Qi in Aikido
The etymological explanation for the form of the qi logogram in the traditional form 氣 is “steam (气) rising from rice (米) as it cooks.”
The earliest way of writing qi consisted of three wavy lines, used to represent one's breath seen on a cold day. A later version, 气, (identical to the present-day simplified character) is a stylized version of those same three lines. For some reason, early writers of Chinese found it desirable to substitute for 气 a cognate, character that originally meant to feed other people in a social context such as providing food for guests. Appropriately, that character combined the three-line qi character with the character for the grain we call rice. So 气 plus 米 formed 氣, and that is the traditional character still used today. (See the Oracle bone character, the Seal script character and the modern "school standard" or Kǎi shū characters in the box at the right for three stages of the evolution of this character.)[1]
References to things analogous to the qi taken to be the life-process or “flow” of metaphysical energy that sustains living beings are found in many belief systems, especially in Asia. Philosophical conceptions of qi date from the earliest recorded times in Chinese thinking. One of the important early cultural heroes in Chinese mythology is Huang Di (the Yellow Emperor). He is identified in the legends of China as the one who first collected and formalized much of what subsequently became known as traditional Chinese medicine.
The earliest extant book that speaks of qi is the Analects of Confucius (composed from the notes of individual students some time after his death in 479 B.C.) Unlike the legendary accounts mentioned above, the Analects has a clear date in history, and most later books (at least the ones that do not purport to be relics of the legendary earliest rulers) can also be assigned clear dates in history.
Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi
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