OriginoftheCharacterdi帝.PDF

DRAFT OF WORK IN PROGRESS: NOT FOR CIRCULATION OR CITATION “A Brief History of Beiji (Northern Culmen), with an Excursus on the Origin of the Character di ” David W. Pankenier Lehigh University Abstract: In ancient Chinese astral lore, the imperial nomenclature associated with the circumpolar stars in the Palace of Purple Tenuity points to the crucial importance of the north-pole in astrological, calendrical, and spiritual contexts. But preoccupation with this numinous region has a history dating back far earlier than the Qin and Han empires. This paper briefly surveys what is known about the pre-imperial history of the region of the ‘Northern Culmen,’ with particular reference to spiritual and metaphysical conceptions concerning the Northern Dipper, and to the void at the pivot of the heavens, where there was no prominent pole star throughout much of the formative period of classical Chinese civilization. The discussion concludes with a hypothesis about possible astral origins of the ancient form of the character used to denote the High God di . Chinese preoccupation with astronomical orientation has a very long history. Archaeological evidence from the 5th millennium BCE Neolithic cultures of North China shows that burials and dwellings were already being oriented with particular attention to 1 the diurnal and seasonal variations in the Sun’s position. With the beginning of the Bronze Age in the early 2nd millennium BCE and the inception of early state formation, such concepts had progressed to the point where ritually and politically important structures were uniformly quadrilateral in shape and cardinally oriented, with the