means “to hide, conceal, or hoard.” When pronounced slightly differently, zàng (藏), it is a place of storage, or ‘storehouse’ (as in 庫藏 (kùzàng, which apparently inspired Unschuld’s translation). In Chinese medicine, the 五藏 (wǔzàng) refer to what Wiseman and Ye render as the ‘five viscera.’ However, rendering zàng (藏) as viscera, or the common ‘zàng-organs,’ projects a (modern) physical bias that distorts the classical meaning; Porkert translated the zàng as ‘orbs’ of influence, and indeed each has particular ‘resonances’ (yìng (應)), according to their Five Phase ‘correspondences’ (also yìng (應)) with a specific sense organ, tissue, emotion, etc. Zàng (藏) can also refer to a holy scripture or canon, so its use in this context implies something that is treasured, as well as being stored.
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