The shi () was a ceremonial "personator" who represented a dead relative during ancient Chinese ancestral sacrifices. In a shi ceremony, the ancestral spirit supposedly would enter the descendant "corpse" personator, who would eat and drink sacrificial offerings and convey messages from the spirit. James Legge, an early translator of the Chinese classics, described shi personation ceremonies as "grand family reunions where the dead and the living met, eating and drinking together, where the living worshipped the dead, and the dead blessed the living." In modern terms, this ancient Chinese shi practice would be described as necromancy, mediumship, or spirit possession.
Word
The word shi 尸 "corpse; personator; inactive; lay out; manage; spirit tablet" can be discussed in terms of Chinese character evolution, historical phonology, semantics, and English translations.
Characters The modern character 尸 for shi "corpse; personator" is a graphic simplification of ancient pictographs showing a person with a bent back and dangling legs. The first records of shi are on oracle bones dating from the late Shang dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1046 BCE). The oracle bone script for shi 尸 "corpse" was used interchangeably for yi 夷 "barbarian; non-Chinese people (esp. eastern, see Dongyi); at ease; level". The bronze script for shi 尸, found in Chinese bronze inscriptions dating from the Shang and Zhou dynasty (c. 1045 BCE – c. 256 BCE), had a more curved back and legs. The graphically reduced seal script for shi, standardized during the Qin dynasty (221–207 BCE), resembles the regular script 尸.
Today, shi 尸 is more commonly used as the "corpse/body radical" in Chinese characters (number 44 in the List of Kangxi radicals) than to write the original word "corpse". Many characters written with this radical involve the body (e.g., niao 尿 "urine" with 水 "water"), but not all (e.g., wu 屋 "house; room" with 至 "go to").
Shi 尸 "corpse; cadaver" has a variant Chinese character 屍 that combines the "corpse radical" 尸 with si 死 "dead" (e.g., jiang shi 僵屍 "stiff corpse") Michael Carr explains, "This semantically redundant shi 屍 'dead-corpse' graphically distinguishes the original 'corpse' meaning of shi 尸 from its various other meanings such as 'personator'."
Meanings Chinese classics used the word shi 尸 in six meanings: (1) "corpse; body of a dead person" (2) "personator of a dead ancestor" (3) "motionless; inactive" (4) "lay out; arrange; expose" (5) "manage; direct; spirit tablet" (6) "proper names (of a place, family, and bird)" Carr outlines the semantic connections among these shi meanings. The basic meaning (1) "corpse" was semantically extended into both (2) "act on behalf of a corpse" or "personator of a dead ancestor" and (3) "act like a corpse" or "motionless; inactive; doing nothing". Meaning (4) "lay out, arrange; display" generalizes "lay out a corpse." Meaning (5) "manage; direct; ancestral tablet" links the representative shi (2) "personator" with the metaphorical replacement "ancestral tablet". Meaning (6) uses shi to transcribe proper names.
Meaning (1) is the core sense of "corpse; dead body; cadaver; carcass". Early ritual texts, notably the Liji "Classic of Rites", Zhouli "Rites of Zhou", and Yili "Etiquette and Rites", frequently use shi "corpse" in mortuary and funeral contexts. Here is an example Liji passage: As soon as death took place, the corpse was transferred to the couch, and covered with a large sheet. The clothes in which the deceased had died were removed. A servant plugged the mouth open with the spoon of horn; and to keep the feet from contracting, an easy stool was employed. These observances were the same for a ruler, a great officer, and an ordinary officer. (22)
Shi meaning (2) "personator; sacrificial representative of a dead person's spirit" is discussed below.
Meaning (3) figuratively expands shi to "corpse-like", which can contextually mean either "motionless; calm; quiescent" or "inactive; negligent; remiss". A Shijing ode (245) laments that, "the good men sit motionless and silent". Karlgren explains, "'The good men act the corpse,' play the part of a representative of the dead at a sacrifice, who sits still and silent during the whole ceremony; here then, remain inactive, do nothing to help." The Lunyu ("Confucian Analects") uses shi to praise Confucius, "In bed, he did not lie like a corpse." Commentators disagree whether this means "sleep with the arms and legs sprawled out" or "sleep facing the north (the land of the dead)".
Meaning (4) is defined as Chinese chen 陳 "lay out; set forth, array; arrange; display". Examples in classic texts range from specifically "lay out (a corpse)" to generally "lay out; set out; arrange". The Liji distinguishes between shi 尸 "uncoffined corpse" and jiu 柩 (with the "wood radical" and a jiu 匛 "long; enduring" phonetic) "coffined corpse": "(The corpse) on the couch is called [shi] (the laid out); when it is put into the coffin, that is called [jiu] (being in the long home)." A Shijing poem (185) refers to men called off to war, "There are mothers who set forth the (sacrificial) dishes."
Meaning (5) of shi is defined as zhu 主 "master; manage, preside; spirit tablet, ancestral tablet". The Chuci uses shi asking about King Wu of Zhou, whose father King Wen of Zhou did not live to see the conquering of the previous dynasty, Shang-Yin: "When Wu set out to kill Yin, why was he so grieved? He went into the battle carrying the 'corpse.' Why was he in such haste?" Commentators disagree whether this shi means zhu, specifically muzhu 木主 "wooden spirit/ancestral tablet" or jiu "corpse in a coffin". Hawkes justifies translating "corpse": "According to some accounts it was the 'spirit tablet' of his dead father [King Wen] which King Wu carried in his chariot to battle. But I think the poet understood him to have taken the actual corpse, and was surprised that he had not waited to bury it."
The sinologists Eduard Erkes and Bernhard Karlgren debated this Chuci usage of shi "corpse; spirit tablet". Erkes proposed that the zhu was a wooden ancestral tablet shaped in the image of the deceased. Karlgren disagreed and argued that the zhu was phallic shaped:Karlgren, 1930. He seems to think that the substitution of [muzhu] 'wooden tablet' for the corpse (if really a corpse is intended; the word shi is ambiguous) proves the [muzhu] to have been an image of the corpse, and therefore he translates [muzhu] by 'wooden statue.' Nothing could be more arbitrary. The [muzhu], wooden ancestral tablet, was the resting place of the ancestor's spirit, once his body was dead and decomposed. In this sense it was a substitute for his body, his spiritual force had entered it, and therefore it was carried into battle, bringing this mental force of his into play on the side of his descendant. Erkes countered Karlgren by citing other texts describing a human-shaped muzhu "wooden lord". For instance, the Shiji ("Record of History")Tr. . records this King Wu story with muzhu instead of shi: "He (viz. Wu-Wang) made a wooden image of Wen-Wang and took it with [him] on his carriage into the battle." Erkes further suggested, "very probably the custom of carrying a [muzhu] into battle had developed from an earlier one of taking the body itself, and that therefore the [muzhu] was something representing the corpse, i.e., an image of the deceased."
Meaning (6) includes some semantically unrelated usages of shi. Shi 尸 is an ancient place name (in Henan); a surname (e.g., the Syncretist philosopher Shizi 尸子, c. 390 – 330 BCE); and a variant of shi 鳲 (which is used in bird names like shijiu 鳲鳩 "cuckoo; turtledove").
Pronunciations and etymologies The Standard Chinese shī pronunciation of 尸 phonologically descends from (c. 6th century CE) Middle Chinese and (c. 6th century BCE) Old Chinese. Compare these Middle and Old Chinese reconstructions of shi 尸 "corpse" and yi 夷 "barbarian" (which anciently had interchangeable characters): śi < *śjər 尸and i < *djər 夷 (Bernhard Karlgren, syij < *hljij 尸and yij < *ljɨj 夷, and śi < *lhi 尸 and ji < *ləi 夷.
There are several hypothetical etymologies for shi "corpse". Karlgren proposed that si < *sjər 死 "die, dead" and shi < *śjər 尸 "the dead, corpse" were etymologically cognate. Paul K. Benedict suggested possible Proto-Sino-Tibetan roots for shi: either *(s-)raw "corpse; carcass" or *siy "die". Schuessler hypothesizes a semantic development from *li 夷 "extend; expose; display; set out; spread out" to *lhi 尸 "to spread out; lie down flat (in order to sleep); motionless; to set forth (sacrificial dishes)", to "personator of a dead ancestor", to "corpse". He rejects Karlgren's assumption that shi "corpse" is cognate to si "to die", "because the MC [Middle Chinese] initial ś- (< *lh-, *nh-, *hj-) never derives from an *s-, except when they share an initial *l or *n."
Translations English translations of the ceremonial shi 尸 include personator, impersonator, representative, medium, and shaman. Carr reviews the choices. Obviously, rendering this into English is problematic because there is no Western analogy for the ceremonial shi 'corpse.' Personator is chosen as the nearest English translation. Impersonator would be possible, but this word implies falsehood, which was not originally associated with the shi. Representative is too general in meaning, and does not usually have a sense of spirituality, unless modified by of the dead/ancestor. Paper suggests Incorporator of the Dead, which has a parallel 'one who embodies' etymology, but the derivate words incorporate and incorporation commonly have other meanings. Medium and shaman are similar with shi in meaning and are part of Chinese traditions; however, the descriptions of a dignified personator are unlike the spirit-possession of either. Another translational tactic would be to coin a nonce word, such as Waley's "the Dead One," Eberhard's "death boy," or Wilhelm's "corpse boy," but the sense of such a coinage is not always clear. Therefore, in the absence of a better English word, personator will translate this meaning of shi.
Early descriptions Zhou dynasty classic texts (c. 11th–3rd centuries BCE) use the word shi 尸 hundreds of times. Lothar von Falkenhausen contrasts the frequently recorded shi "personator" with the rarely noted wu 巫 "shaman; spirit medium". At ancestral sacrifices, the ancestral spirits descend into individuals designated from among their descendants, the "Impersonators" (shi 尸). Occupying their ritual rôle by virtue of their kinship position vis-à-vis the ancestor that is sacrificed to, the Impersonators are not trained religious specialists like the Spirit Mediums. Although it has been speculated that the actions of the shi may have originally involved trance and possession, the surviving source materials—none earlier than the Western Zhou period—show them as staid and passive, acting with the utmost demeanor and dignity.
Some early shi meanings are contextually ambiguous. For instance, the Yijing ("Book of Changes") uses yu shi 輿尸 "carry corpses; corpse carrier" twice for Hexagram 7:Tr. . "Perchance the army carries corpses in the wagon. Misfortune ... Let the eldest lead the army. The younger transports corpses. Then perseverance brings misfortune." Richard Wilhelm summarizes the Yijing commentaries.