Hsien
Hsien East AsiaLiterally, ‘an immortal’, living on or above the earth, but within natural things, a material immortality in which the body was still needed, however preserved in a ‘lightened’ form. Hsien were Taoist immortals, supposed to have partaken the elixir of life, and in early illustrations they often appear as feathered men. The ancient Chinese believed in the existence of drugs which could be taken for this purpose. During the fourth century BC the elixir notion arose, perhaps encouraged by a rumour from India, Persia, or Mesopotamia about a drug plant, and an unprecedented wave of alchemical experimentation occurred. The absence of a sharp dichotomy between good and evil in Chinese thought had hindered the development of an ethical eschatology, which separated the sheep from the goats, and left the way open to the conviction that there were technical means whereby men could enlarge the length of their days so much as to be virtually...
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