This page groups deities by the earliest year a surviving written or inscribed source places them, sorting gods by how far back their documented worship can actually be traced. Archaeologists call this kind of earliest possible date a terminus post quem, which Wikipedia defines as "the earliest date the event may have happened or the item was in existence." Browsing by first attestation separates deities known from the oldest surviving records from ones who only appear in much later texts.
Facts
Attestation
Era of AttestationDivine names appear in the Shang oracle-bone inscriptions of about 1250 to 1050 BCE, the earliest Chinese writing. The pantheon is documented continuously thereafter and is in worship today. 3 Veneration TodayWorshipped today in temples, at domestic altars and at festivals across the Chinese-speaking world. 2 Overview
What Defines This GroupingThe gods of Chinese religion taken across its parts rather than within one of them: the Taoist canonical pantheon, the deities of the imperial state cult, buddhas and bodhisattvas naturalised into popular worship, and the local and household gods of folk religion. The pantheon is ordered like a bureaucracy, with rank, office and promotion, and many of its members are deified humans. 2 Learn More
The gods of Chinese religion
This group gathers the deities of Chinese folk religion, Taoism and the state cult, a pantheon organised much like an imperial bureaucracy, with a supreme heaven, ranked officials and local gods answerable upward. Figures move between Taoist, Buddhist and popular contexts, and many are deified humans elevated for merit.
The browser will find the Jade Emperor at the head of the celestial administration, the Three Pure Ones of Taoist cosmology, the Queen Mother of the West, city gods and kitchen gods, and popular protectors such as Mazu and Guan Yu. The tradition is syncretic and living, and the entries note where a figure belongs to Taoist, Buddhist or folk contexts.
Era Attested Start Year
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. Chinese ReligionView the Source 3. Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China
David N. Keightley, University of California Press, 1978chs. 1-2View the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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