Heavenly Stems Explained

C:天干
P:tiāngān
Poj:thian-kan
J:tin1 gon1
Y:tīn gōn
Hangul:천간
Rr:cheongan
Hanja:天干
Qn:thiên can
Chuhan:天干

The ten Heavenly Stems (or Celestial Stems[1]) are a system of ordinals indigenous to China and used throughout East Asia, first attested 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]

Origin

The Shang people believed that there were ten suns, each of which appeared in order in a ten-day cycle (旬; xún). The Heavenly Stems (tiāngān 天干) were the names of the ten suns, which may have designated world ages as did the Five Suns and the Six Ages of the World of Saint Augustine. They were found in the given names of the kings of the Shang in their Temple Names. These consisted of a relational term (Father, Mother, Grandfather, Grandmother) to which was added one of the ten gān names (e.g. Grandfather Jia). These names are often found on Shang bronzes designating whom the bronze was honoring (and on which day of the week their rites would have been performed, that day matching the day designated by their name). David Keightley, a leading scholar of ancient China and its bronzes, believes that the gān names were chosen posthumously through divination.[3] Some historians think the ruling class of the Shang had ten clans, but it is not clear whether their society reflected the myth or vice versa. The associations with Yin-Yang and the Five Elements developed later, after the collapse of the Shang Dynasty.

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
甲first (book I, person A etc.), methyl group, helmet, armor, words related to beetles, crustaceans, fingernails, toenails
乙fish-gutssecond (book II, person B etc.), ethyl group, twist
丙fishtail[6] third, bright, fire, fishtail (rare)
丁fourth, male adult, robust, T-shaped, to strike, a surname
戊(not used)
己threads on a loom[7] self
庚age (of person)
辛to offend superiors[8] bitter, piquant, toilsome
壬burden[9] to shoulder, to trust with office
癸grass for libation[10] (not used)

Current usage

The Stems are still commonly used nowadays in East Asian counting systems similar to the way the alphabet is used in English. For example:

See also

Bibliography

External links

Notes and References

  1. "Heavenly Stems"
  2. Smith (2011).
  3. 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.
  4. 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. 10.1017/S0362502800000274 . 132200641 . January 29, 2022.
  5. William McNaughton. Reading and Writing Chinese. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1979.
  6. Wenlin Dictionary: Picture of a fish tail.
  7. 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).
  8. Wenlin Dictionary: "The seal has 'knock against, offend' below, and 亠 above; the scholastic commentators say: to offend (亠 =) 上 the superiors"
  9. 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).
  10. Wenlin Dictionary: 癶 "stretch out the legs" + 天; The nicely disposed grass, on which the Ancients poured the libations offered to the Manes
  11. https://books.google.com/books?id=O54oDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA17
  12. https://books.google.com/books?id=O54oDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA17

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