.)
10. Dialect. 1. Dignity, distinction. (威い风.) 2. Entrancement, ecstasy. (入神にゅうしん.) 3. Clever, intelligent. (聪明.)
11. Surname, family name. (姓せい.)

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 "deity", 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 天てん "sky; heaven; nature; god" in tianshen 天神てんじん "celestial spirits; heavenly gods; deities; (Buddhism) deva", with shan 山やま "mountain" in shanshen 山神さんじん "mountain spirit", and hua 話はなし "speech; talk; saying; story" in shenhua 神話しんわ "mythology; myth; fairy tale". Several shen "spirit; god" compounds use names for other supernatural beings, for example, ling 靈れい "spirit; soul" in shenling 神靈しんれい "gods; spirits, various deities", qi 祇 "earth spirit" in shenqi 神祇じんぎ "celestial and terrestrial spirits", xian 仙せん "Xian (Taoism), transcendent" in shenxian 神仙しんせん "spirits and immortals; divine immortal", guai 怪かい "spirit; devil; monster" in shenguai 神かみ怪かい "spirits and demons; gods and spirits", and gui 鬼おに "ghost, goblin; demon, devil" in guishen 鬼神きじん "ghosts and spirits; supernatural beings". The earliest discovered character form for shen suggests two components. The right side of the character gives the basic meaning and pronunciation, as well as providing a graphic representation of flashing lightning from the clouds. This visual displays ancient people’s belief that lightning was the manifestation of god.1 The left side displays a modified character shi which pertains to ritual ceremonies, worship, or prayer. This concept originally referred to stone table used for offering ceremonial sacrifices to the gods.

Wing-Tsit Chan 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.

The primary meaning of shen is translatable in English as god, gods, God; deity, deities, spirit, spiritual, spiritlike, spirits, Spirit, spiritual beings; celestial spirits; ancestral spirits, supernatural beings, etc. Shen is sometimes loosely translated as "soul", but Chinese hun and po distinguishes hun 魂たましい "spiritual soul" and po 魄たま "physical soul". Shen can be used as a loanword. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.) defines shen in these terms, "In Chinese philosophy: a god, person of supernatural power, or the spirit of a dead person." Shen can also refer to a living, "'spiritual' or 'spiritlike'" person or people when they accomplish things perceived to be superhuman, such as saving "people through the power of Virtue."

In acupuncture, shen is a pure spiritual energy devoid of memory and personality traits, whereas hun is the spiritual energy associated with the personality and po the energy tied to the sustenance of the physical body. In this system, shen resides in the heart and departs first at death, hun resides in the liver and departs second, and po resides in the lungs and departs last.

Shen plays a central role in Christian translational disputes over Chinese terms for God. Among the early Chinese "god; God" names, shangdi 上帝じょうてい or di was the Shang term, tian 天てん was the Zhou term, and shen was a later usage (see Feng Yu-Lan. Modern terms for "God" include shangdi, zhu 主あるじ, tianzhu 天主てんしゅ (esp. Catholics), and shen 神かみ (esp. Protestants).

Graphics

The character 神かみ for shen exemplifies the most common class in Chinese character classification: xíngshēngzì 形聲けいせい字じ "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, 神かみ combines the "altar/worship radical" 礻or 示しめせ and a phonetic of shēn 申さる "9th Earthly Branch; extend, stretch; prolong, repeat". Compare this phonetic element differentiated with the "person radical" in shen 伸しん "stretch", the "silk radical" in shen 紳しん "official's sash", the "mouth radical" in shen 呻 "chant, drone", the "stone radical" in shen 砷 "arsenic", the "earth radical" in kun 坤ひつじさる "soil", and the "big radical" in yan 奄 "cover". (See the List of Kangxi radicals.)

Chinese shen 申さる "extend" was anciently a phonetic loan character for shen 神かみ "spirit". The Mawangdui Silk Texts include two copies of the Dao De Jing and the "A Text" writes shen interchangeably as 申さる and 神かみ: "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). The Shuowen Jiezi defines shen 申さる as shen 神かみ and says that in the 7th lunar month when yin forces increase, bodies shenshu 申さる束たば "bind up".

The earliest written forms of shen 神かみ "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 神かみ has not been identified in Shang dynasty oracle bone script records, the phonetic shen 申さる has. Paleographers interpret the Oracle script of 申さる as a pictograph of a "lightning bolt". This was graphically differentiated between dian 電でん "lightning; electricity" with the "cloud radical" and shen 神かみ with the "worship radical", semantically suggesting both "lightning" and "spirits" coming down from the heavens.

See also

• Chinese ancestral worship
• Chinese folk religion
• Chinese gods and immortals
• Chinese theology
• Chinese spiritual world concepts
• Jade Emperor
• Kami in Shinto religion
• Religion in China
• Shangdi
• Tian & Di
• Wufang Shangdi

Further reading

• Dharmananda, Subhuti. 2005. "Towards a spirit at peace: understanding the treatment of shen disorders with Chinese medicine", Institute for Traditional Medicine and Preventive Health Care, Portland, Oregon.
• Li Leyi. 1993. "Tracing The Roots of Chinese Characters: 500 Cases", Beijing Language and Culture University Press.
• Mateer, C.W. 1901–2. "The meaning of the word shen," Chinese Recorder 3.2:61–72, 107–16, 3.3:71–79, 123–32.
• Needham, Joseph; Lu, Gwei-djen (1974). Science and Civilisation in China. Volume 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology. Part 2, Spagyrical Discovery and Inventions: Magisteries of Gold and Immortality. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1086/ahr/82.4.1041. ISBN 0-521-08571-3.

External links

• 神かみ Seal and Bronze Characters, Chinese Etymology
• What Is Shen (Spirit)?, Subhuti Dharmananda