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From Complete Book of Myths and Legends of China
By Unknown Author
The qualification necessary to the above description is that, as time went on and especially since the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960–1280), much confusion arose regarding Shang Ti and T’ien, and thus it came about that the terms became mixed and their definitions obscure. This confusion of ideas has prevailed down to the present time. One result of this is that the people may sometimes state, when they wave their incense-sticks or light their candles, that their humble sacrifice is made to Shang Ti, whom in reality they have no right either to worship or to offer sacrifice to, but whom they may unofficially pay respect and make obeisance to, as they might and did to the emperor behind the high boards on the roadsides which shielded him from their view as he was borne along in his elaborate procession on the few occasions when he came forth from the imperial city.
Thus we find that, while only the emperor could worship and sacrifice to Shang Ti, and only he could officially worship and sacrifice to T’ien, the people who early personified and worshipped T’ien, as already shown, came, owing to confusion of the meanings of Shang Ti and T’ien, unofficially to ‘worship’ both, but only in the sense and to the extent indicated, and to offer ‘sacrifices’ to both, also only in the sense and to the extent indicated. But for these qualifications, the statement that the Chinese worship and sacrifice to Shang Ti and T’ien would be apt to convey an incorrect idea. Page 97
From this it will be apparent that Shang Ti, the Supreme Ruler on High, and T’ien, Heaven (later personified), do not mean ‘God’ in the sense that the word is used in the Christian religion. To state that they do, as so many writers on China have done, without pointing out the essential differences, is misleading. That Chinese religion was or is “a monotheistic worship of God” is further disproved by the fact that Shang Ti and T’ien do not appear in the list of the popular pantheon at all, though all the other gods are there represented. Neither Shang Ti nor T’ien mean the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of the New Testament. Did they mean this, the efforts of the Christian missionaries to convert the Chinese would be largely superfluous.
The Christian religion, even the Holy Trinity, is a monotheism. That the Chinese religion (even though a summary of extracts from the majority of foreign books on China might point to its being so) is not a monotheism, but a polytheism or even a pantheism (as long as that term is taken in the sense of universal deification and not in that of one spiritual being immanent in all things), the rest of this chapter will abundantly prove.
There have been three periods in which gods have been created in unusually large numbers: that of the mythical emperor Hsien Yüan (2698–2598 B. C. ), that of Chiang Tzŭ-ya (in the twelfth century B. C. ), and that of the first emperor of the Ming dynasty (in the fourteenth century A.
D. ).
The qualification necessary to the above description is that, as time went on and especially since the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960–1280), much confusion arose regarding Shang Ti and T’ien, and thus it came about that the terms became mixed and their definitions obscure. This confusion of ideas has prevailed down to the present time. One result of this is that the people may sometimes state, when they wave their incense-sticks or light their candles, that their humble sacrifice is made to Shang Ti, whom in reality they have no right either to worship or to offer sacrifice to, but whom they may unofficially pay respect and make obeisance to, as they might and did to the emperor behind the high boards on the roadsides which shielded him from their view as he was borne along in his elaborate procession on the few occasions when he came forth from the imperial city.
Thus we find that, while only the emperor could worship and sacrifice to Shang Ti, and only he could officially worship and sacrifice to T’ien, the people who early personified and worshipped T’ien, as already shown, came, owing to confusion of the meanings of Shang Ti and T’ien, unofficially to ‘worship’ both, but only in the sense and to the extent indicated, and to offer ‘sacrifices’ to both, also only in the sense and to the extent indicated. But for these qualifications, the statement that the Chinese worship and sacrifice to Shang Ti and T’ien would be apt to convey an incorrect idea. Page 97
From this it will be apparent that Shang Ti, the Supreme Ruler on High, and T’ien, Heaven (later personified), do not mean ‘God’ in the sense that the word is used in the Christian religion. To state that they do, as so many writers on China have done, without pointing out the essential differences, is misleading. That Chinese religion was or is “a monotheistic worship of God” is further disproved by the fact that Shang Ti and T’ien do not appear in the list of the popular pantheon at all, though all the other gods are there represented. Neither Shang Ti nor T’ien mean the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of the New Testament. Did they mean this, the efforts of the Christian missionaries to convert the Chinese would be largely superfluous.
The Christian religion, even the Holy Trinity, is a monotheism. That the Chinese religion (even though a summary of extracts from the majority of foreign books on China might point to its being so) is not a monotheism, but a polytheism or even a pantheism (as long as that term is taken in the sense of universal deification and not in that of one spiritual being immanent in all things), the rest of this chapter will abundantly prove.
There have been three periods in which gods have been created in unusually large numbers: that of the mythical emperor Hsien Yüan (2698–2598 B. C. ), that of Chiang Tzŭ-ya (in the twelfth century B. C. ), and that of the first emperor of the Ming dynasty (in the fourteenth century A.
D. ).