本科英语专业毕业论文(9)
Taoism is another religion that impresses its prints on numbers’ connotations in Chinese culture. Taoism is an ancient religion rooted in China. It is recorded that Taoism dates from divination and leeehcraft in Han Dynasty. Tao Te Ching is its classic book of religious doctrine. The author “Tao Te Ching” writes: “道生一， 一生二，二生三， 三生万物” ( Tao gave birth to the One; the one gave birth successively to two things, three things, up to ten thousand ). He thought that everything in the universe is dual, such as good and bad, right and wrong, long and short, etc. This again illustrates why even numbers are favored by Chinese people and explains to us one basic aesthetic psychology of Chinese people: propensity for symmetry.
Europe has been under the administration of Christianity for almost two thousand years and European culture is interspersed with unique Christian favor. The English language is inevitably influenced by Christianity. For a long time, people from the English-speaking countries have firmly believed that “thirteen is an unlucky number”. In addition to the reason discussed in the above sections, people fear number “thirteen” also because of its linkage with religion. According to the Bible, Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’s twelve disciples, disclosed Jesus’s whereabouts to the chief priests and elders for thirty pieces of silver, which resulted in the crucifixion of Jesus. Before Jesus was arrested, it happened to be the Passover. Jesus invited his twelve disciples to dinner together and at the dinner Judas sat in the thirteenth seat. Partly because of this, western people resent number “thirteen” from generation to generation. The trinity (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) of Christian culture provides another piece of evidence as to why westerners favor number “three”. This religious tradition makes them habitually divide a certain amount or a process in three in order to seek fortune. Positive connotations of number “seven” also originated from Christian culture. “The Genesis” records that God created the heavens, the earth and their entire multitude in six days and blessed the seventh day. Westerners tend to employ number “seven” to standardize people’s morals and describe places of cultural interest, social organizations and religious rituals such as the Seven Virtues (faith, hope, charity, justice, fortitude, prudence, and temperance); the Seven Wonders of the World (the Pyramids of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Tomb of Mausolus, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Statue of Jupiter by Phidias and the Pharos of Alexandria); Seven Champions of Christianity (St. George of England, St. Andrew of Scotland, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. David of Wales, St. Denis of France, St. James of Spain and St. Anthony of Italy); etc. In addition to these, there are many proverbs containing number “seven” such as “seven hours’ sleep will make a clown forget his design” and “a man may lose more in an hour than he can get in seven”.
