Below is an
extract from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hun_and_po
The number of human "souls"
has been a long-standing source of controversy among Chinese
religious traditions. Stevan Harrell (1979:521) concludes, "Almost
every number from one to a dozen has at one time or another been
proposed as the correct one." The most commonly believed numbers of
"souls" in a person are one, two, three, and ten.
One "soul" or
linghun 靈魂 is the simplest idea.[2]
Harrell gives a fieldwork example.
When rural Taiwanese
perform ancestral sacrifices at home, they naturally think of the
ling-hun in the tablet; when they take offerings to the cemetery,
they think of it in the grave; and when they go on shamanistic
trips, they think of it in the yin world. Because the contexts are
separate, there is little conflict and little need for abstract
reasoning about a nonexistent problem. (1979:523)
Two "souls" is a common
folk belief, and reinforced by yin-yang theory. These paired souls
can be called hun and po, hunpo and shen, or linghun and
shen.
Three "souls" comes from
widespread beliefs that the soul of a dead person can exist in the
multiple locations. The missionary Justus Doolittle recorded that
Chinese people in Fuzhou
Believe each person has
three distinct souls while living. These souls separate at the
death of the adult to whom they belong. One resides in the
ancestral tablet erected to his memory, if the head of a family;
another lurks in the coffin or the grave, and the third departs to
the infernal regions to undergo its merited punishment. (1865
II:401–2)
Ten "souls" of
sanhunqipo 三魂七魄 "three hun and seven po" is
not only Daoist; "Some authorities would maintain that the
three-seven "soul" is basic to all Chinese religion" (Harrell
1979:522). During the Later Han period, Daoists fixed the number of
hun souls at three and the number of po souls at seven. A newly
deceased person may return (回魂)
to his home at some nights, sometimes one week (頭七)
after his death and the seven po would disappear one by one every 7
days after death. According to Needham and Lu (1974:88), "It is a
little difficult to ascertain the reason for this, since fives and
sixes (if they corresponded to the viscera) would have rather been
expected." Three hun may stand for the sangang 三綱 "three principles of social
order: relationships between ruler-subject, father-child, and
husband-wife" (Needham 1974:89). Seven po may stand for the
qiqiao 七竅 "seven apertures (in the
head, eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth)" or the qiqing
七情 "seven emotions (joy,
anger, sorrow, fear, worry, grief, fright)" in traditional Chinese
medicine (Baldrian-Hussein 2008:522). Sanhunqipo also stand for
other names.
