Tian ( ) is one of the oldest Chinese terms for the cosmos and a key concept in Chinese mythology, philosophy, and religion. During the Shang Dynasty (17th–11th centuries BCE) the Chinese called god Shangdi (上帝 "lord on high") or Di ("lord"), and during the Zhou Dynasty (11th–3rd centuries BCE) Tian "heaven; god" became synonymous with Shangdi. Heaven worship was, for thousands of years, the orthodox state cult of imperial China.

In the Chinese philosophical systems of Taoism and Confucianism, Tian is often translated as "Heaven" and is mentioned in relationship to its complementary aspect of Di (地), which is most often translated as "Earth". These two aspects of Daoist cosmology are representative of the dualistic nature of Daoism. They are thought to maintain the two poles of the Three Realms (三界) of reality, with the middle realm occupied by Humanity (人 Ren).

Characters

Tian's modern Chinese character 天 combines da 大 "great; large" and yi 一 "one", but some of the original characters in Shang oracle bone script and Zhou bronzeware script anthropomorphically portray a large head on a great person. The ancient oracle and bronze ideograms for da 大 depict a stick figure person with arms stretched out denoting "great; large". The oracle and bronze characters for tian 天 emphasize the cranium of this "great (person)", either with a square or round head, or head marked with one or two lines. Since Shang scribes cut oracle inscriptions on bone or shell, their characters often have straight lines where later bronze inscriptions have curved lines. Schuessler (2007:495) notes the bronze graphs for tian showing a person with a round head resemble those for ding 丁 "4th Celestial stem", and suggests "The anthropomorphic graph may or may not indicate that the original meaning was 'deity', rather than 'sky'."

Besides the usual 天, tian "heaven" has variant Chinese characters. Two early examples are 兲 (written with 王 "king" and 八 "8") and the Daoist coinage 靝 (with 青 "blue" and 氣 "qi", i.e., "blue sky").

Origins

The sinologist Herrlee Creel, who wrote a comprehensive study on "The Origin of the Deity T'ien" (1970:493-506), gives this overview.

For three thousand years it has been believed that from time immemorial all Chinese revered T'ien 天, "Heaven," as the highest deity, and that this same deity was also known as Ti 帝 or Shang Ti 上帝. But the new materials that have become available in the present century, and especially the Shang inscriptions, make it evident that this was not the case. It appears rather that T'ien is not named at all in the Shang inscriptions, which instead refer with great frequency to Ti or Shang Ti. T'ien appears only with the Chou, and was apparently a Chou deity. After the conquest the Chou considered T'ien to be identical with the Shang deity Ti (or Shang Ti), much as the Romans identified the Greek Zeus with their Jupiter. (1970:493)