Metamorphoses

.Like their Greco-Roman counterparts, many Chinese mythical

figures become metamorphosed into plants, birds, and a n im a ls, or ob­
jects such as a dead tree or stone. As Daphne turned into laurel and the
sisters o f Phaeton into amber-dropping trees, so Ch’ih Yu’s fetters
turned into a grove o f maple trees and Y i Y in’s mother turned into a
dead and hollow mulberry tree. As Ganymede (or Deucalion) and Orion
turned into the constellations o f Aquarius and Orion, so Fu Yueh
became a star, and the two quarreling brothers Yen Po and Shih Ch’en
became stars that never crossed paths. As the nymph Psamathe turned
into a seal, so C h’ang O became a toad on the moon. Birds are the most
frequent form o f metamorphosis, possibly because their winged flight
more vividly suggests aerial divinity. Semiramis, w ho became a dove,
C eyx and Alcyone, w ho turned into birds, Leda, w ho metamorphosed
into a swan, Nemesis, w ho became a goose, and Philomela, who
turned into the nightingale— all have their counterparts in Chinese
gods and goddesses: Ching Wei and Tan Chu became birds, and the
emperor o f Shu, Hi Yii, was associated w ith the nightjar’s call.
The correlation between deity and metamorphosed state in the
Greco-Roman tradition is often w ittily realized. Syrinx turns into a
reed as she flees from Pan, w ho makes a musical instrument from her
new form. Narcissus turns into a delicately beautiful water flower, the

189
190 ~ Chinese Mythology

narcissus, after he drowns while admiring his reflection in the water. To

Philomela is given a nightingale’s poignant eloquence to requite her
muteness when Tereus raped her and cut her tongue out to prevent her
from denouncing him. Such symbolic correlations are not always
present or so clearly expressed in Chinese myths o f metamorphoses,
perhaps partly because the meaning o f the metamorphosed state is not
yet known. There are some parallels, however, such as the metamor­
phosis o f Ch’ih Yu’s (? bloodstained) fetters into a red-leafed maple tree,
or the girl w ho was turned into a silkworm jointly with the horse she
had promised to marry but did not, and the pregnant mother w ho be­
came a hollow mulberry tree floating her infant on a river.
The theme o f punishment occurs in many Chinese myths o f meta­
morphosis. Ch’ih Yu was punished by the Yellow Emperor, Tan Chu
by his father, Yao. Y i Y in’s mother was punished because she disobeyed
the command o f a spirit in her dream not to look back on her flooded
city, and C h ’ang O because she stole the Queen Mother o f the West’s
drug o f immortality given to Y i the Archer. Tu Yii, Emperor Wang o f
Shu, was punished because he had ravished his prime minister’s wife,
and Kun was executed because he stole from God. Although the sig­
nificance o f maple, a hollow tree, a bird, and a toad is known in these
instances, more often it is not. For example, the meaning o f the meta­
morphosis o f Kun and Yii into a bear is unclear because their ursinity
and, in the case o f Yii, his bestiovestism have yet to be convincingly
interpreted. It could well be that ursinity may be deciphered in terms
o f the bear cult to be found among Siberian tribes or the Ainu o f Japan,
but a specific link has yet to be established (Bodde 1975, 78, 81,122). The
link between bestiovestism and totemism in archaic times, moreover,
has been rejected by Karlgren (1946, 251).

P’an Ku Is Transformed into the Universe

The clearest correlation between the nature o f the god and his
metamorphosed state is to be seen in the late myth o f P’an Ku, which
is a major etiological myth o f the cosmological human body. The sig­
nificance o f this correlation has been analyzed in chapter 1, utilizing the
terminology o f D oty (1986,115-17) and Lincoln (1986, 5-20).

When the first born, P’an Ku, was approaching death, his body was
transformed. His breath became the wind and clouds; his voice be­
came peals o f thunder. His left eye became the sun; his right eye be­
Metamorphoses ~ 191

came the moon. His four limbs and five extremities became the four
cardinal points and the five peaks. His blood and semen became water
and rivers. His muscles and veins became the earth’s arteries; his flesh
became fields and land. His hair and beard became the stars; his bodily
hair became plants and trees. His teeth and bones became metal and
rock; his vital marrow became pearls and jade. His sweat and bodily
fluids became streaming rain. All the mites on his body were touched
by the wind and were turned into the black-haired people. (Wu yun li-
nien chi, cited in Yi shih, PCTP 1.2a)

The Monster Fish Changes into the Monster Bird

The K ’un fish, the mythical creature that turned into the P’eng
bird, belongs to a very early mythological tradition predating the
fourth-century B .C . text Chuang Tzu. This is evident because the central
passage o f the next reading was cited by Chuang Tzu from a preexist­
ing book, Tall Storiesfrom C h’i (Ch’i hsieh), a book o f marvels originating
in the northeastern state o f Ch’i (Shantung province). That book has
not survived, but the vestigial myth is preserved in Chuang Tzu’s philo­
sophical work, in the first o f seven chapters known to be authentic. The
myth o f the K ’un fish become P ’eng bird remained vestigial and was
not developed in the later tradition. Perhaps this is because the myth
became fixed in amber by being incorporated into the conceptual frame­
w ork o f this original and w itty philosopher o f the school o f Taoism.
Chuang Tzu uses the device o f changing visual perspective, when the
P’eng bird high in the sky looks down at miniscule objects in the world
below, to propound difficult concepts o f relativity, subjectivity, and
objective reality. That Han exegetes glossed k’un as ‘fish roe’, thus
accentuating the dichotomy between the miniscule, k’un, and the gi­
gantic, P’eng, between the microcosm and the macrocosm, adds a
further dimension to the interpretation o f the myth.

In North Gloom there is a fish. Its name is K ’un. K’un is countless

thousand leagues big. It changes into a bird, and its name is P’eng.
P’eng’s back is countless thousand leagues broad. When it is aroused
and flies, its wings are like clouds suspended in the sky. When the seas
roll back their waves, this bird migrates to South Gloom. South
Gloom is the Pool o f Heaven. The book Tall Storiesfrom Ch’i is about
wonders. Tall Stories says, “When the P’eng bird migrates to South
Gloom, the water is dashed up across three thousand leagues. Rolling
192 — Chinese Mythology

on the whirlwind, it rises ninety thousand leagues high.” Only when

it has gone for six months does it rest. Are those horses o f the wild?
Or is it fine dust? Or is it just creatures blown into one another by the
bird’s breath? The blue, blue sky—is that its real color, or is it because
it is so distant and infinite? From where this bird looks down, it must
look just like that. (Chuang Tzu, Hsiao-yao, SPPY i.ia-2a)

The Death o f Ch’ih Yu

M yths o f Ch’ih Yu in his function as the god o f war and the war-
rior-god w ho challenged the Yellow Emperor for supremacy have been
presented and discussed in chapters 2 and 6. It is sufficient here to draw
attention to the major mythic motifs surrounding the death o f the god.
First there is the analogous metamorphosis o f his wooden fetters into
a grove o f maple trees. The maple m otif may signify the color o f the
god’s blood following his execution, and it may be emblematic o f his
function as the god o f war. The first reading is from a first-century a . d .
chapter o f The Classic o f Mountains and Seas and is the earliest expression
o f the god’s metamorphosis. It is elaborated in the second reading, a
T ’ang version o f the myth, in Seven Tomesfrom the Cloudy Shelf by Wang
Ch’iian. The color m otif predominates in later versions. Shen Kua o f
the eleventh century mentions red salt known as “ Ch’ih Yu’s B lood” in
his miscellany Essays Written from Dreaming Pond (the third reading
below), whereas the fragmentary third-century a . d . text Imperial Survey
refers to a scarlet vapor known as “ Ch’ih Yu’s Banner.” This fourth
reading records antiquarian information concerning mythical sites and
the supposed burial place o f the god.

In the middle o f the vast wilderness . . . there is Sung Mountain, and

on it there is a scarlet snake named Birth Snake. There is a tree
growing on the mountaintop called the maple. The maple tree is the
wooden fetters and manacles left behind by Ch’ih Yu, and that is
why it is called the maple tree. (Shan hai ching, Ta huang nan ching,
SPPY i5.3b-4a)
The Yellow Emperor killed Ch’ih Yu on the mound o f Li Mountain.
He threw his fetters on the summit o f Sung Mountain in the middle
o f the vast wilderness. His fetters later turned into a grove o f maple
trees. (Yun chi ch’i ch’ien, Hsien-yuan pen chi, SPTK 100.18b)
Metamorphoses ~ 193

Hsieh-chou is a salt marsh. The color o f the salt is bright red. The
popular name for it is “Ch’ih Yu’s Blood.” (Meng-ch’i pi-t’an chiao
cheng, C H 3.127)

The mound o f Ch’ih Yu is in T ’ung-p’ing commandery in Shou-

ch’ang county in the city o f K’an-hsiang. It is seventy feet high. The
people always worship at it in the tenth month. There is a scarlet
vapor from it like the roll o f blood-red silk. The people call it “Ch’ih
Yu’s Banner.” Shoulders-and-Thighs Mound is in Shan-yang com­
mandery in Chu-yeh county in the city o f Chung-chii. It is the same
in size as the K’an mound. Legend has it that, when the Yellow Em­
peror fought with Ch’ih Yu at the Cho-lu wilderness and the Yellow
Emperor killed him, his body changed places, and that is why he was
buried in another place. (Huang lan, Chung-mu chi, T S C C 1.3)

The Myth o f Yao’s Son Tan Chu

Several fragments narrating the myth o f Tan Chu, Cinnabar Crim ­
son, illustrate the phenomenon in mythography o f the tendency toward
a tenuous, and spurious, linkage between one mythical figure and sev­
eral unrelated ones. In this case the mythical Tan Chu, w ho was also
known as Yao’s unworthy son, is linked through color motifs in his
name to the Land o f Huan-chu, Rousing Crimson, and to the mythical
bird Chu (a phonetic pun), and also by extension to Huan Tou, an offi­
cial o f Yao, and to the land o f Huan-t’ou. The readings present the
myth o f Tan Chu, Cinnabar Crimson, besides these tenuous connec­
tions. This law o f mythographic fallacy is typical o f the false associa­
tions that are sometimes adduced to a famous mythical figure.
The basic narratives o f the Tan Chu myth occur in Chuang Tzu and
The Classic o f History, which form the fifth and second readings respec­
tively. These relate that Yao killed his eldest son and that Tan Chu was
a degenerate youth. The Tan Chu myth fits the recurring pattern in
early texts o f myths relating to Yao and Shun, w ho are both said to have
passed over their eldest son in favor o f a man unrelated to them and to
have ceded him succession to the throne. In these cases the eldest son
is labeled “unworthy” or “worthless,” and it is not only he but also their
many other sons w ho are passed over in the succession. This myth has
traditionally been presented in socioethical terms as a eufunctional par­
adigm o f the sage-ruler ceding to an unrelated man on the basis o f
merit. The most recent exposition o f this interpretation, bolstered with
194 ~ Chinese Mythology

Levi-Straussian structural analysis, is Sarah Allan’s work The Heir and

the Sage (1981, 27-68).
If the myth is subjected to an alternative mode o f analysis, how ­
ever, it suggests a quite different underlying pattern. Taking what M al­
inowski termed the “sociological charter” as a conceptual framework,
the myth o f Tan Chu sent into exile, or even killed by his father, Yao,
allows o f a fresh interpretation. The myth might represent the vestige
o f a social custom in archaic society o f transmitting succession outside
the lines o f kinship. As such, the m otif o f the “unworthy eldest son”
w ho has to be punished by exile or death would constitute a rationale
for what may have been an unpopular custom. It is significant that the
mythologem o f passing over the eldest son to an unrelated heir, the
unworthy displaced by the worthy, died out with the succession o f
Yu’s son after Yii died. The myth survived, however, as a potent ele­
ment in ethical philosophy in the sociopolitical debates o f the late
Chou period.

Yao took the daughter o f the San-yi clan as his wife and gave her the
name Nii-huang. (Ta Tai L i chi, SPTK 7.5b)

There was nothing to match the pride o f Tan Chu. All he did was take
an insolent delight in frivolity and behave as an arrogant tyrant. He
did not care whether it was day or night—it was all the same to him.
He would go boating even when there was no water. He and his
friends would indulge in sexual frolics in his house, and so his line o f
succession was abolished. (Shang shu, Yi Chi, SPPY 5.6b)

Yao’s son was not a good son. Shun had him banished to Cinnabar
G ulf to serve as overlord o f it, which is why Yao’s son was called Tan
Chu, Cinnabar Crimson. (T ’ai-p’ing yii-lan, citing Shang shu yi p’ien,
SPTK 63.3b)
Yao fought a battle on the bank o f Cinnabar River, and as a result he
subjugated the Southern Man tribe. (Lu-shih ch’un-ch’iu, Chao shu,
SPTK 20.9b)
Yao killed his eldest son. (Chuang Tzu, Tao chih, SPPY 9.22b)

The land o f Huan-t’ou is to the south o f it. The people there have
human faces and a bird’s wings, and a bird’s beak, which is useful for
catching fish. One idea is that it is east o f Pi-fang. Another that it is
the Land o f Huan-chu [Rousing Crimson]. (Shan hai ching, Hai tvai
nan ching, SPPY 6.2a)
Metamorphoses — 195

Huan Tou was Yao’s official. He committed a crime and threw him­
self into the South Sea and killed himself. Yao felt pity for him and
made Huan Tou’s son live in South Sea and offer sacrifice to his
father. In paintings he is represented as an immortal. (Kuo P’u’s com­
mentary on Shan hai ching, Hai wai nan ching, SPPY 6.2a)

Chu Mountain looks out over Liu-huang country to the west, faces
Mount Chu-p’i to the north and Mount Ch’ang-yu to the east. Ying
River flows out from it and runs southeast to Scarlet River. There is
a great amount o f white jade and cinnabar grains on Chii Mountain.
There is a beast on it which looks like a sucking-pig. There is an ogre
on it which makes a noise like a dog barking; its name is Li-li. The
district where it appears will achieve great things. There is a bird on
it. In appearance it is like an owl with human hands, and its call
sounds like “Bee!” Its name is Chu. It is named after its own call. The
district where it appears always drives away its good men. (Shan hai
ching, Nan tz’u erh ching, SPPY i.4b~5a)

Ch’ang O Becomes a Toad in the Moon

The myth o f Ch’ang O ’s metamorphosis into a toad in the moon
w ill by now be familiar from earlier chapters. The brief passage is rich
in motifs: the trickster figure, theft from a gpd, punishment by meta­
morphosis, the regenerative powers o f the toad and the moon, the drug
o f immortality, and the related mythical figures o f Y i the Archer and
the Queen Mother o f the West.

Y i asked the Queen Mother o f the West for the drug o f immortality.
Y i’s wife, Heng O, stole it and escaped to the moon. She was meta­
morphosed on the moon and became the striped toad Ch’an-ch’u,
and she is the essence o f the moon. (Subcommentary o f Ch’u hsueh
chi, citing Huai-nan Tzu, SPCY 1.4a)

Yi Yin’s Mother Changes into a

Hollow Mulberry Tree
The myth o f Y i Y in has been discussed in chapter 5. The narrative
is full o f important motifs: miraculous birth; an abandoned baby boy;
a hollow mulberry, which has links with the m otif o f the cosmic tree,
Leaning Mulberry; the mother’s prophetic dream; the mortar bowl,
which replicates the image o f the floating hollow tree and presages Y i
196 ~ Chinese Mythology

Y in’s upbringing and early career as cook; metamorphosis as a punish­

ment for disobeying the spirit world; and the naming o f the foundling
after the river where he was discovered. These motifs conjoin to create
the major m otif o f the hero.

A daughter o f the Yu Shen clan was picking mulberry [leaves] when

she found a baby in a hollow mulberry tree. She presented it to her
lord. The lord ordered his cook to bring the child up. When he
inquired how this had happened, someone said that the baby’s mother
had lived near Y i River and that after she became pregnant a spirit told
her in a dream, “If your mortar bowl leaks water, hurry to the east, but
don’t look back.” Next day she did see her mortar bowl leak water, so
she told her neighbors, and hurried ten leagues to the east. But she
looked back at her city—there was nothing but water. Her body then
transformed into a hollow mulberry tree, which is why they called the
baby Y i Yin. (Lii-shih ch’un-ch’iu, Pen wei, SPTK I4.3b-4a)

Fu Yueh Turns into a Star

The mythical figure o f Fu Yueh is first mentioned in the fourth-
century b .c . text Chuang Tzu, as a sage w ho became a minister to the his­
torical Shang emperor Wu Ting (ca. 1200-1181 B.C.) and then turned into
a star as a reward for his wise and humane government (the second read­
ing below). The third-century B.C. Confucian philosopher Hsun Tzu
notes Fu Yueh’s strange appearance in his chapter entitled “Against
Physiognomy” (the first reading). With Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s account in the
third reading, mythic motifs give way to legendary embellishment as
Fu Yueh becomes the archetypal unknown man w ho is selected by an
omen to lead the kingdom to greater glory. The same pattern is notice­
able in the myths o f Shun, Y i Yin, and the Great Lord Chiang.

In appearance, Fu Yueh’s body was like an erect fin. (Hsun Tzu, Fei
hsiang, SPPY 3.2b)

Fu Yueh achieved the Way and became prime minister for King Wu
Ting, and his rule extended over the whole world. He ascended to
East Tie, mounted Winnower Star and Tail Star, and joined the ranks
o f the countless stars. (Chuang Tzu, Ta tsung shih, SPPY 3-6a-b)

Wu Ting dreamed one night that he had acquired a sage called Yueh.
Taking note o f the appearance o f the person he had seen in his dream,
he then scrutinized all his assembled ministers and all his officials,
Metamorphoses ~ 197

but none o f them was the man in his dream. So he ordered all his offi­
cers to conduct a search in the outlying areas o f his realm, and they
found Yueh on Fu Gorge. At that time, Yueh was part o f a prisoners’
chain gang doing construction work on Fu Gorge. He appeared be­
fore Wu Ting. Wu Ting said, ‘This is the man I dreamed of.” He took
him aside and had a discussion with him, and it turned out that Yueh
was a sage. He promoted him to the rank o f prime minister and the
Yin [Shang] kingdom enjoyed excellent government. (Shih chi, Yin
pen chi, SPPY 3_7a-b)

Tu Yu and the Call o f the Nightjar

The narrative o f Tu Yii may be said to be a singular expression o f
classical mythic motifs: the descent o f the Shu ancestral kings from the
god o f sericulture, Ts’an Ts’ung; the metamorphosis o f Shu kings into
immortals; the descent o f Tu Yii from Heaven to rule the world below;
the appearance o f his bride-to-be from a well; the resurrected corpse o f
Pieh Ling, w ho became Tu Yu’s minister; a flood; the crime o f adultery;
abdication in the manner o f Yao (but for a different reason); and self­
punishment by exile.
The myth o f metamorphosis became attached to the figure o f Tu
Yu; it was said that when he left his kingdom in shame and went from
Shu into exile, the call o f the tzu-kuei bird was heard, and so the deposed
king became identified with the bird. Some translators render the name
o f the bird as the cuckoo. But although the cuckoo has the connotation
o f cuckoldry in Western lore and the theme o f cuckoldry is present in
the narrative, it has not been used to render tzu-kuei here for the reason
that the punning intention o f cuckoo-cuckoldry is not present in the
Chinese text. The name nightjar has been used instead. This semanti­
cally neutral name also has the virtue o f coinciding with the sympathe­
tic attitude o f traditional writers toward the figure o f Tu Yu.
This motif-bound text contains no fewer than three metamor­
phoses: the kings and their people, w ho become immortal; the corpse
o f Pieh Ling, which comes back to life; and the transference o f Tu Yu’s
spirit to the nightjar.
The text o f the first reading below, Basic Annab o f the Kings o f Shu,
is attributed to Yang Hsiung (53 b .c . - a . d . 18), w ho was a native o f Shu,
but it more probably belongs to the category o f pseudepigraphic liter­
ature. It is almost certain, however, that the anonymous author either
was a native o f Shu in the post-Han era or lived there and viewed the
198 ~ Chinese Mythology

m ythology o f the region with great sympathy. The second reading is

from the renowned dictionary o f the Han era, A n Explication o f Written
Characters by Hsu Shen (ca. a . d . 100).

The first ancestor o f the Shu kings was called Ts’an Ts’ung. In the
next era his descendant was called Po Huo, and in the era after that
his descendant was called Yu Fu. Each o f these three eras lasted sev­
eral hundred years. In each era they became gods and did not die, and
their people followed their kings, taking another shape and vanish­
ing like them. The king was out hunting when he came to Mount Yii,
then he vanished as an immortal. Today he is worshiped in a temple
to him in Yii. In those days the population o f Shu grew very sparse.
Later on, a man named Tu Yii descended from Heaven and alighted
on Mount Chu-t’i. A girl called Li emerged from a well in Chiang-
yuan and became Tu Yu’s wife. Then he proclaimed himself King o f
Shu, with the title o f Emperor Wang. He governed a city called P’i
near Mount Min. The other people who had become transformed
gradually reappeared. When Emperor Wang had reached an era o f
over a century long, there was a man in Ching called Pieh Ling
whose corpse completely disappeared. People in Ching searched for
it but could not find it. Pieh Ling’s corpse reached Shu, where it
came to life again. Emperor Wang made Pieh Ling his prime minis­
ter. At that time a huge body o f water poured out o f Jade Mountain,
like the floods in the era o f Yao. Emperor Wang was unable to con­
trol the flooding, so he ordered Pieh Ling to dredge Jade Mountain
so that the people could go back to their houses free from worry.
After Pieh Ling had left to control the floods, Emperor Wang had an
affair with his wife. But when he realized that his virtue was not
equal to the task o f ruling and that he did not measure up to Pieh
Ling, he abdicated the throne and handed power over to him, and
then he went away (just as Yao did when he resigned in favor o f
Shun). When Pieh Ling came to the throne, he took the title o f
Emperor K ’ai-ming. A son was born to Emperor Ch’i named Lu Pao,
who also took the imperial title o f K’ai-ming. (T ’ai-p’ing yii-lan, citing
Shu wangpen chi, SPTK 888.2b-3b)

Emperor Wang o f Shu committed adultery with his prime minister’s

wife, and then, full o f shame, he went into voluntary exile. He
became the tzu-kuei bird [nightjar]. So when the people o f Shu hear
the call o f the nightjar, they always say it is Emperor Wang. (Shuo-
wen chieh-tzu, SPTK 1.4.5a)
Metamorphoses — 199

The Silkworm Horse

Horse myths are not very numerous in the Chinese tradition. The
counterpart o f Pegasus, the winged messenger o f Zeus, is the dragon
that wings through the air and dives into the deep. The most famous
early account o f mythical horses occurs in the story o f King M u o f
Chou, w ho drove a team o f eight horses to visit the Queen Mother o f
the West. His fabled team is described with the same fond hyperbole as
the legendary Bucephalus, the favorite horse o f Alexander the Great,
w ho had the city Bucephalus built in honor o f his horse after it died in
battle in 326 B.C. In the Han era the myth o f the horse o f Heaven and the
golden horse o f the west seized the imagination o f emperors, w ho sent
emissaries to obtain them from Ferghana (Loewe and Hulsewe 1979,
42-43,132-35; Birrell 1993, 40-42, 183 nn. 41-51).
The following narrative o f the horse and the girl is taken from the
fourth-century a . d . collection o f stories A Record o f Researches into Spirits.
In terms o f the mythological tradition, this is a late work, and so the text
should be classified as a fictional reworking o f older legendary material.
The fictional elements are evident in the consecutive narrative style;
the characterization o f the girl, her father, the horse, and the neighbor;
naturalistic dialog; realistic detail; a dramatic climax; and the setting o f
the narrative in the days o f yore. Despite its numerous fictional aspects,
however, the story reveals some vestigial mythic motifs that suggest
that the account may have originated in a local mythological tradition.
As in the myth o f P’an Hu the dog, the animal is male. The horse also
possesses supernatural intelligence and the power to metamorphose and
cause bodily transformation. The metamorphosis o f the girl is again a
punishment, for she reneged on her trickster promise to marry the horse
and also tormented him in his desire. The narrative may be classified as
a vestigial etiological myth since it explains the origin o f the mulberry
tree. A further comparison with the myth o f P’an Hu the dog reveals the
presence o f a similar taboo against bestiality, voiced by the “Dad” in the
narrative, w hen he tells the girl, “D on’t say anything — I’m afraid we will
disgrace our family.” In the best tradition o f myth, however, his worst
fears are realized when his daughter is changed with the horse skin (after
he killed and skinned the horse) to become a silkworm that spins a
gigantic cocoon. This cocoon serves as a ribald sexual emblem, since the
word for the prolific cocoon silk (ssu) is a pun for sexual desire (ssu).
Derk Bodde has noted that this account by Kan Pao originated in Shu
(1975, 271)-
200 — Chinese Mythology

There is an old story that in the period o f great antiquity, there was
a grown man who traveled far away and left no other person at home
except his young girl and a stallion, which she looked after herself.
She lived in poverty in this dismal place and she longed for her
father. Then she said to the horse, “If you can coax our Dad to come
home, I will marry you.” When the horse received this promise from
her, he tore free from his bridle and left, heading in the direction o f
her Dad. When her Dad saw his horse, he was amazed and delighted.
So he took hold o f it to ride it. His horse looked in the direction it
had come from and neighed sadly without stopping. Her Dad said,
‘This horse is not behaving like this for nothing—is there some rea­
son for it at home or not?” Then he hurriedly mounted his horse and
returned home. He was extremely fond o f his horse, so he cut an
extra generous amount o f grass to feed it, but the horse refused to eat
it. Every time he saw the woman going in and coming out he imme­
diately burst into a paroxysm o f rage and joy. This happened on
more than one occasion. Her Dad was amazed by this and questioned
the girl about it in private. The girl told her Dad all about it, and he
was convinced that this was the reason for it all. Her Dad said,
“Don’t say anything —I’m afraid we will disgrace our family—and
don’t keep going in and out o f here.” Then he took cover and killed
it with his bow and arrow and put the skin out in the garden to dry.
Her Dad went on his travels. The girl and a neighbor’s wife were
playing with the skin when the girl kicked it with her foot and said,
“You’re just a domestic animal, yet you wanted a human as your
wife, eh? It’s all your own fault you’ve been butchered and skinned,
so why should you feel sorry for yourself. . . ?” Before she had
finished speaking, the horse skin rose up with one bound, wrapped
the girl up, and went away. The neighbor’s wife was so afraid and
alarmed she did not dare to rescue her but ran off to tell her Dad.
When her Dad got back home, he searched for her but he had long
since lost track o f her. Several days later they found that the girl and
the horse skin had completely changed into a silkworm spinning
thread in the branches o f a big tree. The cocoon’s threads were thick
and large and different from an ordinary silkworm’s. The neighbor’s
wife took it down and looked after it. It produced several times more
silk than the normal silkworm. So she called the tree the mulberry—
mulberry [sang] stands for “mourning” [sang]. Because o f this every­
one rushed to plant from it, and what is cultivated nowadays comes
from this stock. (Sou shen chi, T S C C 14.93-94)