57-651: Diyu ( traditional Chinese : 地獄 ; simplified Chinese : 地狱 ; pinyin : dìyù ; lit. 'earth prison') is the realm of the dead or " hell " in Chinese mythology . It is loosely based on a combination of the Buddhist concept of Naraka , traditional Chinese beliefs about the afterlife , and a variety of popular expansions and reinterpretations of these two traditions. The concept parallels purgatory in certain Christian denomininations. Diyu
114-543: A suribachi and surikogi , respectively. Granite mortars and pestles are used in Southeast Asia , as well as Pakistan and India . In India , it is used extensively to make spice mixtures for various delicacies as well as day-to-day dishes. With the advent of motorized grinders, the use of the mortar and pestle has decreased. It is traditional in various Hindu ceremonies (such as weddings, and upanayanam ) to crush turmeric in these mortars. In Malay , it
171-414: A mortar and pestle ; being ground in a mill ; being crushed by boulders; being made to shed blood by climbing trees or mountains of knives; having sharp objects driven into their bodies; having hooks pierced into their bodies and being hung upside down; drowning in a pool of filthy blood; being left naked in the freezing cold; being set aflame or cast into infernos; being tied naked to a bronze cylinder with
228-509: A certain extent in South Korea , remain virtually identical to traditional characters, with variations between the two forms largely stylistic. There has historically been a debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters . Because the simplifications are fairly systematic, it is possible to convert computer-encoded characters between the two sets, with the main issue being ambiguities in simplified representations resulting from
285-403: A fire lit at its base; being forced to consume boiling liquids; tongue ripping; eye gouging; teeth extraction; heart digging; disembowelment; skinning; being trampled, gored, mauled, eaten, stung, bitten, pecked, etc., by animals. Traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are a standard set of Chinese character forms used to write Chinese languages . In Taiwan ,
342-471: A rougher surface which helps to reduce the particle size. Glass mortars and pestles are fragile, but stain-resistant and suitable for use with liquids. However, they do not grind as finely as the ceramic type. Other materials used include stone, often marble or agate , wood (which is highly absorbent), bamboo , iron, steel , brass , and basalt . Mortar and pestle sets made from the wood of old grape vines have proved reliable for grinding salt and pepper at
399-869: Is 産 (also the accepted form in Japan and Korea), while in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan the accepted form is 產 (also the accepted form in Vietnamese chữ Nôm ). The PRC tends to print material intended for people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and overseas Chinese in traditional characters. For example, versions of the People's Daily are printed in traditional characters, and both People's Daily and Xinhua have traditional character versions of their website available, using Big5 encoding. Mainland companies selling products in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional characters in order to communicate with consumers;
456-447: Is a purgatory that serves to punish and renew spirits in preparation for reincarnation . Many deities, whose names and purposes are the subject of conflicting accounts, are associated with Diyu. Some early Chinese societies speak of people going to Mount Tai , Jiuyuan, Jiuquan or Fengdu after death. At present, Fengdu and the temples on Mount Tai have been rebuilt into tourist attractions, incorporating artistic depictions of hell and
513-828: Is a blunt, club-shaped object. The substance to be ground, which may be wet or dry, is placed in the mortar where the pestle is pounded, pressed, or rotated into the substance until the desired texture is achieved. Mortars and pestles have been used in cooking since the Stone Age ; today they are typically associated with the pharmacy profession due to their historical use in preparing medicines. They are used in chemistry settings for pulverizing small amounts of chemicals; in arts and cosmetics for pulverizing pigments, binders, and other substances; in ceramics for making grog ; in masonry and other types of construction requiring pulverized materials. In cooking, they are typically used to crush spices, to make pesto , and certain cocktails such as
570-460: Is divided into ten courts, each overseen by a Yanwang. Souls pass from stage to stage at the decision of a different judge. The "Ten Courts of Yanluo" is also known as the Ten Courts of Yanwang ( 十殿阎王 ), Ten Lords of Minggong ( 冥宫十王 ), Ten Courts of Yan-jun ( 十殿阎君 ), Ten-Lords of Difu ( 地府十王 ), and Ten-Lords of Mingfu ( 冥府十王 ). The concept of the eighteen hells started in
627-473: Is known as batu lesung . Large stone mortars, with long (2–3 foot) wood pestles were used in West Asia to grind meat for a type of meatloaf , or kibbeh , as well as the hummus variety known as masabcha . In Indonesia mortar is known as Cobek or Tjobek and pestle is known as Ulekan or Oelekan . The chobek is shaped like a deep saucer or plate. The ulekan is either pistol-shaped or ovoid. It
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#1732775303695684-586: Is often used to make fresh sambal , a spicy chili condiment , hence the sambal ulek/oelek denotes its process using pestle. It is also used to grind peanuts and other ingredients to make peanut sauce for gado-gado . Large mortars and pestles are still commonly used in developing countries to husk and dehull grain. These are usually made of wood, and operated by one or more persons. In the Philippines , mortar and pestles are specifically associated with de-husking rice . A notable traditional mortar and pestle
741-576: Is the boat-shaped bangkang pinawa or bangkang pangpinawa , literally "boat ( bangka ) for unpolished rice", usually carved from a block of molave or other hardwood. It is pounded by two or three people. The name for the mortar, lusong , is the origin of the name of the largest island in the Philippines, Luzon . Large wooden mortars and pestles have been used to hull grain in West Africa for centuries. When enslaved Africans were brought to
798-473: Is typically depicted as a subterranean maze with various levels and chambers, to which souls are taken after death to atone for the sins they committed when they were alive. The exact number of levels in Diyu and their associated deities differ between Buddhist and Taoist interpretations. Some speak of three to four "courts"; others mention "Ten Courts of Hell", each of which is ruled by a judge (collectively known as
855-493: The Chinese Commercial News , World News , and United Daily News all use traditional characters, as do some Hong Kong–based magazines such as Yazhou Zhoukan . The Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified characters. DVDs are usually subtitled using traditional characters, influenced by media from Taiwan as well as by the two countries sharing the same DVD region , 3. With most having immigrated to
912-529: The Aztec and Maya , stretching back several thousand years, is made of basalt and is used widely in Mexican cooking. Other Native American nations use mortars carved into the bedrock to grind acorns and other nuts. Many such depressions can be found in their territories. In Japan , very large mortars are used with wooden mallets to prepare mochi . A regular-sized Japanese mortar and pestle are called
969-691: The Kebaran culture ( the Levant with Sinai ) from 22000 to 18000 BC to crush grains and other plant material. The Kebaran mortars that have been found are sculpted, slightly conical bowls of porous stone, and the pestles are made of a smoother type of stone. Another Stone Age example is the rock mortars in the Raqefet Cave in Israel , which are natural cavities in the cave floors, used by Late Natufians around 10000 BC to grind cereals for brewing beer in
1026-551: The Kensiu language . Mortar and pestle A mortar and pestle is a set of two simple tools used to prepare ingredients or substances by crushing and grinding them into a fine paste or powder in the kitchen , laboratory , and pharmacy . The mortar ( / ˈ m ɔːr t ər / ) is characteristically a bowl, typically made of hardwood, metal, ceramic , or hard stone such as granite . The pestle ( / ˈ p ɛ s əl / , also US : / ˈ p ɛ s t əl / )
1083-463: The Old Testament (Numbers 11:8 and Proverbs 27:22). In Indian mythology, Samudra Manthan from Bhagavata Purana creates amrita, the nectar of immortality, by churning the ocean with a pestle. Since medieval times, mortars would be placed or carved on the gravestones of pharmacists and doctors. In Russian and Eastern European folklore, Baba Yaga is described and pictured as flying through
1140-733: The Rod of Asclepius , the Green Cross, and others, is one of the most pervasive symbols of pharmacology. For pharmaceutical use, the mortar and the head of the pestle are usually made of porcelain , while the handle of the pestle is made of wood . This is known as a Wedgwood mortar and pestle and originated in 1759. Today the act of mixing ingredients or reducing the particle size is known as trituration . Mortars and pestles are also used as drug paraphernalia to grind up pills to speed up absorption when they are ingested , or in preparation for insufflation . To finely ground drugs, not available in
1197-640: The Shanghainese -language character U+20C8E 𠲎 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-20C8E —a composition of 伐 with the ⼝ 'MOUTH' radical—used instead of the Standard Chinese 嗎 ; 吗 . Typefaces often use the initialism TC to signify the use of traditional Chinese characters, as well as SC for simplified Chinese characters . In addition, the Noto, Italy family of typefaces, for example, also provides separate fonts for
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#17327753036951254-668: The Tang dynasty . The Buddhist text Sutra on Questions about Hell ( 問地獄經 ) mentioned 134 worlds of hell, but was simplified to the Eighteen Levels of Hell in the Sutra on the Eighteen Hells ( 十八泥犁經 ) for convenience. Some literature refers to eighteen types of hells or to eighteen hells for each type of punishment. Some religious or literature books say that wrongdoers who were not punished when they were alive are punished in
1311-422: The mojito , which requires the gentle crushing of sugar, ice, and mint leaves in the glass with a pestle. The invention of mortars and pestles seems related to that of quern-stones , which use a similar principle of naturally indented, durable, hard stone bases and mallets of stone or wood to process food and plant materials, clay, or minerals by stamping, crushing, pulverizing and grinding. A key advantage of
1368-413: The 14th century, bronze mortars became more popular than stone ones, especially for use in alchemy and early chemistry. Bronze mortars would become more elaborate than stone ones, had the advantage to be harder, and were easily cast with handles, knobs for handling, and spouts for easier pouring. However, the big disadvantage was that bronze would react with acids and other chemicals and corrode easily. Since
1425-619: The Americas, they brought this technology—and knowledge of how to use it—with them. During the Middle Passage , some slave ships carried un-hulled rice, and enslaved African women were tasked with using mortars and pestles to prepare it for consumption. In both colonial North and South America, rice continued to be primarily milled by hand in this way until around the mid-1700s when mechanical mills became more widespread. Good mortar and pestle-making materials must be hard enough to crush
1482-529: The English pestle . Stemming from the pistillum, the word pesto in Italian cuisine means created with the pestle. The Roman poet Juvenal applied both mortarium and pistillum to articles used in the preparation of drugs, reflecting the early use of the mortar and pestle as a symbol of a pharmacist or apothecary. Mortar as a synonym for cement in masonry came from the use of mortars and pestles to grind
1539-653: The Medieval Ages. In various Asian mythologies and folklores, there is a common theme of a Moon rabbit , making use of a mortar and pestle to process the ingredients for the Elixir of life (or rice for making mochi ). Modern pharmacies, especially in Germany, still use mortars and pestles as logos. Mortars and pestles were traditionally used in pharmacies to crush various ingredients before preparing an extemporaneous prescription . The mortar and pestle, with
1596-555: The People's Republic of China, traditional Chinese characters are standardised according to the Table of Comparison between Standard, Traditional and Variant Chinese Characters . Dictionaries published in mainland China generally show both simplified and their traditional counterparts. There are differences between the accepted traditional forms in mainland China and elsewhere, for example the accepted traditional form of 产 in mainland China
1653-497: The Ten Yama Kings); other Chinese legends speak of the "Eighteen Levels of Hell". Each court deals with a different aspect of atonement and different punishments; most legends claim that sinners are subjected to gruesome tortures until their "deaths", after which they are restored to their original state for the torture to be repeated. According to ideas from Taoism , Buddhism and traditional Chinese folk religion , Diyu
1710-587: The United States during the second half of the 19th century, Chinese Americans have long used traditional characters. When not providing both, US public notices and signs in Chinese are generally written in traditional characters, more often than in simplified characters. In the past, traditional Chinese was most often encoded on computers using the Big5 standard, which favored traditional characters. However,
1767-591: The afterlife. Some Chinese folk religion planchette writings , such as the Taiwanese novel Journeys to the Under-World , say that new hells with new punishments are created as the world changes and that there is a City of Innocent Deaths ( 枉死城 ) designed to house those who died with grievances that have yet to be redressed. Other terminology related to Diyu includes: The concept of the "Ten Courts of Yanluo " ( 十 殿 閻 羅 ) began after Chinese folk religion
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1824-452: The cavities. These rock mortars are large enough for a person to stand upright by them and crush the cereals inside the cavity with a long wooden pestle. Ancient Africans, Sumerians, Egyptians, Thai, Laos People, Polynesians, Native Americans, Chinese, Indians, Greeks, Celts, and countless other people used mortars and pestles for processing materials and substances for cooking, arts, cosmetics, simple chemicals, ceramics and medicine. Since
1881-416: The dinner table. Uncooked rice is sometimes ground in mortars to clean them. This process must be repeated until the rice comes out completely white. Some stones, such as molcajete , need to be seasoned first before use. Metal mortars are kept lightly oiled. Since the results obtained with hand grinding are not easily reproducible, most laboratories use automatic mortar grinders. Grinding time and pressure of
1938-426: The forest standing inside a large wooden mortar (stupa), holding the long wooden pestle in one hand to remove obstacles in front of her, and using the broom in her other hand to sweep and remove her traces behind her. This seems as a trace of some ancient rituals connecting the witch symbols of Baba Yaga with the use of mortars in alchemy, pharmacy, and early chemistry, which were all seen as magic by uneducated people in
1995-474: The function of small, mobile, hand-operated mills that do not require electricity or fuel to operate. Large wooden mortars and wooden pestles would predate and lead to the invention of butter churns , as domestication of livestock and use of dairy (during the Neolithic ) came well after the mortar and pestle. Butter would be churned from cream or milk in a wooden container with a long wooden stick, very like
2052-496: The hells after death. Sinners feel pain and agony just like living humans when they are subjected to the tortures listed below. They cannot "die" from the torture because when the ordeal is over, their bodies will be restored to their original states for the torture to be repeated. The eighteen hells vary from narrative to narrative but some commonly mentioned tortures include: being steamed; being fried in oil cauldrons; being sawed into half; being run over by vehicles; being pounded in
2109-493: The inverse is equally true as well. In digital media, many cultural phenomena imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, such as music videos, karaoke videos, subtitled movies, and subtitled dramas, use traditional Chinese characters. In Hong Kong and Macau , traditional characters were retained during the colonial period, while the mainland adopted simplified characters. Simplified characters are contemporaneously used to accommodate immigrants and tourists, often from
2166-512: The late 17th century, glazed porcelain mortars became very useful, since they would not be damaged by chemicals and would be easy to clean. The English word mortar derives from Middle English morter , from old French mortier , from classical Latin mortarium , meaning, among several other usages, "receptacle for pounding" and "product of grinding or pounding"; perhaps related to Sanskrit "mrnati" - to crush, to bruise. The classical Latin pistillum , meaning "pounder", led to
2223-419: The liquid dosage form are used also if patients need artificial nutrition such as parenteral nutrition or by nasogastric tube . Mortars are also used in cooking to prepare wet or oily ingredients such as guacamole , hummus , and pesto (which derives its name from the pestle pounding), as well as grinding spices into powder. The molcajete , a version used by pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures including
2280-725: The mainland. The increasing use of simplified characters has led to concern among residents regarding protecting what they see as their local heritage. Taiwan has never adopted simplified characters. The use of simplified characters in government documents and educational settings is discouraged by the government of Taiwan. Nevertheless, with sufficient context simplified characters are likely to be successfully read by those used to traditional characters, especially given some previous exposure. Many simplified characters were previously variants that had long been in some use, with systematic stroke simplifications used in folk handwriting since antiquity. Traditional characters were recognized as
2337-682: The majority of Chinese text in mainland China are simplified characters , there is no legislation prohibiting the use of traditional Chinese characters, and often traditional Chinese characters remain in use for stylistic and commercial purposes, such as in shopfront displays and advertising. Traditional Chinese characters remain ubiquitous on buildings that predate the promulgation of the current simplification scheme, such as former government buildings, religious buildings, educational institutions, and historical monuments. Traditional Chinese characters continue to be used for ceremonial, cultural, scholarly/academic research, and artistic/decorative purposes. In
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2394-413: The material faster and more efficiently. Working over a large mortar that a person can stand next to is physically easier and more ergonomic (by ensuring a better posture of the whole body) than for a small quern, where a person has to crouch and use the uncomfortable, repetitive motion of hand grinding by sliding. Mortars and pestles predate modern blenders and grinders and can be described as having
2451-599: The materials for creating cement. The short bombard cannon was called "mortar" in French because the first versions of these cannons looked like big metal mortars of the Medieval Ages and they required to be filled with gunpowder, like a mortar would be full of powdered material. The antiquity of the mortar and pestle is well documented in early writing, such as the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus of around 1550 BC (the oldest preserved piece of medical literature) and
2508-983: The merging of previously distinct character forms. Many Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between these character sets. Traditional characters are known by different names throughout the Chinese-speaking world. The government of Taiwan officially refers to traditional Chinese characters as 正體字 ; 正体字 ; zhèngtǐzì ; 'orthodox characters'. This term is also used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard characters, including both simplified, and traditional, from other variants and idiomatic characters . Users of traditional characters elsewhere, as well as those using simplified characters, call traditional characters 繁體字 ; 繁体字 ; fántǐzì ; 'complex characters', 老字 ; lǎozì ; 'old characters', or 全體字 ; 全体字 ; quántǐzì ; 'full characters' to distinguish them from simplified characters. Some argue that since traditional characters are often
2565-429: The mortar is that it presents a deeper bowl for confining the material to be ground without the waste and spillage that occur with flat grinding stones. Another advantage is that the mortar can be made large enough for a person to stand upright and adjacent to it and use the combined strength of their upper body and the force of gravity for better stamping. Large mortars allow some individuals with several pestles to stamp
2622-677: The official script in Singapore until 1969, when the government officially adopted Simplified characters. Traditional characters still are widely used in contexts such as in baby and corporation names, advertisements, decorations, official documents and in newspapers. The Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative in Southeast Asia regarding simplification. Although major public universities teach in simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications such as
2679-700: The original standard forms, they should not be called 'complex'. Conversely, there is a common objection to the description of traditional characters as 'standard', due to them not being used by a large population of Chinese speakers. Additionally, as the process of Chinese character creation often made many characters more elaborate over time, there is sometimes a hesitation to characterize them as 'traditional'. Some people refer to traditional characters as 'proper characters' ( 正字 ; zhèngzì or 正寫 ; zhèngxiě ) and to simplified characters as 簡筆字 ; 简笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'simplified-stroke characters' or 減筆字 ; 减笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'reduced-stroke characters', as
2736-833: The predominant forms. Simplified characters as codified by the People's Republic of China are predominantly used in mainland China , Malaysia, and Singapore. "Traditional" as such is a retronym applied to non-simplified character sets in the wake of widespread use of simplified characters. Traditional characters are commonly used in Taiwan , Hong Kong , and Macau , as well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside of Southeast Asia. As for non-Chinese languages written using Chinese characters, Japanese kanji include many simplified characters known as shinjitai standardized after World War II, sometimes distinct from their simplified Chinese counterparts . Korean hanja , still used to
2793-521: The set of traditional characters is regulated by the Ministry of Education and standardized in the Standard Form of National Characters . These forms were predominant in written Chinese until the middle of the 20th century, when various countries that use Chinese characters began standardizing simplified sets of characters, often with characters that existed before as well-known variants of
2850-530: The strong flavor of a past ingredient to be tasted in food prepared later. Also, the food particles left in the mortar and on the pestle may support the growth of microorganisms . When dealing with medications , the previously prepared drugs may interact or mix, contaminating the currently used ingredients. Rough ceramic mortar and pestle sets can be used to reduce substances to very fine powders, but stain easily and are brittle. Porcelain mortars are sometimes conditioned for use by grinding some sand to give them
2907-418: The substance rather than be worn away by it. They cannot be too brittle either, or they will break during the pounding and grinding. The material should also be cohesive so that small bits of the mortar or pestle do not mix in with the ingredients. Smooth and non-porous materials are chosen that will not absorb or trap the substances being ground. In food preparation , a rough or absorbent material may cause
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#17327753036952964-636: The traditional character set used in Taiwan ( TC ) and the set used in Hong Kong ( HK ). Most Chinese-language webpages now use Unicode for their text. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends the use of the language tag zh-Hant to specify webpage content written with traditional characters. In the Japanese writing system , kyujitai are traditional forms, which were simplified to create shinjitai for standardized Japanese use following World War II. Kyūjitai are mostly congruent with
3021-985: The traditional characters in Chinese, save for minor stylistic variation. Characters that are not included in the jōyō kanji list are generally recommended to be printed in their traditional forms, with a few exceptions. Additionally, there are kokuji , which are kanji wholly created in Japan, rather than originally being borrowed from China. In the Korean writing system , hanja —replaced almost entirely by hangul in South Korea and totally replaced in North Korea —are mostly identical with their traditional counterparts, save minor stylistic variations. As with Japanese, there are autochthonous hanja, known as gukja . Traditional Chinese characters are also used by non-Chinese ethnic groups. The Maniq people living in Thailand and Malaysia use Chinese characters to write
3078-518: The ubiquitous Unicode standard gives equal weight to simplified and traditional Chinese characters, and has become by far the most popular encoding for Chinese-language text. There are various input method editors (IMEs) available for the input of Chinese characters . Many characters, often dialectical variants, are encoded in Unicode but cannot be inputted using certain IMEs, with one example being
3135-873: The use of wooden mortars and pestles. Mortars and pestles were invented in the Stone Age when humans found that processing food and various other materials by grinding and crushing into smaller particles allowed for improved use and various advantages. Hard grains could be cooked and digested more easily if ground first, grinding potsherds into grog would vastly improve fired clay, and larger objects such as blocks of salt would be much easier to handle and use. Various stone mortars and pestles have been found, while wooden or clay ones would perish much more easily over time. Scientists have found ancient mortars and pestles in Southwest Asia that date back to approximately 35000 BC. Stone mortars and pestles have also been used by
3192-587: The words for simplified and reduced are homophonous in Standard Chinese , both pronounced as jiǎn . The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han dynasty c. 200 BCE , with the sets of forms and norms more or less stable since the Southern and Northern dynasties period c. the 5th century . Although
3249-453: Was influenced by Buddhism. In this variation of Chinese mythology, there are 12,800 hells located under the earth – eight dark hells, eight cold hells and 84,000 miscellaneous hells located at the edge of the universe. All will go to Diyu after death but the period of time one spends in Diyu is not forever – it depends on the severity of the sins one committed. After receiving due punishment, one will eventually be sent for reincarnation . Diyu
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