@article{oai:dwcla.repo.nii.ac.jp:00001907,
 author = {朱, 捷 and ZHU, jie},
 journal = {総合文化研究所紀要, Bulletin of Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts},
 month = {Jul},
 note = {application/pdf, AN10052143-20200812-34, What was the original image of the character 神 (Jp. kami: Ch. shén: Eng. “god, deity, divinity”)? And what did it mean to ancient Chinese people? Drawing on sources such as the poetry of Du Fu (712–770 CE), the Guanzi, the Mozi, and the results of recent studies in ancient Chinese archeology and paleography, this essay proposes one theory. It concludes that the Chinese character 神 and the attitude toward divinity held by the ancient Chinese was something very close to shamanism.
As it is used in the poetry of Du Fu, the character 神 means something similar to “divine possession.” Body and spirit resonate in tune with the divine, the very soul quakes—Du Fu thought that it was this to which the best poetry should aspire.
In the Guanzi and the Mozi, the character 神 does not denote a personal god with human characteristics like substance, a will, or individuality. It is, rather, functional. Yet, much as shamans do, humans must participate in particular practices and demonstrate certain virtues in order to gain access to the divine.
The most recent classical Chinese paleographical research indicates that the character 神 originates in an image of a dragon with two mouths. The dragon—that is, the divine—granted life and death through these two mouths. The entity that communed with the dragon was the shaman.
In ancient China, then, the relationship between the divine and the human was not one of domination and subordination. Rather, it was the intermingling, reciprocal sense of awareness that was paramount—an idea that has implications for contemporary humans contemplating the relationship between the human and the divine., 論文},
 pages = {34--50},
 title = {神字雑考：杜甫から神の原像へ},
 volume = {36},
 year = {2019},
 yomi = {シュ, ショウ}
}