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Chinese Shamanism
Chinese shamanism, alternatively called Wuism (; alternatively ''wū xí zōngjiào''), refers to the shamanic religious tradition of China. Its features are especially connected to the ancient Neolithic cultures such as the Hongshan culture. Chinese shamanic traditions are intrinsic to Chinese folk religion. Various ritual traditions are rooted in original Chinese shamanism: contemporary Chinese ritual masters are sometimes identified as ''wu'' by outsiders, though most orders don't self-identify as such. Also Taoism has some of its origins from Chinese shamanism: it developed around the pursuit of long life (''shou'' /), or the status of a '' xian'' (, "mountain man", "holy man"). Meaning of ''wu'' The Chinese word ''wu'' "shaman, wizard", indicating a person who can mediate with the powers generating things (the etymological meaning of "spirit", "god", or ''nomen agentis'', ''virtus'', ''energeia''), was first recorded during the Shang dynasty (ca. 1600-1046 BCE), w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wu (shaman)
''Wu'' () is a Chinese term translating to "shaman" or "sorcerer", originally the practitioners of Chinese shamanism or "Wuism" (巫教 ''wū jiào''). Terminology The glyph ancestral to modern is first recorded in bronze script, where it could refer to shamans or sorcerers of either sex. Modern Mandarin ''wu'' (Cantonese ''mouh'') continues a Middle Chinese ''mju'' or ''mjo''. The Old Chinese reconstruction is uncertain, given as *''mywo'' or as *''myag'', the presence of a final velar ''-g'' or ''-ɣ'' in Old Chinese being uncertain. By the late Zhou Dynasty (4th to 3rd centuries BCE), ''wu'' referred mostly to female shamans or "sorceresses", while male sorcerers were named ''xi'' "male shaman; sorcerer", first attested in the ''Guoyu'' or '' Discourses of the States'' (4th century BCE). Other sex-differentiated shaman names include ''nanwu'' for "male shaman; sorcerer; wizard"; and ''nüwu'' , ''wunü'' , ''wupo'' , and ''wuyu'' for "female shaman; sorceress; witch". ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shang Dynasty
The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Dynasties in Chinese history, Chinese royal dynasty founded by Tang of Shang (Cheng Tang) that ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Western Zhou, Western Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from texts such as the ''Book of Documents'', ''Bamboo Annals'' and ''Records of the Grand Historian''. According to the traditional chronology based on calculations made approximately 2,000 years ago by Liu Xin (scholar), Liu Xin, the Shang ruled from 1766 to 1122 BC, but according to the chronology based upon the "current text" of ''Bamboo Annals'', they ruled from 1556 to 1046 BC. Comparing the same text with dates of five-planet conjunction (astronomy), conjunctions, David Pankenier, supported by David Nivison, proposed dates of the establishment of the dynasty to 1554 BC. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zhuang People
The Zhuang (; ; za, Bouxcuengh, italic=yes; ) are a Tai-speaking ethnic group who mostly live in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in Southern China. Some also live in the Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou, and Hunan provinces. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. With the Bouyei, Nùng, Tày, and other Northern Tai speakers, they are sometimes known as the Rau or Rao people. Their population, estimated at 18 million people, makes them the largest minority in China, followed by the Hui and Manchu. Etymology The Chinese character used for the Zhuang people has changed several times. Their autonym, "Cuengh" in Standard Zhuang, was originally written with the graphic pejorative , (or ''tóng'', referring to a variety of wild dog).漢典.獞. Chinese. Accessed 14 August 2011. 新华字典, via 中华昌龙网. 字典频道.". Chinese. Accessed 14 August 2011. Chinese characters typically combine a semantic element o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bön
''Bon'', also spelled Bön () and also known as Yungdrung Bon (, "eternal Bon"), is a Tibetan religious tradition with many similarities to Tibetan Buddhism and also many unique features.Samuel 2012, pp. 220-221. Bon initially developed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, but may retain elements from earlier religious traditions (which also used the term Bon).Kvaerne 1996, pp. 9-10. Bon remains a significant minority religion in Tibet (especially in Eastern Tibet) and in the surrounding Himalayan regions. The relationship between Bon and Tibetan Buddhism has been a subject of debate. According to the modern scholar Geoffrey Samuel, while Bon is "essentially a variant of Tibetan Buddhism" with many resemblances to Nyingma, it also preserves some genuinely ancient pre-Buddhist elements. David Snellgrove likewise sees Bon as a form of Buddhism, albeit a heterodox kind. Similarly, John Powers writes that "historical evidence indicates that Bön only developed as a self-consci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tibetan Script
The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system (''abugida'') of Brahmic scripts, Indic origin used to write certain Tibetic languages, including Lhasa Tibetan, Tibetan, Dzongkha, Sikkimese language, Sikkimese, Ladakhi language, Ladakhi, Jirel language, Jirel and Balti language, Balti. It has also been used for some non-Tibetic languages in close cultural contact with Tibet, such as Thakali language, Thakali. The printed form is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê script. This writing system is used across the Himalayas, and Tibet. The script is closely linked to a broad ethnic Tibetan identity, spanning across areas in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet. The Tibetan script is of Brahmic scripts, Brahmic origin from the Gupta script and is ancestral to scripts such as Meitei script, Meitei, Lepcha script, Lepcha,Daniels, Peter T. and William Bright. ''The World's Writing Systems''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Standard Tibetan
Lhasa Tibetan (), or Standard Tibetan, is the Tibetan dialect spoken by educated people of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China. It is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region. In the traditional "three-branched" classification of Tibetic languages, the Lhasa dialect belongs to the Central Tibetan branch (the other two being Khams Tibetan and Amdo Tibetan). In terms of mutual intelligibility, speakers of Khams Tibetan are able to communicate at a basic level with Lhasa Tibetan, while Amdo speakers cannot. Both Lhasa Tibetan and Khams Tibetan evolved to become tonal and do not preserve the word-initial consonant clusters, which makes them very far from Classical Tibetan, especially when compared to the more conservative Amdo Tibetan. Registers Like many languages, Lhasa Tibetan has a variety of language registers: * ( Wylie: , literally " demotic language"): the vernacular speech. * ( Wylie: , " honorifics or deference, courtesy"): th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turkic Languages
The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languages originated in a region of East Asia spanning from Mongolia to Northwest China, where Proto-Turkic is thought to have been spoken, from where they expanded to Central Asia and farther west during the first millennium. They are characterized as a dialect continuum. Turkic languages are spoken by some 200 million people. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish, spoken mainly in Anatolia and the Balkans; its native speakers account for about 38% of all Turkic speakers. Characteristic features such as vowel harmony, agglutination, subject-object-verb order, and lack of grammatical gender, are almost universal within the Turkic family. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility, upon moderate expo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mongolian Language
Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia and both the most widely spoken and best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the ethnic Mongol residents of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.Estimate from Svantesson ''et al.'' (2005): 141. In Mongolia, Khalkha Mongolian is predominant, and is currently written in both Cyrillic and traditional Mongolian script. In Inner Mongolia, the language is dialectally more diverse and is written in the traditional Mongolian script. However, Mongols in both countries often use the Latin script for convenience on the Internet. In the discussion of grammar to follow, the variety of Mongolian treated is the standard written Khalkha formalized in the writing conventions and in grammar as taught in schools, but much of what is to be said is also valid for ve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berthold Laufer
Berthold Laufer (October 11, 1874 – September 13, 1934) was a German anthropologist and historical geographer with an expertise in East Asian languages. The American Museum of Natural History calls him, "one of the most distinguished sinologists of his generation." Life Laufer was born in Cologne in Germany to Max and Eugenie Laufer (née Schlesinger). His paternal grandparents Salomon and Johanna Laufer were adherents of the Jewish faith. Laufer had a brother Heinrich (died 10 July 1935) who worked as a physician in Cairo. Laufer attended the Friedrich Wilhelms Gymnasium from 1884 to 1893. He continued his studies in Berlin (1893–1895), and completed his doctorate in oriental languages at the University of Leipzig in 1897. The following year he emigrated to the United States where he remained until his death. He carried out ethnographic fieldwork on the Amur River and Sakhalin Island during 1898-1899 as part of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition. He was fluent in more than te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shamanism In Siberia
A large minority of people in North Asia, particularly in Siberia, follow the religio-cultural practices of shamanism. Some researchers regard Siberia as the heartland of shamanism.Hoppál 2005:13 The people of Siberia comprise a variety of ethnic groups, many of whom continue to observe shamanistic practices in modern times. Many classical ethnographers recorded the sources of the idea of "shamanism" among Siberian peoples.Hoppál 2005: 15 Terminology in Siberian languages *'shaman': ''saman'' (Nedigal, Nanay, Ulcha, Orok), ''sama'' (Manchu). The variant /šaman/ (i.e., pronounced "shaman") is Evenk (whence it was borrowed into Russian). *'shaman': (Yukagir) *'shaman': (Tatar, Shor, Oyrat), (Tuva, Tofalar) *The Buryat word for shaman is ''бөө'' (''böö'') , from early Mongolian ''böge''. *'shaman': ńajt (Khanty, Mansi), from Proto-Uralic (c.f. Sámi ) *'shamaness': (Mongol), (Yakut), (Buryat), (Evenki, Lamut), (Nedigal). Related forms found in various Siberia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tongji (spirit Medium)
Tongji (; Tâi-lô: tâng-ki) or Jitong () is a Chinese folk religious practitioner, usually translated as a " spirit medium", " oracle", or "shaman". This word compounds ''tong'' "child; youth; boy servant" and ''ji'' "to divine" (cf. '' fuji'' "divination; planchette writing"). Regional variants include Hokkien ''tâng-ki'' and Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding ar ... ''gei-tung'' or ''san-daa'' . A ''tongji'' or ''jitong'' is a person believed to have been chosen by a particular '' shen'' "god; spirit" as the earthly vehicle for divine expression. The Chinese differentiate a '' wu'' "shaman; healer; spirit medium" who gains control of forces in the spirit world versus a ''tongji'' who appears to be entirely under the control of forces in the spi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
