mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== _________________________________________________________________ Yin^1 & Yáng and the I Ching _________________________________________________________________ In India the theory of the three elements in the Chândogya Upanishad led to the theory of the three forces, the gunas, and to the later theory of five elements. In China, the theory of five elements coexisted early with the theory of two forces: yin^1 and yáng. In the Spring and Autumn Period there was actually a Yin and Yang School. Later its theories were accepted by nearly everyone, but especially by Taoism. The implications of the theory are displayed in the great book of divination, the I Ching, the "Book of Changes." Yin originally meant "shady, secret, dark, mysterious, cold." It thus could mean the shaded, north side of a mountain or the shaded, south bank of a river. Yang in turn meant "clear, bright, the sun, heat," the opposite of yin and so the lit, south side of a mountain or the lit, north bank of a river. From these basic opposites, a complete system of opposites was elaborated. Yin represents everything about the world that is dark, hidden, passive, receptive, yielding, cool, soft, and feminine. Yang represents everything about the world that is illuminated, evident, active, aggressive, controlling, hot, hard, and masculine. Everything in the world can be identified with either yin or yang. Earth is the ultimate yin object. Heaven is the ultimate yang object. Of the two basic Chinese "Ways," Confucianism is identified with the yang aspect, Taoism with the yin aspect. Although it is correct to see yin as feminine and yang as masculine, everything in the world is really a mixture of the two, which means that female beings may actually be mostly yang and male beings may actually be mostly yin. Because of that, things that we might expect to be female or male because they clearly represent yin or yang, may turn out to be the opposite instead. Taoism takes the doctrine of yin and yang, and includes it in its own theory of change. Like Anaximander and Heraclitus, Taoism sees all change as one opposite replacing the other. The familiar diagram of Yin and Yang flowing into each other, the earliest attested example of which, strangely enough, occurs on a Roman shield illustrated in the fifth century Notitia Dignitatum, also illustrates, with interior dots, the idea that each force contains the seed of the other, so that they do not merely replace each other but actually become each other. Unlike Heraclitus, Taoism sees change as violent only if the Tao [Dào] is opposed: If Not Doing [Wú Wéi] and No Mind [Wú Xin^1] are practiced, then the Tao guides change in a natural, easy way, making for beauty and life. Since trying to be in control is a yang (or Confucian) attribute, Taoism sees Not Doing (and Taoism itself) on the yin side of things; but since Not Doing does not literally mean doing nothing, Taoism can use the language of passivity and receptivity to mean something that is actually quite active. That is especially obvious in the use of the term [Wade-Giles jou^2], "soft, pliant, yielding, gentle." Róudào, the "yielding way," is read in Japanese as judô and is the name of a popular Martial Art. Judo doesn't look at all yielding or gentle, but it does employ Taoist doctrine in so far as it is not supposed to originate force or an attack but takes the attack of an opponent and uses its own force against it. Thus the great economist [1]F.A. Hayek invoked Taoism in the defense of capitalism, a system that does not seem particularly yielding or gentle, but is based on the principle that government should "leave alone" (laissez faire) private property and voluntary exchanges and contracts. The free market would thus be the Not Doing of government. When it comes to the five elements, earth, water, and wood are clearly to be associated with yin. Water, the softest and most yielding element, becomes the supreme symbol of yin and the Tao in the Tao Te Ching. Fire (the hottest element) and metal (the hardest) both are associated with yang. Nevertheless, the Blue Dragon that symbolizes wood is a principal symbol of yang, while the White Tiger that symbolizes metal is a principal symbol of yin. This kind of reversal turns up frequently in the I Ching. The I Ching is based on the principle of a broken line, , representing yin, and an unbroken line, , representing yang. During the Shang Dynasty (1523-1028 BC), questions that could be answered with a "yes" or a "no" were written on tortoise shells. The shells were heated, then doused in water, which caused them to crack. A broken crack, , was interpreted as a "no" answer, an unbroken crack, , as a "yes." The I Ching elaborates on this, by grouping the lines into sets of threes (the trigrams) and into sets of sixes (the hexagrams). There are eight trigrams: Among the trigrams it is noteworthy that in all the children, the sex is determined by the odd line, so that the trigrams are predominately the opposite quality from the sex of the child. Also, we expect water to be associated with yin and fire with yang, but water is the second son and fire the second daughter. The other children are associated with such things as we might expect, e.g. water turns up again in the third daughter as the Lake. The arrangement of the trigrams around the compass reflects Chinese geomancy (feng shui), i.e. the determination of the auspicious or inauspicious situation and orientation of places (cities, temples, houses, or graves). Chinese cities are properly laid out as squares, with gates in the middle of the sides facing due north, east, south, and west. The diagonal directions are then regarded as special "spirit" gates: northwest is the Heaven Gate; southwest the Earth Gate; southeast the Man Gate; and northeast the Demon Gate. The northeast was thus the direction from which malevolent supernatural influences might particularly be expected. The situation of the old Japanese capital city of Kyôto is particularly fortunate. [2][LINK] To the northeast is a conspicuous, twin-peaked mountain, Mt. Hiei (corresponding to the Mountain trigram), which is crowned with a vast establishment of Buddhist temples to guard the Demon Gate. Later, Tôkyô (originally called Edo) was laid out with temples to the northeast on rising ground in the Ueno district; but both the ground and the temples are now entirely surrounded and obscured by the sprawl of Tôkyô. [[3]note] The I Ching [Yì Jing^1] uses the trigrams by combining pairs of them into 64 hexagrams. The hexagrams reuse the trigrams by combining pairs of them into 64 hexagrams. The hexagrams represent states of affairs, and the I Ching is consulted through the construction of a hexagram to answer one's question. The construction is carried out either through a complicated process of throwing and counting yarrow stalks, or by throwing three coins. The obverse (head) of each coin is worth 3 points (odd numbers are yang), while the reverse (tail) is worth 2 (even numbers are yin). Three coins will therefore add up to either 6, 7, 8, or 9. The numbers 7 and 8 represent "young" yang and yin, respectively. Starting from the bottom up, these add a plain yang, , or a plain yin, , line. The numbers 6 and 9, in turn, represent "old" yin and yang, respectively, and are called "changing lines." This illustrates an important aspect of the theory of yin and yang: Because the "Way of the Tao is Return," yin and yang, when they reach their extremes, actually become their opposites. The "old" lines therefore change into their opposites, giving us two hexagrams if any changing lines are involved: the first hexagram, representing the current state of affairs; and the second hexagram, after the changes have been made, representing the future state of affairs. Changing lines are usually denoted by writing for a 9 and for a 6. The text of the I Ching describes the significance of each hexagram and also the special meaning to be attached to the presence of any changing lines. _________________________________________________________________ [4]Psychological Types [5]Gender Stereotypes and Sexual Archetypes [6]Chinese Elements and Associations [7]Home Page Copyright (c) 1997, 2002, 2003 [8]Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All [9]Rights Reserved _________________________________________________________________ Yin^1 & Yáng and the I Ching, note _________________________________________________________________ As it happens, there is a conspicuous mountain north-east of [10]Los Angeles Valley College. Indeed, there is a whole mountain range, the San Gabriel Mountains. Beyond the lower Verdugo Mountains in the foreground, which rise to 3126 feet, there is the conspicuous [11]Mt. Lukens in the San Gabriels, which is 5074 feet high. Behind Mt. Lukens runs Big Tujunga Canyon. There are much higher peaks in the San Gabriels (up to Mt. San Antonio, "Old Baldy," at 10,064 ft., which is east and outside of the image provided here), as can be seen in the image, but these are hidden from the perspective of Valley College. Unfortunately, there are no Buddhist temples, as far as I know, upon Mt. Lukens. Los Angeles could use the protection. [12]Return to text _________________________________________________________________ Categories of Chinese Characters _________________________________________________________________ Chinese characters are the last ancient ideographic writing system that survives in modern usage. This was a close call, since both China and Japan (the only other country still regularly using Chinese characters) were contemplating a transition to the Latin alphabet. Ironically, it is the most modern technology which has saved the most ancient writing. Computer assisted writing makes the use of characters relatively convenient, and the need for vast metal fonts for printing and even typewriting has now been eliminated. Although Chinese characters are originally and basically ideographic, writing whole words, the language over time has become more polysyllabic and many characters now do not occur in isolation. The system thus can be said to have become morphographic, writing semantic elements of words, morphemes, rather than ideas or words as wholes. The characters and their definitions here are from Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary [Harvard, 1972]. The number under the character is the character number in Mathews. The superscript number by the character is the tone, which is also indicated by diacritic in the [13]Pinyin writing above the character. There are, understandably, disputes over the classification system and over the assignment of individual characters. For instance, the very first example, dá, "big," is from the drawing of a man, and so can be considered "pictographic"; but since it doesn't mean "man," but "big," it might be considered "indicative" instead. 1. Pictographic: These are characters that originate with pictures of the objects in question. In the [14]Shang Dyansty, these counted for 23% of all characters. By the [15]Han they were down to only 4%, and during the [16]Sung only 3%. The characters at right were all originally little pictures. "Great" was the picture of a man, while "mountain," "field," "woman," "horse," "shield," and "tree" were just that. John DeFrancis [The Chinese Language, Fact and Fantasy, University of Hawaii Press, 1984, 1986, & Visible Speech, University of Hawaii Press, 1989], one of the greatest scholars of Chinese, has the view that language (or meaning) is essentially spoken (i.e. sound) and that pictograms really stand for the words rather than for the things. However, it seems the most natural to say that a picture of a man, a woman, or a tree simply represents those things directly. While all writing systems, including Chinese, develop phonetic elements, the thesis that meaning is essentially sound is destroyed by the use of sign language among the profoundly deaf, for whom language and meaning have no aural component at all. At one time, it was not believed that the profoundly deaf had any true language, just because sign language was not taken seriously; but this view is now insupportable. 2. Simple Indicative: Some abstract concepts can be suggested with certain diagrams, like simple lines for "one," "two," and "three." At right, we also have "under," "above," and "middle," all of which bear some relation, as diagrams, to the meaning. In the Shang Dynasty, only 2% of characters were like this. By the Han and Sung, it was down to only 1%. So these kinds of characters may be frequently used, but there aren't many of them. 3. Compound Indicative: Multiple examples of the first two kinds of characters can be combined to suggest something semantically related to the original meanings. So at right, we see "sun" and "moon" combined to mean "bright," "light," or even "cleanse." Three "fields" can be combined to mean "fields divided by dikes." A "woman" under a "roof" means "quiet," "peace," "tranquility." Two "women" means "handsome" or "pretty," and also "cunning." This negative (misogynistic) suggestion emerges fully with three "women," which means "adultery," "fornication," "licentiousness," "debauch," "ravish." Two "trees" get us "forest," and three are "luxuriant," "overgrown," "dark." Three "stones" is "heap of stone, boulders." In the Shang Dynasty, 41% of the characters were of this type. In the Han it was 13%, and in the Sung only 3%. It is sometimes said that the Chinese character for "trouble" shows two women under one roof. Such a character is possible, and would look like this , but there actually is no such Chinese character. 4. The most common Chinese characters are of the "Radical and Phonetic" form. These combine other characters either side by side or above and below. The constituent character called the "Radical" gives some clue about the meaning and, more importantly, is the basis for the listing of the character in Chinese dictionaries. The constituent character called the "Phonetic" gives some clue about the pronunciation, which is usually similar to that of the original character. In the Shang Dynasty, only 34% of characters (or 334 actual characters) were of this type. By the Han Dynasty, it was up to 82% (or 7697), the Sung up to 93% (21,810), and in the [17]Ch'ing radical and phonetic characters were 97% (or 47,141) of the total. Clearly, this device becomes the most productive way of generating new characters in Chinese. It is also unique to Chinese. Nothing similar is seen in Egyptian [18]hieroglyphics, for instance, where the phonology of a word is indicated by writing extra, purely phonetic, glyphs. In the diagram at right, the basic phonetic value of "horse" (ma) turns up in the purely phonetic interrogative particle, and in a word for "mother." The character for "to tie, bind" occurred as a phonetic in the alternative character given above for "heap of stone/boulders" (lei). The "fields" compound character above (lei again) occurs as a phonetic with the character for "stone" to mean "roll stones down hill." "Shield" (gan) occurs with "sun" in "sunset," with "woman" in "crafty," villainous," "false," and with "tree" in "shaft of a spear," "pole." "Middle" occurs with the radical "heart" to mean "conscientious," "loyal," "honest," etc. It is these characters that provide some of the evidence for the reconstruction of the pronunciation of earlier forms of Chinese. Since radical and phonetic characters already exist in the Shang Dynasty, there clearly was a long period of development prior to this. But the evidence for this is scant, and the ultimate origin of Chinese characters is unclear. _________________________________________________________________ [19]History of Philosophy [20]Home Page Copyright (c) 2000 [21]Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All [22]Rights Reserved _________________________________________________________________ The Dialects of Chinese _________________________________________________________________ What are usually called the "dialects" of Chinese are really separate languages, all descended from the Chinese of the [23]T'ang Dynasty. They are all about as far apart from each other now as English and Dutch. However, they are all written with the same characters, which means that an educated person can understand their written forms, and for cultural and political reasons, as well as their historical origin, are regarded by the Chinese as part of the same language. The picture of the languages has changed somewhat over the years. Older sources (e.g. S. Robert Ramsey, The Languages of China, Princeton, 1987, John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language, Fact and Fantasy, Hawaii, 1984, & Nathan Sivin, editor, The Contemporary Atlas of China, Houghton Mifflin, 1988) say that there are seven different languages, or six, since sometimes Gan is linked with Hakka, or with Xiang. Now, however, a new source (Lynn Pan, The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, Harvard, 1999) lists ten languages, where Jin is separated from Mandarin, Hui from Wu, and Pinghua from Yue. Within each of these, especially Mandarin, there are true dialects, which means that they are mutually intelligible. These are distinguished in the following table. In Pan's book, many dialects are shown for Min, Hakka, and Cantonese -- and the Hakka area itself is considerably larger than in older sources, where the two major dialects of Min were also sometimes considered separate languages. The confusion over all this -- can't everyone tell what forms of speech are mutually intelligible? -- is certainly due to the difficulties of doing research in China in the 20th century. From revolution, to war, to revolution, to totalitarianism, China until recently was not the best place for graduate students wandering around with tape recorders asking strange questions. Such behavior would often have evoked suspicion, arrest, or worse. The table gives some population figures for the older seven language classification. These are given as percentages of the total Chinese speaking population, as a number in millions (M), and, from another source, as a number in thousands (k). These are from older sources and count those for whom the languges are their first languages. The figure of 952,000,000 speakers for Mandarin given [24]elsewhere is for people who speak Mandarin at all. This is considerably larger than the 715 million number below, not just because the population has grown in the last twenty years, but also because Mandarin in the national language of China, taught in schools around the country. Areas where the languages are spoken are given after the language name(s). Names of cities and provinces in [25]Pinyin are given in italics. 1. Mandarin, North, Southwest, 71.5%, 715 M, 679,250 k + Northern o Northern, Peking [Beijing] o Northwestern, Kansu [Gansu] + Southern, Nanking [Nanjing] + Southwestern, Szechwan [Sichuan] 2. Jin, Shanxi 3. Wú, Shanghai, Zhejiang, 8.5%, 85 M, 80,750 k + Wú (I), Suzhou, Shanghai + Wú (II), Wenzhou, Chekiang [Zhejiang] 4. Hui, Anhui 5. Gàn, Kiangsi [Jiangxi], 2.4%, 24 M, 22,800 k 6. Xiang, Hunan, 4.8%, 48 M, 45,600 k + Old Xiang, countryside + New Xiang, NW Hunan, cities 7. Hakka, Guandong, Jiangxi, scattered, 3.7%, 37 M, 35,150 k 8. Min^3, Fukien [Fujian], 4.1%, 41 M, 38,950 k + Northern Min^3, Foochow [Fuzhou], 1.3%, 13 M + Southern Min^3, Amoy-Swatow, 2.8%, 28 M 9. Yuè, Cantonese, Guandong, Guangxi, 5.0%, 50 M, 47,500 k 10. Pingua, Guangxi It is noteworthy that the extension of Mandarin into the Southwest was in part the result of veterans being settled there after the [26]Mongols were ejected from China and the [27]Ming Dynasty founded. _________________________________________________________________ Examples of Dialect Differences Between Peking, Shanghai and, Canton _________________________________________________________________ In the table superscript numbers are the tones, and brackets contain [28]Pinyin writings (with superscript tones where HTML does not contain the appropriate diacritic). Shanghai Peking p- pu^1 "wave" po^1 [bo^1] p'- p'u^1 "slope" p'o^1 [po^1] b- bu^2 "old woman" p'o^2 [pó] t- tong^1 "east" tong^1 [dong^1] t'- t'ong^1 "be open" t'ong^1 [tong^1] d- dong^2 "be alike" t'ong^2 [tóng] k- kuong^1 "light" kuang^1 [guang^1] k'- k'uong^1 "frame" k'uang^1 [kuang^1] g- guong^2 "mad, wild" k'uang^2 [kuáng] Cantonese Peking -t/0 kat^7a "cough" k'e^2 (sou^4) [ké(sòu)] -t/0 pat^7a "brush" pi^3 [bi^3] -t/0 yüt^7b/8 "moon" yüeh^4 [yuè] -t/0 yat^7a/8 "sun, day" jih^4 [rì] -k/0 paak^7b "hundred" pai^3 [bai^3] -k/0 sik^7a "color" (yen^2)se^4 [(yán)sè] -k/0 kwok^7byü^4 "national language" kou^2yü^3 [guóyu^3] -p/0 t'aap^7b "pagoda" t'a^3 [ta^3] -p/0 yap^8 "enter" ju^4 [rù] -p/0 sap^8 "ten" shih^2 [shí] The Wu dialect of Shanghai is noteworthy because it retains the distinction between voiced and unvoiced, aspirated and unaspirated stops that existed in [29]T'ang Chinese. In Mandarin the voiced stops have disappeared. In these examples, the voiced stops have seen assimilated to the aspirated ones. Cantonese is noteworthy because it retains from T'ang Chinese a greater variety of finals. In Mandarin, a syllable must end in a vowel or in n or ng. In Cantonese, syllables can also end in p, t, k, or m as well. Words borrowed from Chinese into Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese often also preserve evidence of the older final consonants. Thus "China" (Mandarin Zhongguó, "Middle Country") in Korean is Chung-guk and in Japanese Chû-koku. Both of them have an extra consonant in "country" where Mandarin doesn't -- but Cantonese (Jòong-gwok) does. I had a lingustics professor once who said that you could get a kind of "instant [30]Proto-Indo-European" by combining Greek vowels and Sanskrit consonants. Well, we can get a kind of "instant T'ang Chinese" by combining Shanghai initials and Cantonese finals. The evidence is poor for older versions of Chinese. Cantonese also preserves the larger number of tones that T'ang Chinese had. Mandarin only has four now, but Cantonese has six, or even nine if the tones of finals that end in stops are counted separately, which they sometimes are. The most daring speculation is that the Chinese of Confucius's day didn't even have tones, which were borrowed later from neighboring, unrelated languages, like Vietnamese, which had tones already. _________________________________________________________________ Pronouncing Mandarin Initials _________________________________________________________________ Chinese has the extraordinary structure that nearly every syllable has a semantic content, even if only a historical one. Each syllable is thus written with a Chinese [31]character, which was originally a separate word. Each syllable is analyzed into an "intitial" and a "final." The "final" contains the vowel, the tone, and the final consonant, if any. This structure is also applied to Simple Initials Pinyin Wade-Giles Pronunication b p p, unaspirated (spot) p p' p^h, aspirated (pot) m m m f f f d t t, unaspirated (stop) t t' t^h, aspirated (top) n n n l l l g k k, unaspirated (skit) k k' k^h, aspirated (kit) h h h Sibilant Initials Pinyin Wade-Giles Pronunication z ts ts, unaspirated c ts t^hs, aspirated (hats) s s s Retroflex Initials Pinyin Wade-Giles Pronunication zh ch t.s., unaspirated ch ch' t.^hs., aspirated sh sh s. r j r Palatal Initials Pinyin Wade-Giles Pronunication j ch tsh, unaspirated q ch' t^hsh, aspirated (church) x hs sh Korean and Vietnamese, which borrowed Chinese writing and many Chinese words, even though neither language was even related to Chinese. The "initials," apart from the tones, pose the greatest challenge for foreigners trying to pronounce Chinese. And now we have two common systems for writing Mandarin, the older Wade-Giles and the recent Pinyin. The greatest challenge is that Mandarin does not have voiced stops, like b, d, and g. These existed in T'ang Chinese, but have been lost in Mandarin. Instead, Mandarin contrasts aspirated stops with unaspirated stops. "Aspirates" have breath coming out, "unaspirates" don't. In Wade-Giles, aspirates were indicated with an apostrophe, as in the name of the T'ang Dynasty. Sometimes it is said that an aspirated t is pronounced like the t in "hot house." This not quite right, since the t there is in a separate syllable, and a separate word, from the "h" aspiration. Instead, it should be noted that English contrasts, in certain environments, an aspirated from an unaspirated t. Thus the t in "top" is aspirated, and the t in "stop" is unaspirated. Holding a hand in front of the mouth can detect the breath expelled in one and not expelled in the other. The Chinese unaspirated t can be duplicated by pronouncing "stop" without the "s." Aspirations are indicated in the "pronunciation" column of the table with a superscript h. Since there are no voiced stops in Mandarin, the Pinyin system conveniently uses the Latin letters for the voiced stops for unaspriated stops, and the Latin letters for the unvoiced stops for the aspirated stops. The English word "stop" thus could be written in Pinyin as "sdob," which looks very odd, and has a final consonant unallowed by Mandarin, but does use the proper values of the Pinyin consonants. The "retroflex" initials have the tongue curling up, as in the similar series of sounds in Sanskrit and subsequent languages in India. But other Chinese dialects do not distinguish retroflex from palatal initials. In fact, even in Mandarin, retroflexes and palatals are really just different allophones (sounds) of the same phonemes, i.e. they do not occur in the same environment and so can actually be represented by the same signs (as in Wade-Giles). Retroflexes (and sibilants) occur only with a, o/e, and u finals. Palatals occur only with i and ü finals. The "i" written with sibilants and retroflexes, e.g. "si" and "zhi," does not represent a true i, but a "buzzing" for sibiliants and an r for retroflexes. The Wade-Giles system represents Chinese more efficiently and familiarly. Pinyin, besides the phonemic redundancy, has the drawback that the sound of a number of letters (like q and x) has nothing to do with how they are pronounced in most Western languages. On the other hand, Pinyin makes a more elegant use of the Latin alphabet. _________________________________________________________________ The Contrast between Classical and Modern Chinese _________________________________________________________________ Although both ancient and modern Chinese are written with the same characters, the modern daughter [32]languages have become very different from the ancient one. One of the most conspicious differences is just that the terse, monosyllabic nature of Classical Chinese has given way to many more particles, polysyllabic words, and periphrastic idioms. The following story, given in both Classical Chinese and a translation into modern Mandarin, illustrates the difference. This is also a salutary example for one's view of government, as [33]Confucius indeed makes clear to his students. [I am unaware of the origin of this text.] The modern Mandarin pronunciation is given for the Classical characters because the ancient pronuncation, indeed the pronunciation before the [34]T'ang Dynasty, is unknown. Even that of the T'ang is reconstructed and uncertain. The extreme simplifiction of Mandarin phonology, which would render the Classical language ambiguous if used as a spoken language today (too many words now being pronounced the same), explains the polysyllablic character of the modern language and the reduction of many characters to morphemes. The same Classical text that can today be read as Mandarin could as well be read with Korean, Vietnamese, or Japanese versions of the Chinese words, or the Korean, Vietnamese, or Japanese translations of the words. None of those languages is even [35]related to Chinese, but since mediaeval, or even modern, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Japanese often wrote in Chinese, without, however, really speaking the language, their own renderings of the characters was customary. Since the ancient pronunciation of the Classical language is unknown, Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese, and Sino-Japanese reading are really just as "authentic" for Classical Chinese as a Modern Mandarin reading. Indeed, much of our evidence for the T'ang pronuncation of Chinese is from the Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese readings, which were contemporary borrowings. For example, the character for "mountain," now read shan in Mandarin, turns up as san in Korean, in Vietnamese as so^. n or núi, and in Japanese as san, sen, zan, or yama -- the last versions in Vietnamese and Japanese being the native words. Similarly, we find the name of Japan itself, "Sun Source," as Rìben [[36]Wade-Giles Jihpên] in Mandarin, Yatbóon in Cantonese, Ilbon in Korean, Nhâ.t-Bàn in Vietnamese, and Nippon or Nihon in Japanese. The Cantonese word is, of course, [37]cognate to the Mandarin. The Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese are all borrowings from Chinese, pronounced in the local manner. Native words for "sun" are hae in Korean, ma.t giò^. i ("face of the sky") in Vietnamese, and hi in Japanese (e.g. hi-no-maru, "circle of the sun," "sundisk"). The Japanese borrowed word for "sun" in isolation is nichi, but this is just the pronunciation of niti, where the final i as been added because Japanese syllables cannot end in t. In compounds, the i can drop out, so nichi-hon (*hi-moto in the unused pure Japanese reading) becomes nit-hon. At that point different things can happen. The t can be lost in assimilation to the h, getting us Nihon, OR the h can revert to its original p, with the t getting assimilated and doubled with it, getting us Nippon. Another example concerns the present capital of Japan. The [38]Míng capitals of China were Nánjing (Nanking) and then Beijing (Peking), which simply mean, respectively, "Southern Capital" and "Northern Capital." The capital of Japan from 794 to 1868 was Kyôto, which meant "Capital District." Then the capital was moved to Edo, which was renamed the "Eastern Capital." In Chinese that would be Dongjing. In Japanese, however, that is pronounced Tôkyô. In Vietnamese it is Ðông-Kinh (or Tonkin). The Vietnamese version preserves more of the Chinese consonants, but both Japanese and Vietnamese versions reveal that "capital" originally started with a k, which has become palatalized (to a j) in Mandarin. The k is also preserved in early modern Western versions of Chinese words, like "Nanking" and "Peking" themselves. Chinese departments in colleges sometimes expect students to learn Mandarin even though they only want to read Classical Chinese or Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese, or Sino-Japanese. This imposes a vast unnecessary burden on them, but even teachers and scholars of Chinese sometimes have trouble accepting that the ancient language is not the modern one and that the ancient language is part of the civilization of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan as much as of modern China. It is as though students of Latin were told they would have to learn Italian as well. Once when Confucius was passing near the foot of Mount Tai in a chariot, there was a married woman weeping at a grave mound, and dolorously too. Confucius politely rested his hands on the front rail of the chariot and listened to her weeping. He sent Zilu (Tzu-lu) to inquire of her, saying; "From the sound of your weeping, it seems that you indeed have many troubles." Classical Chinese: Mandarin Translation: Then the woman said; "It is true. My father-in-law died in a tiger's jaw; my husband also died there. Now, my son has also died there." Confucius said, "Why do you not leave this place?" The woman said: "Here there is no harsh and oppressive government." Classical Chinese: Mandarin Translation: Classical Chinese: Mandarin Translation: Confucius said, "Young men, take note of this: a harsh and oppressive government is more ferocious and fearsome than even a tiger." _________________________________________________________________ [39]History of Philosophy [40]Home Page Copyright (c) 2000 [41]Kelley L. 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