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Tianlong (; lit. "heavenly dragon") is a flying dragon in Chinese mythology, a star in Chinese astrology, and a proper name. The term tianlong combines tian "heaven" and long "dragon". Since tian literally means "heaven; the heavens; sky" or figuratively "Heaven; God; gods", tianlong can denote "heavenly dragon; celestial dragon" or "holy dragon; divine dragon". Tianlong 天龍 is homophonous with another name in Chinese folklore. Tianlong 天聾 "Heavenly Deaf" (with the character long "deaf" combining the "ear radical" and a long 龍 phonetic element) and Diya 地啞 "Earthly Dumb" are legendary attendants to Wenchang Wang 文昌王, the patron deity of literature. From originally denoting "heavenly dragon", Tianlong 天龍 semantically developed meanings as Buddhist "heavenly Nāgas" or "Devas and Nāgas", "centipede", and "proper names" of stars, people, and places. Among Chinese classic texts, tian "heaven" and long "dragon" were first used together in Zhou Dynasty (1122 BCE – 256 BCE) writings, but the word tianlong was not recorded until the Han Dynasty (207 BCE – 220 CE). The ancient Yijing "Book of Changes" exemplifies using tian "heaven" and long "dragon" together. Qian 乾 "The Creative", the first hexagram, says: Commentaries on these explain: The earliest usage of tianlong 天龍 "heavenly dragon", according to the Hanyu Da Cidian, is in the Xinxu 新序 "New Prefaces" by Liu Xiang (79–8 BCE). It records a story about Zigao, the Duke of Ye, who professed to love dragons. After he carved and painted dragon images throughout his house, a [天龍] heavenly dragon [or fulong 夫龍 in some editions] came to visit, but Ye was scared and ran away. The Fangyan 方言 dictionary by Yang Xiong (53 BCE – 18 CE) has another early usage of tian and long. It defines panlong 蟠龍 "coiled dragon" as 未陞天龍, syntactically meaning either "Dragons which do not yet ascend to heaven" or "Heavenly Dragons which do not yet ascend". Tianlong Heavenly Dragon names both the Western constellation Draco and a star in the Chinese constellation Azure Dragon.

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Related concepts (6)

Yinglong

Yinglong () is a winged dragon and rain deity in ancient Chinese mythology. This legendary creature's name combines yìng 應 "respond; correspond; answer; reply; agree; comply; consent; promise; adapt; apply" and lóng 龍 "Chinese dragon". Although the former character is also pronounced (with a different tone) yīng 應 "should; ought to; need to; proper; suitable", yinglong 應龍 definitively means "responsive dragon; responding dragon" and not "proper dragon".

Tianlong

Tian

Tiān (天) is one of the oldest Chinese terms for heaven and a key concept in Chinese mythology, philosophy, and religion. During the Shang dynasty (17th―11th century BCE), the Chinese referred to their supreme god as Shàngdì (上帝, "Lord on High") or Dì (帝, "Lord"). During the following Zhou dynasty, Tiān became synonymous with this figure. Before the 20th century, worship of Tiān was an orthodox state religion of China.