2 - Son of Heaven: kingship as cosmic paradigm

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Let us go back to the etymological origins of the word for ‘king’. The Chinese character wang (king, ruler, or prince) is found frequently on ancient oracle bones. The graph is sometimes supposed to represent a fire in the earth, other times an axe, but in any case designates without doubt the political ruler and his royal ancestors. The French scholar Léon Vandermeersch sees wang in relation to shih / shi (officer, written with one vertical line going through a longer horizontal line to reach a shorter one), a term originally denoting ‘male’, and explains it as the virile ‘wang’ father of the ethnic group, heir of the founder–ancestor's power. Thus kingship is placed in a familial and patriarchal context.

The definitive character for this word is written with three horizontal lines, joined in the middle by a vertical line. The philosopher Tung Chung-shu (179–104 BGE) analysed this configuration by asserting that the three horizontal lines represent the heavenly order, the human order, and the earthly order, joined together by the vertical line representing the institution of kingship, which mediates among the three orders. This interpretation is reiterated in Hsu Shen's lexicon. Besides, the ancient rulers often referred to themselves as the ‘one man’ or the ‘solitary one’. This highlights loneliness in the exercise of power and responsibility. It also serves to reinforce the notion of the king as collective man, as mediator between Heaven and Earth. So the king is the supreme mediator between Heaven and Earth.