Yin and Yang (symbol)

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Taiji, the symbol for yin and yang

The Yin-Yang symbol , Chinese Taijitu ( Chinese  太極 圖  /  太极 图 , Pinyin Tàijí Tú , literally “ symbol of the very great outermost / supreme”), is a symbol used in Chinese Daoism and New Confucianism (Chinese tu , symbol or diagram ) for Taiji (“very great extreme”), which is understood as the origin of the world . The image pattern is also common among the Celts , Etruscans and Romans .

Geometric figure

Naturally overgrown tree trunk

The yin-yang symbol is an image pattern, the numerous variations of which mostly consist of circular lines that appear to be in motion. The classic Daoist symbol can be drawn with the help of a compass and a ruler : one draws two non-overlapping circles on the diameter of a circle , the diameter of which corresponds to the radius of the outer circle; you just keep the line that describes an "S" and remove the other. This creates a spiral shape that Taoist texts compare with a pair of fish with their head and tail nestled together. This basic pattern is not only a product of the human imagination, but can also be found - less geometrically precise - in nature (see picture). In Taiji, the two differently colored halves each contain an additional point of opposite color.

European characters

Celts

Celtic Yin-Yang motif on an enamelled bronze plate (mid-1st century AD)

In Celtic art , the motif of two entangled commas that seem to revolve around their own axis can be traced back to the late 5th century BC. Trace back to BC. Art historians of the La Tène culture use the anachronistic term "Yin and Yang" for this form, referring to the much more recent Chinese character.

The earliest Celtic yin and yangs usually do not appear as independent characters, but rather within larger flower or animal patterns, where they depict swirling leaves at the foot of a palmette or stylized tails of seahorses . From the 3rd century BC A more abstract style developed in which the yin and yang symbol now also appears as the main motif in ornamentation. Although it is not possible to determine exactly whether the Celts have the sign attached to a special symbolic value, but in such cases where it is emphasized by a prominent position such as the top of a sword scabbard , seems to be use in fact apotropaic (for to ward off demons).

Celtic triple vortex

In contrast to the classic Daoist emblem, the Celtic yin and yangs lack the element of mutual penetration; the two halves are not always in different colors either. In keeping with the dynamic nature of Celtic symbolism, which is characterized by a pronounced preference for curved lines, the circles are often not completely closed, giving the impression of pairs of leaves whirling endlessly around their own axis. On some metal objects, the Yin-Yang ornaments also stand out from the background.

The symbol enjoyed some popularity with the Celts and adorned a variety of art and everyday objects, including beaked jugs, helmets, vases, bowls, collars, pins, brooches and knife edges. While the Celtic treasure trove of symbols on the continent was displaced by Roman art , it was able to hold onto Ireland and even came to life again in Britain in the post-Roman era (see insular illumination ); three vertebrae can be found as components of triskeles in the 7th century in the famous Book of Durrow (folio 3v).

Etruscan

In Etruscan art , the yin and yang motif first appeared at the end of the 4th century BC. In appearance, possibly due to the increasing contact with the Celts penetrating over the Alps; it can be found in a Falisker grave in large format on the belly of two oinochoes , where the geometric pattern that is now typical of the Celtic yin and yang is combined with Etruscan floral ornamentation.

Yin-Yang motif from Sousse
Shield coat of arms of the western Roman infantry unit armigeri defensores seniores (around 430 AD)

Romans

A mosaic from a Roman villa in Sousse ( Tunisia ) shows the halves separated by an "S" line, but without the dots.

The classic yin and yang pattern ☯is depicted - for the first time - in the late antique Notitia Dignitatum , a listing of shield coats of arms of the Roman army from around AD 430. The drawings are handed down in three manuscripts : The symbol of an infantry unit , the armigeri defensores seniores ("shield bearer"), corresponds to the classic Far Eastern yin and yang except for the choice of color. Another division from the western Roman infantry, the Pseudocomitatenses Mauri Osismiaci , had a coat of arms with the same "fish-like" outlines on its shield; here the two points have the same color. A third infantry regiment, the Thebaei , had a pattern that is comparable to the static variant of East Asian Taiji: three concentric circles separated by a vertical line in the middle so that the sequence of colors on each side is in reverse order to other half moves. The Roman yin-yang-like symbols precede the later, Daoist variants by several centuries:

“As for the first appearance of the iconography of the yin-yang over time, it is reported that the earliest representations of the yin-yang in China, at least those that came down to us, go back to the 11th century AD , although of these two principles as early as the 4th or 5th century BC. Was spoken of. With the Notitia Dignitatum, on the other hand, we are in the 4th or 5th century AD, that is, in iconographic terms, almost seven centuries earlier than the oldest examples from China. "

Modern times, EDP

☯

In the Unicode character encoding standard , the code point U+262F(decimal 9775) in the Unicode block Various Symbols is assigned to the Yin and Yang symbol . In HTML it is ☯coded with . The character appears as ☯.

Daoism

Taijitu is only attested in China in the 11th century. It originated in a Daoist milieu, where according to the sources, the Daoist Wujitu ("symbol of the one who has no ultimate / highest") , which appeared for the first time in the 10th century, was the starting point. In the first centuries of its use, Taijitu took various forms; the oldest still show no resemblance to the "fish-like" shape that was later used ☯. They were often concentric black and white or half black and half white circles. The innermost circular area was always white. The white color stood for the principle of Yang, the black for the principle of Yin. The "fish-like" shape commonly used today did not emerge until the Ming Dynasty , which came to power in 1368.

The neo-Confucian philosopher Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073) wrote a treatise "Taiji Tu Shuo" ( Chinese  太極 圖 說  /  太极 图 说 , Pinyin Tàijí Tú Shuō  - "Explanation of Taijitu"), with which the New Confucian reception of Taijitu began. Living in the 12th century Neo-Confucians Zhu Xi gave the Taiji Tu Shuo general recognition in Neo-Confucian circles.

gallery

  • Yin and Yang vortices on a gilded Celtic disc (early 4th century BC)

  • Shield coat of arms of the western Roman infantry unit armigeri defensores seniores (around 430 AD)

  • Shield coat of arms of the Western Roman Mauri Osismiaci (around 430 AD)

  • Shield coat of arms of the Thebaei (around 430 AD)

  • National flag of South Korea

See also

literature

European characters

  • Dieter Ahrens (Ed.): Θίασος των Μουσών. Studies on Antiquity and Christianity. Festschrift for Josef Fink on his 70th birthday (= archive for cultural history . Supplements. 20). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 1984, ISBN 3-412-05083-0 .
  • Franz Altheim : Attila and the Huns. Publishing house for art and science, Baden-Baden 1951.
  • Alain de Benoist : Communisme et Nazisme. 25 réflexions sur le totalitarisme au XXe siècle (1917–1989). Labyrinths, Paris 1998, ISBN 2-86980-028-2 .
  • Paul-Marie Duval : The Celts. CH Beck, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-406-03025-4 .
  • Denys W. Harding: The Archeology of Celtic Art. Routledge, New York NY et al. 2007, ISBN 978-0-203-69853-2 .
  • Howard E. Kilbride-Jones: Celtic Craftsmanship in bronze. Croom Helm, London 1980, ISBN 0-7099-0387-1 .
  • Lloyd Laing: Celtic Britain (= Britain before the Conquest. 2). Routledge & Kegan Paul, London et al. 1979, ISBN 0-7100-0131-2 .
  • Lloyd Laing: Later Celtic Art in Britain and Ireland (= Shire Archeology. 48). Shire Publications, Princes Risborough 1987, ISBN 0-85263-874-4 .
  • Edward T. Leeds: Celtic Ornament in the British Isles down to AD 700. Dover Publications, Mineola NY 2002, ISBN 0-486-42085-X .
  • Ruth Megaw, Vicent Megaw: Early Celtic Art in Britain and Ireland. (= Shire Archeology. 38). 2nd edition, with new text, revised, updated. Shire Publications, Princes Risborough 2005, ISBN 0-7478-0613-6 .
  • Giovanni Monastra: The "Yin-Yang" among the Insignia of the Roman Empire? In: Sophia. Vol. 6, No. 2, 2000.
  • John Meirion Morris: The Celtic Vision. Y Lolfa, Talybont 2003, ISBN 0-86243-635-4 .
  • Harry Mountain: The Celtic Encyclopedia. Volume 5. Universal Publishers, Parkland FL 1998, ISBN 1-58112-894-0 .
  • Helmut Nickel: The Dragon and the Pearl. In: Metropolitan Museum Journal. Vol. 26, 1991, ISSN  0077-8958 , pp. 139-146, doi: 10.2307 / 1512907 .
  • Christian Peyre: Ya-t'il un contexte italique au style de Waldalgesheim? In: Paul-Marie Duval, Venceslas Kruta (ed.): L'art celtique de la période d'expansion, IVe et IIIe siècles avant notre ère (= Center de Recherches d'Histoire et de Philologie de la IVe Section de l ' Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. 3: Hautes études du monde gréco-romain. Vol. 13, ZDB -ID 2554087-7 ). Librairie Droz, Paris 1982, ISBN 2-600-03342-4 , pp. 51–82, here pp. 62–64, 82.
  • Leonardo Sacco: Aspetti storico-religiosi del Taoismo. (Part seconda). In: Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni. Vol. 69 = NS Vol. 27, No. 1, 2003, ISSN  0081-6175 , pp. 5-93.
  • Stéphane Verger: Une tombe à char oubliée dans l'ancienne collection Poinchy de Richebourg. In: Mélanges de l'école française de Rome. Antiquité. Vol. 108, No. 2, 1996, ISSN  0223-5102 , pp. 641-691, digitized .
  • Nancy van Deusen (Ed.): The Medieval West Meets the Rest of the World (= Institute of Mediaeval Music. Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen. Vol. 62, 2). Institute of Mediaeval Music, Ottawa 1995, ISBN 0-931902-94-0 .

Daoist symbolism

  • Isabelle Robinet : Taiji do. Diagram of the Great Ultimate. In: Fabrizio Pregadio (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Taoism. A – Z. Volume 2. Routledge, London et al. 2008, ISBN 978-0-7007-1200-7 , pp. 934-936.

Web links

Commons : Yin and Yang (symbol)  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Peyre 1982, pp. 62-64, 82 (pl. VI); Harding 2007, pp. 68f., 70f., 76, 79, 84, 121, 155, 232, 239, 241f., 248, 253, 259; Duval 1978, p. 282; Kilbride-Jones 1980, p. 127 (Fig. 34.1), 128; Laing 1979, p. 79; Verger 1996, p. 664; Laing 1997, p. 8; Mountain 1997, p. 1282; Leeds 2002, p. 38; Morris 2003, p. 69; Megaw 2005, p. 13.
  2. ↑ a b Peyre 1982, pp. 62-64.
  3. ↑ a b c Monastra 2000; Nickel 1991, p. 146, footnote 5; White, Van Deusen 1995, pp. 12, 32; Robinet 2008, p. 934.
  4. ↑ Peyre 1982, pp. 62f.
  5. ↑ a b c Robinet 2008, p. 934.
  6. ↑ a b c Peyre 1982, pp. 62–64, 82 (pl. VI)
  7. ↑ a b c Duval 1978, p. 282.
  8. ↑ a b Duval 1978, p. 282; Monastra 2000
  9. ↑ Harding 2007, pp. 70f., 76, 79, 155, 232, 241f., 248, 259; Kilbride-Jones 1980, p. 128.
  10. ↑ Harding 2007, p. 253.
  11. ↑ Altheim 1951, p. 82; Fink, Ahrens 1984, p. 104; Benoist 1998, p. 116; Sacco 2003, p. 18.
  12. ↑ Bodleian Library : Late Roman Shield Patterns. Notitia Dignitatum: Magister Peditum
  13. ^ Bavarian State Library , Clm 10291 (I): Mauri Osismiaci ; Armigeri ; Thebei
  14. ^ Bavarian State Library, Clm 10291 (II): Mauri Osismiaci ; Armigeri ; Thebei
  15. ↑ a b c d e f Monastra 2000
  16. ↑ Monastra 2000:

    "As for the appearance of the iconography of the" yin-yang "in the course of time, it was recorded that in China the first representations of the yin-yang, at least the ones that have reached us, go back to the eleventh century AD, even though these two principles were spoken of in the fourth or fifth century BC. With the Notitia Dignitatum we are instead in the fourth or fifth century AD, therefore from the iconographic point of view , almost seven hundred years earlier than the date of its appearance in China. "