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Tue 3 Jul, 2007 11:59 pm
Can we use "axis mundi" to express an ancient Chinese concept of China being the centre of areas inhabited by many many tribes and formed a loose federation?
I would suggest not. The "axis mundi" is generally considered to be a religious or spiritual concept. The axis mundi (world axis), in religion or mythology, is the center of the world and/or the connection between heaven and earth. It is common to virtually all cultures on Earth, although it plays a much more explicit role among indigenous peoples.
It is thought that the idea of the Proto-Indo-European religion axis mundi, spread throughout Eurasia, in particular the concept of the world tree. It is familiar today as the caduceus, the symbol of medicine; the staff is the axis itself, and the serpents are the guardians or guides to the other realm. It is a common shamanic concept, the healer traversing the axis mundi to bring back knowledge from the other world. The axis mundi both connects heaven and earth as well as provided a path between the two.
The idea you wish to express sounds more like a political or geographic concept. It may be that the ancient Chinese concept you speak of might be better expressed as the "centre of the [known] world".
Thanks
I highly appreciate your explanation. As a matter of factor, "Zhong Guo" (China) literally means Middle Kingdom or Middle Country, which agrees with your suggested version Centre of the world.
However, middle kingdom does not refer to a geographic location--it refers to China as being between heaven and earth. One eternal problem of Chinese foreign relations arose from their consistent view of all other people as barbarians inhabiting a howling wilderness--one seen as philosophically "beneath" the middle kingdom.
I don't of course know how you intend to use the term, but if in a geographic context, middle kingdom would not necessarily be appropriate.
Setanta wrote:However, middle kingdom does not refer to a geographic location--it refers to China as being between heaven and earth.
In that case, then perhaps "axis mundi" is a good expression after all. Strictly speaking, "axis mundi", is not English at all. It is Latin.
Since axis mundi is a very European description of a European mind-set, I wouldn't use the term to describe China.
The term "Middle Kingdom" has its own cultural history.
Noddy24 wrote:Since axis mundi is a very European description of a European mind-set, I wouldn't use the term to describe China.
The term "Middle Kingdom" has its own cultural history.
So the Black Hills of Dakota, Tibet, Mecca, the Temple Mount, the Mount of Olives, Calvary, Mount Meru, Mesopotamia and the Pacific Northwest are all "European"?
Quote:Many cultures consider a specific place, almost always a hill, a mountain or a pyramid to be the axis mundi. For example, the Sioux consider the Black Hills to be the axis mundi, while Mount Kailash is holy to several religions in Tibet. Often, within the same belief system, several places may be considered the axis mundi; in Islam Mecca is said to be the place which was made first on earth. The Temple Mount, site of the Dome of the Rock, is also holy to Judaism and Christianity. Other nearby sites that are considered sacred and are on hills include the Mount of Olives and Calvary. The ancient Greeks had several sites that were considered places of the omphalos (navel) stone, such as the oracle at Delphi, while also maintaining a belief in a world tree and Mount Olympus as the abode of the gods.
Many religious structures explicitly mimic axis mundi. The stupa of Hinduism, and later Buddhism, reflects Mount Meru. The upright bar of the cross is sometimes seen as representing a world axis, while the steeple of a church or minaret of a mosque indicates a place where the earthly and the divine meet. In Mesopotamian civilizations, the ziggurat works as an axis mundi. Structures such as maypoles in pre-Christian Europe, linked to the Saxons' Irminsul, and totem poles among Pacific Northwest Native Americans also formed local or temporary world axes.
Other times a specific plant is considered the axis mundi. In some Pacific island cultures the banyan tree, of which the Bodhi tree is of the Sacred Fig variety, is the abode of ancestor spirits. The Bodhi Tree is also the name given to the tree under which Gautama Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, sat on the night he attained enlightenment. Other corrolaries include Yggdrasil of Norse mythology, Jievaras of Lithuanian mythology, the pre-Christian Germanic peoples's Thor's Oak, the Sefirot of Judaism, the Chakras common to many Eastern religions, and the Trees of Life and Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. Entheogens are often considered to be the axis mundi, such as the Fly Agaric mushroom among the Evenks of Russia.
Contrex--
You've found a fatal flaw. I should have been pickier about words and said "Western" instead of "European"
I do have a feeling that only the Lost Tribes of Israel were the only Native American fluent in Latin and that the non-European Western sites were being talked of by Europeans.
Noddy24, I am, on reflection, inclined to agree with you that the concept of the "axis mundi" was originally a European one. You can't get more European than Latin after all. However, just as, if you or I were to attempt to learn one of the Chinese languages, it would be not just advantageous but necessary to "enter the Chinese mindset", (if there is such a thing) surely an astute Chinese student (for such I believe her to be) would seek to enter the "European mind set" when learning English, to explore and manipulate such concepts as this?
Contrex--
Fansy certainly writes much better English than I write any dialect of Chinese.
Still, if she's discussing China with Chinese thinkers, Chinese forms are more important. Using a Western vocabulary when talking about China flirts with the "we're all one world" fallacy which ignores national and regional differences.
I don't think that either classical philosophers or medieval scholastics would accept China as the pivot of the universe, any more than scholars of the Middle Kingdom would feel centered on the Black Hills or the Mount of Olives or Mecca.
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