Friday 28 December 2007

Scroll Painting of Nether World Recording Officers (冥府六曹四司官)





The Nether World Recording Officers, in the Nether World, in different Courts, there are different number of Recording Officers.

Each different Recording Officer is being allocated in different Departments in-order to able to perform the tasks correctly and effectively.

In the Nether World, similar to the Mortal World, in the Nether World Imperial System, there are 6 Main Departments (Ming Fu Liu Cao 冥府六曹) that in-charge of the issues that associated with the Souls.

So what are the 6 Main Departments?

Here they are:

Shi Cao – In-charge of the allocation of Spiritual Officers & Official Personnel
士曹(官吏調遣)

Hu Cao – In-charge of the Recording & Changing of the Physical Addresses
戶曹(戶籍更新)

Cang Cao – In-charge of issues that are associated with Financial
倉曹(財政貴富)

Ke Cao – In-charge of the Public Relation, such as Inviting & Ushering of Deities from the other Realms, meeting of Deities of important ranking, etc
客曹(禮賓迎神)

Bing Cao – In-charge of the Military issues in Spiritual World, etc
兵曹(靈界軍事)

Xing Cao – In-charge of the different Punishments in the Nether World
刑曹(處份刑法)

In the scrolls, the 6 Main Officers of the Departments are dressed in Green, Pink & Red standing at the lower part of the Painting.

As for the 4 Officers standing on top of the Painting, wearing Black, are known as the Si Guan, meaning the assistants of the 6 Main Departments.

To be more accurate, each Department will have 4 Si Guan (四司官), meaning, in total, there will be 24 Si Guan, which what we address them as Ming Fu Er Shi Si Si (冥府二十四司).

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for the post shifu. This is very informative now I know why there are Ming Fu Er Shi Si Si. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. sifu..actually tua yi pek oso have the duties like the above officers??

    ReplyDelete
  3. No, their main task is to grab the newly dead souls, not like what you see in the Society now.

    Such Officers only Officially being appointed by Heaven then they can be allocated in the Departments for recording.

    ReplyDelete

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