Te-lin
Te-lin (Shinasthana: 天 or 祆, te-lin) is a Themiclesian deity of the sky, the Meng nation, and war.
Name
The word te-lin is an archaic reading of the word l′in (天), which has the meaning of "top, peak". In the oldest texts of the Menghic family dating to about 1600 BCE, it has the primary meaning of the top of the head and is not evidenced as a theonym. Graphically, it represents a person with an exaggerated head, where exaggeration is an indicator. In later manuscripts, the logogram grji (示) was added to distinguish the theonymic use from ordinary use.
History
The worship of Te-lin is secondary to the ancestral cult and that of Têgh, but there is no consensus when or where his worship originated. By the start of the Common Era, he was worshipped in a central cult in Dringh and in peripheral cults in at least nine other locations, one of them being Tsjinh. Some scholars have postulated that Te-lin may be a deity created by the conflation of certain remarkable ancestors and traits from Steppe gods.
In the final decades of the Archaic Period, Te-lin's cult achieved state patronage in Tsjinh. In 71 CE, the ruler of Tsjinh was first said to have "offered sacrifices" at his temple constructed just outside of the royal palaces, called te-lin-tsung (天宗); the temple complex was protected by walls and featured a large, open-air altar on an elevated pedestal. A series of halls surrounded the pedestal. Artifacts recovered from the site suggest that at this early stage, he was called l′in-tsje′ (天子) or tsje′-l′in (子天). These names have the structure of many Tsjinh nobles, a given name attached to tsje′, or "child". But in other documents, he is usually referred to only as l′in. Many voltives weres buried at the site of the temple, suggesting that it was often open to the public.
In 420, Te-lin became the recognized state god of the Sungh hegemony.
Theology
The theology of Te-lin is seriously tinted, in the view of modern scholars, by the kind of materials where references to him are found. There is no authoritative document accepted by those who profess belief in Te-lin that provides a complete description of his origins and interactions with humanity or other divine figures. Moreover, descriptions could also vary depending on the writer's geographic perspective and the genre of the text written.
In the Antiquities of Themiclesia, Te-lin is portrayed as a deity that "arose" from the clear air and light of the created world. After fending off challengers to his dominion, the sky, he becomes the ruler of earthly gods and creates the Meng people in Themiclesia. However, his dominance is consistently challenged by the other gods of the world as well as their followers, which results in a prehistoric war that decimated his creations. Unwilling to exhaust his creations, he taught them how to procreate and fend for themselves by building city walls and temples; in addition to this, he created more human beings and placed the new creations under the protection of those who were seasoned in a conflicted world. He appointed ten of the first creation as rulers of the city of Tsjinh and promised that kings shall arise from their lineage, for as long as the pole star stays unmoving. For the people who wished to remain in the city, he promised never to betray the city and defend it from the heavens. For those unwilling to settle, however, he promised to grant his abilities as a warrior to adventurers and colonists. Gradually, however, his worship was forgotten in the cities but remained strong in fledgling colonies.
Even though the Antiquities is a relatively late text (written in 432 CE), it remains the foundation for most textual analyses of Te-lin, as its narrative is the most detailed and longest. Scholars have asserted that the narrative frames Te-lin as the god of an expanding nation, which points to a source during the Colonial Period (c. 200 BCE to the start of CE). However, historically, Te-lin was not worshipped in an organized cult during this period, or at least is not attested in written documents. The religious activities of the colonies were, primarily, ancestral.
Some identify Te-lin with the literary Archaic Hero, who was a noble kinsman, warrior, and founder of a city. Such origin myths often had some basis in reality but were heavily embellished to enhance a city's reputation. These scholars argue that Te-lin's widespread ancestral aspect arose from his identification with the mythologized founder of cities. The temple of Te-lin is called te-lin-tsung (天宗), a term that otherwise identifies a shrine to ancestors. The idea that Te-lin founded the entire nation is often read as an enlargement or retrojection of the founding of cities. It is out of this inconsistency that Kramer wrote in 1947, that Te-lin's fouding of Tsjinh is a foil for the founding of colonies during this period, and Te-lin himself represents the person who founded the colony from the perspective of individuals who later lived in it.
In the 6th century work Old Tales (舊事), Te-lin is recast as the son of Têgh and helped the latter in the creation of the world. While Têgh had a certain international or cosmological aspect, Te-lin was a national god whose loyalty to his progeny was unquestionable. In Antiquities, Te-lin has an aspect of a protector that parried away disasters Têgh aroused against Tsjinh: Te-lin defied Têgh, whose narrative aspect grew unfavourable in this era. However, in the 6th century, theomachy apparent went out fashion against a more harmonious pantheon. Te-lin was said to "assist Têgh" (右帝) or "arise and descend from Têgh" (陟降于帝). In this view, Te-lin did not arise abiogenetically from the clear air and bright light but was created by Têgh to assist in the creation in the world. Combined with the tendency to identify Te-lin as the father of the cities through their gods, Te-lin was accorded pre-eminence in the pantheon.
In a pre-war oration recorded in 512, the functions of Têgh and Te-lin is explained by the Patriarch of Dringh to the soldiers (probably their noble officers):
The units on the left shall attack on the left; the units on the right shall attack on the right. Te-lin has aroused his heavenly hosts that attacks from above the enemy to put them in confusion and from behind them to destroy their spirits. Men, do you not recall what the oracle has thrice revealed? Têgh is compliant to us!
左旅工于左，右旅工于右。子天不出天師我右自上，其上工啻德，後工啻翳。師勿亡德襲三貞：帝若。