![]() ![]() "to avoid eating cereals in order to obtain immortality" "to abstain from cereals in order to attain to immortality to starve" ![]() "to give up eating the five cereals, with a view to immortality. ![]() The complex 14-stroke traditional Chinese character gu 穀 "grain" has a 7-stroke simplified Chinese character gu 谷 "valley gorge." Although a few Chinese dictionaries gloss the pronunciation of bigu 辟穀 as pigu, the definitive Hanyu Da Cidian (1997) gives bigu.Įnglish lexicographic translations of bigu are compared in this table. The alternate pronunciation of pi 辟 "open up develop refute eliminate" is a variant character for 闢. The bi 辟 meaning in bigu is a variant Chinese character for bi 避 "avoid shun evade keep away" (e.g., bixie 辟邪 or 避邪 "ward off evil spirits talisman amulet"). The Chinese word bigu compounds bi 辟 "ruler monarch avoid ward off keep away" and gu 穀 or 谷 "cereal grain ( 穀子) millet". The concept of bigu developed in reaction to this tradition, and within the context of Daoist philosophy. In the historical context of traditional Chinese culture within which the concept of bigu developed, there was great symbolic importance connected with the five grains and their importance in sustaining human life, exemplified in various myths and legends from ancient China and throughout subsequent history. Avoiding "grains" has been diversely interpreted to mean not eating particular foodstuffs ( food grain, cereal, the Five Grains, wugu, or staple food), or not eating any food ( inedia). For instance, bigu fasting was the common medical cure for expelling the sanshi 三尸 "Three Corpses", the malevolent, grain-eating spirits that live in the human body (along with the hun and po souls), report their host's sins to heaven every 60 days, and carry out punishments of sickness and early death. Grain avoidance is related to multifaceted Chinese cultural beliefs. 'avoiding grains') is a Daoist fasting technique associated with achieving xian "transcendence immortality". Shennong tasting plants to discover their qualitiesīigu ( simplified Chinese: 辟谷 traditional Chinese: 辟穀 pinyin: bìgǔ Wade–Giles: pi-ku lit. ![]()
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