section_path: Terminology
section_name: Terminology
paragraph_text: Terminology
  
  The Chinese language historically has not had a concept or overarching name for "religion". In English, the terms "popular religion" or "folk religion" have long been used to mean local religious life. In Chinese academic literature and common usage "folk religion" (Chinese: 民間宗教; pinyin: mínjiān zōngjiào) refers to specific organised folk religious sects.
  
  Contemporary academic study of traditional cults and the creation of a government agency that gave legal status to this religion have created proposals to formalise names and deal more clearly with folk religious sects and help conceptualise research and administration. The terms that have been proposed include "Chinese native religion" or "Chinese indigenous religion" (Chinese: 民俗宗教; pinyin: mínsú zōngjiào), "Chinese ethnic religion" (Chinese: 民族宗教; pinyin: mínzú zōngjiào), or "Chinese religion" (Chinese: 中華教; pinyin: zhōnghuájiào) viewed as comparable to the usage of the term " Hinduism " for Indian religion. In Malaysia, reports the scholar Tan Chee-Beng, Chinese do not have a definite term for their traditional religion, which is not surprising because "the religion is diffused into various aspects of Chinese culture". They refer to their religion as 拜佛 (bai fo, Buddha worship) or 拜神 (bai shen, spirit worship), which prompted Alan J. A. Elliott to suggest the term " shenism " (Chinese: 神教; pinyin: shénjiào). Tan however, comments that is not the way the Chinese refer to their religion, which in any case includes worship of ancestors, not shen, and suggests it is logical to use "Chinese Religion". "Shenxianism" (Chinese: 神仙教; pinyin: shénxiān jiào, literally, "religion of deities and immortals "), is a term partly inspired by Elliott's neologism, "Shenism".
  
  In the late Qing dynasty scholars Yao Wendong and Chen Jialin used the term shenjiao not referring to Shinto as a definite religious system, but to local shin beliefs in Japan. Other terms are "folk cults" (Chinese: 民間崇拜; pinyin: mínjiān chóngbài), "spontaneous religion" (Chinese: 自發宗教; pinyin: zìfā zōngjiào), "lived (or living) religion" (Chinese: 生活宗教; pinyin: shēnghuó zōngjiào), "local religion" (Chinese: 地方宗教; pinyin: dìfāng zōngjiào), and "diffused religion" (Chinese: 分散性宗教; pinyin: fēnsàn xìng zōngjiào). "Folk beliefs" (Chinese: 民間信仰; pinyin: mínjiān xìnyǎng), is a seldom used term taken by scholars in colonial Taiwan from Japanese during Japan's occupation (1895–1945). It was used between the 1990s and the early 21st century among mainland Chinese scholars.
  
  "Shendao" (Chinese: 神道; pinyin: shéndào; lit. ' the Way of the Gods ') is a term already used in the Yijing referring to the divine order of nature. Around the time of the spread of Buddhism in the Han period (206 BCE – 220 CE), it was used to distinguish the indigenous ancient religion from the imported religion. Ge Hong used it in his Baopuzi as a synonym for Taoism. The term was subsequently adopted in Japan in the 6th century as Shindo, later Shinto, with the same purpose of identification of the Japanese indigenous religion. In the 14th century, the Hongwu Emperor (Taizu of the Ming dynasty, 1328–1398) used the term "Shendao" clearly identifying the indigenous cults, which he strengthened and systematised.
  
  "Chinese Universism", not in the sense of " universalism ", that is a system of universal application, that is Tian in Chinese thought, is a coinage of Jan Jakob Maria de Groot that refers to the metaphysical perspective that lies behind the Chinese religious tradition. De Groot calls Chinese Universism "the ancient metaphysical view that serves as the basis of all classical Chinese thought.... In Universism, the three components of integrated universe—understood epistemologically, 'heaven, earth and man', and understood ontologically, ' Taiji (the great beginning, the highest ultimate), yin and yang'—are formed".
  
  In 1931 Hu Shih argued that "Two great religions have played tremendously important roles throughout Chinese history. One is Buddhism which came to China probably before the Christian era but which began to exert nation-wide influence only after the third century A.D. The other great religion has had no generic name, but I propose to call it Siniticism. It is the native ancient religion of the Han Chinese people: it dates back to time immemorial, over 10,000 years old, and includes all such later phases of its development as Moism, Confucianism (as a state religion), and all the various stages of the Taoist religion."