Tianlong (; lit. "heavenly dragon") is a flying dragon in Chinese mythology, a star in Chinese astrology, and a proper name. Word The term tianlong combines tian "heaven" and long "dragon". Since tian literally means "heaven; the heavens; sky" or figuratively "Heaven; God; gods", tianlong can denote "heavenly dragon; celestial dragon" or "holy dragon; divine dragon". Tianlong is homophonous with another name in Chinese folklore. Tianlong "Heavenly Deaf" (with the character long "deaf" combining the "ear radical" and a long phonetic element) and Diya "Earthly Dumb" are legendary attendants to Wenchang Wang , the patron deity of literature. Meanings From originally denoting "heavenly dragon", Tianlong semantically developed meanings as Buddhist "heavenly Nāgas" or "Devas and Nāgas", "centipede", and "proper names" of stars, people, and places. Dragons Among Chinese classic texts, tian "heaven" and long "dragon" were first used together in Zhou Dynasty (1122 BCE – 256 BCE) writings, but the word tianlong was not recorded until the Han Dynasty (207 BCE – 220 CE). The ancient Yijing "Book of Changes" exemplifies using tian "heaven" and long "dragon" together. Qian "The Creative", the first hexagram, says (tr. Wilhelm 1967:9), "Nine(it stands for a solid horizontal line that symbolizes the yang. Why nine is used is unclear.) in the fifth place means: Flying dragons in the heavens. It furthers one to see the great man("九五，飞龙在天，利见大人”)." The "Commentary on the Decision" (, tr. Wilhelm 1967:371) explains, "Because the holy man is clear as to the end and the beginning, as to the way in which each of the six stages completes itself in its own time, he mounts on them toward heaven as though on six dragons(大明終始，六位時成。時乘六龍以御天)." And the "Commentary on the Images" (, tr. Wilhelm 1967:371) says, "'Flying dragon in the heavens.' This shows the great man at work.(飛龍在天，大人造也。)" The earliest usage of tianlong "heavenly dragon", according to the Hanyu Da Cidian, is in the Xinxu "New Prefaces" by Liu Xiang (79–8 BCE). It records a story (Yuan 2006:213) about Zigao, the Duke of Ye, who professed to love dragons. After he carved and painted dragon images throughout his house, a [] heavenly dragon [or fulong in some editions] came to visit, but Ye was scared and ran away. The Fangyan dictionary (12) by Yang Xiong (53 BCE – 18 CE) has another early usage of tian and long. It defines panlong "coiled dragon" as , syntactically meaning either "Dragons which do