The shi (Chinese: 尸; pinyin: shī; Wade–Giles: sh'ih; lit. 'corpse') 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:
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