A Study On The Cognitive Category In The Tang And Song Dynasties

The sinicization of Islam is a long-term concern of the academic circlesacademia,but what is this processit really about and how did the processit undertake the Sinicization of Islam's "what and how"questions are questions necessarily related to a problem which is the origin of such phenomenon-how Chinese documents of the Tang and Song Dynasties recorded and portrayed Islam.Based on the theory of historical anthropology and combing it with other valid theories from the field of ethnology,religious studies,communication studies and Philology,this paper tries to find out the substance content and characteristics of those inChinese documents that involved Islam from the Tang and Song Dynasties by exploring the historical resources.And the cognitive process together with the errors spreading behind the inner logic of "origin" interpretation will be well examined in the hope of remedying the defects of present study on Islam's sinicization.This paper is divided into four chapters.The introduction part,mainly introduces the reason and the significance of choosing the topic,followed by a detailed review of related research results and a brief summary of the ideas,content,structure arrangement of this paper as well as the main theories and methods applied within.The first chapter elaborates the meaning of "Lions like people talkingSpeaking Lion”(????)metaphor appeared in Chinese documents.According to the historical investigation,,"Auspicious Omens" is a symbol that legitimized the nation' s political power in ancient China.Based on this argument,different names of lion in Chinese such as“Tianlu”(??)and "Pixie”(??)are being analyzed through the comparison of the stories about lion in Buddhist scriptures.Other than the description of Buddha ' s incarnation,lion also symbolizes a brave,strong and powerful king.Finally,conclusion can be drew that“Lion" is equal tois“Auspicious Omens",and“Auspicious Omens" "speakstalking like humanpeople" represents China' s recognition of the legitimacy of the Arab regime's legitimacy.The second chapter reviews the introduction of Islam as a religion to China in the Tang and Song Dynasties.People at that time borrowed the term“Tian"(?)from Confucianism for better understanding of the belief of Allah in Islam."Tian" was first a religious concept and then became the absolute order of the society.On top of that,two groups of words from the Chinese documents were analyzed-one is "JiTian"(??)in the Confucian system,and the other is“ShiTian”(??)in Monotheism.Through a thorough comparison comes the conclusion that "JiTian" means God worship,and“ShiTian" means to serve God.Despite the fact that“Tian”,as a term,has different meanings in contexts of China and the Arab world,it certainly helps to reinforce the localization and popularity of Islam in China as a shared concept.The third chapter is about the three groups of words which are closely related to the Muslim faith group in the Chinese documents of the Tang and Song dynasties——the Hu(?),Fan(?),and Hailiao(??).By the semantic and image analysis of "Hu",it shows that the meaningsignified of the word changes from north to west as well as from Mongolians to White people.In the Sui and Tang Dynasties,Hu in the Chinese documents often referred to the ethnic groups that shared physical characteristics of“deep eyes,bushy beard" or“high nose and deep eyes”.Fan means barriers in Chinese,and the group of people it referred to were usually Arabian or Persian traders.The liao lived in Southwest China,whereas the Hailiao were thought to be Arabian or Persian traders from Southeast Asia by people in the Tang and Song dynasties.Finally the epilogue reveals a conclusion that the documents about Islam from the Tang and Song Dynasties represent the traditional Chinese view of the world of Chinese/barbarians and a binary opposition of different ethnic groups.