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Hundun () is both a "legendary faceless being" in Chinese mythology and the "primordial and central chaos" in Chinese cosmogony, comparable with the World egg. ==Linguistics== ''Hundun'' 混沌 was semantically extended from a mythic "primordial chaos; nebulous state of the universe before heaven and earth separated" to mean "unintelligible; chaotic; messy; mentally dense; innocent as a child". In modern Written Chinese, ''hùndùn'' "primordial chaos" is 混沌, but Chinese classic texts wrote it either 渾沌 ( in the Daoist classic ''Zhuangzi'', etc.) or 渾敦 (''Zuozhuan''). ''Hùn'' "chaos; muddled; confused" is written either ''hùn'' 混 "abundantly flowing; turbid water; torrent; mix up/in; confuse; muddle through; drift along; thoughtless; senseless" or ''hún'' 渾 (Simplified Chinese character 浑) "sound of running water; muddy; muddled; turbid; concealed; confused; dull; stupid; unsophisticated; whole; all over". These two are interchangeable graphic variants readable as ''hún'' 混 "muddy; dirty; filthy" (e.g., Mandarin slang ''húndàn'' 渾蛋/混蛋 "filthy egg"; bastard; scumbag") and ''hùn'' 渾 "nebulous; stupid" (''hùndùn'' 渾沌). ''Dùn'' "dull; confused" is written either ''dùn'' 沌 "dull; confused; stupid" or ''dūn'' 敦 "thick; solid; generous; earnest; honest; sincere". Isabelle Robinet outlines the etymological origins of ''hundun''. Semantically, the term ''hundun'' is related to several expressions, hardly translatable in Western languages, that indicate the void or a barren and primal immensity – for instance, ''hunlun'' 混淪, ''hundong'' 混洞, ''kongdong'' 空洞, ''menghong'' 蒙洪, or ''hongyuan'' 洪元. It is also akin to the expression "something confused and yet complete" (''huncheng'' 混成) found in the ''Daode jing'' 25, which denotes the state prior to the formation of the world where nothing is perceptible, but which nevertheless contains a cosmic seed. Similarly, the state of ''hundun'' is likened to an egg; in this usage, the term alludes to a complete world round and closed in itself, which is a receptacle like a cavern (''dong'' 洞) or a gourd (''hu'' 壺or ''hulu'' 壺盧). (2007:524) Most Chinese characters are written using "radicals" or "semantic elements" and "phonetic elements". ''Hùndùn'' 混沌 is written with the "water radical" 水 or 氵and phonetics of ''kūn'' 昆 and ''tún'' 屯. ''Hùndùn'' "primordial chaos" is cognate with Huntun (''húntun'', 餛飩, 馄饨) "wonton; dumpling soup" written with the "eat radical" 食. Note that the English loanword ''wonton'' is borrowed from the Cantonese pronunciation ''wan4tan1''. Mair (1994:16) explains ''hundun'' and ''wonton'', "The undifferentiated soup of primordial chaos. As it begins to differentiate, dumpling-blobs of matter coalesce. … With the evolution of human consciousness and reflectiveness, the soup would have been adopted as a suitable metaphor for chaos." ''Hundun'' 混沌 has a graphic variant ''hunlun'' 混淪 (using ''lún'' 淪/沦 "ripples; eddying water; sink down", see the ''Liezi'' below), which etymologically connects to the mountain name Kunlun 崑崙 (differentiated with the "mountain radical" 山). Robinet (2007:525) says, "Kunlun and ''hundun'' are the same closed center of the world." Girardot (1983:25) quotes the Chinese philologist Lo Mengci 羅夢冊 that reduplicated words like ''hundun'' "suggest cyclic movement and transformation", and speculates. Ritually mumbling the sounds of ''hun-tun'' might, therefore, be said to have a kind on incantatory significance that both phonetically and morphologically invokes the mythological and ontological idea of the Tao as the ''creatio continua'' process of infinitely repeated moments of change and new creation. The ''Shuowen Jiezi'' does not enter ''dun'' 沌 (which apparently lacked a pre-Han Seal script). It defines ''hun'' 混 as ''fengliu'' 豐流 "abundantly flow", ''hun'' 渾 as the sound of ''hunliu'' 混流 "abundantly-flowing flow" or "seemingly impure", ''dun'' 敦 as "anger, rage; scolding" or "who", and ''lun'' 淪 as "ripples; eddies" or "sink into; disappear". English ''chaos'' is a better translation of ''hundun'' in the classical sense of ''Chaos'' or ''Khaos'' in Greek mythology meaning "gaping void; formless primordial space preceding creation of the universe" than in the common sense of "disorder; confusion". The latter meaning of ''hundun'' is synonymous with Chinese ''luàn'' 亂 (Simplified 乱) "chaos; disorder; upheaval; confusion; turmoil; revolt; indiscriminate; random; arbitrary". Their linguistic compound ''hùnluàn'' 混亂 (lit. "chaos-chaos") "chaos; disorder; confusion" exemplifies the "synonym compound" category in Chinese morphology. 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「Hundun」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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