Who were the Dingling? Part I

[Johanna Laakso]

Dear Uralists,

forwarded, (below and in the next 2-?3 messages) a message from a new member
of the list. The subject exceeds my expertise (and that of many other list
members as well), but - in order to "let all flowers bloom", I'll submit
this contribution for further discussion. However, let me remind you of the
possibility of saving lengthy texts like this one as a WWW page and just
posting a link to the list, in order to avoid flooding the list. In the
future, this will be the policy strongly recommended by the moderator.

Best,

Johanna

--
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johanna Laakso
Institut für Finno-Ugristik der Universität Wien
Universitätscampus, Spitalg. 2-4 Hof 7, A-1090 Wien
tel. +43 1 4277 43009 | fax +43 1 4277 9430
johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at | http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/Johanna.Laakso/

----------

Greetings to the members of the Ura-list.

Foregoing some thoughts on Nikolaeva's A Grammar of
Udihe in conmection to Uralic, I have decided to
present first some studies on the shaman as graphic
camouflage, which after having begun, revealed much
more than expected. There are other things woven into
this series that may seem non-sequitur. Whilst not
forgetting Decsy's proto-Uralic, it is hoped that a
few side excursions in the literature may shed some
light on things rather than render them more
complicated.

Timely, perhaps, is that jade-working may go back
8,000 years in China. A theory (as yet apparently
undecided) relating to trilobate jade discs are
published in University of London School of Oriental
and African Studies Bulletin(1983)'Hsuan Chi Trilobate
Jade Discs,' p.74:

'Hiyashi Minao's discussion on the whorl patterns on
Shang and Chou bronzes may provide the basis for a
better understanding of the ritual significance of
triple division on these discs....Hiyashi points to
resemblance with ming ___. The significance may be
in the fact that apart from 'bright,' ming can also be
used to mean numinous or 'separated from the common
world by ritual barriers.'

Applying astronomy, one disc was superimposed over
Ursa major. It comes very close to a fit in some ways,
yet the colure does not match with the time(600 B.C.)
The time may be way off, as the discs could have been
handed down through time. There is, though, possibly
something more than their use in astronomy, even
though one Siberian Paleolithic artifact seems akin
to it(see below).

In the taixuanjing, Yang Hsiung refers to the use of
the pi disc in Shou 81, the last verse, which
coincides with the taotejing. Mechanically, the
flanges on the disc(that mentioned in the taixuan does
not describe it) would act as a pawl. As is known,
both the earth and horses do not run backward very
well. The triplicitous nature of this artifact, even
life itself, resonates with Einsteinian theory as well
as Henry Bergson's critique of that theory: for one
physicist (here named Peter) may have great difficulty
imagining how another physicist (here named Paul)
could possibly 'be.' I will try to show that the discs
may be both functional and ritualistic, found not only
in China and Siberia, as horses, shamans, and other
critters became better known. Cullen and Farrer state
of the jade discs....

'Apart from the gap in time involved, there is
evidence that the jade rings may have been imported
into China from Baikalia, around the second millenium
B.C.[Watson, Cultural Frontiers in Ancient East Asia,
Edinburgh(1971):36]...The trilobate disc as simply a
form of a ritual motif which, as has been shown, can
be traced back as far on the funerary pottery of the
Yangshao culture.'

It should be noted that there were also found four-
and five-lobed discs, and that, as far as is known,
the only example of what one might call 'quintagrams'
five-lined graphs (as opposed to the hexagrams of the
yijing or tetragrams of the taixuan)can be found in a
short passage from the T'ung chih t'ang ching
chieh/Na-lan Hsing-te chi, Yang-chou shih: Chiang-su
kuang-ling ku chi ko yin she, (1993), V.4, P.66]

One other place a 'quintagram' appears is on the
bottom of the bowl of the Late Shang Bronze Rhinoceros
ritual wine receptacle. This figure coincides very
well with the Chinese Water-Spouting bowl mentioned in
Tyndall's experiment, whereby resonating the bowl by
rubbing its rim causes it to spout water. In fact,
here in this bell-shaped inner part of the rhinoceros
one can also find the same described pattern as the
Tyndall experiment. It is an 'x' with the angle of the
'x' at approximately 120 degrees. This coincides with
the Paleolithic rectangular Siberian find. See Inst.
arkheologii i etnographii i, godova i a itogova i a
sessi i a (5th 1997)V.3, p.89-90. Placebo Effect or
not, there was certainly interest in rhinoceros horn
especially during the Ming, as....

To the tune 'Soaring Clouds'
We took one piece of
Magic rhinoceros horn
And could not sleep all night long.
[Huang O,(1498-1569), Ming dynasty]

These notions resonate with the Chinese art of feng
chiao 'Wating for the Ethers,' or "Cosmic Magic of the
Clouds and Wind,' or a vulgarization as 'Blowing of
the Ashes,' these types of arts associated with
divination, shamanism and prognostication.

Yang Hsiung, author of the taixuanjiing, was accused
of being a traitorous accomplice to a usurper of the
throne at the time. Nevertheless, closer examination
brings back into focus the nature of the Tai Hsuan
as a remarkable work of philsophy as well as
prognostication. I feel fortunate to have just a
very small part to play in reinforcing this
exoneration. Yang's story rings of Boethius. The
character in question here is a tetragram:

''Zheng'...the appearance of these early materials
corresponding to the taixuanjing demonstrates that
the system could not have been a creation of Yang
Xiong's imagination. The two systems must have a
definite developmental relationship. We tentatively
propose that the five symbols described above are
hexagram symbols of milfoil divination, possibly
stemming from the same source as the Yi hexagrams, but
exhibiting a different elaboration, and as such, are
the earliest hexagram pictures yet found in China.
Similar to this there is also a pair of halberds
unearthed at Anyang....this kind of hexagram picture
could be as early as the Shang dynasty, and the
taixuan system would then also have to be regarded as
very ancient.'
[Early China(1981-2):54]


Russian Archaeology and the Shaman

Returning to the 'discs' from Russian archaeology, one
finds the parallel to Chinese ____ tao 'knife' as well
as 'proto-discs' of mammoth bone, reminiscent of the
hsuan-chi of Cullen and Farrer. Here also, is the idea
of eclipse, and the exact symbol found on horse tack
that is also found in Hopkin's article(forthcoming in
part II). Remarkably, Hopkins, without knowing it, may
have solved quite a few riddles.


Mike Lawrence <hoosiersky2002 at yahoo.com>

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