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The concept of sin, in the sense of violating a universal moral code, was unknown in Chinese philosophy and folk religion until around the second century CE, when Buddhism arrived from India and religious Daoism originated. While English lexically differentiates theological ''sin'' from legal ''crime'', the Chinese language uses one word ''zui'' 罪 meaning "crime; guilt; misconduct; sin; fault; blame." ==Terminology== Chinese has two common words meaning "sin": ''zui'' () and ''guo'' (). The German sociologist Wolfram Eberhard wrote ''Guilt and Sin in Traditional China'', which said (1967:13) ''zui'' has three basic meanings "crime, punishment of a crime, and sin", and ''guo'' means "a criminal act which has been unintentionally committed, as well as a sin which has been committed without any intention." ''Zui'' can mean "crime; criminal act; punishment; guilt; fault; blame; wrongdoing; misconduct; sin; suffering; hardship". Some ''zui'' compounds, such as ''youzui'' 有罪 (with "have; there is") "guilty (of an offense); sinful", are ambiguous between "crime" and "sin"; while others are unequivocal, such as ''fanzui'' 犯罪 (with "crime; criminal") "commit a crime; criminal act" or ''yuanzui'' 原罪 (with "origin; source") "original sin". The Chinese character 罪 for ''zui'' combines ''wang'' 罒 or 网 "net" over ''fei'' 非 "wrong", ideographically depicting, "A 网 net used to capture the criminal who has done 非 wrong" (Bishop 2011). ''Zui'' was used to translate Chinese Buddhist terminology, for instance, ''zuizhang'' 罪障 (with "obstruction") "sin" and ''zuiye'' 罪業 (with "action") "sinful karma". ''Zui'' 罪 "crime; guilt; punishment" had an archaic variant Chinese character ''zui'' 辠, written with ''zi'' 自 "nose" and ''xin'' 辛 "painful" — emphasizing the "punishment" aspect of ''zui''. For instance, under traditional Chinese law, the excruciating Five Punishments included ''yi'' 劓 "cutting off the nose". The (121 CE) ''Shuowen Jiezi'' dictionary defined the original meanings of these homophonous ''zui'' characters as罪 "fish trap" and 辠 "crime; punishment", and noted Qin dynasty (221 BCE-206 BCE) imperial naming taboo made 辠 obsolete. The first Qin emperor Qin Shi Huang 秦始皇 forbid using ''zui'' 辠 "crime", which graphically resembled ''huang'' 皇 "emperor" in his name, and replaced it with ''zui'' 罪 (Schuessler 2007:637). In Modern Standard Chinese character usage, ''zui'' 罪 is common and ''zui'' 辠 is rare. ''Guo'' nominally means "fault; mistake; error; excess" and verbally "pass by; go past; surpass; cross; exceed". The specialized sense of "sin" is usually limited to Daoist usage, except for the Chinese "synonym compound" ''zuiguo(r)'' 罪過(兒) "fault; wicked act; sin; offense", which is a humble expression for "guilty conscience; this is really more than I deserve." Words meaning "sin; violation of religious law" are not a linguistic universal. For instance, the anthropologist Verrier Elwin (1947:145), who studied the Gondi language, said, "There are no words in Gondi for sin or virtue: a man may be ruined, here and hereafter, for a breach of a taboo, but the notion of retribution for sinners is an alien importation." The Gondi language word ''pap'' "sin" is a loanword from the Marathi language. Fürer-Haimendorf explains that, … throughout the Christian era men and women of the western world believed in the existence of a universal phenomenon which they called sin. The tongues they spoke provided terms (''peccatum'', ''péché'', ''sin'', ''Sünde'' etc.) which referred to this phenomenon and it was not until the age of discovery that Christian missionaries encountered languages which did not contain any comparable terms. The existence of such languages leads us inevitably to the conclusion that the concept and with it the sense of sin cannot be common to all branches of humanity. This raises the question whether some societies lack the very idea that certain modes of conduct are not only undesirable in the eyes of other men but that they also bring the actor into conflict with supernatural powers believed to play the role of guardians of morality—in other words whether there exist ethnic groups devoid of any concept of 'sin' in the conventional sense. (1974:540) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chinese views on sin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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