June3] SOCIETYOF BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY. [1890.
The sign>— < {vide supra) wasalso read til, in the sense of
"to live" {baldtu),and"to .finish," "cutoff"{gamdru,katu);with
the latter we may compareVien," to terminate," and" exterminate."
Further, as <K tin or din means "seeing," it answers im
mediatelyto the Chinese Hen, " to consider," tien," to glance at,"
" regardwithattention."
TheChinese_£ ^ Shang-ti, " the supreme ruler, the highest
being in the heavenly Pantheon,"also called t'ien-ti, "the //' of
heaven,"maynowperhapsbe explained. "Theradical ideaof H"
says Dr. Williams, "is a ruler of the highest kind,"and he gives
" to judge " as the first meaningof the character, for which, how
ever,the next, viz.,gff (the samesignwiththe determinative words),
ti, "to judge,""to examine into,to decide between,"is now used.
Thislatterplainlycorrespondsto the Accadian ^|S^Di, " to judge,"
properly "todistinguish between" (discerno,and thendecerno);
the d-form of zi, shi, and the rest of the series of related terms
meaning"to see," and then "to know." But the primitive meaning
of ti, "a god," was,as we have concluded, "a seer," or "spirit" ;
and the word di, "to see," occurs in the Accadian compound
<J-f|yyfJ^Of.Sin-di (or igin-di), " to look at " {naplusu) ; ep.
W<\) ti, " to gaze at," Cantonesetei, " to see," " to look." Theideaof
seeingis the fundamental ideaof the primitive di, ti ; that of judging
is secondary.
There is a saying, Shang-ti t'ien ye\ "Shang-ti is heaven,"
whichrecallsthe fact that >-»-y is both heavenandthe god or spirit
of heaven (Anu),like Dyaus, Zeus,Jupiter. In the Accadian J^: fff
ni-ni,"god,"later,i-li,we have an n-form relatedto the t (d)-form
ti, "god," as J^: ni, "male," is to tin (din), "male." The
emperoris called li-wang; wang, old wung=mung, mun,Cantonese,
wong,Amoy,ong (=mang, ang,man,an)," king," maybe compared
with (<( man, "king" {sarru), ^ u-mun, un, "lord," "lady"
{bUu, beltu), *^ mu, " king " {sarru), and " heaven" {Samti).
Thesem-forms are, of course, relatedto g-forms like gi, " king,"
yuen, dialectic tin, gwan, nti" (Accadian un, "lord," >~yyy, nun,
" magnate," " prince," rubti, •£-£], nin, " lady ") : cp. also ang
(=ngan)," great, high,to raise the head," withan, " high."
As to the Shang of Shang-ti, it obviously is identical with the
Accadianf^ls^:sang,shang," head, top,great, chief,first-born,"
of which the oldest formis T|. Shang means" top, above, high,
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