)"; and huà 化 means "change, transform, convert; melt; dissolve, thaw; digest, remove; burn up, incinerate; disguise; [religion] die, pass away".
The modern Chinese character 變 for bian is classified as a radical-phonetic graph, combining the semantically significant "strike" radical 攴 or 攵 at the bottom with the phonetic indicator luan 䜌 (from 言 "words" between two 糸 "silk threads") at the top.
Bian was first recorded on Zhou dynasty bronze script; "The meaning of the drawing is uncertain, but it contains two hanks of silk, and Xu Shen [in his ca.
[6] Chinese has a rich lexicon of words meaning "change", including bian, hua, fan 反 "turn over; return; counter; oppose", huan 還 "go/come back; give back; return; repay", yi 易 "change" (as in the Yijing), and yi 移 "shift; adapt; modify; adjust"; and Joseph Needham notes, "the exact meaning of which are sometimes difficult to differentiate".
[Bian] could be used of weather changes, insect metamorphosis, or slow personality transformations; hua may refer to the transition points in dissolving, liquefying, melting, etc., and to profound decay.
A locus classicus for this distinction is in the [Guanzi] ...: "The exemplary man ([shengren]) changes ([bian]) in accordance with the times without transforming [the essence of his being]" ...
The change from a caterpillar to a butterfly, for example, which is both substantive and irreversible, is a frequently cited instance of hua in the earlier literature.
[10] Bianhua has very diverse meanings, from basic "change and transformation" to "universal life" or "creation", even referring to the Daoist "science of metamorphosis" and generically "supernatural powers obtained by either magical practices or meditation exercises".
[11] The (c. 4th century) encyclopedic Guanzi text uses bianhua 5 times (3 in the Xinshu 心術 "Mind Techniques" chapters).
The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (2001) notes both pronunciations were first recorded during the Nara period; henge 変化 "A god, Buddha, spirit, etc.
The myriad things evolve and develop; even twisted little shoots have their own special shapes—such are the gradations of fullness and decline, the flow of transformation and evolution [bianhua].
The arch of his spine was higher than his forehead; his chin pressed down on his chest; his two buttocks were on top; his rectum pointed to the sky.
[26] While the Daodejing text does not use bianhua, its (c. 2nd century CE) commentary attributed to Heshang Gong 河上公 (lit.
[30] The transformations of Laojun began with the first mythical ruler Fu Xi, included Gautama Buddha, the Yellow Emperor's teacher Guangzhengzi 廣成子 "Master Broadly Complete" (mentioned in the Zhuangzi), and ended with a 155 CE manifestation in the Sichuan region.
Mark Csikszentmihalyi distinguishes between early Daoist discussions that tended to emphasize the way in which bianhua applies to human beings in the same way it does to the natural world,[31] and later Daoism that stressed the potential for the adept to harness bianhua, particularly in the eschatological picture of the Shangqing tradition.
Like Laozi, the diverse spirits of the Shangqing tradition are able to transform themselves, and the adept had to be able to identify their different manifestations.
The Daoist adept practices metamorphosis both internally through meditation on colored breaths and gods within the body, and externally using magic to change the appearances of things.
The (late 8th century) Daoist Sanlun yuanzhi 三論元旨[36] explains that: "The saint responds to all things, but his essence is distinct from them.
[37] Early Buddhist translators chose Chinese bianhua 變化 as the equivalent for Sanskrit nirmāṇa "transformation; supernatural manifestation; reincarnation".
Charles Muller's Digital Dictionary of Buddhism[38] defines bianhua as basically meaning "transformation of things", and distinguishes four senses: Monier Monier-Williams's Sanskrit-English Dictionary[39] translates nirmāṇa निर्माण as "measuring, measure, reach, extent", "forming, making, creating", "(Buddhist literature) transformation", "essence, essential/best part of anything" (sāra), and "unconformity, impropriety, unbecomingness" (asamañjasa).
The common Buddhist term bianhuashen 變化身 or huashen 化身 (translating nirmāṇakāya) "transformation-body; manifested-body" refers to one of the sanshen 三身 (trikāya) "three bodies [of a buddha]" doctrine, along with the fashen 法身 (dharmakāya) "dharma-body; truth-body", and baoshen 報身 (saṃbhogakāya संभोगकाय) "reward-body; bliss-body".
Contexts describing Buddhas manifesting as animals and humans use the related terms bianhuaren 變化人 (nirmita) "magically manifested human body", bianhuatu 變化土 (nirmāṇa-kṣetra निर्माण क्षेत्र) "transformation land where the inhabitants reincarnate", and *bianhuasheng 變化生 (upapāduka उपपादुका) "birth by transformation; miraculous materialization".
Besides bianhua 變化, Buddhist translators used other Chinese bian compounds for Sanskrit words dealing with supernatural manifestations.
Victor Mair traced the historical semantics of Chinese bian before and after the (c. 2nd-3rd century) introduction of Buddhism, when it started being used as to translate Sanskrit nirmāṇa meaning "discontinuity or break with reality (illusion)".
The post-Buddhist concept extended bian to mean "strange" in the sense of "transformation from nothing to something; magically creative power to conjure".
The early "strange incident; supernatural transformation" sense of bian became popular during the early Tang dynasty period, for instance, the (c. 668) Fayuan Zhulin "Pearl Grove in the Garden of the Dharma" used bianhua "[miraculous] transformation" to describe strange incidents.
The Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi's interpretations of the Chinese classics, which scholars and officials from the 12th to 19th centuries considered to be canonical, differentiated between two types of "change": sudden, transformational bian and gradual, evolutionary hua.
For instance, Zhu explained an ambiguous Yijing statement within the Xici zhuan 繫辭傳 "Commentary on the Appended Phrases",[42] "That which transforms things and fits them together is called change [化而裁之謂之變]; that which stimulates them and sets them in motion is called continuity", with a lunar analogy:[43] "[The progression] from the first day to the thirtieth day [of a lunar month] is hua (transformation).
Bianhua continues to be a linguistically productive word, as evident in Chinese technical neoloigisms like bianhuali "paradigm", bianhuaqiu 變化球 "breaking ball", bianhuayu 變化語 "inflective language", and bianhuamangshi 變化盲視 "change blindness".