天

Tiān
Chinese Bronze script character for tiān.
Chinese	天
Literal meaning	heaven(s)
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Tiān Wade–Giles T'ien1

Tiān (天) is one of the oldest Chinese terms for heaven and a key concept in Chinese mythology, philosophy, and religion. During the Shang Dynasty (17–11th centuries BCE), the Chinese referred to their supreme god as Shàngdì (上帝, "Lord on High") or Dì (帝,"Lord"). During the following Zhou Dynasty, Tiān became synonymous with this figure. Heaven worship was, before the 20th century, an orthodox state religion of China.

In Taoism and Confucianism, Tiān (the celestial aspect of the cosmos) is often translated as "Heaven" and is mentioned in relationship to its complementary aspect of Dì (地), which is most often translated as "Earth". These two aspects of Daoist cosmology are representative of the dualistic nature of Taoism. They are thought to maintain the two poles of the Three Realms (三界) of reality, with the middle realm occupied by Humanity (人, Rén), and the lower world occupied by Demons (魔, Mó) and Ghosts (鬼, Guǐ).

The modern Chinese character and early seal script both combine dà "great; large" and yī "one", but some of the original characters in Shāng oracle bone script and Zhōu bronzeware script anthropomorphically portray a large head on a great person. The ancient oracle and bronze ideograms for dà 大 depict a stick figure person with arms stretched out denoting "great; large". The oracle and bronze characters for tiān 天 emphasize the cranium of this "great (person)", either with a square or round head, or head marked with one or two lines. Schuessler (2007:495) notes the bronze graphs for tiān, showing a person with a round head, resemble those for dīng "4th Celestial stem", and suggests "The anthropomorphic graph may or may not indicate that the original meaning was 'deity', rather than 'sky'."