Page 91 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

OVERVIEW SI

appearance, it fashions the celestial and human worlds that constitute its own
body. This divinity governs and teaches through scriptures, first transmitted
in Heaven and later to humans in written form. There was also disagreement
about the identity of the primordial deity, who was usually thought to be either
Yuanshi tianzun :lC ~~ *. (Celestial Worthy of Original Commencement; see
*sanqing) or *Laojun. In the Lingbao cosmogony, the Tianzun *. (Celestial
Worthy) takes the name Yuanshi tianzun in the Vermilion Brilliance era. The
notion of gods changing appearances in precosmic eras and throughout the
history of humankind appears to be a compromise in the struggle for prior-
ity among Taoist schools: all deities are seen as names and apparitions of the
one, primordial, and ultimate Truth.

Isabelle ROBINET
W Bokenkamp 1997, 188-98, 207-9; Girardot 1976; Girardot 1977; Girardot
1978b; Girardot 1983; Kalinowski 1996; Le Blanc 1989; Mathieu 1992; Mugitani
Kunio 1979; Peerenboom 1990; Robinet 1977, 149-203; Robinet 1994b; Robinet
1995C; Robinet 1997a; Robinet 2002; Robinet forthcoming

* hundun; sanyuan; wu and you; wuji and taiji; xiantian and houtian; xing; yi
[oneness]; yuanqi; COSMOLOGY

Cosmology

1. Overview

By the beginning of the imperial age in China, the dominant patterns of
cosmological thinking that had emerged were clearly of the correlative type.
This entry briefly introduces the two main patterns, those of Yin and Yang
and the *wuxing. The next entry, "Cosmology: Taoist Notions," describes the
application of these and other configurations of emblems in Taoism.

Yin and Yang. Let us consider first the simple binary scheme of Yin and Yang, two
terms whose earliest identifiable meanings appear to be "the dark (northern)
side of a hill" and "the sunny (southern) side of a hill." The earliest lengthy
statement of the Yin-Yang system comes from a text of the late third century
BCE found in the 168 BCE tomb at *Mawangdui, entitled Cheng m (Designa-
tions; trans. Yates 1997, 155-69; see also Graham 1989, 330-31). We are told at
the outset: "In sorting things out, use Yin and Yang." There then follows the
list reproduced in table 1. It should be quite clear that Yin and Yang are not
substances of any kind, nor are they "forces" or "energies": they are simply the
names that label the typical partners in a whole series of parallel relationships.