Chinese Mythology - An Introduction by Anne M. Birrell
Chinese Mythology - An Introduction by Anne M. Birrell
Chinese Mythology - An Introduction by Anne M. Birrell
JLhis book offers for the first time a comprehensive range o f texts
o f myths o f the classical Chinese tradition translated from the Chinese
into English w ith an analysis o f their context and significance. A repre
sentative corpus o f over three hundred narratives has been selected
from more than one hundred classical texts. These constitute the most
authentic texts in the Chinese mythic tradition. The organizational prin
ciples are based on thematic categories and classes o f m otif familiar to
mythologies worldwide. A perusal o f the chapter headings in this book
reveals the wide range o f Chinese mythic themes: cosmogonic myths,
creation myths, etiological myths, myths o f divine birth, mythic meta
morphoses, myths o f strange places, peoples, plants, birds, and animals,
myths o f the primeval and the lesser gods, mythical figures, and myths
o f the semidivine heroes w ho founded their tribe, city, or dynasty at
the dawn o f history.
The narratives are mostly fragmentary texts, often written in a lap
idary style in obscure language and meaning. The texts are therefore
accompanied by discussions that explain and clarify the obscurities and
difficult textual background. While these analyses are firmly based on
the cultural traditions o f classical China, the motifs and themes o f the
myths are also elucidated from the aspects o f interdisciplinary studies
and o f comparative mythology. Thus significant research on a variety
2 ~ Chinese Mythology
Definitions o f Myth
The Chinese term for myth, shen-hua, almost exactly coincides with
one o f the many contemporary Western definitions o f myth as sacred
narrative. S^en-means ‘god’, ‘divine’, ‘holy’; hua means ‘speech’ , ‘oral
account’, ‘tale’, ‘oral narrative’ . In this respect, the second part o f the
Chinese term, hua, is equivalent to the original meaning o f the word
mythology: the root o f the word myth begins with the Proto-Indo-
European root *mu ‘to mutter or murmur’, from which the Greek stem
my and the noun mythos, meaning ‘word’ or ‘story’, are derived, while
the Greek noun logos denotes ‘word’, ‘ordered discourse,’ or ‘doctrine.’
Introduction ~ 3
o f thought and symbol. In recent times the late Joseph Campbell elab
orated Jungian concepts o f the archetype in myth. Mircea Eliade, who
was influenced by the myth-as-ritual school o f Cambridge and by the
Jungian concept o f archetypes, defined myth as the vital link between
the ancient past and contemporary realities, while emphasizing its etio
logical characteristics.
These definitions by scholars from a wide spectrum o f disciplines
have greatly enlarged the scope and content o f myth. Yet in appropri
ating myth for its ow n purpose, each discipline or school remains jeal
ous o f its own concerns, aims, and methodology. In the end, myth is
not anthropology, nor is it religion, or sociology, psychology, or liter
ature. As Friedrich Schelling insisted as early as 1857, myth has its own
autonomy; it is a human experience that must be understood on its own
terms and in its own right. Any attempt to graft it onto another disci
pline w ill result in its diminution and loss (cited by Puhvel 1987,12).
This brief review o f the definitions o f myth which have evolved
over the past century and a half may now be usefully followed by D oty’s
eight ways o f categorizing it in most interdisciplinary works on myth:
(1) myth as aesthetic device, narrative, literary form; (2) myth con
taining subject matter having to do with the gods, the “other” world;
(3) myth explaining origins (etiology); (4) myth as mistaken or primi
tive science; (5) myth as the text o f a rite, or depending on ritual that it
explains; (6) myth making universal truths or ideas concrete or intelli
gible; (7) myth explicating beliefs, collective experiences, or values; (8)
myth constituting “spiritual” or “psychic” expression (Doty 1986, 9).
D oty also provides a definitive statement o f the significance, context,
and function o f myth:
myths, and flood myths o f early China. Despite its brevity, it offers a
study that is rigorous and scholarly in its methodology, questioning
traditional concepts o f prehistory, and applying, where relevant, the
findings o f comparative mythology. Bodde has made an important con
tribution to Chinese ethnographic and ritual studies in his more recent
work Festivals in Classical China (1975). In this pioneering study his sub
sidiary aim o f tracing certain Han rituals to their mythic counterparts
by means o f textual and iconographic documentation is o f major im
portance for the study o f the evolution o f Chinese myth. Combining
the data o f iconographic records with the disciplinary approaches o f
history and archeology, Michael Loewe has examined mythic motifs at
tached to the mythologem o f immortality as it is manifested in the
mythical figure o f the Queen Mother o f the West in Ways to Paradise:
The Chinese Quest for Immortality (1979).
The younger generation o f Sinologists has also begun to develop
studies in this emerging field. Sarah Allan has applied the methodology
o f Levi-Strauss, especially his concept o f transformations, in her exam
ination o f the succession myths and foundation myths o f the protohis-
torical and historical dynasties o f archaic China, and she has success
fully utilized the Levi-Straussian theory o f binary opposition in her
counterpointing o f the sage-king and negative or subordinate mythical
figures (Allan 1981). William G. Boltz has conducted research on the
figure o f Kung Kung with illuminating insights and has explained in
the clearest terms the long-term misunderstanding o f many Sinologists
in applying the term euhemerization to Chinese mythical figures (1981).
Mark E. Lewis has focused on the theme o f violence in classical China,
proposing the thesis that some forms o f aggression in this period found
their archetypal pattern in sacred narrative and so came to be sanc
tioned by the authority o f myth (1990). Wolfgang Miinke has adopted
a more general approach in a work that constitutes a dictionary o f C hi
nese myth (in German). For the most part, he refers to, but does not
translate, the classical sources. His introductory essay deals with some
important issues, such as the Chinese terms for God. In the text o f his
dictionary he also discusses a variety o f problematic questions, such as
the gender o f the earth deity H ou-t’u. Occasionally, his discussions are
marred by value-laden epithets, such as “ Satan,” in respect o f the God
o f War, Ch’ih Yu, and o f the god, Kung Kung (Miinke 1976, 5-28,142-
43,71,219). The French Sinologist Remi Mathieu has produced two sig
nificant works on classical Chinese mythology. The first is his tw o-
volume annotated translation o f The Classic o f Mountains and Seas, a
8 — Chinese Mythology
1 and 2). Etiological myths are also evident in narratives o f the founda
tion o f a tribe, people, city, or dynasty (chaps. 5 and 16). Another impor
tant influence has been Raglan’s approach to myth, that is, the delinea
tion o f the characteristics o f the mythical figure as hero, based on
Raglan’s formulation o f twenty-two stereotypical features o f the hero
to be found in the biographies o f major Indo-European and Semitic
heroes (1937). Raglan’s w ork followed on from the studies o f O tto Rank
in The Myth o f the Birth o f the Hero (1959) and was developed by Joseph
Campbell, with the influence o f Jungian archetypes, in The Hero with a
Thousand Faces (1968). The use o f Raglan’s hero pattern is evident in my
study in the patterns o f miraculous birth, the pattern o f the savior
figure, and the m ythology o f divine heroes such as the Yellow Emperor,
Y i the Archer, and the semidivine figure Yii the Great (chaps. 3, 5, 6-8,
and 13).
At a more complex level, certain approaches to Chinese myth have
been used to interpret opaque, fragmentary, or corrupt mythic narra
tives that express a surface meaning but also convey a deeper underly
ing reality. Often in such cases the most fruitful approach has been that
pioneered by Malinowski, w ho suggested that some myths contain the
vestige o f a social or communal practice that may or may not still be fol
lowed. Two o f his statements on this concept are particularly relevant:
and antithetical archetypes, such as fire and water. Because o f his com-
parativist study, several Chinese mythic motifs that might otherwise
have passed unnoticed have been discovered, identified, and clarified.
In any discussion o f comparative mythology, Greco-Roman paral
lels predominate, o f course, and since the myths o f Greece and Rome
are so familiar, it has seemed natural and helpful to draw some parallels
in this book. But this has not been done to the exclusion o f parallels
with other cultures, particularly Indian, Iranian, and Scandinavian.
Moreover, the temptation to label Chinese mythical figures as “the C hi
nese Orpheus,” “the Chinese O din,” or “the Chinese Prometheus” has
been resisted in order to keep the cross-cultural parallels from converg
ing on the line o f inquiry and so endangering the authenticity and
integrity o f Chinese myth.
tains and Seas. His system o f classification was based not on thematic
principles but on disciplinary or subject categories, namely, philoso
phy, science, religion, history, and sociology (1932,127). For example, he
subsumed myths on primal matter, cosmogony, and the creation o f
humans under the category o f philosophy, and celestial and meteoro
logical myths under science. But when he subsumed myths o f divine
beings and divine culture bearers under the category o f history, he
appeared to have disregarded Ku Chieh-kang’s reconstruction o f my
thology and ancient history. Another important methodological ad
vance was the publication o f an article by K. C. Chang in which he
showed the value o f applying comparative approaches to the analysis o f
Chinese creation myths, citing the major authors in the discipline:
Durkheim, Boas, Eliade, Bascom, Leach, Levi-Strauss, Malinowski,
Raglan, and Thompson (K. C. Chang 1959, 47-79). In a later study, in
English, a chapter entitled “A Classification o f Shang and Chou
M yths,” he usefully discussed the sources o f Chinese myths and orga
nized the classical narratives into a five-part typology including the sep
aration o f gods and heroes, natural calamities and human saviors, and
heroes and their descents (K. C. Chang 1976,149-73).
The novelist Chou Tso-jen was also influenced by Western mythol
ogy, especially the writings o f Andrew Lang and Jane Ellen Harrison,
and by anthropological and psychological studies. He argued (1950) for
the authenticity and autonomy o f myth as a subject in its own right and
was instrumental in introducing Chinese readers to the mythical figures
o f ancient Greece (C. H. Wang 1977, 5-28).
One o f the major writers and scholars w ho specialized in the study
o f Chinese myth in the 1930s and 1940s was Wen Yi-to. Basing his
research on the classics, especially the Songs o f C h’u, The Classic of
Change, and The Classic o f Poetry, he attempted to combine the philolog
ical method o f Muller with the anthropological approach o f Lang.
Wen’s main contribution resides in two methodological approaches.
First, he singled out an individual classic as a special focus for studies
o f myth, as Cheng Te-k’un had already done, instead o f ranging across
the broad spectrum o f classical texts. Second, he devoted individual
monographs to specific motifs, such as the fish m otif (Wen Y i-to 1948,
1:117-38). Nevertheless, Chinese and Western scholars have criticized
Wen’s philological method as idiosyncratic and unscientific. His over-
eager tendency to identify totems such as the dragon or the snake with
mythical figures has also been questioned on the grounds o f a lack o f
evidence. Despite these drawbacks, Wen Y i-to ranks as the foremost
16 ~ Chinese Mythology
exponent o f Chinese myth in the first half o f this century (Allen 1982,
146-58).
Japanese researchers into Chinese myth, such as Izushi Yoshihiko
in 1943, have generally followed the thematic principle o f classification.
In 1944, M ori Mikisaburo developed a more sophisticated classification
system w ith a four-part division into the gods, ancestral myths, nature
myths, and minor deities. More recently, Mitarai Masaru has devoted
a monograph, The Deities o f Early China (1984), to a variety o f problems
relating to Chinese myth. Like many Japanese research works, Mitarai’s
monograph is a valuable source o f new research data, and it contains a
thorough survey o f traditional and modern problems in this field. His
methodological approach, however, makes his otherwise useful work
difficult to assimilate. He proposes the thesis that the foundation o f
China’s protohistoric and historical dynasties may be identified with
primeval gods and suprahuman figures w ho came to be associated with
the emergence o f the most important clans in antiquity. Interspersed
uneasily among the discussions o f this central thesis are fundamental
cosmological myths and numerous important others, which, because
o f their artificial linkage to dynasties and clans o f remote antiquity, are
diminished in terms o f their authenticity, narrative content, and mythic
significance. Also published in 1984, Kominami Ichiro’s Chinese Myths
and Tales usefully discusses sources o f myth in the post-Han era, besides
the meaning o f specific mythic themes.
A number o f recent Chinese scholars have published impressive
w ork in the field o f comparative mythology, for example, Hsiao Ping,
Ho Hsin, Tu Erh-wei, and Wang Hsiao-lien. They have produced a
wealth o f new data, but their w ork is not without its problems. Ho
Hsin, for example, bases his w ork on myth on the outdated theory o f
solar myth propounded by Muller (1891) and deploys a dubious phono
logical argument for the primacy o f a sun god in China and the w or
ship o f solar deities (1986). Similarly, Tu Erh-wei places undue emphasis
on the lunar theory o f myth, now equally outmoded as a monomythic
approach. W ith little substantive evidence, he postulates the existence
o f numerous moon deities in the Chinese mythic tradition and argues
for a lunar significance in narratives where none is to be found (Tu Erh-
wei 1977). Hsiao Ping has written a monumental study o f the myths
relating to the classic Songs o f Ch’u using a multidisciplinary approach
with an emphasis on ethnology. The value o f his work lies in his skill,
convincingly backed by textual and ethnographic evidence, in tracing
the living elements o f myth motifs that have their origin in classical
Introduction — 17
an Ovid, w ho recounted myth and shaped its content and style, early
Chinese myth existed as an amorphous, untidy congeries o f archaic
expression. So, to the extent that it was not reworked and extrapolated
from early texts into an Iliad, an Odyssey, or a Metamorphoses, it retained
a measure o f authenticity.
O n the other hand, as Remi Mathieu and others have pointed out,
early Chinese writers o f different intellectual persuasions w ho used
myth may have distorted it in order to make better use o f it in their
works (1989, 12). Another major disadvantage o f the manner o f their
preservation in various classical texts is that mythic narratives were
deployed by writers o f different persuasions to illustrate this or that
point o f view, and as a consequence the narratives often remained tied
to and, to some extent, colored by that viewpoint. This is particularly
noticeable in the philosophical w ork Chuang Tzu, dating from the
fourth century B.C. For example, it is the sole source that preserved the
myth o f the P’eng bird, which metamorphosed from a monster fish, yet
the reason for the recounting o f that myth was to explain complex ideas
o f relativity and objectivity which were central to early Taoist thought.
Similarly, the mythical figure o f Shun in Mencius is identified with the
ethical principle o f filial piety, central to the humanistic doctrines o f
Confucianism, yet other mythic narratives in several classical texts
relate contradictory aspects o f this figure. The very existence o f these
variant versions is rewarding for the modern mythographer, since it
permits a comparison o f different modes o f narrative and, in some cases,
allows o f a piecing together o f a composite myth from overlapping
fragments o f the same textual period. It is because the corpus o f C hi
nese myth is so rich in variant forms, perhaps uniquely so in respect o f
other mythological traditions, that in this book multiforms o f a myth
are presented together wherever possible, in order to give the reader an
idea o f the range, variety, and vitality o f mythic expression.
The texts o f the mythic narratives presented in this book may be
classified into three main periods. The first is the pre-Han or early clas
sical era from the middle to late Chou dynasty, that is, circa 600 B.C. to
221 B.C. Although the earliest written records date from circa 1300 B.C.,
discovered at the site o f the Shang dynasty capital, Yin, near Anyang in
Honan province, these texts, in the form o f oracle bones, are mainly
divinatory and are to do with religion, ritual, and mundane affairs. N o
myths are recorded among these oracle bones. Although no mytholog
ical texts from the archaic or historical Shang period exist, there is the
Introduction «—* 19
later in the mythological tradition, the supreme deity o f the Taoist pan
theon, and yet again as the amalgam o f homogenized local mythic tra
ditions.
It is partly because o f the polyfunctionality o f myth that this book
has been organized into chapters marked by thematic categories that
underscore major worldwide motifs, such as cosmogony, the creation
o f humankind, etiological myths o f culture and civilization, founda
tion myths, and so forth. In order to highlight the way in which myths
may serve several functions, some narratives have been repeated within
different thematic chapters to reveal their rich aspectual multiplicity.
This scheme w ill be found to be not too different from the arrange
ments o f motifs devised by Stith Thompson in Motif-lndex (1955,
1:61-345).
23
24 ~ Chinese Mythology
gies contain narratives that present a picture o f the cosmos that emerged
from it. The ancient Chinese conceived the world as a square area o f
land or earth, above which was the round sky, held up like a dome by
four supports from the earth. In some accounts these supports are said
to be four giant pillars, or eight pillars fastened by cords to the sky’s can
opy, or four immense mountains reaching from earth to the sky, which
they prop up. This world picture bears a strong resemblance to the
ancient Egyptian view, an account o f which is given by J. M . Plumley
(1975,17-41). Since Egyptian mythic narratives predate the Chinese by
about tw o and a h alf millennia, the resemblance may well reflect a
cross-cultural influence from Egypt to China through Central Asia.
Another important point is that the ancient Chinese conceived o f
the cosmos in this world picture as the only world, not as part o f a vast,
limitless universe. One o f the Chinese accounts from the fourth cen
tury B .C., “ Questions o f Heaven,” makes it clear that the edges and
boundaries, seams and corners are all observable in this world picture.
And like the Babylonian, the Chinese cosmogonic myths describe how
the stars, sun, and moon became fixed and ordered in their trajectories
soon after the moment o f creation.
The cosmogonic myths differ fundamentally from those o f other
traditions, such as the Judeo-Christian, in the absence o f a creator and
lack o f any necessity for a divine w ill or benevolent intelligence to
ordain the act o f creation. Consequently, Chinese cosmogonic myths
are not marked by the seal o f authority within a monolithic religiocul-
tural system, such as is the function o f the account in Genesis, which
serves as the authorized version o f the origin o f the world in the Judeo-
Christian tradition. Rather than one authorized version in the Chinese
tradition, there are several accounts o f the creation o f the world and o f
human beings. G. E. R. Lloyd has observed o f ancient Greek cosmol
ogy, “There is no such thing as the cosmological model, the cosmolog
ical theory, o f the Greeks” (1975, 205). Thus Lloyd speaks o f “Greek
cosmologies” in the plural. Similarly, it is more accurate to discuss the
pluralism o f Chinese cosmological conceptions. This point is important
for the Sinological debate on ancient Chinese cosmology, for many
scholars have asserted that the cosmological tradition in ancient China
is negligible, or even nonexistent, as N. J. Girardot amply demonstrates
in his seminal article on this subject, “The Problem o f Creation M ythol
ogy in the Study o f Chinese Religion” (1976,289-318). Exceptions to this
“benign neglect” in Sinology are the scholars Wolfram Eberhard, Derk
Bodde, Eduard Erkes, M ax Kaltenmark, and K. C . Chang.
Origins ~ 25
upper world and an earthly world are described, little mention is made
o f an underworld. None o f the accounts gives a detailed description o f
the geography o f the world o f the dead, or the underworld, such as that
ruled by Hades, brother o f the sky god, Zeus, in Greek myth, or in
Mesopotamian myth.
changes o f Y in and Yang which wrought the cosmos, and the nonary
system in the nine layers o f sky and gates, besides the numerological
significance o f the number eight. The number nine is endowed with
special meaning in the early culture o f Ch’u, as is evidenced by several
titles in Songs o f C h ’u, such as “Nine Songs,” “Nine Declarations,”
“Nine Arguments,” and others (Hawkes 1985, 8). The number nine gen
erally has a divine connotation, being especially linked to the sacred
sphere o f the sky. The number eight has distinctively Chinese connota
tions o f cosmic harmony and felicity. The number three is o f world
wide significance as a mystical or magical figure, and the number two,
especially in its dualistic aspect, is distinctively Chinese.
The cosmological account ends with a description o f the ordered
movement o f the sun, moon, and stars, “Dipper’s Ladle,” “the C ord,”
and “the twelve divisions.” It is clear that although there is an interest
in astronomy, the concept o f heliocentricity does not play a significant
role. Moreover, the world presented in this picture is conceived o f as
the only world, one that is not part o f a limitless universe. Thus the nar
rative tells o f the “ends” o f the sky and their “corners and edges,” which
are observable and comprehensible to the human mind.
The second reading is from a newly discovered text, believed to
date from the fourth century B.C. and from the same region o f Ch’u as
the first text. It was excavated from a Han tomb in C h’angsha, Hunan,
the area o f ancient C h’u culture (Jan Yiin-hua 1978, 75). The narrative
describes the chaos prior to creation, when everything was a wet, dark,
empty space. Its concept o f unity before creation, “all was one,” strik
ingly resembles the modern cosmogonic concept o f “singularity” at the
moment o f creation.
The third and fourth readings are from the Huai-nan Tzu, an eclec
tic work compiled in the early Han period, circa 139 B.C., by Liu An,
king o f Huai-nan (ca. 170-122 B.C.) and by members o f his coterie o f
scholars and thinkers, mainly o f the Taoist persuasion. The first o f the
two citations is from chapter 7, “Divine Gods.” The second is from
chapter 3, “The System o f the Heavens.” To some extent, the narratives
provide some kind o f answer to questions posed in “Questions o f
Heaven,” but, together with the second reading, they present a cosmo
gonic picture that is quite different. Their mode o f expression is discur
sive rather than interrogative. They also reveal an impetus toward nat
ural philosophy in their conceptualization o f the world at the moment
o f creation. Although in method and style the Huai-nan Tzu does not
approach the Latin classic D e rerum natura o f Lucretius (ca. 94-55 B.C.),
Origins — 29
a near contemporary o f Liu An, there is an affinity between the two cos
mogonic accounts in Huai-nan Tzu and the works o f Roman nature phi
losophers in their reference to the theory o f the elements, lightness,
density, vapor, and so forth.
Both passages from Huai-nan Tzu develop the dualistic concept o f
Y in and Yang in “ Questions o f Heaven.” The first citation narrates that
there were “tw o gods born out o f chaos,” w ho divided into Y in and
Yang and became “the hard and the soft” ; the second citation elaborates
this dualism. This dualism lends itself to Levi-Straussian analysis, but
i f one looks beyond his theory o f binary opposites and mediation, the
use o f abstract concepts in this dualism suggests that they may be the
vestige o f a much older mythological paradigm that was then rational
ized and diminished. It is useful to hypothesize that the Chinese dual
ism o f Y in and Yang and o f the two primeval gods may be the rational
ized remnant o f the sort o f m otif to be found in Akkadian cosmogony,
the mythic narrative o f which was preserved in seventh-century B.C.
texts but probably is much older. The Akkadian myth relates that in the
beginning there were Apsu and Tiamat, male sweet water and female
salt water; from them another male-female pair (possibly signifying
silt), Lahmu and Lahamu, were born, and from them Anshar and Kishar
(aspects o f the horizon), w ho produced the sky god, w ho in turn pro
duced Ea, the earth god (Kirk 1970,121).
The second o f the Huai-nan Tzu readings (the fourth reading) differs
from the other cosmogonic accounts in its introduction o f the mechanis
tic concept o f a primal generator, the Tao, or Way. Though both extracts
narrate the birth o f all living things, the first specifies that “the pure
vapor became humans,” but the second integrates human beings into a
generalized idea o f all creatures, “the ten thousand things in nature.”
The fifth reading is a late mythological account from Historical
Records of the Three Sovereign Divinities and the Five Gods by Hsu Cheng,
o f the third century. The w ork now exists only in fragments preserved
in later works. The text is important, even though it is late in the myth
ological tradition, because it has acquired the status o f orthodoxy as the
most generally accepted account o f the cosmogonic myth in China.
Remi Mathieu suggests that the myth may derive from Tibetan peoples
o f the southwestern region, where the author, Hsu Cheng, lived in the
era o f the Three Kingdoms (1989, 29 n. 1). The text differs radically
from the other accounts in its use o f the cosmic egg as an image o f pri
mordial chaos. But the presentation o f the egg m otif through a simile
rather than a statement o f truth or fact, in the mythic mode, betrays the
30 «—> Chinese Mythology
lateness and literariness o f its composition. The text also differs from
those preceding in its presentation o f an anthropogonic account o f cos
mogony, in which P’an Ku, Coiled Antiquity, is the firstborn semi
divine human w ho takes his place in the universe as an equal in the
cosmic trinity o f Heaven, earth, and human. This tripartition was not
new with Hsu Cheng but was derived from early Han philosophers
such as Tung Chung-shu (?i79-?io4 B.C.), a Confucian scholar and put
ative author o f the sociopolitical philosophical w ork Heavy Dew of the
Spring and Autumn Annals. His school o f thought sought to prove a line
o f reciprocal interaction among Heaven, earth, and human, the reign
ing Han emperor mediating among the three spheres as the archetypal
human (Fung Yu-lan 1953, 2:16-87).
A further difference between the organismic cosmogony o f “Ques
tions o f Heaven” and the Huai-nan Tzu and the anthropogonic account
o f the P’an Ku myth is the clear, but as yet unelaborated, narrative o f the
myth o f the separation o f sky and earth. It relates that at creation the
sky rose higher with the light elements and the earth sank deeper with
the heavy matter, and in the mesocosm between sky and earth P’an Ku
was born. This myth o f the separation between sky and earth receives
a more elaborate treatment in narratives presented in chapter 4, from
much earlier sources o f the late Chou era.
The last reading tells o f the transformation o f P’an Ku’s body into
the various parts o f the universe. It is from A Chronicle o f the Five Cycles
o f Time, a w ork also attributed to Hsu Cheng, o f the third century a .d .,
which again is extant only in fragments. The narrative presents the
m otif o f the cosmological human body, in which the microcosm o f the
human body o f P’an Ku becomes the macrocosm o f the physical world.
It is important to note that this is also a myth o f the dying god: P’an Ku
is the firstborn, not quite a god nor yet fully human; he is a giant who
shares the cosmic powers o f Heaven and earth. He is also the first dead,
and the creation o f the world results from the metamorphosis o f his
dying body. In a recent study, Bruce Lincoln compiled a list o f the char
acteristics o f the Indo-European myths o f the cosmological human
body, epitomized by the Norse creation story o f Ymir. The features o f
the P’an Ku myth fit Lincoln’s general pattern for the most part. The
most striking similarities occur in what Lincoln terms homologic allo-
forms, or homologic set. That is, the physical world was made from
various parts o f the body, natural forms corresponding in a logical way
to bodily parts (Lincoln 1986, 2-3, 5-20). In the P’an Ku myth there are
sixteen such alloforms, as against nine typical Indo-European alio-
Origins ~ 31
forms, and they conform in such aspects as flesh becoming earth, hair
becoming plants, and so forth. The P’an Ku narrative is expressed with
lyricism and elegance. Just as the simile o f the chicken’s egg for primor
dial chaos denoted a literary rather than an authentically mythological
genesis, so too does the P’an Ku transformation narrative. It is possible
to conclude that this myth did not originate from the native Chinese
tradition, for two reasons. First, it does not appear in the early mythic
texts o f classical China but emerges only in late sources o f the third cen
tury a . d . Second, the myth shares so many features w ith the Indo-
European mythologem o f the cosmological human body that it seems
likely that it was borrowed at a late date, perhaps through Hsu Cheng
himself, from Central Asian sources reaching China. The specialist
Jaan Puhvel suggests that it is traceable to the traditions o f the ancient
Near East (1987, 285).
Long ago, before Heaven and earth existed, there were only images
but no forms, and all was dark and obscure, a vast desolation, a misty
expanse, and nothing knew where its own portals were. There were
two gods born out o f chaos who wove the skies and designed the
earth. So profound were they that no one knew their lowest deeps,
and so exalted were they that no one knew where they came to rest.
Then they divided into Yin and Yang and separated into the Eight
Poles. The hard and the soft formed, and the myriad living things
took shape. The dense cloudy vapor became insects, and the pure
vapor became humans. (Huai-nan Tzu, Ching shen, SPPY 7.1a)
Before Heaven and earth had formed, there was a shapeless, dark
expanse, a gaping mass; thus it was called the Great Glory. The Way
[Tao] first came from vacant space, vacant space gave birth to the cos
mos, the cosmos gave birth to the Breath, and the Breath had its lim
its. The limpid light [Yang] rose mistily and became the sky, the
heavy turbidness congealed and became earth. Because rare limpid
ity easily condensed but heavy turbidity congealed with difficulty,
the sky was the first to form, and earth settled into shape later. The
double essence o f sky and earth became Yin and Yang, the complex
essence o f Yin and Yang became the four seasons, the diffuse essence
o f the four seasons became the ten thousand things in nature. The
hot Breath o f concentrated Yang gave birth to fire, the essence o f the
fiery Breath became the sun, and the cold Breath o f concentrated Yin
became water, the essence o f watery Breath became the moon. The
excess from sun and moon became the stars. The sky received the
sun, moon, and stars, and the earth received rivers and rain water,
and dust and silt. . ..
Heaven is round; earth is square. (Huai-nan Tzu, T'ien wen, SPPY
3-ia, 3-9b)
Heaven and earth were in chaos like a chicken’s egg, and P’an Ku was
born in the middle o f it. In eighteen thousand years Heaven and
earth opened and unfolded. The limpid that was Yang became the
heavens, the turbid that was Yin became the earth. P’an Ku lived
within them, and in one day he went through nine transformations,
becoming more divine than Heaven and wiser than earth. Each day
the heavens rose ten feet higher, each day the earth grew ten feet
thicker, and each day P’an Ku grew ten feet taller. And so it was that
in eighteen thousand years the heavens reached their fullest height,
earth reached its lowest depth, and P’an Ku became fully grown.
Origins ~ 33
When the firstborn, P’an Ku, was approaching death, his body was
transformed. His breath became the wind and clouds; his voice
became peals o f thunder. His left eye became the sun; his right eye
became 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 peo
ple. (Wu yun li-nien chi, cited in Yi shih, PCTP 1.2a)
arcane primal myth develops into a specific theme, from creative power
to the act o f creation, and then further evolves, or degenerates, into a
myth that contradicts the original intent and meaning o f the early
mythic expression.
How was Nii Kua’s body made? How did she ascend when she rose
on high and became empress? (Ch’u Tz’u, T ’ien wen, SPTK 3.20b)
People say that when Heaven and earth opened and unfolded, hu
mankind did not yet exist. Nii Kua kneaded yellow earth and fash
ioned human beings. Though she worked feverishly, she did not have
enough strength to finish her task, so she drew her cord in a furrow
through the mud and lifted it out to make human beings. That is
why rich aristocrats are the human beings made from yellow earth,
while ordinary poor commoners are the human beings made from
the cord’s furrow. (Feng su t’ung-yi, CFCE 1.83)
Long ago, when the world first began, there were two people, Nii
Kua and her older brother. They lived on Mount K ’un-lun. And
there were not yet any ordinary people in the world. They talked
about becoming husband and wife, but they felt ashamed. So the
brother at once went with his sister up Mount K ’un-lun and made
this prayer:
Oh Heaven, if Thou wouldst send us two forth as man and
wife,
then make all the misty vapor gather.
If not, then make all the misty vapor disperse.
At this, the misty vapor immediately gathered. When the sister
became intimate with her brother, they plaited some grass to make
a fan to screen their faces. Even today, when a man takes a wife, they
hold a fan, which is a symbol o f what happened long ago. (Tu yi chih,
T S C C 3.51)
Sunrise, Sunset
Chinese solar m ythology is a very large topic and has been the sub
ject o f a specialist study by Henri Maspero (1924), no doubt inspired by
the nineteenth-century nature mythologists, w ho were mainly con
cerned with origins in myth and proposed different single natural phe
nomena as the most important for the study o f primitive man (de Vries
1984,31-40). Since Maspero’s monograph, no Sinologist or specialist in
Figure i. T h e w orld-tree, Leaning M ulberry, w ith the cro w in the rising sun and
other suns. Funerary C h ’u silk painting, tomb o f the w ife o f the M arquis o fT a i,
M a -w a n g-tu i, C h ’ang-sha, H unan province, circa 190 B.C. W en-w u, The West
ern Han Silk Painting, 1972, detail from Fig. 1.
Origins ~ 37
myth has dealt fully with Chinese solar myths using recent findings in
Sinology and comparative mythology. Ho Hsin’s monograph is based
on the outdated theory o f M ax Muller and employs unscientific pho
nology to argue for the primacy o f a sun god and the worship o f solar
deities in archaic China (1986).
The three readings on solar myth which follow contain several pri
mary myths. Though they do not belong to cosmogonic myths per se,
they are o f major importance in terms o f cosmological narratives, and
so they are included here. Various solar motifs are examined in later
chapters.
The first two readings here are from The Classic of Mountains and
Seas. This is an anonymous work o f mixed authorship and dating, com
piled in the late Chou and the Han periods from earlier source material.
After the Ch’u “Questions o f Heaven,” this text is the second most val
uable source o f classical myths. Remi Mathieu, w ho has made a special
study o f this classic, dates its first five chapters to the third century B. C. ,
chapters 6-13 to the second century B. C. , and the last five chapters to the
Latter Han period, circa the first century a . d . (1983, 1: c-ciii). The text
o f the classic itself contains two valuable indicators o f its dating. At the
end o f chapters 9 and 13 appear the official signatories, Wang, Kung,
and Hsiu, with the statement that they checked the material, that is,
chapters 1-13, in the year 6 B. C. That the signatories read this part in the
late first century B. C. means that the material clearly dates from an ear
lier period (Yuan K ’o 1980.1,266,334). The presence o f these official edi
tors may also indicate that the material was censored.
The classic differs from “Questions o f Heaven” in that it is not so
culture bound and does not reflect a single belief system or cultural tra
dition but seeks to explore the known and imagined world o f the clas
sical era in terms o f its mythology, geography, ethnography, medicine,
and natural history. In form, style, and content it may be characterized
as an uneasy melange o f several styles — a snatch o f O vid’s Metamorph
oses, a w h iff o f Lucretius’s De rerum natura, and an echo o f Ctesias’s fabled
descriptions o f India. Compiled in an age o f travel and exploration and
appearing at the dawn o f Chinese geographical science, this repository
o f myth and fable clearly does not seek to convey scientifically verifiable
information about Chinese regions and foreign lands and peoples;
rather, it aims to amuse, delight, shock, horrify, and at times inform its
readers. Its first five chapters, especially, advise on remedies for numer
ous and varied ailments (Mathieu’s list o f 69 ailments, 1983, 2:1046-48).
Although the text was finally compiled in the Han period, the classic
38 ~ Chinese Mythology
Beside T ’ang Valley there is the Leaning Mulberry, where the ten
suns are bathed—it is north o f the Land o f Black-Teeth — and where
they stay in the river. There is a large tree, and nine suns stay on its
lower branches while one sun stays on its top branch. (Shan hai ching,
Hai wai tung ching, SPPY 9-3a-b)
The sun rises from Yang [Sunny] Valley and is bathed in Hsien Pool,
and when it brushes past Leaning Mulberry it is called bright dawn.
When it climbs Leaning Mulberry and is about to begin its journey,
it is called daybreak. When it reaches Winding Riverbank, it is called
daylight. When it reaches Ts’eng-ch’iian, it is called breakfast. When
it reaches Mulberry Wilds, it is called supper. When it reaches Pivot
Sunshine, it is called angle center. When it reaches K’un-wu, it is
called perfect center. When it reaches Mount Niao-tz’u, it is called
small return. When it reaches Sad Valley, it is called evening meal.
When it reaches Nii-chi it is called great return. When it reaches
Yuan Yu, it is called high pestle. When it reaches Lan-shih it is called
low pestle. When it reaches Sad Springs and stops the Woman and
rests its six dragons with stunted horns, it is called tethered carriage.
When it reaches Yii Yuan, it is called yellow gloaming. When it
reaches Meng Valley, it is called fixed dusk. When the sun rises from
Yii Yuan’s riverbank and brightens the slopes o f Meng Valley, and
then passes over the Nine Provinces and the Seven Halts, it has cov
ered 517,309 leagues. (Huai-nan Tzu, T ’ien wen, SPPY 3.9b-iob)
V
Culture
Bearers
40
Culture Bearers — 41
being and nourishment o f humans and to the great care they take to
teach and show humans how to perform the cultural act, such as sow
ing, weaving, hunting, or producing fire. Thus the myths deal not so
much with the first plant or the first animal as with the first teachings
o f the techniques and arts o f culture and civilization. This is not to say
that the gods are not jealous o f their gifts, as Prometheus discovered
when he stole the sacred fire, or Tantalus when he stole the food o f the
gods, the food o f immortality, and as Kun in the Chinese tradition
knew when he stole the divine soil from God in order to save humans
from the flood. Similarly, the beneficent role o f the gods does not ex
clude their visiting upon humans disaster, plague, and war. This jeal
ous, punitive aspect o f divinity is examined in chapter 3.
In his recent study o f mythological motifs, Bruce Lincoln focuses
on the nature and origin o f food, for which he has devised the neolo
gism sitiogony, from the Greek sitos ‘food, bread, grain’ (1986, 65). Cer
tainly, in Chinese m ythology the origin and production o f food and
the cultivation, reclamation, and nurture o f the land are major mytho
logical themes. Another theme having to do with the physical well
being o f humans is the search for the drug o f immortality and the art
o f healing. But the dominant m otif is water, its management and con
trol, its resources, its gods, its abundance and scarcity, and its power for
good or evil. It is with this m otif that the readings begin.
and folklore compiled by Kan Pao in the fourth century a . d . Its narra
tives incorporate supernatural phenomena, such as portents, the links
among gods, humans, and spirits, strange creatures, metamorphoses,
magic, miracles, and divine retribution (K. S. Y. Kao 1985, 4-11). A l
though the text is o f late provenance, it contains a great deal o f pre-Han
mythological material. This reading illustrates how a pristine myth,
such as that o f Chii Ling, is reworked to suit the postclassical idiom,
with its appeal to tourism and its antiquarian interest in ancient mon
uments. Both texts exemplify the mythological tenet that although
mythologists rely on the earliest texts for source material, they must
also explore the vast range o f later eclectic writings in order to discover
vestiges o f myth which might otherwise be overlooked. In the case o f
the Chii Ling myth, although it has been overlaid w ith philosophical
or antiquarian elements, it can be stripped down to its original base o f
the river god utilizing his primeval force for the benefit o f humankind.
There was one Chu Ling. He chanced to obtain the Way o f Divine
Prime Cause, and he could create mountains and rivers and send
forth rivers and water courses. (Tun chia k’ai shan t’u, Shuo-fu 5/43.ia)
The hills o f the two Hua mountains were originally one mountain
that looked down on the river. As the river passed it, it took a wind
ing course. The river god, Chii Ling, split the mountaintop open
with his hand and rent it below with his foot, dividing it in two
down the middle in order to ease the river’s flow. Today one may
view the print o f his hand on Hua Peak—the outline o f his fingers
and palm is still there. His footprint is on Shou-yang Mountain and
still survives to this day. (Sou shen chi, T S C C 13.87)
Ten thousand miles from the capital o f the Shen-mi Kingdom there
is Sui-ming Country. It knows nothing o f the four seasons, or day
or night. Its people never die. When they get tired o f life, they live in
Heaven. There is a fire tree called Sui-wood. Twisted and gnarled, it
spreads over ten thousand hectares. Clouds and fog drift out o f it. If
twigs broke from it and rubbed together, they produced fire. After
44 ~ Chinese Mythology
many generations there was a sage who traveled beyond the sun and
moon. He provided food to save all living creatures. He came to Nan-
ch’ui. He looked at the tree and saw a bird like an owl, and when it
pecked the tree with its beak, fire shot out in a blaze. The sage real
ized what had happened, so he took a small twig to drill for fire, and
he was called Sui-jen, the Fire Driller. This was before Pao-hsi, and
roasted food cooked by a fire came from that. (T ’ai-p’ing yii-lan, citing
Shih yi chi, SPTK 869.2a)
Long ago, when Pao Hsi ruled the world, he looked upward and
meditated on the images in the skies, and he looked downward and
meditated on the patterns on the ground. He meditated on the mark
ings o f birds and beasts and the favorable lie o f the land. He drew
directly from his own person, and indirectly he drew upon external
objects. And so it was that he created the Eight Trigrams in order to
communicate with the virtue o f divine intelligence and to classify
the phenomena o f all living things. He made knotted cord for nets
and fishing pots in hunting and fishing. He probably took these
ideas from the hexagram “Clinging.” (Chou yi, Hsi tz’u, 2, Chuan,
SPPY 8.3a)
tune. Someone from Ch’u state composed the “Lao shang,” based on
the “Lao shang” tune. They are divine pieces o f music, a delight to lis
ten to. Some people say that the “Fu Hsi” and the “Chia pien” are
divine song tunes. (Wang Y i’s commentary on Ch’u Tz’u, Ta chao,
SPTK 10.6a)
T ’ai Hao imitated the spider and wove nets. (Pao-p’u Tzu, Neip’ien, Tui
su, SPTK 3.5a)
c d
Figure 2. a, the Farmer God, Shen Nung, with his plow; inscription reads, “The
Farmer God taught agriculture based on land use; he opened up the land and
planted millet to encourage the myriad people”; b, the Yellow Emperor, Huang
Ti; inscription reads, “The Yellow Emperor created and changed a great many
things; he invented weapons and the wells and fields system; he devised upper
and lower garments, and established palaces and houses”; c, the God Chuan
Hsu; inscription reads, “The God Chuan Hsu, Kao Yang, was the grandson of
the Yellow Emperor and the son of Ch’ang Yi”; d, the God K’u, Ti K’u; inscrip
tion reads, “The God K’u, Kao Hsin, was the great grandson of the Yellow
Emperor.” Funerary stone bas-relief, Wu Liang Shrine, Chia-hsiang county,
Shantung province, a .d . 151. From Feng and Feng, Research on Stone Carving
(1821) 1934, chap. 3.
Culture Bearers —■ 49
In ancient times the people ate plants and drank from rivers, and they
picked fruit from trees and ate the flesh o f shellfish or crickets. At
that time there was much suffering due to illness and injury from poi
soning. So the Farmer God taught the people for the first time how
to sow the five grains and about the quality o f the soil—which soils
were prone to be arid or wetland, which were fertile or barren, which
were highland and lowland. He tasted the flavor o f every single plant
and determined which rivers and springs were sweet or brackish,
and he let the people know how to avoid certain things. At that time
he himself suffered from poisoning seventy times in one day. (Huai-
nan Tzu, Hsiu wu, SPPY 19.1a)
After the Pao Hsi clan had died out, the clan o f the Farmer God
emerged. He split wood to make a plowshare and molded wood to
make a plowhandle. With the plow he dug the soil and taught the
benefit o f this to the world. He probably took this from the hexa
gram “Advantage.” (Chou yi, Hsi tz’u, 2, Chuan, SPPY 8.3a)
On Holy Metal Ridge in the Central Plain there still exists the tripod
the Farmer God used for thrashing herbs. On Ch’eng-yang Moun
tain is the spot where the Farmer God thrashed the herbs. One name
for it is Farmer God Plain, or Thrashed Herbs Mountain. On its
summit is Purple Yang Lookout. Tradition has it that the Farmer
God distinguished every single herb, and for over a thousand years
one o f these herbs, Dragon Brain, still grows there. (Shu yi chi,
HWTS 2.5a)
Figure 3. The God o f War, Ch’ih Yu, inventor of metal weapons. Funerary stone
bas-relief, Wu Liang Shrine, Chia-hsiang county, Shantung province, a .d . 151.
From Feng and Feng, Research on Stone Carving (1821) 1934, chap. 3.
Then Ko-lu Mountain burst open and there came out water, and
metal followed it. Ch’ih Yu gathered it up and fashioned it into
swords, armor, spears, and lances. That year he brought under his
power nine lords. Then Yung-hu Mountain burst open and there
came out water, and metal followed it. Ch’ih Yu gathered it up and
fashioned it into the lances o f Yung-hu and the dagger-axes ofjui.
That year he brought under his power twelve lords. (Kuan Tzu, Ti
shu, SPTK 23.1b)
When Hsien-yuan first came to the throne, there were Ch’ih Yu and
his brothers, seventy-two in all. They had bronze heads and iron
brows, and they ate stone pebbles. Hsien-yuan executed them in the
wilderness o f Cho-lu. Ch’ih Yu was able to stir up a dense fog. Cho-
lu is now in Chi Province. The spirit o f Ch’ih Yu is there. People say
that it has a human body, the hooves o f an ox, four eyes, and six
hands. Recently the people o f Chi Province unearthed a skull that
looked like bronze and iron, and it turned out to be the bones of
Ch’ih Yu. And now there is Ch’ih Yu’s tooth, which is two inches
long and so hard that it is unbreakable. During the Ch’in and Han
eras it was said that Ch’ih Yu’s ears and temples were like swords and
spears and that his head had horns. It was also said that when he
fought against Hsien-yuan, he butted people with his horns and no
one could stand up to him. Nowadays there is a piece o f music from
Chi Province called “Ch’ih Yu’s Game.” The local people form into
twos and threes and wear horns on their heads and butt each other.
The horn-butting game that was devised in the Han period was
probably based on this tradition. In the villages and in the country
side o f T ’ai-yuan, horned heads do not feature in the sacrifice to
Ch’ih Yu’s spirit. In modern Chi Province there is the Ch’ih Yu
River, which is in the wilderness o f Cho-lu. In the reign o f Emperor
Wu o f the Han, Ch’ih Yu’s spirit was visible in daylight. He had tor
toise feet and a serpent’s head. When [textual lacuna] a plague broke
Culture Bearers ~ 53
pheasant. Yet these are not emblematic o f T i K ’u himself but are part o f
the divine sphere. Here they function as divine messengers visiting a
lesser god as a mark o f divine favor. This reading underscores T i Ku’s
function as a divine king endowed with the harmonious gift o f power.
Thus the birds o f paradise serve as a m otif o f harmony in the idealized
image o f T i K ’u’s divine rule.
Ti K’u commanded Hsien Hei to compose the music and songs “Nine
Summons,” “Six Ranks,” and “Six Blooms.” He ordered Yu Ch’ui to
create the small war drum, drum, bell, chime, panpipe, pipe, clay
ocarina, flute, hand drum, and hammer bell. Ti K’u then ordered peo
ple to play them. Some drummed on the drum and war drum, some
blew the panpipe, some performed on the pipe and flute so that they
made the phoenix and sky-pheasant dance to it. Ti K ’u was very
pleased, and serene in his regal power. (Lii-shih ch’un-ch’iu, Ku yueh,
SPTK 5.9b)
the family line descended from the god. The narrative fits the pattern
o f the first-finder and links this m otif to two foundation myths, the
founding o f the Chou and the founding o f the first Chou sacrifice to
the god o f agriculture.
The second reading is a prose account o f the Hou C hi myth from
the “Basic Annals o f the Chou” by Ssu-ma Ch’ien. Although it was
written some five centuries after the poem’s compilation date, it follows
the early version with remarkable fidelity. But halfway through his nar
rative the Han historian grafts on another, late mythologem o f Yao and
Shun derived from The Classic o f History. According to the author o f The
Classic o f History, time began with Yao. Thus the primeval gods o f the
traditional pantheon are subsumed under the figures o f Yao and his suc
cessor Shun and made to serve subordinate roles. (The mythical figure
Ch’ih Yu is the only exception to this rule.) B y the Han era, The Classic
of History had acquired the status o f orthodoxy, constituting the true
version o f historical events and also the ideal model for the writing o f
ancient history. M any writers, including Ssu-ma C h’ien, therefore,
sought to give the subjects o f their biographies the seal o f approval by
linking them to the sage-rulers o f the Golden A ge o f Antiquity, Yao,
Shun, and Yii. Consequently in Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s biography o f Hou
Chi, the primeval god is subordinated to Yao and Shun and is demoted
from god o f agriculture to a mere minister o f agriculture in their admin
istration. It is possible to hypothesize that in using the paradigm o f Yao
and Shun in The Classic o f History, Ssu-ma Ch’ien intended to demon
strate that the gods o f the Chou were desacralized when the sociopolit
ical structure o f the Chou dynasty had been dismantled by the Ch’in
and Han conquerors.
The designation Hou in the name Hou C hi is the subject o f consid
erable debate. Many Sinologists translate it as the title o f a male deity,
rendering it as Lord Millet. Yet the title is o f ambiguous gender. The
deity Hou t’u, for example, is rendered as Lord Earth or as Empress
Earth or Earth Goddess. The rendition o f H ou-t’u as a female sovereign
divinity is followed by Edouard Chavannes (1910, 521-25) and more
recently by Remi Mathieu (1989,195). If the title o f Hou C hi were ren
dered in the feminine, as Empress Millet or Goddess Millet, this myth
ical figure would find a parallel w ith the general pattern o f female
cereal deities, o f w hom Demeter (Ceres) is the foremost example. In the
readings below the name Hou C hi is rendered as Lord Millet.
56 ~ Chinese Mythology
at plowing and farming. He would study the proper use o f the land,
and where valleys were suitable he planted and he reaped. Everyone
went out and imitated him. Emperor Yao heard about him and pro
moted Ch’i to master o f agriculture, so that the whole world would
benefit from him and have the same success. Emperor Shun said,
“Ch’i, the black-haired people are beginning to starve. You are the
Lord Millet [Hou Chi]. Plant the seedlings in equal measure through
out the hundred valleys.” He gave Ch’i the fiefdom o f T ’ai with the
title o f Lord Millet, and he took another surname from the Chi clan.
(Shih chi, Chou pen chi, SPPY 4.ia-b)
The ancestor o f the Ch’in people was a descendant o f the god Chuan
Hsu. His granddaughter was called Nii-hsiu. When Nii-hsiu was
weaving, a black bird dropped an egg. Nu-hsiu swallowed it and
gave birth to Ta Yeh. Ta Yeh took the daughter o f the Shao-tien as his
wife, and her name was Nii-hua. Nii-hua gave birth to Ta Fei, who
controlled the inundated earth with Yu. Once he had completed this
work . . . he aided Shun in taming birds and beasts. A great number
o f birds and beasts were tamed, and that is why he became known as
Po Yi. (Shih chi, Ch’in pen chi, SPPY 5.ia-b)
Emperor [Shun] said, “Who will control the plants and trees, the
birds in the highlands and lowlands?” Everyone said, “Y i is the one.”
The Emperor said, “Excellent! Now, Yi, you will do the work that
has been giving me cause for concern.” Y i bowed and kowtowed,
and he assigned tasks to Scarlet, Tiger, Bear, and P’i-bear. The em
peror said, “Excellent! Set out, then. They will go with you.” (Shang
shu, Shun tien, SPPY 3.i4b-i5a)
6o — Chinese Mythology
Shih-men was the disciple o f Hsiao-fu. He, too, had the ability to
create fire. He ate from peach and plum trees and flowers. He became
the dragon trainer o f K ’ung Chia o f the Hsia. But K’ung Chia could
not make Shih-men abide by his wishes, so he murdered him and
buried him in outlying fields. One morning a storm blew up there
and when it was over the mountain forest was completely on fire.
K’ung Chia offered sacrifice to Shih-men and prayed to him, but on
the way home he fell down dead. (Lieh hsien chuan, T S C C 1.12)
The text states that the Shu kings were descended from the god Ts’an
Ts’ung, the bringer o f sericulture. Yuan K ’o proposes the theory that
the ancient graph for Shu is similar to the graph for silkworm (1980.2,
283). Such a cultural origin has yet to be proved by archeological and
historical evidence. The second reading, from the same work, affirms
this descent with some added ethnographic data. The third reading is
cited in the compendium A Continuation of "The Origin o f Things” by the
T ’ang author Feng Chien, which has survived only in fragments cited
in various works. The citation is from Supplementary Material to “Biogra
phies of Immortals” and to “Biographies of Holy Immortals” by the Former
Shu author Tu Kuang-t’ing o f the tenth century a .d . Biographies of
Immortab is attributed to Liu Hsiang (79-8 B.C.) o f the Former Han
period, and Biographies o f Holy Immortals is attributed to Ko Hung (a . d .
254~334)- ^ is clear that Tu Kuang-t’ing has added fictional color to the
earlier myth.
The fourth reading is from an anonymous popular w ork o f the
Yuan dynasty, edited circa a . d . 1592, A Compendium o f Information on the
Gods of the Three Religions (that is, Confucianism, Taoism, and Bud
dhism). This late account o f the god Ts’an Ts’ung adds several motifs:
color symbolism (green being the color o f spring silkworms), the god
teaching humans the technique o f sericulture, miraculous cure, local
worship, and touristic data.
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 Yii Fu. Each o f these three eras lasted sev
eral hundred years. In each era they became gods and did not die.
Their people followed their kings, taking another shape and vanish
ing like them. (T ’ai-p’ing yti-lan, citing Shu wangpen chi, SPTK 888.2b)
The king o f Shu’s ancestor was called Ts’an Ts’ung. The first ances
tors o f Shu with the title o f king were Ts’an Ts’ung, Po Huo, and Yu
Fu. In the K’ai-ming reign people used to pile their hair up, and they
wore their collar on the left. They did not understand writing and
they did not yet have ritual or music. From the K’ai-ming reign back
to Ts’an Ts’ung was an aeon o f 34,000 years. (Ch’uan Shang ku, Ch’uan
Han wen, citing Shu wangpen chi, 53.5a)
golden silkworms and gave the people one silkworm each. The silk
worms the people raised always multiplied prolifically, so that in the
end they could return the gift to the king. When he went on a royal
tour o f his realm, wherever he stopped on his journey, the people
created a market town. Because o f his legacy people in Shu hold a
silkworm market every spring. (Hsu shih shih, citing Hsieti chuan shift
yi, Shuo-fu 10.4.5a)
century B.C. and M o Tzu o f the fourth century B.C ., one o f whose inven
tions was the kite. B ut the Lieh Tzu, itself o f dubious authenticity, espe
cially cannot be relied on for its dating in this case, for the reason that
none o f the late Chou texts mentions a Master Yen, but they frequently
refer to Ch’iao Ch’ui, Master Shu Pan, M o Tzu, and other ingenious
inventors, both mythical and historical.
This long narrative from the Lieh Tzu contrasts strongly with the
typical mythological narrative o f the late C hou era, which is usually
brief, elliptical, disjointed, and lacking in informative links. The prose
style o f the Lieh Tzu narrative is sophisticated in its portrayal o f the
inventor, its dramatic denouement, and its humorous asides. Its punch
line, moreover, contravenes the norm o f mythic accounts since the
author speaks in the voice o f a modern man o f the post-Han era seek
ing to demythologize the divine nature o f creation: “Such human inge
nuity can be judged to be just as worthy as the Creator!” Master Yen’s
invention itself, a realistic automaton, was a product o f the post-Han
era and may have originated in Central Asia. A s such, the Lieh Tzu text
belongs to legendary rather than mythological literature.
Ti Chun gave birth to Yii Hao, Yu Hao gave birth to Yin Liang, Yin
Liang gave birth to Fan Yii, who was the first to create boats. Fan Yii
gave birth to Hsi Chung, Hsi Chung gave birth to Chi Kuang, and
Chi Kuang was the first to use wood to make carriages. (Shan hai
ching, Hai nei ching, SPPY 18.7a)
Shao Hao gave birth to Pan, and Pan was the first to create bows and
arrows. (Shan hai ching, Hai nei ching, SPPY 18.7a)
Ti Chun gave birth to Yen Lung. It was Yen Lung who created the
lute and the zither. (Shan hai ching, Hai nei ching, SPPY 18.7b)
Ti Chun had eight sons. They were the first to create song and dance.
(Shan hai ching, Hai nei ching, SPPY 18.7b)
Ti Chun gave birth to San Shen [Three-Body], San Shen gave birth
to Y i Chun. Y i Chun was the first to create Ch’iao Ch’ui [Skilled
Artisan], who was the first to bring down to the people here below
the hundred skilled crafts. Hou Chi was the one who sowed the hun
dred grains, and Chi’s grandson was called Shu Chun, who was the
first to make the ox-drawn plow. The Ta Pi Ch’ih Yin were the first
to create a kingdom [kuo]. Yii and Kun were the first to distribute the
land, and to define equally the Nine Provinces. (Shan hai ching, Hai
nei ching, SPPY i8.7b-8a)
3
Saviors
67
68 ~ Chinese Mythology
In remote antiquity, the four poles collapsed. The Nine Regions split
up. Heaven could not cover all things uniformly, and earth could not
carry everything at once. Fires raged fiercely and could not be extin
guished. Water rose in vast floods without abating. Fierce beasts
devoured the people o f Chuan. Violent birds seized the old and weak
in their talons. Then Nii Kua smelted five-color stones to mend the
blue sky. She severed the feet o f a giant sea turtle to support the four
poles and killed a black dragon to save the region o f Chi. And she
piled up the ashes from burned reeds to dam the surging waters. The
blue sky was mended. The four poles were set right. The surging
waters dried up. The region o f Chi was under control. Fierce beasts
died and the people o f Chuan lived. They bore earth’s square area on
their backs and embraced the round sky.. . .
Ever since then, there have been no birds or beasts, no insects or
reptiles, that do not sheathe their claws and fangs and conceal their
poisonous venom, and they no longer have rapacious hearts. When
one considers her achievement, it knows only the bounds o f Ninth
Heaven above and the limits o f Yellow Clod below. She is acclaimed
by later generations, and her brilliant glory sweetly suffuses the
whole world. She rides in a thunder-carriage driving shaft-steeds of
winged dragons and an outer pair o f green hornless dragons. She
bears the emblem o f the Fortune o f Life and Death. Her seat is the
Visionary Chart. Her steeds’ halter is o f yellow cloud; in the front is
72 ~ Chinese Mythology
Hou Chi o f the Chou was named Ch’i, the Abandoned. . . . When
Ch’i was a child, he looked imposing, as if he had the bold spirit o f
a giant. When he went out to play, he liked planting hemp and beans,
and his hemp and beans were very fine. When he became an adult, he
also grew very skilled at plowing and farming. He would study the
proper use o f the land, and where valleys were suitable he planted
and he reaped. Everyone went out and imitated him. Emperor Yao
heard about him and promoted Ch’i to master o f agriculture, so that
the whole world would benefit from him and have the same success.
Emperor Shun said, “Ch’i, the black-haired people are beginning to
starve. You are the Lord Millet [Hou Chi], Plant the seedlings in
equal measure throughout the hundred valleys.” He gave Ch’i the
fiefdom o f T ’ai with the title o f Lord Millet, and he took another sur
name from the Chi clan. (Shih chi, Chou pen chi, SPPY 4.ia-b)
Figures, a, the demigod Yao; inscription reads, “The God Yao, Fang Hsun, was
humane like Heaven itself, and wise like a divine being; to be near him was like
approaching the sun, to look at him was like gazing into clouds”; b, the demi
god Shun; inscription reads, “The God Shun, Chung Hua, plowed beyond
Mount Li; in three years he had developed it”; c, the demigod Yu with his
water-control rod; inscription reads, “Yii of the Hsia was skilled in charting the
earth; he explored water sources and he understood the Yin [cosmic principle];
according to the seasons he constructed high dikes; then he retired and created
the physical punishments”; d, King “Chieh [last ruler] of the Hsia,” holding a
sickle-lance, supported by his two favorites, Wan and Yen. Funerary stone bas-
relief, Wu Liang Shrine, Chia-hsiang county, Shantung province, a .d . 151.
From Feng and Feng, Research on Stone Carving (1821) 1934, chap. 3.
74 ~ Chinese Mythology
Confucian moral principles. B y the early Han period, The Classic o f His
tory, the Analects o f Confucius and his school, and the Mencius came to
form part o f the Confucian canon, and Shun thereby became irrevoc
ably identified as an orthodox Confucian hero.
The four readings in this section recount different aspects o f the
Shun cycle o f myths. They appear in the chronological order o f the dat
ing o f their texts. The first, from “Questions o f Heaven,” refers to the
story o f Shun’s third trial at the hands o f his father, Ku Sou, whose
name means ‘the Blind M an,’ and his half-brother, Hsiang (whose
name, among various meanings, denotes ‘Elephant’). The father’s blind
ness is a mythic m otif indicating his moral darkness. This has a parallel
in some narratives which relate that Shun had double pupils, signifying
acute mental and moral vision. (The narratives o f this and other trials
o f Shun are presented together in chap. 4.) The reference to dog’s mess
in the first reading here denotes a charm against the power o f alcohol.
The second reading is from the Mencius, dating from the fourth cen
tury B.C. It relates two o f the trials o f Shun, in which the hero shows
mercy and filial love in the face o f evil. The third reading, from the post-
Han text Biographies o f Women, briefly mentions the two brides o f Shun
(here he is named Yu Yii). In the earlier narratives these brides, daugh
ters o f Yao, are not named, but latter accounts tended to supply bio
graphical data.
The fourth reading is from Historical Records. Its narrative is based
on the myth o f Shun’s marriage and follows the account o f Shun in The
Classic o f History, in which Shun the demigod is demythologized and
humanized. The narrative tells o f Yao’s mark o f favor in giving his
daughters in marriage to Shun, and it prefigures the account o f Yao’s
choice o f Shun as successor. It is possible to hypothesize that this myth
may be interpreted at one level as a myth o f political intermarriage in
which a ruler’s successor is not his hereditary heir but an outsider w ho
is integrated into the ruler’s family through marriage and entourage
affiliations. The underlying pattern o f this myth may serve the function
o f explaining and transmitting a form o f social structure which may
have existed in prehistoric times.
Shun served his brother, but his brother still wronged him. Why was
his body unharmed after he had bathed in dog’s mess? (Ch’u Tz’u,
T ’ien wen, SPTK 3.20b)
Shun’s parents sent him to repair the shed. Then they took the ladder
away, and the Blind Man set fire to the shed. They sent Shun to
76 ~ Chinese Mythology
dredge the well. They went out after him and covered over the well
and blocked it. Hsiang said, “I was the one who thought up the plot
to kill Shun. His cattle and sheep are for you, Father and Mother, and
also his granary. His spears are for me, as well as his lute and his bow.
His two wives must also take care o f my rooms.” Hsiang entered
Shun’s house and there he found Shun sitting on the bed playing the
lute. Hsiang was ashamed and said, “I was trying to do the best for
you.” Shun said, “I try to do the best for my people. You can help me
in my work o f governing.” (Meng Tzu, SPTK 9-3b-4b)
Yu Yii’s two consorts were the two daughters o f Emperor Yao. The
oldest was O-huang; the next oldest was Nu-ying. (Lieh nil chuan, Yu
Yii erhfei, SPPY i.ia)
Shun’s father, Ku Sou, was blind, and when Shun’s mother died, Ku
Sou [the Blind Man] remarried and Hsiang was born to him. Hsiang
was arrogant. Ku Sou loved his second wife and child and often felt
like killing Shun. . ..
By the time Shun was twenty, he had won a reputation for filial
piety. By the time he was thirty, Emperor Yao was making inquiries
about who might be employed in his administration. The Four Peaks
unanimously recommended Yii Shun as a man who was worth em
ploying. Yao therefore gave his two daughters in marriage to Shun
so that they would look after Shun’s household. He ordered his nine
sons to be his [Shun’s] retainers so that they would look after his pub
lic business. . . . Then Yao presented Shun with fine linen clothes
and a lute, and he had a granary built for him, and he gave him cattle
and sheep. (Shih chi, Wu ti pen chi, SPPY 1.17b, 1.18a, 1.18b)
East o f Scarlet River are the wilds o f Ts’ang-wu where Shun and Shu
Chun are buried. Therefore there are the Wen-pei bird, the Li-yu
bird, the Ch’iu-chiu bird, the Ying-eagle, the Ku-eagle, the Wei-wei
serpent, the bear, the P’i-bear, the elephant, the tiger, the panther, the
wolf, and the Shih-jou beast. (Shan hai ching, Ta huang nan ching,
SPPY is.ia-b)
annihilate the world. The first reading, from The Classic o f Mountains
and Seas, relates that Y i was given a sacred bow and arrows by the god
T i Chun to shoot the suns down. T i Chun ordered Y i to rescue humans
from disaster. Thus T i Chun is connected with this nexus o f solar
myths, as he is through his consort, Hsi-Ho, mother o f the suns.
The second reading, from Huai-nan Tzu, gives a slightly different
version o f this myth. Here Y i is a minister under the demigod Yao, w ho
orders him to kill six monsters and to shoot down the ten suns. For this
act Yao is rewarded w ith the title o f Son o f Heaven, or supreme ruler.
Other versions state that it was Yao himself, not Y i, w ho shot the suns
(Wang Ch’ung, Disquisitions, SPTK 11.15b). The Yao tradition did not,
however, survive in mythography, and it was Y i the Archer w ho came
to be identified with the act o f deliverance.
Despite the profound significance o f the myth, and although nearly
all the Chou texts recite it— for example, “Questions o f Heaven,” Ana
lects, Mencius, Chuang Tzu, Kuan Tzu, Mo Tzu, Hsun Tzu, Han Fei Tzu,
and Annals o f Master Lii — the Y i solar myth achieved far less importance
in the continuum o f the mythological tradition than the comparable
myth o f Yu controlling the flood. Perhaps this is partly because, in
terms o f diurnal reality, the myth o f the flood and its control was more
nearly relevant to the lives o f the people than the less than real myth o f
the unnatural phenomenon o f solar disaster. Another factor in this
question o f dominant motifs is the presentation o f Y i the Archer in the
totality o f classical mythic narratives. Although in the solar myth he is
portrayed positively as a hero, in others, such as the story o f his attempt
to usurp the Hsia government, he is projected negatively as a degener
ate villain. This ambiguity o f presentation prevented Y i from attaining
the same status as Yu, who, according to all the myths in the Yii cycle,
never committed any wrong.
When it came to the era o f Yao, the ten suns all rose at once, scorching
the sheaves o f grain and killing plants and trees, so that the people were
without food. And the Cha-yii Dragon-Headed beast, the Chisel-
Tusk beast, the Nine-Gullet beast, the Giant-Gale bird, the Feng-hsi
wild boar, and the Giant-Head long-snake all plagued the people. So
Yao ordered Y i to execute the Chisel-Tusk beast in’ the wilds o f Ch’ou
Saviors ~ 79
, States (ibid., 250). Another strand in The Classic o f History also depicts
Kun as a rebel w ho turned against Yao and Shun because he was not
appointed as one o f the Three Excellencies in government. This theme
o f Kun the rebel is corroborated in Annals o f Master Lii (Yuan K ’o and
Chou M ing 1985, 242). Thus two equally strong traditions o f Kun the
failed hero and Kun the criminal developed along parallel lines in clas
sical mythography. The tradition based on “Questions o f Heaven” and
The Classic o f Mountains and Seas clearly represents the more authenti
cally mythological matter, rather than the humanizing historicization
o f the History and the Annals, and so those texts are cited here.
It is worth examining the m otif o f the self-renewing soil (hsi-jang)
by comparing it with the earth-diver creation m otif o f N orth America.
(Besides my rendition o f hsi-jang as ‘self-renewing soil’, the term has
also been rendered as ‘breathing earth’ [Eberhard 1968, 354]; ‘swelling
mold’ [Bodde 1961,399]; ‘idle soil’ [Greatrex 1987,267 n. 11]; and ‘living
earth’, or ‘breathing earth’ [Mathieu 1989,96 n. 1,101 n. 6]). In the earth-
diver myth various creatures are sent down from the sky to earth to
dive into a flood o f water to secure a small particle o f soil that w ill be
used to form the earth. A ll the creatures fail except the last one, w ho re-
emerges from the flood half-dead, “bringing up the tiny bit o f mud
which is then put on the surface o f the water and magically expands to
become the world o f the present time” (Wheeler-Voegelin as quoted by
Dundes 1984, 277).
If Kun was not fit to control the flood, why was he entrusted with
this task? They all said, “D o not fear! Try him and see if he can accom
plish it.” When the bird-turtles joined together, how did Kun follow
their sign? If [Kun] completed his task as it was willed, why did God
punish him? He lay exposed on Feather Mountain for a long time,
but why did he not decompose for three years? Lord Yii issued from
Kun’s belly. How did he metamorphose? (Ch’u Tz’u, T ’ien wen, SPTK
3.5b-6b)
When Kun came to the end o f his journey to the west, how did he
pass through the heights? He turned into a yellow bear. How did the
shamans restore him to life? They both planted black millet and the
arid heath became a tilled area. Since they planted at the same time,
why did Kun’s grow so tall and lush so fast? (Ch’u Tz’u, T ’ien wen,
SPTK 3-i6b-i7b)
Saviors ~ 81
descriptions o f Yii in these two texts serve to exemplify Y u’s role as the
savior who is the servant o f the people.
O f the mythical account o f Yii’s control o f the flood in The Classic
of History Karlgren notes: ‘There are scores o f names o f rivers, moun
tains and localities, and the chapter [‘T h e Tribute o f Yii”] gives in fact
a rough geography o f the world with which the Chinese had some con
tact— by sight or hearsay— in the early half o f the Chou dynasty” (Karl
gren 1946, 302). Karlgren’s dating o f this text in around 600 B.C. is de
batable, and modern scholarship would move its date closer to around
the fourth to the third century B.C., in respect o f its authentic parts.
When he speaks o f “a rough geography,” Karlgren means, as his foot
note to this passage makes clear, mythogeography as well as verifiable
geography.
In the linked myths o f Kun and Yii, a pattern o f binary opposites
is readily discernible: Kun must die for Yii to be born; Kun must fail for
Yii to succeed; Kun is blamed as a wrongdoer (in some versions), while
Yii is glorified as a hero; Kun incurred the anger o f God, whereas Yii
was favored by God; and finally, the father’s w ork is completed by his
son. The Kun-Yii myth o f the deluge is ideally suited to a structural
analysis on the basis o f the mediation o f binary opposites, using the
methodology o f Levi-Strauss in “The Story o f Asdiwal” (1968,1-47).
If Kun was not fit to control the flood, why was he entrusted with
this task? They all said, “D o not fear! Try him and see if he can accom
plish it.” . . . Lord Yu issued from Kun’s belly. How did he meta
morphose? Yii inherited his legacy and continued the work o f his
father. Why was his plan different, even though the work was already
in progress? How did he dam the floodwaters at their deepest? How
did he demarcate the Nine Lands o f the earth? Over the rivers and
seas, what did the Responding Dragon fully achieve and where did
he pass? What plan did Kun devise? What did Yii succeed in doing?
(Ch’u Tz’u, T ’ien wen, SPTK 3.5b-7b)
The Nine Provinces were standardized. The four quarters were made
habitable. The Nine Mountains were deforested and put down for
arable land. The sources o f the Nine Rivers were dredged. The Nine
Marshes were banked up. The Four Seas had their concourses opened
freely. The Six Treasuries were well attended to. All the soils were
compared and classified. Their land values and revenues were care
fully controlled. (Shang shu, Yii kung, SPPY 6.16b)
Saviors >—< 83
In ancient times, Dragon Gate had not been cleft open, Lu-liang had
not been bored through, and the river passed above Meng-men, its
waters greatly swollen and its current irregular, so that it destroyed
all in its path, the hills and high mounds, and this was what was
known as the Flood. Yii channeled the river and sluiced off the Great
River. For ten years he did not visit his home, and no nails grew on
his hands, no hair grew on his shanks. He caught an illness that made
his body shrivel in half, so that when he walked he could not lift one
leg past the other, and people called it “the Yu walk.” (Shih Tzu,
SPPY 1.16b)
When Yii went east as far as the region o f the Leaning Tree, the sun
was rising over Nine Fords and the plains o f Ch’ing-ch’iang, a place
where the trees are densely clustered and where the mountains brush
against the sky. He went through the districts o f Bird Valley, Green
Mound, through the Land o f the Black-Teeth. He went south as far
as the Lands o f Crossed Toes, Sun-p’u, and Hsu-man, and the moun
tains o f Nine Brilliances with their cinnabar grain, lac trees, and
seething rivers that rush and roar. He went to the regions o f the
Feathered Men and Naked People, and the district o f Never Die. He
went west as far as the Land o f the Three Perils, below Mount Sha
man, to the people who drink dew and sip air, to the Banked Gold
Mountain, to the districts o f the Odd Arm and the One Arm Three
Face. He went north as far as the Land o f Jen-cheng and near Hsia-
hui, to the top o f Heng Mountain, to the Land o f Dogfight, to the
wilds o f K ’ua-fu, to the place o f Yu Ch’iang with its immense rivers
and mountains o f massive rocks. There was nowhere he neglected to
travel. He was anxious for the black-haired people. His face became
pitch black, his bodily orifices and his vital organs did not function
properly, his stefis were faltering. As a result, he sought out wise
men, for he wished to discover everything about the advantages of
these lands. It was a laborious task. (Lu-shih ch'utt-ch’iu, Ch’iu jen,
SPTK 22.8b-9b)
steal (ch’ieh) the music o f the gods. The Storehouse of A ll Things is an anon
ymous work, no longer extant except in fragments, dating from the late
Chou to Han era, and it belongs to the category o f divinatory books
such as The Classic o f Change. B y contrast, the myth o f K ’ai in a late chap
ter o f The Classic o f Mountains and Seas (first century a . d .) uses the more
neutral word received instead o f stole. If the version in the Explanations is
correct, it would mean that K ’ai, the grandson o f Kun, repeated Kun’s
theft (ch’ieh) from God, even at the risk o f ritual execution. This version
fits the savior pattern o f the myth. It also casts K ’ai in the role o f a trick
ster figure in myth.
Whichever version is taken to be correct, both texts contain the
important m otif o f music as the source o f divine harmony. K ’ai’s act o f
ascending the highest point on earth to sing the music o f the gods close
to Heaven itself may be interpreted as a mimesis o f divine harmony and
power.
K ’ai’s association w ith music is linked to the circumstances o f his
birth. He was the son o f Yii, and at his birth he had been named C h’i,
meaning ‘to open’. His title, Hsia-hou, in the first reading below, from
The Classic of Mountains and Seas, signifies his succession to Yii, founder
o f the Hsia, and it means ‘Lord o f the Hsia’ . When K ’ai’s father was
going to marry the T ’u-shan girl, he leapt for jo y and accidentally
drummed with his feet on a stone. The girl saw Yii metamorphosed
into a bear and fled in shame, carrying her son in her womb. She turned
to stone, and her son was born from her north side when Yu pursued
her and ordered her to give him their son. The name K ’ai also means ‘to
open’. So the birth o f K ’ai, or Ch’i, was flawed by his father’s error, and
that flaw became his gift o f music to the world.
The second reading is a good example o f the way in which a philos
opher appropriates a myth to illustrate his ideas and in so doing sub
verts that myth. Its author, M o Tzu (ca. 479-ca. 381 B.C.) belonged to the
utilitarian and logical traditions o f classical thought. His philosophical
method is adversarial in the sense that he expounded his ideas by means
o f a fundamental critique o f Confucian concepts. He launched a polem
ical attack on the financial and material expense o f ritual ceremony, a
key element in Confucian educational and social theory, with its asso
ciated aspects o f ceremonial music and dance. The chapter o f Mo Tzu
from which the reading is taken is entitled “Against M usic,” and since
the written word for ‘music’, yueh, is a pun for ‘pleasure’, lo, M o Tzu’s
attack on extravagant music carries a puritanical connotation. The Wu
kuan mentioned in the text either refers to the five sons o f K ’ai, or it may
Saviors ~ 85
mean “The Martial Kuan,” the title o f a lost chapter o f The Classic of
History.
Beyond the sea to the southwest, south o f Scarlet River and west o f
Drifting Sands, there is a man called Hsia-hou K ’ai who wears a
green snake in his pierced ears and rides a pair o f dragons. K’ai went
up to Heaven three times as a guest. He received the “Nine Counter
points” and the “Nine Songs,” and he brought them down to earth.
This Plain o f Heavenly Mu is sixteen thousand feet high, and it was
here that K ’ai first came to sing the “Nine Summons.” (Shan hai ching,
Ta huang hsi ching, SPPY i6.7b-8a)
The Wu kuan says: “Ch’i then became immoral and dissipated, and he
spent a great deal o f time idly enjoying music. And he went out to
eat and drink in the plains to a loud ra-ra! and clang-clang! as flutes
and chimes played violently. He would get soaked with wine and
went out more and more often to eat in the plains. The splendid Wan
Dance was degraded. This show was heard up in great Heaven, and
Heaven refused to have anything further to do with him.” This was
not pleasing to Heaven above, nor did it benefit the people below. So
Mo Tzu says that if gentlemen truly wish to benefit the world and
eliminate disaster, they must prohibit things like music. (Mo Tzu, Fei
yueh, 1, SPTK 8.i9a-b)
not appear in extant editions. The rite o f rainmaking was enacted by the
mythical first ruler o f the Shang dynasty, T ’ang the Conqueror. It is
both penitential and sacrificial; the severe drought was believed to be
due to a crime or fault committed on earth, and this crime could be ex
piated only by human sacrifice. The second reading, in fact, indicates
that prior to the royal rite human sacrifice had already been offered, but
without success. In both texts the king performs the ceremonial act o f
cutting o ff his hair and fingernails, a mimesis o f the ritual o f animal
sacrifice. Thus the king is both priest and sacrificial victim. In another
version o f the rite in Shih Tzu (fourth century B.C.), the king is described
being tightly bound w ith white rushes and driving to the open-air altar
in a plain carriage drawn by white horses, for white was the symbolic
color o f death (Yuan K ’o 1957, 289 n. 14). The kingly hero, w ho is a
good man according to all accounts, is rewarded for his saving act with
a heavy fall o f rain. The narratives o f the rainmaking rite belong to a
cycle o f myths figuring T ’ang the Conqueror. (For a survey o f these nar
ratives in various classical works, see Mathieu 1989,140 n. 1.) They uni
formly project him in a positive way as a great hero w ho enjoyed a
favored relationship w ith Heaven and w ho acted as the humble servant
o f the people.
Long ago, when T ’ang had conquered the Hsia and ruled the world,
there was a severe drought and the harvests failed for five years. So
T ’ang went in person to pray at Mulberry Forest, saying, “If I, the
One Man, have sinned, do not visit your punishment upon the myr
iad people. If the myriad people have sinned, let me alone take the
blame. Do not let the demons and spirits o f Almighty God harm the
lives o f my people simply because o f my own stupid mistakes.” Then
he cut off his hair, rubbed his hands smooth, and offered himself as
a sacrificial beast to enable him to seek the blessing o f Almighty
God. And then the people rejoiced, for then there was a heavy fall of
rain. (Lii-shih ch'un-ch’iu, Shun mitt, SPTK 9-3b-4a)
In the era o f T ’ang there was a severe drought for seven years, and
divination was made for humans to be sacrificed to Heaven. T ’ang
said, “I will make a divination myself, and I will offer myself as a
sacrifice on behalf o f my people. For is this not what I ought to do?”
Then he ordered an official to prepare a pile o f kindling and logs. He
cut off his hair and fingernails, purified himself with water, and laid
himself on the woodpile in order to be burnt as a sacrifice to Heaven.
Just as the fire was taking hold, a great downpour o f rain fell. (Li
Saviors ~ 87
After King Chao o f Ch’in had attacked and conquered Shu, he ap
pointed Li Ping as prefect o f the Shu commandery. There was a river
god who took two young virgins as his brides every year. The head
officer o f the region declared, “You will have to hand over a million
in cash to pay for the brides’ dowry.” Ping said, “That won’t be nec
essary. I have young daughters o f my own.” When the time came, he
had his daughters beautifully dressed and made up, and he led them
away to be drowned in the river. Li Ping went straight up to the
throne o f the local god, poured out wine as an offering, and said,
“Up till now, I have continued our family line into the ninth genera
tion. Lord o f the River, you are a mighty god. Please show your
august presence to me, so that I may humbly serve you with wine.”
Ping held the goblet o f wine forward. All the god did was to ripple
its surface, but he did not consume it. Ping said in a thunderous
voice, “Lord o f the River, you have mocked me, so now I intend to
fight you!” He drew out his sword, then suddenly he vanished. A lit
tle later two blue oxen were fighting on the sloping riverbank. After
a few moments, Ping went back to his officers and ordered them to
help him: ‘The ox facing south with white tied around his saddle will
be me with my white silk ribbon.” Then he returned to the fray. The
Keeper o f Records promptly shot dead with his arrow the ox facing
north. With the Lord o f the River dead, there was no more trouble
ever again. (T ’ai-p’ing yii-lan, citing Feng su t’ung-yi, SPTK 882.4a-b)
4
Destroyers
89
90 ~ Chinese Mythology
Nearer to historical time are the myths o f Y i the Archer, King Chieh o f
the Hsia, K ing Kai o f the Shang, and King C hou o f the Shang, who
caused the downfall o f their dynastic line and the ruin o f their royal
house. Several mythic narratives depicting such flawed mythical figures
constitute what Jaan Puhvel terms “nadir episodes,” which show them
to be venal, sacrilegious, unjust, cowardly, and treacherous (1987, 243).
Double Load’s officer was called Peril. Peril and Double Load mur
dered Cha Yii. God therefore chained him on Su-shu Hill. He fet
tered his right foot and tied both hands behind his back with his hair,
binding him to a mountaintop tree. This was on Mount K ’ai-t’ou’s
northwest side. (Shan hai ching, Hai nei hsi ching, SPPY n.ia-b)
from The Classic o f History, which both date from the late Chou period.
In these two versions the myth is called “severing the links between
earth and Heaven.” Both versions are extremely convoluted and incor
porate several major themes: the proper ministration o f the relationship
between gods and humans, political control, cosmic harmony, and par
adisiacal loss.
Discourses o f the States, as its title proclaims, contains political and
philosophical discourse and speeches purporting to have been deliv
ered by historical personages o f the different states o f the C hou dynasty.
Its sophisticated style clearly marks it as later than the era o f the person
ages it claims to portray, and it probably dates from about the fifth to
the third century B.C. A lthough the speeches are idealized reconstruc
tions rather than a historical record, the text is valuable for m ythology
because it contains versions o f important myths. The myth o f the sep
aration o f the sky and earth is related in the chapter o f Discourses entitled
“Discourses o f Ch’u,” because the C h’u people are believed to have
descended from Ch’ung and Li, and ultimately from Chuan Hsu, the
three central figures o f the myth. The myth is placed in three different
periods. First there was the primeval era, when gods and humans did
not intermingle but communicated with one another through a small
number o f humans w ith special powers who were called hsi and wu,
that is, male and female shamans. Second, there was the era o f Shao
Hao, when gods and humans intermingled and ordinary people usurped
the special functions o f the hsi and wu. Third, there was the era o f
Chuan Hsu, Shao Hao’s successor, w ho ordered two officers, Ch’ung
and Li, to keep the affairs o f Heaven and the affairs o f earth under sep
arate control. This command o f Chuan Hsu became know n as “sever
ing the links between earth and Heaven.” The eras in which these
events occurred were characterized by an initial period o f paradisiacal
grace, when there were no natural calamities; a period when the cosmic
order was disrupted; and a final period when order was restored.
The version in The Classic o f History narrates the myth from a totally
different perspective, although the context is similar. Again, this text
belongs to the same period as the Discourses, and it is also characterized
as a collection o f idealized reconstructions o f political and philosophi
cal discourse which is valuable for its mythological material, no matter
how distorted it may be. The account o f the separation o f the sky and
earth occurs in the opening passage o f the chapter entitled “The Punish
ments o f [the Prince of] Lu.” This purports to be a formal record o f the
archaic discourse o f an ancient king o f the Chou dynasty on the nature
Destroyers — 93
o f law and punishment for the benefit o f his official, the Prince o f Lii,
whom he had appointed as one o f the highest-ranking ministers o f
state. The king relates the history o f rebellion and evil deeds from prim
eval times, when Ch’ih Yu was the first rebel, to the era o f Yao, Shun,
and Yii. He traces the evolution o f evil and characterizes it as an infec
tious sickness in the body politic. The evil o f C h i’h Yu was passed on
to the Miao people, w ho oppressed the population with harsh and
indiscriminate punishments. The people became demoralized and were
infected by the same lack o f virtue as their leaders. God intervened to
assuage the people, and he exterminated the Miao. He also commanded
Ch’ung and Li to “sever the links between earth and Heaven,” because
the Miao had violated their sacred trust and had used their supernatural
powers for evil purposes. Thus the account o f the myth is framed within
a narrative told by a king in antiquity.
The three versions o f the myth in The Classic o f Mountains and Seas,
Discourses o f the States, and The Classic o f History are widely disparate,
although they draw on the same mythological matter. The version in
the first text below, with its brief narrative and lack o f explanatory
background, closely coincides w ith the worldwide motif. The other
tw o versions clearly show signs o f distortion o f a basic myth for the
purposes o f political philosophy and legal theory. This is most notice
able in the version in the third reading, from the History, which elimi
nates the central god, Chuan Hsu, and transforms the mythical figures
o f Ch’ung and Li into human types serving mundane goals o f sociopo
litical administration and control. Both the version in the Discourses and
the one in the History may be said to represent a formulation o f a polit
ical myth which seeks to demonstrate the proper method o f social con
trol. The version in the Discourses (the second reading below), espe
cially in its last section, may also be construed as a m ythologem o f the
separation between sacral and temporal powers. While the first version
o f the myth focuses on the physical aspects o f sky and earth, the second
version expresses major concepts noted by G. S. Kirk concerning the
myth o f the separation o f sky and earth: the idea o f a Golden A ge and
the relationship between gods and humans (1970; 209, 226-38).
birth to Ch’ung and Li. The god ordered Ch’ung to raise his hands
up against Heaven and he ordered Li to press down against earth.
Under the earth Y i was born and he lived at the west pole. Through
him the movements and rotation o f the sun, moon, and stars were set
in motion. (Shan hai ching, Ta huang hsi ching, SPPY i6.4b~5a)
King Chao [of Ch’u, 515-489 B.C.] asked Kuan She-fu, “Is it really
true as the History o f the Chou says that Ch’ung and Li caused Heaven
and earth to be kept apart? If they had not done that, the people
would still be able to ascend to Heaven, wouldn’t they?” He replied,
“No, it wasn’t like that. In ancient times gods and humans did not
intermingle. But among the people there were some who were gifted
with clear vision, who were single-minded, and who possessed the
power o f absolute reverence and authority. Such was their knowl
edge that they could correlate the affairs o f the world on high and the
world below. Such was their wisdom that they could illuminate the
remote and reveal what was clear.. . . Therefore _the shining gods
descended to the people, to the males known as tai-shamans and to
the females known as w»-shamans. It was they who arrange3 “tHe
positions o f the gods and their due sequence at ceremonies. . . . Thus
the offices in charge o f the functions o f Heaven and earth, and o f
gods and humans, were named the Five Offices. . . . Humans and
gods were treated as separate entities.. . . Therefore the gods sent
down their blessings on humans, and they received their offerings,
and no calamities were visited upon them. When it came to the
period o f decline under Shao Hao, the Nine Li disrupted the cosmic
powers, and gods and humans intermingled and became indistin
guishable, and it became impossible to determine who were mortal
creatures. Everyone performed sacrifices with offerings as if they
weresKaman officials, ancTthey lost their essential sincerity o f faith.
. . . Blessings no longer came down to them and calamities were vis
ited upon them. Chuan Hsu succeeded him [Shao Hao], and then he
ordered Ch’ung, the Principal o f the South, to control Heaven in
order to assemble the gods in their proper place, and he ordered Li,
the Fire Principal, to control earth in order to assemble the people in
their proper places. He made them go back to old establishecFcus-
toms and not usurp powers or commit sacrilege. This was termed to
“sever the links ~betwe5n~earth and_Heaven."' Later the San Miao
repeated the disruption o f the cosmic powers as the Nine Li had
done. Therefore Yao protected the descendants o f Ch’ung and Li,
Destroyers — 95
who had not forgotten the old ways, and ordered them to supervise
them. Right up until the era o f the Hsia and the Shang, therefore, the
descendants o f Ch’ung and Li arranged Heaven and earth in their
due spheres and kept their functions and sovereigns separate. (Kuo
yii, Ch’u yii, SPTK i8.ia~3a)
The king said, “We have been taught from antiquity that Ch’ih Yu
was the first to bring disorder and that this extended to the people
who had been at peace. They all became thieves, bandits, hawkish
people, traitors, looters, forgers, and murderers. The Miao people
did not apply the restraints o f training but subdued them through
punishments. They devised the five severe punishments, which they
called the Lawj h e y executed the innocent and began to carry to
excess punitive mutilations o f amputating tHe nose, legs, and testi
cles and-branding with pitch. All these were designated as punish
ment, and everyone received the same equal punishment, no distinc
tion being_made_among those who haJbeen pronouncedj*uiky. The
people were stirred up and affected_one another with their wrongdo-
ing, becoming Jroublesome and disorderly. They lost their innate
good faith and broke their vows and covenants. -AU-thosewho had
received these severe punishments from tyrannical rule protested
aloud their innocence before the Almighty. God Almighty looked
down upon his people, and there was no_jragrant_virtue but the
stench- coming-from those .punishments. The August God felt sor
row and pity for the innocent who had been so severely chastised.
His vengeance on the harsh tyrants was their own severe chastise
ment: he exterminated the Miao people and extinguished their line
forever. Therefore he ordered Ch’ung and Li to sever the links be
tween earth and Heaven, so that no gods descended or_ humansi
ascended. (Shang shu, Lti hsing, SPPY i9.ioa-nb) ^^^
Ominous Ones (Ssu hsiung) (Karlgren 1946, 255-56, 247-49.) The first
reading below is from a first-century a . d . text by- Wang (Zh’urig, It
further relates that Chuan Hsu had three other sons w ho w efe plague-
ghosts when they died in childbirth. The author, Wang Ch’ung, cites as
his source one o f the ancient books o f ritual, and, although his account
is late, his recording o f known myths is usually reliable. _The second
reading is from The Classic o f Spirits and Strange Bemgvattributed to the
famous Han author Tung-fang “Shuo, but probably is later. Here the
untalented son o f Chuan Hsu, T ’ao Wu, the Block, is fancifully de
scribed. The third reading is from a very late encyclopedic w ork by
. Ch’en Yao-wen, o f w hich his preface is dated a . d . 1569. In this text the
god goes_und6r the name o f Kao Yang.
These three readings narrate quite different myths that are linked
only by the evil nature o f the spirits or lesser gods descended from the
otherwise benign god Chuan Hsu. The last reading shows how a clas
sical myth can lose its identity in the later tradition and become merged
with a tale relating to a popular socioreligious custom. Bodde has made
a special study o f demons in the Han era (1975, 85-117).
The Rites says, “Chuan Hsu had three sons who lived for a while and
then died and turned into plague-ghosts. One lived in the Great
River, and this was the Fever Ghost. One lived in Jo River and was
the water goblin ghost. One lived in the palaces and houses of
humans and loved scaring little children.” The generation before
Chuan Hsu certainly produced great numbers o f sons, and there
were all kinds o f ghostly spirits like Chuan Hsu’s ghosts. (Lun heng,
Ting kuei, SPTK 22.14a)
Master Kao Yang’s son was lean and miserly. He enjoyed wearing
threadbare clothes and eating rice gruel. On the last day o f the first
month he died in an alley. It became popular custom to cook rice
gruel and throw threadbare clothes outdoors and to offer sacrifice on
Destroyers ~ 97
this day in the alleyways, which was called “The Cortege o f the
Wasted Ghost.” (T ’ien-chung chi, citing Sui shih chi, SKCS 4.57b)
Ever since the era o f the Fire Driller, there has never been one who
did not consider managing the empire to be o f great importance.
When Kung Kung was king, water covered seven-tenths o f the world
98 ~ Chinese Mythology
Long ago Kung Kung fought with Chuan Hsu-to be God. In his fury
he knocked against Pu-chou Mountain. The pillar o f Heaven broke
and the cord o f earth snapped. Heaven tilted toward the northwest,
and that is why the sun, moon, and stars move in that direction.
Earth had a gap missing in the southeast, and that is why the rivers
overflowed and silt and soil came to rest there. (Huai-nan Tzu, T ’ien
wen, SPPY 3-ia-b)
The god o f the south sea was Shu [Brief], the god o f the north sea
was Hu [Sudden], and the god o f the center was Hun Tun [Con
fused] . Shu and Hu occasionally used to go together to Hun Tun’s
land, and Hun Tun received them very cordially. Shu and Hu planned
how to repay his generosity. They said, “All humans have seven
openings with which to see, hear, eat, and breathe. Only this one has
not got any.” So they tried chiseling him. Each day they chiseled one
opening. On the seventh day, Hun Tun died. (Chuang Tzu, Ying Ti
Wang, SPPY 3.i9a-b)
Three hundred and fifty leagues farther west is called Sky Mountain.
There is a lot o f gold and jade, and it has green realgar. Ying River
springs from there and then flows southwest to empty into T ’ang Val
ley. There is a god [shen] there. His appearance is like a yellow bag,
and he is red like a cinnabar flame. He has six feet and four wings.
Hun Tun has no face or eyes. This one knows how to sing and dance.
He is, in fact, Ti Chiang [God River]. (Shan hai ching, Hsi tz’u san
ching, SPPY 2.22b-23a)
Long ago Kao Hsin had two sons. The elder was called Yen Po; the
younger was called Shih Ch’en. They lived in a vast forest. They
could not bear each other and every day they looked out for a fight
with shield and dagger-ax and made attacks on each other. The Lord
God was displeased and moved Yen Po to Shang-ch’iu, putting him
in charge o f the Ch’en star. The Shang people followed him, and that
is why Ch’en is the Shang star. And he moved Shih Ch’en to Ta Hsia,
putting him in charge o f the Shen star. The people o f T ’ang [Yao] fol
lowed him and so they became subjects o f the Hsia and the Shang.
(Tso chuan, Chao kung First Year, SPPY I5.7b-8a)
wife, and the usurpation o f the Hsia royal house. Classical commenta
tors o f the second and third centuries a . d ., such as Wang Y i (second and
fourth readings), Ju C h’un (third reading), and Kao Yu (fifth reading),
embroider the myth o f Y i’s crimes o f murder and adultery in their ex
plications o f passages in “Questions o f Heaven” and in Huai-nan Tzu
(seventh and tenth readings) and the commentary on it (ninth reading).
Yet even while recounting his crimes, these commentators retain a sym
pathy for Y i and explain away his wrongdoing. The most d a m n in g
accusation against Y i, however, in terms o f the later historical record
was that he caused the downfall o f the glorious Hsia dynasty, which
had been founded by Yii the Great. The narrative in the Chronicle (the
eleventh and last reading below) clearly removes Y i from the primeval
solar myth and humanizes him as a political personage who, like many
other villains in the Chronicle, meets with a grisly death. The Chronicle
dates from about the fourth century B.C.
The myth o f the death o f Y i comes in two versions, one from the
aforementioned Chronicle, which historicizes Y i, the other from late
Chou texts such as Mencius and Hsun Tzu (eighth and sixth readings).
Both contain numerous mythic motifs.
God sent down Y i Y i to drive away the evils besetting the Hsia peo
ple, so why did he shoot down the Lord o f the River and take his
wife, Lo-pin? (Ch’u Tz’u, T ’ien wen, SPTK 3.15b)
Lo-pin was a water nymph and she was called Fu-fei.. . . Y i also
dreamed that he had an affair with Fu-fei, the goddess o f Lo River.
(Wang Y i’s commentary on Ch’u Tz’u, T ’ien wen, SPTK 3.15b)
Ju Ch’un says that Fu-fei, the daughter o f [?Fu] Hsi, died by drown
ing in Lo River and then she became a goddess. (Li Shan’s commen
tary on Lo shen fu, citing Han shu yin yi, Wen hsuan, SPTK 19.14b)
The Lord o f the River turned into a white dragon and played on the
riverbank. When Y i saw him, he shot him with his arrow, aiming for
his left eye. The Lord o f the River went up to complain to God in
Heaven: “Kill Y i because o f what he has done to me!” God in Heaven
said, “Why were you shot by Yi?” The Lord o f the River said, “When
I transformed myself into a white dragon I came out to play.” God
in Heaven said, “If you had kept to the river depths as a god, how
could Y i have committed this crime against you? Today you became
a reptile, so you were bound to be shofat by someone. O f course he
Destroyers ~ 103
is in the right—what was Y i’s crime in this case?” (Wang Y i’s com
mentary on Ch’u Tz’u, T ’ien wen, SPTK 3.15b)
Y i and Feng Men were the best archers in the world. (Hsun Tzu,
Cheng lun, SPPY 12.9b)
“Club” is the large stick that he [Feng Meng] made out o f peach
wood to batter Y i to death with. From that time on demons are ter
rified o f peaclrwood. (Hsu Shen’s commentary on Huai-nan Tzu,
Ch’uan yen, SPPY 14.1b)
Y i rid the world o f evil, so when he died he became the god Tsung
Pu. (Huai-nan Tzu, Fan lun, SPPY 13.22a)
Long ago, when the Hsia was beginning to decline, Lord Y i moved
from Ch’u to Ch’iung-shih and, relying on the people o f Hsia,
replaced the Hsia government. He took advantage o f his archery
skills, neglecting public affairs and indulging in hunting game in the
fields. He discarded the ministers Wu Lo, Po Yin, Hsiung K ’un, and
Mang Yii, employing instead Cho o f Han. Cho o f Han was a treach-'
erous young retainer o f the house o f Po Ming, and the Lord o f Po
Ming had dismissed him. But Y i Y i trustingly received him into his
entourage and appointed him as his prime minister. Cho practiced
flattery at court and bribery in society at large. He deceived the peo
ple and"em;ouraged Lord Y i to go hunting. He devised a plot to de
prive Y i o f his state. Society and the court all acquiesced to Cho’s
command. But Y i still refused to mend his ways. One day, on his re
turn from the hunt, his clansmen all assassinated him, and they
cooked his corpse in order to serve it to his sons to eat. But his sons
could not bear to eat him, and they were all put to death at Ch’iung-
men. (Tso chuan, Hsiang kung Fourth Year, SPPY 29.i2b-i3a)
104 ~ Chinese Mythology
The Biographies of Women tells how the Blind Man and Hsiang plotted
to kill Shun. They ordered Shun to repair the granary. Shun told his
two women. The two women said, “This time it can only mean they
are going to destroy you; this time it can only mean they are going
to burn you to death. Take off your top garment and go out wearing
the bird-patterned coat.” When Shun was putting the granary in
order, they immediately removed his ladder and the Blind Man set
fire to the granary. But Shun had already flown away. Later they
ordered him to dig a well. Shun told his two women. The two
women said, “This time it can only mean they are going to destroy
you; this time they are going to bury you alive. You take off your top
garment and go out wearing your dragon-patterned coat.” Shun
went out to dig the well. They spied on his movements and then
began burying him alive. But Shun had escaped and disappeared.
(Hung Hsing-tsu’s commentary on Ch’u Tz’u, Tien wen, citing a pas
sage in Lieh nii chuan not in extant editions, Ch’u Tz’u pu chu, T SC C
3-8i)
The Blind Man also invited Shun to drink strong liquor, so as to kill
him. Shun told his two women. So the two women gave Shun a lo
tion to bathe himself with in the pool. Then he went o ff and drank
the liquor all day without getting drunk. Shun’s younger sister took
pity on him and restored peace and harmony to her in-laws’ home.
(Lieh nil chuan, Yu Yii erhfu, SPPY 1.1b)
Destroyers ~ 105
The Bhnd Man and Hsiang were delighted, imagining that Shun
was now dead. Hsiang said, “I was the one who thought o f it first.”
When Hsiang divided Shun’s possessions with his father and mother,
he said, “I will take Shun’s two daughters o f Yao and his lute. I shall
give you, Father and Mother, the cattle and sheep and the granary.”
Hsiang immediately settled in at the palace residence and was beat
ing time on the lute when Shun came and saw him there. Hsiang was
amazed beyond belief. He said, “When I thought about you, Shun,
I was very sad and anxious about you.” Shun said, “All right. I hope
you will always continue to be like that.” Shun once again served
under the Bhnd Man and he loved his younger brother and cared for
him with devotion. (Shih chi, Wu ti pen chi, SPPY 1.19a)
Mountains and Seas. It relates that the ruler o f the Y u-yi people, King
Mien-ch’en, killed King Kai (referred to here as Prince Hai o f the Yin,
or Shang), and exposed his corpse in retribution for violating his wife.
K ing Kai’s successor, K ing Shang Chia-wei, the eighth Shang king,
avenged him by killing Mien-ch’en.
The third reading, from The Classic o f Mountains and Seas itself,
returns to the classical mythological tradition with the m otif o f divine
intervention by a river god and w ith an early account o f the foundation
myth o f the Yao minority people o f South China.
The basic outline o f the myth o f King Kai that emerges thus far is
clearly insufficient to explain the myth in a convincing way. One small
clue is, however, contained in a recurring feature o f the first and third
readings below which might be explored in the search for the underly
ing significance o f the myth. This recurring element is the pastoral way
o f life o f the king and his people and the particular pastoral mode ex
pressed in the two narratives. The first reading states that the king lost
his “herdsmen, cattle, and sheep” when he visited the king o f a neigh
boring tribe but that he managed “ to lead back his herds and flocks.”
The passage also says that relations between the tw o tribes remained
precarious for some generations. The third reading indicates that King
Kai (here named Hai) “entrusted his herds” to the neighboring tribe,
but they “killed King Hai and stole his herd o f domesticated cattle.” If
these accounts are compared w ith the brilliant comparative analysis o f
the “myth o f the first cattle raid” by Bruce Lincoln, w ho found convinc
ing parallels between the pastoral culture o f the Masai tribe o f East
Africa in modern times and the Indo-Iranian pastoral culture as re
corded in the ancient textual tradition, a strong argument appears to
emerge for interpreting the myth o f King Kai as the “myth o f the first
cattle raid” in the Chinese tradition. Lincoln shows that underlying
such a myth is the socioeconomic value and importance o f cattle in the
pastoral cultures o f the Masai and the ancient Indo-Iranians:
Kai maintained the power passed down by Chi, his father having
been well endowed with goodness. Why then did he die in the end
at Yu-yi, together with his herdsmen, cattle, and sheep? When he
danced with shield and plumes, why did someone desire him? Why
did her smooth flanks and firm flesh grow so plump? Where did the
young herdsmen meet up with him? When they bludgeoned his bed,
he had already got up, so how did he meet his fate? Heng maintained
the power passed down by Chi. How did he manage to lead back his
herds and flocks? Why did he go back and seek to gain from them
with his attractive gifts, and not go straight back home? Hun Wei
was descended from Heng and Kai, but the Yu-yi were restless. Why
did the people grow troublesome and unruly, and their womenfolk
and children become so immoral? Hsuan and his brother were both
sexually corrupt; they endangered the life o f their brother. Why is it
that, even though times had so changed for the worse that they com
mitted acts o f treachery, their descendants met with good fortune?
(Ch’u Tz’u, T ’ien wen, SPTK 3.22a-24a)
The Yin [Shang] Prince Hai was a guest at Yu-yi, but he committed
fornication there. The ruler o f Yu-yi, Mien-ch’en, killed him and
threw him away. That is why Shang Chia-wei o f the Yin availed him
self o f the army o f the Lord o f the River and attacked Yu-yi and
destroyed it. Then he killed its ruler, Mien-ch’en. (Kuo P’u’s com
io8 ~ Chinese Mythology
mentary on Shan hai ching, Ta huang tung ching citing Chu shu chi nien,
SPPY 14.4b)
There is a man called King Hai who held a bird in his two hands and
then ate its head. King Hai entrusted his herds to Yu-yi and the Lord
o f the river domesticated his cattle. The people o f Yu-yi killed King
Hai and stole his herd o f domesticated cattle. The Lord o f the River
mourned Yu-yi. Then the people o f Yu-yi left the region in secret
and made their kingdom among wild beasts, which people took for
their food. This kingdom is called the Yao people. (Shan hai ching, Ta
huang tung ching, SPPY I4.4b-5a)
downfall. For his part, King T ’ang’s charisma attracted the finest men
to assist him in his campaign against the Hsia. O ne such person was Y i
Yin, a major mythical figure and a famous hero. Thus the protagonists
on the side o f the tyrant are females, while those on the side o f the good
ying are virtuous males, a dichotomy that reinforces the structure o f
binary sexual opposition, Y in and Yang, in this mythologem.
The Chou texts and later narratives were unanimous in their con
demnation o f King Chieh, accusing him o f sexual excess, tyranny, and
extravagance. The details o f his crime become more picturesque as the
mythological and legendary tradition lengthens. Like Caligula in an
cient Rome, King Chieh is depicted as a ruler w ho enjoyed observing
the suffering o f others as they froze or drowned or were chased by rav
ening tigresses through the marketplace. K ing Chieh’s extravagance is
illustrated in the second reading in this section by his wasteful use o f
precious jewels, such as the t’iao-bloom jade, to carve the names o f
female favorites, and, in another context, his fondness for massing thirty
thousand female singers for day-long concerts. Like Y i the Archer, King
Chieh refused to take advice from wise counselors, but followed the
advice o f courtiers w ho pandered to his whims. In the end his weak
nesses, especially his love o f women, facilitated the successful ruse by
which King T ’ang and Y i Y in destroyed him.
The fall o f the Hsia is dramatically presaged in two solar myths.
The first reading, from The Classic o f History, relates one such omen,
which echoes a proverb preserved in the Record o f Ritual, in the chapter
entitled “The Questions o f Tseng Tzu” : ‘T h e sky does not have two
suns, a knight does not serve tw o rulers, a household does not serve
tw o masters, and one cannot respect two superiors.” The other solar
myth is related in the third reading, from The Treatise on Research into
Nature, third to fifth century a . d . It tells o f the simultaneous rising and
setting o f tw o suns in the sky, an omen that is interpreted as the dynas
tic ascendancy o f the Shang and the decline o f the Hsia. This portent
ironically echoes the blasphemy o f King Chieh when he swore: “When
that sun dies, you and I, we’ll all perish!” Like many tyrants in myth and
history, K ing Chieh senses his ow n impending doom and seeks to
bring down destruction on the w hole world.
The second reading is taken from the compendium o f historical
records and documentation compiled by Ma Su in the seventeenth cen
tury, Hypotheses on History. This w ork contains a great number o f valu
able mythological fragments from classical times which do not always
appear in the extant editions o f the texts they are cited from. In this
no ~ Chinese Mythology
The king o f the Hsia completely depleted his country’s energies, and
with his system o f punishments he slaughtered his people in the city
o f the Hsia. So great numbers o f people showed disrespect toward
him and the king was displeased. He said, “When that sun dies, you
and I, we’ll all perish!” (Shang shu, T ’ang shih, SPPY 8.ib)
Lord Chieh ordered Pien to attack the Min mountain people. The
Min mountain people presented Chieh with two girls, one named
Wan, the other named Yen. The lord found the two girls very beau
tiful . . . and carved their names on f’wo-bloom jade. . . . He dis
carded his former favorite mistress, named Mo Hsi, on Lo River. She
plotted with Y i Y in and then they caused the Hsia to be destroyed.
(Subcommentary, Yi shih, citing Chu shu chi nien, PCTP 14.3a)
In the era o f King Chieh o f the Hsia, the king’s clansman, Fei Ch’ang,
was going along by the river when he saw two suns, one rising in
brilliant light from the east, the other sinking with fading light in the
west, and he heard a sound like a sudden boom o f thunder. Ch’ang
asked P ing Yi, “Which sun means the Yin, and which sun means the
Hsia?” He answered, ‘T h e sun in the west means the Hsia, the sun in
the east means the Yin.” At this, Fei Ch’ang promptly moved his clan
and went over to the Yin [Shang]. (Po wu chih, Yi wen, SPPY 10.1a)
King Chou was a man with remarkable qualities, and he was most
discerning, besides being forceful and quick-witted. When he re
ceived counsel from his officials and when he gave them audience, he
showed a very keen mind. His natural strength exceeded that o f other
men, and a blow from his fist could fell wild animals. He was suffi
ciently clever to be able to oppose official censure, and with his elo
quence he was able to gloss over his mistakes. He boasted o f his abil
ities to his courtiers, and he was loud in his praise o f his own
reputation to everyone. He made everyone detest him. He was far
too fond o f drink and he was overindulgent in listening to music. He
was amorous with the ladies, but his favorite was Ta Chi, and he did
everything Ta Chi told him to do. Then he made his music master,
Ch’iian, compose some new love music and Pei-li dances, which
were a very effete style o f music. He increased taxation in order to fill
the treasury at Stag Terrace and filled to overflowing the granary at
Great Bridge. He collected great numbers o f dogs, horses, and rare
animals, which filled the palace buildings. He enlarged the park ter
races at Sha-ch’iu and housed there great numbers o f wild beasts and
the winged birds he had caught. He was negligent in his duties
toward the ghosts and gods. He had a large ensemble o f musicians to
entertain him at Sha-ch’iu, and he made men and girls parade naked
together, holding drinking parties through the long nights. The peo
ple felt resentful toward him, and there were some who plotted sedi
tion among the nobility. (Shih chi, Yin pen chi, SPPY 3.8b-9a)
King Wen cultivated the Way and his virtue, and the people grew
close to him. King Wen had two sons, the Duke o f Chou and King
Wu, and they were all wise men. At that time, Ch’ung-hou Hu and
King Wen both ranked among the nobles, but the former could not
match King Wen in virtue, and so he was always jealous o f him. Then
he slandered King Wen to King Chou saying, “Ch’ang, the Lord o f
the West, is a sage, and his oldest son, Fa, and his next son, Tan, are
also both sages. These three wise men have hatched a plot and they
are going to take advantage o f you, so you had better think carefully
112 ~ Chinese Mythology
what you intend to do about them.” King Chou made use o f his
advice and imprisoned King Wen at Yu-li, and he chose a day when
he would execute him. Then King Wen’s four ministers, T ’ai Tien,
Hung Yao, San Yi-sheng, and Nan-kung-kua, went to visit King
Wen. King Wen winked and slid his right eye round, indicating that
King Chou was overly fond o f the ladies, and he patted his belly
with his archery bow to hint that King Chou was greedy for rare val
uables. Then he tottered feebly on his feet, meaning that his minis
ters should be very quick in supplying King Chou’s wants. So they
traveled all over the country and went to every local area, and they
found two beautiful girls, a large water-cowrie, and a white horse
with a red mane. They went to present these to King Chou, display
ing them in the central courtyard. When King Chou saw them, he
looked up to Heaven and sighed, “How lovely they are! Who do they
belong to?” San Yi-sheng hurried into the courtyard and said, ‘They
are the prize possessions o f the Lord o f the West, and they are for his
ransom because he has been condemned to death.” King Chou said,
“How very generous he is to me!” Then he promptly released the
Lord o f the West. King Chou said to Yi-sheng, “The man who acted
in secret against the Lord o f Ch’i has a long nose and a disfigured
ear.” When Yi-sheng went back to his own country he told King
Wen about this description o f the traitor, and so they knew that
Ch’ung-hou had betrayed him. (Ch’in ts’ao, Chii yu ts’ao, T S C C 1.5)
5
Miraculous
Birth
113
H4 ~ Chinese Mythology
Ti K’u
There are many radical differences between gods o f Indo-Euro
pean and Chinese mythologies, but none is so striking as in the matter
o f divine sexuality. Gods o f the Indo-European tradition, such as the
sky god, Zeus, had innumerable loves and children, and this love was
not o f the decorous kind pictured in late Western classical art but a sav
age lust inspired by demonic energy. The loves o f Zeus are exemplified
by his desire for Europa, w hom he captivated and carried away by ap
proaching her from the sea in the shape o f a mild and playful bull; sim
ilar was his desire for Leda, w hom he approached in the shape o f a
swan. B y Zeus, Europa and Leda had Minos, Rhadamanthys, Sarpe-
don, Helen, and Polydeuces. B y contrast, the gods o f the Chinese tra
dition, such as T i K ’u, were less fortunate. T i K ’u was husband to two
goddesses w ho bore tw o sons by virgin birth. T i K ’u is a significant
figure in myth because o f his role as husband o f the goddess Chien Ti,
w ho bore Ch’i, or Hsieh, the founder o f the Shang people, and also as
husband o f the goddess Chiang Yuan, w ho bore Hou Chi, founder o f
the Chou people. Both births were by miraculous conception, not
through T i K ’u. Thus T i K ’u is connected, i f not paternally, then by
affiliation, to the founding myths o f the first two historically verifiable
dynasties o f China.
The first o f the following readings is from the reconstructed frag
ments o f The Genealogical Records o f Emperors and Kings by Huang-fu M i
(a . d . 215-282). This C hin dynasty author was the transmitter and refor-
mulator o f late myths and legends about primeval deities. A s his title
Miraculous Birth ~ 115
When Ti K’u was born, there was a divine miracle. He uttered his
own name, “Ch’iin.” (Ti wang shih-chi, T S C C 3701.8)
The Yu-Sung clan had two glamorous daughters. They built a nine-
story tower for them. When they ate and drank, drum music was
always played for them. God ordered a swallow to go and look at
them, and it sang with a cry like “Yee-yee!” The two daughters fell
in love with it and each tried to be the one to catch it. They covered
it with a jade box. After a moment they opened it up and looked at
it. The swallow had laid two eggs. It flew away to the north and
never came back. The two daughters composed a song, a line o f
which went, “Swallow, Swallow, you flew away!” This is, in fact, the
first composition in the style o f Northern Music. (Lu-shih ch’un-ch’iu,
Yin ch’u, SPTK 6.6b)
n6 — Chinese Mythology
Yin Hsieh’s mother was called Chien Ti. She was the daughter o f the
Yu-Sung clan and the second concubine o f Ti K ’u. Three o f them
went to bathe. They saw a black bird drop its egg. Chien Ti picked
it up and swallowed it. Then she became pregnant and gave birth to
Ch’i. Ch’i grew up and gave meritorious service in helping Yii con
trol the floodwater. Emperor Shun therefore gave this command to
Ch’i: “The people do not have close family relationships, and the five
social relationships are in disorder. You will serve as my director of
retinue.” He gave him the Shang fiefdom and conferred on him the
surname Tzu-shih. Hsieh flourished in the reigns o f Yao T ’ang, Yii
Shun, and Yii the Great. His accomplishments were well known
among the people, and so the people became peaceable. (Shih chi, Yin
pen chi, SPPY 3.ia-b)
245, on which he must have based his own account, and inserts explan
atory data, such as names and Chiang Yuan’s motivation for infanticide,
but the historian excludes the fertility rite and Chiang Yuan’s barren
ness and the inauguration o f the new temple rite to H ou Chi with its
paean o f praise to the glorious line o f the Chou. With the advent o f the
Han empire, the mythic account, told by the court historian, has shifted
away from a belief in the divine descent o f the god Hou Chi and his
people, the Chou, to a historicizing and humanizing biographical mode
that subverts the mythic themes.
Hou Chi o f the Chou was named Ch’i, the Abandoned. His mother,
the daughter o f the Yu-t’ai clan, was called Chiang Yuan. Chiang
Yuan was Ti K’u’s first consort. Chiang Yuan went out to the wild
fields and she saw the footprints o f a giant. Her heart was full o f joy
and pleasure, and she felt the desire to tread in the footprints. As she
trod in them there was a movement in her body as if she were with
child. She went on until her due time and gave birth to a baby boy.
Because she thought he was unlucky, she abandoned him in a nar
row alley. All the horses and cattle that passed by avoided treading
on him. She moved him into woods, but she happened to meet too
many people in the mountain woods. She moved him away and aban
doned him on the ice o f a ditch, but flying birds protected him with
their wings and cushioned him. Chiang Yuan thought he might be
a god, so she took him up at once and brought him up until he was
fully grown. Because she had wanted to abandon him at first, his
name was Ch’i. (Shih chi, Chou pen chi, SPPY 4.ia-b)
P’an Hu
The god T i K ’u, known by his other name, Kao Hsin, also features
in the P’an Hu dog myth, and again he plays no biological role in the
account o f a miraculous birth. The theme o f barrenness recurs in this
narrative, this time in the person o f a woman beyond childbearing age,
“an old wife” o f T i K ’u or Kao Hsin. The myth is preserved in the form
o f a folk tale, one o f a collection compiled by Kan Pao in the fourth cen
tury a . d . Shorn o f its fictional elements, the kernel is basically an etio
logical myth, that is, it relates the founding o f a new people and a new
social order. The dog myth contains two covert taboos: bestiality (cop
ulation between a human and an animal) and sibling incest. D erk Bodde
agrees with Wolfram Eberhard that this account constitutes an ances-
Miraculous Birth ~ 119
tral myth o f the Miao and Yao tribes o f South China (Bodde 1961, 383;
Eberhard 1968, 44-46). It should be noted that although the names o f
the mythical P’an Hu and the cosmological demigod P’an Ku are pho
netically similar, and although both myths appear to derive from South
China, there is no connection between the tw o in terms o f substance,
motif, or meaning.
Kao Hsin had an old wife who lived in the royal palace. She devel
oped an earache. After some time the doctor cleared her ear out to
cure her and he removed a knob-worm as big as a cocoon. After the
wife had gone out, she put it in a gourd basket and covered it with
a plate. Soon the knob-worm changed into a dog and it had five-
color markings. So it was named P’an Hu, Plate-Gourd, and she
looked after it.
At the time the Jung-wu were powerful and successful and fre
quently invaded the border region. So he [Kao Hsin] dispatched gen
erals to attack and quell the invasion but they could not capture or
defeat them [the invaders]. So [Kao Hsin] issued a proclamation that
if anyone in the world could capture the head o f the commander in
chief o f the Jung-wu, he would be rewarded with a thousand catties
o f gold and would have the fiefdom o f ten thousand households, and
he would have the hand o f his own daughter in marriage. Some time
later, P’an Hu carried in his jaws a head he had captured and he car
ried it to the tower o f the royal palace. The king examined it, and it
turned out to be the very head o f the commander o f the Jung-wu.
What was to be done about it? His courtiers all said, “Plate-Gourd is
an animal, so he cannot have an official rank or a wife. He should not
have the reward, even though he deserves it.” His youngest daughter
heard them and entreated the king, saying: “Your Majesty did prom
ise me to him before the whole world! Plate-Gourd came with the
head in his jrws and saved your kingdom from disaster. This was
decreed by Heaven. How can it just be due to the wisdom and power
o f a dog? The king must weigh his words carefully; the chief earls
must attach importance to their good faith. You cannot cancel an
agreement that was pledged before the whole world just because o f
a girl’s body—that would mean catastrophe for your kingdom.” The
king became alarmed and agreed with what she said. He ordered his
youngest daughter to be a dutiful wife to Plate-Gourd.
Plate-Gourd led the girl up South Mountain. The grass and trees
were thick and bushy and there was no trace o f human footprints.
120 ~ Chinese Mythology
Then the girl took her clothes o ff and became bonded to him as his
servant, wearing clothes that she made as best she could, and she fol
lowed Plate-Gourd up the mountain. (Sou shen chi, T S C C 14.91)
Po Yi
The mythical figure o f Po Y i, and his numerous namesakes, was
discussed in chapter 2 with a special emphasis on his culture-bearing
function o f domesticating birds and beasts. Here he is examined in his
role as the hero descended from a god through virgin birth in the gen
eration o f his grandmother, Nu-hsiu. The myth o f this miraculous
birth bears a strong resemblance to the myth o f Chien Ti, consort o f T i
K ’u, mother o f Hsieh (or Ch’i), the founder o f the Shang people. The
m otif o f ornithomorphous hierogamy had become a convention in Han
biographies o f gods, demigods, and heroes. Both o f the accounts o f
Chien T i and Nu-hsiu swallowing a divine egg and becoming preg
nant come from the pen o f Ssu-ma Ch’ien and have to be considered
late mythological versions. The Han historian’s tendency to rationalize
and make consistent the protean stuff o f myth is also evident in his
fusion o f tw o mythical Po Y i figures, one being the ancestor o f the
C h ’in people, the other a minister o f Shun responsible for forestry and
animal husbandry. As Karlgren noted, “it would seem that Si-ma
[Ch’ien] has confused tw o different sets o f legends.. . . B ut there is, as
w e have seen, not the slightest support for all this in the pre-Han
sources” (1946,260, 261). In this version o f the myth, Po Y i’s name was
originally Ta Fei, and this itself suggests that yet another fusion o f
mythical figures may have occurred.
The ancestor o f the Ch’in people was a descendant o f the god Chuan
Hsu. His granddaughter was called Nu-hsiu. When Nii-hsiu was
weaving, a black bird dropped an egg. Nu-hsiu swallowed it and
gave birth to Ta Yeh. Ta Yeh took the daughter o f the Shao-tien as his
wife, and her name was Nii-hua. Nii-hua gave birth to Ta Fei, who
controlled the inundated earth with Yii. Once he had completed his
work . . . he aided Shun in taming birds and beasts. (Shih chi, Ch’in
pen chi, SPPY 5.ia-b)
Miraculous Binn ~ 121
If [Kun] completed his tasks as it was willed, why did God punish
him? He lay exposed on Feather Mountain for a long time, but why
did he not decompose for three years? Lord Yu issued from Kun’s
belly. How did he metamorphose? (Ch’u T z’u, T ’ien wen, SPTK
3.6a-b)
When Yii was controlling the floodwaters and was making a passage
through Mount Huan-yuan, he changed into a bear. He spoke to the
T ’u-shan girl: “If you want to give me some food, when you hear the
sound o f a drumbeat, come to me.” But Yii leaped on a stone and by
mistake drummed on it. The T ’u-shan girl came forward, but when
she saw Yu in the guise o f a bear she was ashamed and fled. She
reached the foothills o f Mount Sung-kao, when she turned into a
stone and gave birth to Ch’i. Yu said, “Give me back my son!” The
stone then split open on its north flank and Ch’i was born. (Yen Shih-
ku’s commentary on Han shu, Wu-ti chi, referring to a nonextant pas
sage in Huai-nan Tzu, SPPY 6.iyb-i8a)
(the second reading) as the mother o f the twelve moons, w ho cares for
them after their passage across the nocturnal world, and she is the con
sort o f the god T i Chun. Yet the identification o f the tw o mythical
figures as male court astronomers bears the hallmark o f the historiciz-
ing impulse o f texts like The Classic o f History and has little to do with
mythology. The number o f the suns and moons engendered by Hsi-
H o and Ch’ang-hsi corresponds to the ten days o f the week in antiquity
and the twelve months o f the year.
If the myths o f H si-H o and Ch’ang-hsi are removed from their C h i
nese context and compared with other mythologies, the goddess H si-Ho
finds no counterpart among Hellenic or Roman gods o f the sun Helios,
Apollo, Phaeton, or Sol, but she does find an echo in the sun goddess o f
Japan, Amaterasu, though this goddess is authenticated only by late texts
in thejapanese tradition. Ch’ang-hsi, on the other hand, has many female
counterparts in the moon goddesses Phoebe, Diana, and Luna.
Beyond the southeast sea, around Kan River there is the kingdom o f
Hsi-Ho. There is a girl named Hsi-Ho. She is just now bathing the
suns in Kan Gulf. Hsi-Ho is Ti Chun’s wife. She gave birth to the ten
suns. (Shan hai ching, Ta huang nan ching, SPPY 15.5a)
There is a girl. She is just bathing the moons. Ti Chun’s wife, Ch’ang-
hsi, gave birth to the twelve moons. She is just beginning to bathe
them. (Shan hai ching, Ta huang hsi ching, SPPY 16.5a)
Birds o f five colors have three names: one is Huang Niao [Divine
Bird], one is Luan Niao [Luan Bird], and one is Feng Niao [Phoenix
Bird]. (Shan hai ching, Ta huang hsi ching SPPY 16.2b)
The annals o f King Yen o f Hsu say that an attendant in the palace o f
the ruler o f Hsu became pregnant and gave birth to an egg, but
because she thought it was unlucky, she abandoned it by the river
side. A woman who lived on her own had a dog called Ku-ts’ang. He
was out hunting on the riverside when he found the abandoned egg.
Miraculous Birth «—» 127
In appearance, King Yen o f Hsu had eyes that could not look down.
(Hsun Tzu, Fei Hsiang, SPPY 3.2a)
King Yen o f Hsu had muscles but he had no bones.. . . King Yen o f
Hsu loved anything unusual. He dived deep into rivers and caught
strange fish, and he went far into the mountains and caught strange
animals. He laid many o f them out on display in the courtyard. (Shih
Tzu, SPPY 1.2a, 1.3b)
128 ~ Chinese Mythology
The account clearly divides into two sections: the first contains the
motifs that herald the coming o f the great man; the second deals w ith a
special rite. The mythic first h alf does not inform this rite; the rite does
not enact the myth. The rite essentially has to do with the act o f transfer
ence as Y i Y in moves from one social order, the Yu Shen, to another, the
household o f T ’ang, the royal house. The rite has nothing to do with Y i
personally, for he is said to be “a good man.” The text says that this rite
“cleansed him o f evil,” perhaps indicating the presence o f a social taboo
in respect o f Y i Yin’s association with another social group or class.
Whether such a taboo operates because he w ill be preparing food for the
future king, or for the king’s gods, or whether it is because o f his strange
parentage, or because o f his being an outsider is not made clear. The pur
ification rite is considered a necessary stage before embarking on the
great task awaiting him in the heroic service o f T ’ang the Conqueror.
Myths o f
the Yellow
Emperor
130
Myths o f the Yellow Emperor — 131
Because the fighting had gone on for a long time, the Yellow Em
peror and the Flame Emperor used the elements o f water and fire.
(Lii-shih ch’un-ch’iu, Tang ping, SPTK 7.3a)
Because the Flame Emperor used fire to destroy him, the Yellow
Emperor finally captured him. (Huai-nan Tzu, Ping lueh, SPPY 15.1b)
132 — Chinese Mythology
The Flame Emperor had the same father and mother as the Yellow
Emperor, and he was his younger brother. Each possessed one half
o f the universe. The Yellow Emperor followed the Way, but the
Flame Emperor refused to obey. So they fought on the Waste o f Cho-
lu. Blood flowed in streams from their clubs. (Hsin shu, SPTK 2.3a)
When the Yellow Emperor and the Flame Emperor fought on the
Wastes o f P’an-ch’iian, all the bears, grizzly bears, wolves, panthers,
cougars, and tigers were in his [the Yellow Emperor’s] vanguard,
while the eagles, fighting pheasants, falcons, and kites served as his
banners and flags. (Lieh Tzu, Huang ti, SPPY 2.22a)
Figure 6. Responding Dragon executes the God of War, Ch’ih Yu, after his battle
with the Yellow Emperor. Funerary stone bas-relief, Wu Liang Shrine, Chia-
hsiang county, Shantung province, a . d . 151. From Feng and Feng, Research on
Stone Carving (1821) 1934, chap. 3.
o f it. There was someone dressed in green clothes named the Yellow
Emperor’s daughter, Drought Fury. Ch’ih Yu took up arms and at
tacked the Yellow Emperor, so the Yellow Emperor commanded the
Responding Dragon to launch an attack against him in the wilder
ness o f Chi Province. The Responding Dragon stored up all the
water. Ch’ih Yu asked the Wind God and the Rain Master to release
a cloudburst. Then the Yellow Emperor sent down the Daughter o f
Heaven named Drought Fury and the rain stopped. Then he killed
Ch’ih Yu. (Shan hai ching, Ta huangpei ching, SPPY i7-4b-5b)
storms. Its light is like the sun and moon; its voice is like thunder. Its
name is K ’uei. The Yellow Emperor captured it and used its hide for
a drum. When he struck it with a bone from the thunder beast the
sound was heard for five hundred leagues, and it made the world
stand in awe. (Shan hai ching, Ta huang tung ching, SPPY 14.6b)
At the beginning o f the Yellow Emperor’s era he cared for his own
person and loved his people. He took no pleasure in war or aggres
sion. But the Four Emperors each took the name o f their regional
color and gathered together to plot against him. Each day they
threatened him near his city walls, refusing to remove their armor.
The Yellow Emperor sighed and said, “If the ruler on high is in dan
ger, the people beneath will be unstable. If the ruler suffers the loss
o f his kingdom, his officers will ‘marry’ themselves off to another
kingdom. Because o f this kind o f damage, it is the same as harboring
bandits, isn’t it? Today I stand at the head o f the people, but you four
robbers oppose me and cause my army to be on the alert constantly.”
136 — Chinese Mythology
look for it, but he could not find it. So he told Hsiang-kang [Shape
less] to do so, and Hsiang-kang found it. The Yellow Emperor said,
“That’s amazing! How was Hsiang-kang the one who was able to
find it?” (Chuang Tzu, T ’ien-ti, SPPY 5.2b~3a)
The Yellow Emperor and Ch’ih Yu fought nine times, but for nine
times there was no winner. The Yellow Emperor returned to T ’ai
Mountain for three days and three nights. It was foggy and dim.
There was a woman with a human head and bird’s body. The Yellow
Emperor kowtowed, bowed twice, and prostrated himself, not dar
ing to stand up. The woman said, “I am the Dark Lady. What do you
want to ask me about?” The Yellow Emperor said, “Your humble ser
vant wishes to question you about the myriad attacks, the myriad
victories. ” Then he received the art o f war from her. (T’ai-p’ing yii-lan,
citing Huang Ti wen Hsuan nil chan fa, SPTK 15.9b)
Myths o f
Yi the Archer
138
Myths o f Y i the Archer — 139
role, he falls from grace w ith the gods, but, more important, he loses
the good w ill and trust o f human beings. Although the functional am
biguity o f Y i is clearly and frequently expressed in the early texts, exe-
getes and commentators o f the late Han and post-Han eras invariably
sympathized with him and identified him as a positive hero. Thus com
mentators such as Wang Y i (a .d . 89-158), Kao Yu (fl. a .d . 205-215), and
Ju Ch’un (fl. a . d . 198-265) explain away and rationalize Y i’s actions and
even go as far as to condone his crimes. In the literary mind and in pop
ular imagination, the mythical figure o f Y i remains Y i the hero and
savior rather than Y i the antihero and usurper.
When it came to the era o f Yao, the ten suns all rose at once, scorch
ing the sheaves o f grain and killing plants and trees, so that the peo
ple were without food. And the Cha-yii Dragon-Headed beast, the
Chisel-Tusk beast, the Nine-Gullet beast, the Giant-Gale bird, the
Feng-hsi wild boar, and the Giant-Head long-snake all plagued
the people. So Yao ordered Y i to execute the Chisel-Tusk beast in the
wilds o f Ch’ou Hua, to slaughter the Nine-Gullet beast near Hsiung
River, to shoot down with his corded arrows the Giant-Gale at
Ch’ing-ch’iu Marsh. He ordered him to shoot the ten suns up above
and to kill the Cha-yii Dragon-Head beast below, to behead the
Giant-Head long-snake at Tung-t’ing, and to capture the Feng-hsi
wild boar at Mulberry Forest. The myriad people were overjoyed
and decided on Yao as their Son o f Heaven. And so for the first time
in the whole world, there were roads and signposts in the broadlands
and in the narrow defiles, in the deep places and on level ground both
far and wide. (Huai-nan Tzu, Pen ching, SPPY 8-5b-6a)
140 — Chinese Mythology
Wei-lii is where the waters o f the seas empty out. It is also called Wu
Chiao, and it is in the center o f the great ocean. The Wei is at the very
end o f all rivers; that is why it is called Wei [Tail]; lit means ‘massed’;
it is where water masses together, and that is why it is called lii. East
o f Leaning Mulberry there is a rock that is forty thousand leagues all
round and forty thousand leagues thick. Although the seas and riv
ers empty into it, it never fails to consume all the water, and that is
why it is called Chiao [Consume]. (Kuo Ch’ing-fan citing Ssu-ma
Piao’s commentary on Chuang Tzu, Ch’iu shui, Chuang Tzu chi shih,
SHCSK 6.2.3b)
murder o f the river god by stating that the Lord o f the River had him
self been killing humans.
The final reading, from Chronicle ofTso, deals with the myth o f Y i the
usurper. In a historicizing mode it removes the hero from the context o f
gods, suprahumans, and demigods and fixes him firmly among human
beings. Here, Y i’s crimes are directed not against deities but against the
state. Thus Y i the demigod becomes Y i the human opportunist w ho
usurps the Hsia state and embarks on a career o f misrule and indulges in
a reckless private life. The primary m otif o f Y i’s skill in archery is sub
ordinated to the demands o f the humanizing narrative and is transmuted
into Y i’s excessive fondness for sport at the expense o f affairs o f state. Y i
is consequently made to fit the paradigm o f “the bad ruler.” Y i’s death
is similarly narrated without regard for the mythological tradition,
since the manner o f his political assassination is identical to that o f many
other victims o f palace intrigue recounted in the Chronicle.
God sent down Y i Y i to drive away the evils besetting the Hsia peo
ple, so why did he shoot down the Lord o f the River and take his
wife, Lo-pin? (Ch’u Tz’u, T ’ien wen, SPTK 3.15b)
The Lord o f the River turned into a white dragon and played on the
riverbank. When Y i saw him, he shot him with his arrow, aiming for
his left eye. The Lord o f the River went up to complain to God in
Heaven: “Kill Y i because o f what he has done to me!” God in Heaven
said, “Why were you shot by Yi?” The Lord o f the River said, “When
I transformed myself into a white dragon I came out to play.” God
in Heaven said, “If you had kept to the river depths as a god, how
could Y i have committed this crime against you? Today you became
a reptile, so you were bound to be shot at by someone. O f course he
is in the right—what was Y i’s crime in this case?” (Wang Y i’s com
mentary on Ch’u Tz’u, T ’ien wen, SPTK 3.15b)
Figure 7. Yi the Archer and the world-tree, Leaning Mulberry. Funerary stone
bas-relief, Wu Liang Shrine, Chia-hsiang county, Shantung province, a .d . 151.
From Feng and Feng, Research on Stone Carving (1821) 1934, chap. 3.
The Prince o f Chin said, “What happened to Lord Yi?” Wei Chiang
replied, “Long ago, when the Hsia was beginning to decline, Lord Y i
moved from Ch’u to Ch’iung-shih and, relying on the people o f
Hsia, replaced the Hsia government. He took advantage o f his arch
ery skills, neglecting public affairs and indulging in hunting game in
the fields. He discarded the ministers Wu Lo, Po Yin, Hsiung K ’un,
and Mang Yii, employing instead Cho o f Han. Cho o f Han was a
Myths o f Yi the Archer — 143
whole world was better than he, so he killed Yi. (Meng Tzu, Li Lit, 2,
SPTK 8.8b)
“Club” is a large stick, that he [Feng Meng] made out o f peach wood
to batter Y i to death with. From that time demons are terrified o f
peach wood. (Hsu Shen’s commentary on Huai-nan Tzu, Ch’tian yen,
SPPY 14.1b)
Y i rid the world o f evil, so when he died he became the god Tsung
Pu. (Huai-nan Tzu, Fan lun, SPPY 13.22a)
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)
In those days people said that there was a cassia on the moon and the
striped toad, Ch’an-ch’u. That is why books on marvels say that the
cassia on the moon is five thousand feet high, and there is someone
under it who is always chopping the tree but the gash in the tree soon
becomes whole. This man’s family name is Wu, and his given name
is Kang, and he is from the West River area. They say that because he
made a mistake in his quest for immortality, he was exiled and forced
to chop the tree. (Yu-yang tsa-tsu, T ’ien chih, SPTK 1.8b)
Myths o f
Yii the Great
146
Myths o f Yii the Great ~ 147
If Kun was not fit to control the flood, why was he entrusted with
this task? They all said, “D o not fear! Try him and see if he can accom
plish it.” . . . Lord Yii issued from Kun’s belly. How did he metamor
phose? Yu inherited his legacy and continued the work o f his father.
Why was his plan different, even though the work was already in
progress? How did he dam the flood waters at their deepest? How
did he demarcate the Nine Lands o f the earth? Over the rivers and
seas what did the Responding Dragon achieve, and where did he
pass? What plan did Kun devise? What did Yu succeed in doing?
(Ch’u Tz’u, Tien wen, SPTK 3.5b-7b)
The Nine Provinces were standardized. The four quarters were made
habitable. The Nine Mountains were deforested and put down for
arable land. The sources o f the Nine Rivers were dredged. The Nine
Marshes were banked up. The Four Seas had their concourses opened
freely. The Six Treasuries were well attended to. All the soils were
compared and classified. Their land values and revenues were care
fully controlled. (Shang shu, Yu kung, SPPY 6.16b)
In ancient times, Dragon Gate had not been cleft open, Lii-liang had
not been bored through, and the river passed above Meng-men, its
waters greatly swollen and its current irregular, so that it destroyed
all in its path, the hills and high mounds, and this was what was
known as the Flood. Yii channeled the river and sluiced off the Great
River. For ten years he did not visit his home, and no nails grew on
148 ~ Chinese Mythology
his hands, no hair grew on his shanks. He caught an illness that made
his body shrivel in half, so that when he walked he could not lift one
leg past the other, and people called it “the Yii walk.” (Shih Tzu,
SPPY 1.16b)
How did he dam the floodwaters at their deepest? How did he de
marcate the Nine Lands o f the earth? Over the rivers and seas what
did the Responding Dragon fully achieve and where did he pass?
What plan did Kun devise? What did Yii succeed in doing? (Ch’u
Tz’u, T ’ien wen, SPTK 3.6b~7b)
most nearly coincides w ith the warrior function o f the Yellow Em
peror. The chastisement o f the god Fang-feng is linked to the story o f
the first assembly o f the gods, told in the first reading, from a first-
century a . d . text. The second reading, from a late Chou era text circa
the fifth century B.C., purports to cite Confucius’s (551-479 B.C.) expla
nation o f the Fang-feng myth. According to this account, the god must
have been a giant.
The third reading, from a second-century B.C. text, recounts how
Kung Kung caused an inundation that disturbed the cosmos. The
fourth reading, from a philosophical w ork o f the Confucian school dat
ing from the third century B.C., tells briefly how Yu punished the mar
plot Kung Kung to save the people.
The fifth reading is linked to the myth o f Y ii’s punishment o f Kung
Kung. The account, from a second-century B.C. chapter o f The Classic
o f Mountains and Seas, states that the poisonous monster Hsiang Liu was
Kung Kung’s official. The execution o f this nine-headed, serpentine
monster is one o f the tasks o f Yii in the concatenation o f stories in the
myth o f Yii and the flood.
The sixth reading illustrating the warrior function o f the demigod
Yu is notable more for its literariness than for its mythological form. It
is from Li Kung-tso’s narrative “Prefect Li T ’ang.” It relates Yii’s strug
gle w ith the Wu-chih-ch’i beast in his effort to control the flood. It is the
first written occurrence o f this legend. Probably based on the classical
myth o f K ’uei, the one-legged storm god, it constitutes an interesting
example o f fiction based on myth, which itself inspired numerous pieces
o f mythopoeic literature. The Yuan dynasty dramatist Wu Chang-ling,
for example, cast Wu-chih-ch’i in the role o f the sister o f the legendary
character o f the M onkey King, whereas the M ing novelist Wu Ch’eng-
en (ca. 1506-ca. 1582), converted Wu-chih-ch’i into Monkey, Sun Wu-
k’ung (Lu Hsiin 1964,109-10).
From the beginning, Yii was so anxious for the people that he
rescued them from the flood. He reached Great Yueh. He went up
Mao Mountain and held a major assembly [k’uai-chi]. He rewarded
the virtuous and gave fiefdoms to the meritorious. He changed the
name o f Mao Mountain to K ’uai-chi. (Yueh chueh shu, Wai chuan chi
ti, SPPY 8.1a)
Confucius said, “I have heard this said about it. Long ago, Yii assem
bled all the gods on the Mountain o f K’uai-chi. Fang-feng arrived
too late. Yii killed him and beheaded his corpse. One joint o f his
Myths o f Yu the Great ~ 151
In the era o f Shun, Kung Kung stirred the floodwater to make crash
ing waves, so that they rose as far as K’ung-sang [Hollow Mul
berry]. (Huai-nan Tzu, Pen ching, SPPY 8.6a)
Kung Kung’s official was called Hsiang Liu. He had nine heads, so he
ate from nine mountains at the same time. Whatever Hsiang Liu
knocked against became marshy or a ravine. Yii killed Hsiang Liu.
His blood stank, so that it was impossible to plant the five grains. Yu
excavated the area and filled it three times, but it leaked three times.
He therefore created out o f that place a terrace for the gods north o f
K’un-lun and east o f Jou-li. This Hsiang Liu had nine heads with
human faces and a snake’s body, and he was green. (Shan hai ching,
Hai wai pei ching, SPPY 8.ib-2a)
Figure 8 (opposite). The unsuccessful attempt by the First Ch’in Emperor (r.
to recover one of the nine sacred cauldrons of Yu from the river;
2 2 1 - 2 1 0 B.C.)
had a green body and a white head with metallic eyes and snowy
teeth. His neck stretched out for a hundred feet. He was stronger
than nine elephants. He lunged out with his fists and leapt about in
a sudden frenzied rush, so swift and fast that now you’d hear him,
now you wouldn’t, now you’d see him, now you wouldn’t.
Yii handed him over to T ’ung-lu but he could not control him. He
handed him over to Wu-mu-yu but he could not control him. He
handed him over to Keng-ch’en and he was able to control him. The
Ch’ih-p’i and Huan-hu, wood demons and water sprites, mountain
trolls and rock monsters rushed forth screaming in a circling mass
numbering several thousand. Keng-ch’en chased him with his spear.
Then he chained his neck with a huge rope.and threaded a metal bell
through his nostril, and he banished him to the south o f Huai River
to the foothills o f Tortoise Mountain. So Huai River was able to flow
peacefully out to sea for ever more. Afterward, people made images
o f the monster, and they no longer suffered from the stormy waves
o f Huai River. (T ’ai-p’ing kuang chi, L i T'ang, citing Jung-mo hsien t’an,
JM W H 467.2b)
Yii then commanded T ’ai Chang to pace out from the east pole as far
as the west pole, making 233,500 leagues and 75 paces. He com
manded Shu Hai to pace out from the north pole as far as the south
pole, making 233,500 leagues and 75 paces. O f all the vast waters to
the deepest abyss from twenty-four feet and higher he fathomed
233,559 stretches o f water. Yii then dammed the vast waters with self-
renewing earth, and these banks became famous mountains. (Huai-
nan Tzu, Chui hsing, SPPY 4.2a)
is said to play that role in conjunction with one Fei Lien (Yi-pao M ei
1929,212-13). The reading presented in this section is from the Chronicle
ofTso, dating from the fourth century B.C., as with the Mo Tzu. Its nar
rative contains several motifs: Yu as the divine smith, the divine w is
dom o f Yii in teaching humans how to distinguish between harmful
and benign gods, the symbolic value o f representing images o f gods on
the nine cauldrons, the number nine, which reflects the celestial sphere,
and the moral value o f the cauldrons in gauging the rise or decline o f
sovereign power. This moral worth o f the cauldrons is expressed meta
phorically through their weight. For example, in the third-century B.C.
text Intrigues o f the Warring States, it was stated that the victorious Chou
people waged their war against the Shang, conscious o f the Chou’s
moral supremacy; it was also stated that the Chou “captured the nine
cauldrons [from the Shang] and it took ninety thousand men to haul
one cauldron” (Crump 1970, 38). Conversely, when in turn the Chou
were overthrown by the C h’in, it was stated that “in the nineteenth year
o f King Nan o f the Chou, K ing Chao o f the C h ’in captured the nine
cauldrons. Then one cauldron flew into Ssu River and the other eight
went into the territory o f C h ’in” (Historical Records, official commentary
on the “Basic Annals o f the C h’in,” SPPY 5.26b). Thus the divinely
forged cauldrons o f Yii passed from dynasty to dynasty, becoming
heavy with moral virtue and light w ith moral turpitude. K. C. Chang
has observed that the nine cauldrons “became a symbol o f legitimate
dynastic rule,” being “symbols o f wealth . . . symbols o f ritu a l. . . and
symbols o f the control o f metal” (1983, 95-97). The function o f Yii as
the divine smith links him to N ii Kua when she repaired the cosmos
and to Ch’ih Yu, inventor o f metal and weapons.
The myth o f Yii and the nine sacred cauldrons is also connected
with another important motif, Y u’s role as dynastic founder o f the
Hsia, and this brings him into the nexus o f founding myths. (The Yti
cycle has been identified by Eberhard with the Yueh culture o f South
east China [1968,348-62].) This in turn is linked to Yii’s prominent role
in the important myth o f the Golden Age, when first Yao, then Shun,
and lastly Yii ruled the world with suprahuman wisdom. Unlike the
Golden A ge o f Greek myth, when humans enjoyed a long life free from
disease, toil, and old age, the Chinese myth presents a utopia o f peace
and good government, when rulers were benevolent and just.
Myths o f Yti the Great ~ 155
[The prince o f Ch’u asked Wang-sun Man o f the royal state o f Chou
about the size and weight o f the nine cauldrons. Wang-sun Man gave
this reply.]
Long ago, when the aspect o f the Hsia showed virtue, people from
distant areas made illustrations o f objects and creatures and made
tributary offerings o f metal to the nine regional stewards. So he [Yii]
forged cauldrons in the image o f these creatures. He took precaution
ary measures against all living things on behalf o f the people, to
make sure that they knew which were the malign spirits. Therefore,
when the people went on rivers or entered marshes, or went on
mountains or into forests, they never came across adverse beings;
neither goblins or trolls could ever run into them. They also enjoyed
the grace o f harmony between Heaven above and earth below, and
received blessings from Heaven. Chieh [of the Hsia] was wicked, so
the cauldrons and their sovereign power passed over to the Shang for
six centuries. Chou [last ruler o f the Shang] was a harsh despot, so
the cauldrons passed over to the Chou. If the virtue o f the ruling
house is pure and true, even though the cauldrons might be small,
they weigh heavily. If the ruling house is perverted and prone to
instability, even though the cauldrons may be large, they are light
weight. Heaven protects pure virtue and keeps it safe. (Tso chuan,
Hsuan kung Third Year, SPPY 2i.8b-9a)
Yii collected metal from the nine regional stewards and forged the
nine cauldrons. (Han shu, Chiao ssu chih, SPPY 25.1.21a)
The account establishes that the mating was for dynastic rather than
passionate considerations. This account moves from the mythic mode
o f “Questions o f Heaven” to a legendary one. The third reading bears
all the hallmarks o f a mythological account, referring as it does to meta
morphosis, bestiovestism, divine error, and miraculous birth. The
motifs and the textual source were discussed in full in chapter 5.
Yu labored with all his strength. He came down and gazed at the
earth below. How did he get the T ’u-shan girl and lie with her in T ’ai-
sang? His consort became his mate and her body gave forth a child.
Why did they hunger for the same food, when they had satisfied
their hunger for the food o f love at dawn? (Ch’u Tz’u, Tien wen,
SPTK 3.i3b-i4a)
When Yii was controlling the floodwaters and was making a passage
through Mount Huan-yuan, he changed into a bear. He spoke to the
T ’u-shan girl: “If you want to give me some food, when you hear the
sound o f a drumbeat, come to me.” But Yii leaped on a stone and by
mistake drummed on it. The T ’u-shan girl came forward, but when
she saw Yii in the guise o f a bear she was ashamed and fled. She
reached the foothills o f Mount Sung-kao, when she turned into a
stone and bore Ch’i in her womb. Yii said, “Give me back my son!”
The stone then split open on its north flank and Ch’i was born. (Yen
Myths o f YU the Great — 157
Yii forged the Mountain o f Dragon Pass and then called it Dragon
Gate. He came to an empty cavern several tens o f leagues deep and
so pitch black that he could go no further. So Yii carried a fire torch
on his back and went forward. There was a beast that looked like a
hog, and it held a night-shining pearl in its mouth, the light o f which
was like a torch. There was also a green dog, which barked and ran
on ahead. Yii reckoned that he must have gone ten leagues, and he
lost track of whether it was day or night. Suddenly he was aware that
it was gradually getting a bit lighter, and he noticed the hog and the
dog coming toward him, and as they did, they changed into human
form, both wearing dark clothes. He also noticed a god with a ser
pent’s body and a human face, and so Yu had a talk with him. The
god at once showed Yii a chart o f the Eight Trigrams spread out on
top o f a bench o f gold. And there were eight gods in attendance on
all sides. Yii said, “Hua Hsu gave birth to a sage-child—was it you?”
He answered, “Hua Hsu is the goddess o f the Nine Rivers and she
gave birth to me.” Then he reached for a jade tablet and handed it to
Yii. It was one foot, two inches long, and it contained all the num
bers o f the twelve hours, which would enable Yii to make calcula
tions o f Heaven and earth. As soon as Yu held the tablet, he brought
order to the flooded land. The god with the serpent’s body was [Fu]
Hsi the August. (Shih yi chi, HWTS 2.2b~3a)
asked her for her help. She at once commanded her handmaid to
bring Yii the Book of Rules and Orders for demons and spirits. Then
she ordered her spirits K’uang-chang, Yii-yii, Huang-mo, Ta-yi,
Keng-ch’en, T’ung Lu, and others, to help Yii to hew rocks in order
to clear the spurting waves and to dredge blocked riverbeds to con
duct water through the narrow places, so as to ease the flow o f water.
Yii bowed to them and thanked them for their help.
Yii wished to visit the lady on the summit o f the soaring pinnacle,
but before he could look around, she had turned into a rock. Now
she suddenly flies around, dispersing into light cloud, which grows
dense, then stops, and condenses into an evening shower. N ow she
turns into a roving dragon, now into a soaring crane. She takes on a
thousand appearances, ten thousand shapes. It was impossible to ap
proach her. Yii suspected she might be a treacherous phantasm, not
a true immortal, so he asked T ’ung Lu about her. Lii said, “ . . . Lady
Yun-hua is the daughter o f the Mother o f M etal... . Hers is not a
body that dwelt naturally in the womb, but it is the vapor from the
pale shadow o f West Hua. . . . When she comes among humans, she
turns into a human, among animals she turns into an animal. Surely
she is not limited to the shape o f clouds or rain, or a dragon, or a
stork, or a flying swan, or wheeling phoenix?” Yii thought what he
said was right.
Later on, when he did go to visit her, he suddenly saw a cloudy
tower and a jade terrace, a jasper palace with jade turrets, which
looked magnificent. Standing on guard were spirit officers whose
names were unknown: lions held the gates, horses o f Heaven made
way, vicious dragons, lightning animals, eight guards stood by the
palace pavilions. The lady was sitting quietly on the jasper terrace.
Yii bowed his head very low and asked about the Way.. . . Then the
lady ordered her handmaid, Ling Jung-hua, to bring out a small
cinnabar-red jade box. She opened it and lifted up a priceless docu
ment in a distinguished script and presented it to Yii. Yu bowed low
as he accepted it and then he left. He also gained the help o f Keng-
ch’en and Yii-yii, so that in the end he managed to direct the waves
and contain the rivers, and he succeeded in accomplishing his task.
He made fast the Five Peaks and demarcated the Nine Provinces.
Heaven therefore conferred on him the Black Jade insignia and made
him the True Man o f the Purple Palace. (T ’ai-p’ing kuang chi, citing
Yung-ch’eng chi hsien lit, JMWH 56.347-49)
9
Goddesses
160
Goddesses — 161
Goddess o f Salt River is in the late classical era, but this account is prob
ably based on an earlier oral tradition. Jasper Lady appears in the tenth
century, being an amalgam o f goddesses in the ancient C h’u tradition
o f the “Nine Songs” o f Songs o f C h ’u, and in rhapsodies o f the Han and
post-Han eras, notably those epideictic evocations o f goddesses by the
pseudonymous Sung Yu, which were probably written in the third or
fourth century a .d .
From a mythographic standpoint, o f course, the first mention o f
some goddesses in a late textual source does not mean that they cannot
belong to a much earlier oral tradition. Conversely, some deities, for
example, O-huang and N ii-ying, w ho are identified as the daughters o f
Yao in the sixth century a . d ., may originally have been independent
divinities localized in the Yangtze region, a localization the author o f
our reading from the Commentary on the Classic o f Rivers makes clear,
since he refers to them by the name Hsiang, a tributary o f the Yangtze.
The goddesses mentioned throughout this book do not include
some well-known deities. Excluded are the goddesses Hsiang Chun or
Princess o f the River Hsiang, Hsiang Fu-jen or Lady o f the River
Hsiang, and Shan kuei or Mountain Wraith, w ho all appear in the “Nine
Songs,” dating from the fourth century B.C., in Songs of C h’u. A second
omission is the earth deity H ou-t’u, w ho is invoked in Han hymns.
Mountain goddesses w ho appear in literary evocations in rhapsodies
attributed to Sung Yii, a Ch’u author o f the early third century B.C., are
also excluded. These rhapsodies belong to pseudepigraphic literature,
that is, anonymous pieces ascribed to a w ell-known name. A hiatus o f
seven centuries divides the era o f the putative Sung Yu from these lyr
ically erotic rhapsodies, and their style is radically different from that o f
literary pieces known to date from the third century B.C. The m a in rea
son for their exclusion is that they belong to the literary tradition rather
than mythological sources. They do not impart a myth; rather, they ex
press religious, ritual, and imaginative verities.
The gender o f some divinities is often obscured by their title. For ex
ample, the name o f the earth deity is H ou-t’u: Hou signifies a hallowed
title, such as Divine Lord or Divine Lady, or Lord or Empress, attached
equally to females and males; t’u means earth or soil. Sinologists have
been divided on the issue o f the gender o f H ou-t’u. Burton Watson
favors the traditional rendition, “Earth Lord” (1961, 2, 59). Edouard
Chavannes and Michael Loewe prefer the rendition “Earth Queen”
(Chavannes 1910, 521-25; Loewe 1974, 28,170-72). More recently, Remi
Mathieu has agreed with Chavannes and Loewe (1989,195), and Wolf
162 — Chinese Mythology
gang Miinke has explored the issue (1976, 142-43). In a Han hymn re
corded in Pan Ku’s History o f the Han o f the first century a .d ., which the
historian dates from the reign o f the Han Emperor Wu (141-87 B.C.), the
earth deity is lauded thus: “Empress Earth is the rich O ld Woman” (Hou-
t’u fu-wen ) (Birrell 1993, 35, 183 nn. 37-38). In the same set o f hymns, a
deity w ho is linked to the deity o f Heaven, and w ho is therefore likely
to be the earth deity, is praised thus: “O ld Goddess is richly endowed”
(ibid., 38). The female gender o f H ou-t’u has, however, recently been
rejected by David R. Knechtges, who, referring to the Han hymn, states
that “the rich O ld Woman . . . has nothing to do with the female sex”
(1990, 312). He bases his evidence for this assertion on the opinion o f a
thirteenth-century a .d . commentator o f the Han hymn, Wu Jen-chieh
(d. ca. 1200), w ho claimed that fu-wen ‘rich old woman’ is a variant or
corruption o f fu-yun ‘rich and fecund’ (ibid.). Nevertheless, his argu
ment on this point must be seen in the light o f textual evidence proper.
For it is well known that medieval commentators amended and manip
ulated classical textual readings in the name o f variants, corruptions, or
rare glosses to suit their argument, opinion, or point o f view. A textual
rule holds, however, that i f the original, earliest text reads convincingly,
it should remain intact; whereas i f that text is garbled, then amendments
are clearly allowable. In the case o f the text o f the Han hymn, preserved
in an important traditional history, it clearly indicates a female gender
for H ou-t’u, w ho must therefore be rendered as Empress Earth, or a
similar feminine title. It is most likely that late commentators such as
Wu Jen-chieh preferred to conceive o f H ou-t’u as a male deity, and
their preference, or prejudice, has filtered down to modern research and
translation. Edward H. Schafer draws the same conclusion concerning
the diminution o f the role o f the goddess N ii Kua in the T ’ang dynasty
(1973. 29).
The concept o f H ou-t’u as a female deity certainly accords with
similar deities in mythologies worldwide. Just as early textual evidence
supports the view that the Chinese earth deity was female, so, too, it
could be shown that the corn deity, H ou Chi, might be female, Empress
Millet. Thus she would parallel the corn goddess, Demeter or Ceres, in
the Greco-Roman tradition. The comparative method, however, is a
double-edged sword here, and it could be equally argued that H ou C hi
has his counterpart in the male Eleusian Triptolemus sent by Demeter
to teach humans the art o f agriculture.
It w ill be noted that several goddesses bear the name O or Huang,
which are used as a prefix or suffix, and are known as stopgap names
Goddesses ~ 163
Nil Kua
The earliest references to N ii Kua are sparse and enigmatic. The
“ Questions o f Heaven” asks, “W ho shaped the body o f N ii Kua?” indi
cating that she was unusually formed. The question also implies that
164 ~ Chinese Mythology
N ii Kua, the greatest primeval cosmogonic deity, was not the ultimate
creator, since she was formed before she created humans. In this respect,
the creatrix is similar to those other cosmogonic gods o f m ythology
worldwide w ho create the world and humankind not ex nihilo but from
preexisting matter and from a preexisting state. The Huai-nan Tzu
relates that in the beginning o f time, N u Kua made “seventy transfor
mations,” but it is not clear i f this refers to her creative powers o f chang
ing and renewing the cosmos or to her own sacred metamorphoses. The
Classic o f Mountains and Seas mentions “ten spirits whose name is ‘The
Bowels o f N ii Kua,’ ” which strangely describes a deity whose bodily
form exists disparately, but in aggregate, in other supernal beings.
These early traditions about N ii Kua always treat her as an independent
deity and a major cosmogonic goddess.
In the Latter Han era, however, the process o f relegating her to a
minor role began with Pan Ku’s incorporation o f Nti Kua as one o f a
number o f minor deities subsumed under the major god T ’ai Hao,
w hom he mistakenly identified as Fu Hsi (Karlgren 1946, 230). Later in
the Han period, N u Kua’s divinity was further eroded when she lost
her independent status and became linked to Fu Hsi as his consort,
making a divine pair, like Zeus and Hera. In Han iconography she is
represented with a body o f a serpent entwined with Fu Hsi’s serpentine
form. Edward H. Schafer offered a plausible explanation o f the diminu
tion o f N u Kua in the postclassical tradition: “Her gradual degradation
from her ancient eminence was partly due to the contempt o f some emi
nent and educated men for animalian gods, and partly due to the in
creasing domination o f masculinity in the elite social doctrine” (Schafer
1973, 29).
The mythic motifs and themes in the readings have already been
discussed in chapters 1 and 3.
People say that when Heaven and earth opened and unfolded, hu
mankind did not yet exist. Nu Kua kneaded yellow earth and
fashioned human beings. Though she worked feverishly, she did not
have enough strength to finish her task, so she drew her cord in a fur
row through the mud and lifted it out to make human beings. That
is why rich aristocrats are the human beings made from yellow
earth, while ordinary poor commoners are the human beings made
from the cord’s furrow. (Feng su t’ung-yi, CFCE 1.83)
In remote antiquity the four poles collapsed. The Nine Regions split
up. Heaven could not cover all things uniformly, and earth could not
Goddesses 165
carry everything at once. Fires raged fiercely and could not be extin
guished. Water rose in vast floods without abating. Fierce beasts de
voured the people o f Chuan. Violent birds seized the old and weak
in their talons. Then Nii Kua smelted five-color stones to mend the
blue sky. She severed the feet o f a giant sea turtle to support the four
poles and killed a black dragon to save the region o f Chi. And she
piled up the ashes from burned reeds to dam the surging waters. The
blue sky was mended. The four poles were set right. The surging
waters dried up. The region o f Chi was under control. Fierce beasts
died and the people o f Chuan lived. They bore earth’s square area on
their backs and embraced the round sky. . ..
Ever since then, there have been no birds or beasts, no insects or
reptiles, that do not sheathe their claws and fangs and conceal their
poisonous venom, and they no longer have rapacious hearts. When
one considers her achievement, it knows only the bounds o f Ninth
Heaven above and the limits o f Yellow Clod below. She is acclaimed
by later generations, and her brilliant glory sweetly suffuses the
whole world. She rides in a thunder-carriage driving shaft-steeds o f
winged dragons and an outer pair o f green hornless dragons. She
bears the emblem o f the Fortune o f Life and Death. Her seat is the
Visionary Chart. Her steeds’ halter is o f yellow cloud; in the front is
a white calf-dragon, in the rear a rushing snake. Floating, drifting,
free and easy, she guides ghostly spirits as she ascends to Ninth
Heaven. She has audience with God inside the holy gates. Silently,
solemnly, she comes to rest below the High Ancestor. Then, without
displaying her achievements, without spreading her fame, she holds
the secret o f the Way of the True Person and follows the eternal nature
o f Heaven and earth. (Huai-nan Tzu, Lan ming, SPPY 6.7b-8a)
They say that when Shun the Great made a royal tour o f his territor
ies, his two queens followed the expedition. They drowned in
Hsiang River, and their spirits wandered over the deeps o f Lake
Tung-t’ing and appeared on the banks where the Hsiao and Hsiang
rivers meet. (Shui ching chu, Hsiang shui, SPTK 38.14a)
The local speckled bamboo are very beautiful, and in the Wu area the
speckled bamboo is called the Hsiang queens’ bamboo. The speckles
on it are like tear stains. (Ch’iin fan gp ’u, C h u p ’u, CFPCS 5.139)
Woman Ch’ou
The three narratives o f Woman C h ’ou (Nii Ch’ou) from The Classic
o f Mountains o f Seas are rich in mythic motifs. They display the incongru
ities, oddness, and paradox o f authentic myth. The first tw o readings
date from the first century a . d . , the third from the second century B.C.
The first narrative relates that “there are two people in the sea,” but, par
adoxically, only Woman C h’ou is mentioned. Her attribute o f a crab
may be explained as a symbol o f regeneration and as a creature that
knows the ways o f the sea and the He o f the land. Since the crab peri
odically sheds its shell and reveals fresh skin underneath, there is a
widespread belief that it never dies (Malinowski 1954,129; Frazer 1984,
170 ~ Chinese Mythology
90). The Huai-nan Tzu links the regenerative power o f the crab with the
moon, stating that the crab waxes and wanes with the moon (Mathieu
1983,1: 497 n. 3, citing Huai-nan Tzu 4.5b). The name Ch’ou signifies the
second o f the Twelve Earthly Branches o f the ancient calendrical sys
tem, and also a period o f time, the nocturnal hours between 1.00 and
3.00 A .M .
Further paradox is evident in the second and third readings, which
relate that the goddess’s name was Woman C h’ou Corpse, stating that
“Woman C h’ou Corpse was born.” Besides this corpse deity, the Classic
describes or refers to ten other corpse deities. The paradox signifies life
in death and death in life. Woman C h ’ou’s function is to counter the
effects o f drought by self-immolation, from which she is reborn
because she never truly dies. Her deformity from being scorched by the
sun she hides with her sleeve, or in the variant, with her right hand.
Her rebirth is marked by the green clothes she wears, a color emblem
atizing life and cyclical renewal: green signifies water, vegetal growth,
and so life itself. It is emblematic o f the thing desired. The same Classic
relates that the other drought deity, Drought Fury or N ii Pa, was
“dressed in green clothes.” Like D rought Fury, Woman C h ’ou is vir
ginal, as are other generative deities in mythology. The last reading nar
rates, “Where the ten suns are up above, Woman Ch’ou lived there on
the top o f the mountain,” thus linking the goddess to the nexus o f solar
myths, in which T i Chun, Y i the Archer, Hsi-Ho, and K ’ua-fu play a
role. Commentators have sought to establish that this and similar mythic
narratives point to the practice o f sacrificing shamanesses to the sun in
times o f drought, interpreting the myth in sociological terms (Mathieu
1989, 49 n. 1). Yet the mythic motifs are so complex and profound that
such a reading would seem to be too narrow.
There are two people in the sea. Her name is Woman Ch’ou. Woman
Ch’ou has a large crab. (Shan hai ching, Ta huang tung ching, SPPY 14.5a)
There was a person who wore green clothes and hid her face with
her sleeve. Her name was Woman Ch’ou Corpse. (Shan hai ching, Ta
huang hsi ching, SPPY 16.4a)
Woman Ch’ou Corpse was born, but the ten suns scorched her to
death. That was north o f the Land o f Men. She screened her face
with her right hand. Where the ten suns are up above, Woman Ch’ou
lived there on the top o f the mountain. (Shan hai ching, Hai wai hsi
ching, SPPY 7.2b)
Goddesses — 171
Figure 10. T h e Q ueen M other o f the West, w ith sheng head-dress, seated on her
leopard throne, attended (clockwise) by the nine-tailed fox, the kneeling hare
offering an elixir, tw o officials, the trance-dancing toad, a crouching suppliant,
the three-legged crow o f the sun, and a standing guard. R ubbing from a funer
ary carved brick, 38 cm . high, 18 cm . w ide. Latter H an, C h ’eng-tu , Szechwan
Provincial M useum C ollection . From Shih Yen, Chung-kuo tiao-su shih t’u lu,
vol. 1 (Shanghai: Shanghai Jenmin m ei-shu), 1983, 248.
Chou text. In one late text, Hsun Tzu o f the third century B.C., the name
refers only to the western kingdom.
The first readings relate myths about the goddess and describe her
attributes. O f these four readings from The Classic o f Mountains and Seas,
the first and third date from the third century B.C.; the second is from
the second century B .C., the fourth from the first century a . d . The god
dess portrayed in the narratives appears like the Greek goddess, Arte
mis, a “lady o f wild things,” and a “lion unto women” (Rose 1970,127).
Like Artemis, she is a goddess o f the wilds, far from human habitation
and cultivation. The Queen Mother o f the West is a deity w ho presides
over a mountain wilderness in the west and lives among wild beasts. In
these accounts she is described as a human with unkempt hair, a
panther’s tail, and tiger’s fangs, and she has a retinue o f feline beasts and
birds that bring her messages and food. Her only civilizing features are
the symbolic sheng head ornament she wears, a sort o f crown, and her
staff, a sort o f scepter. Her mountain realm is designated as being in the
west, and it is said to be the sacred mountain range o f K ’un-lun. This
is an axis mundi, a holy place poised equally between sky and land,
Heaven and earth, and is visited by gods. It is a paradise for mortals
w ho have been favored with the gift o f eternal life and those w ho have
a communion with the gods. Like Artemis, too, whose name means
Slaughterer or Butcher, the Queen Mother o f the West’s other attribute
is that she is a plague bringer and an avenging goddess.
In her later manifestation, the Queen Mother o f the West, like the
monstrously ugly Gorgo, w ho in early myth was hairy and wild, is rep
resented as a beautiful female divinity. This is well illustrated by the
fifth reading, a long narrative from The Chronicle o f Emperor Mu, which
is believed to date from the fourth century B.C. but is probably a post-
Han fictional romance. The narrative depicts the Queen Mother o f the
West in her civilized aspect, behaving like a dignified queen in her
exchange o f diplomatic gifts and polite courtesies with King M u, the
fifth king o f the Chou dynasty (trad. 1001-947 B.C.). Many legends are
attached to his name, such as the anecdote preserved in Lieh Tzu about
the inventor Master Yen. The Lieh Tzu contains a chapter entitled
“King M u o f C hou,” which relates many o f these traditional tales. The
text o f The Chronicle o f Emperor M u purports to be much earlier than
Lieh Tzu, a fourth-century a . d . forgery. The Chronicle was allegedly dis
covered in a . d . 281 when a graverobber named Pu Chun stole treasures
from the grave o f King Hsiang o f the Wei state, a late Chou ruler w ho
died between 319 and 296 B.C. The style o f the Chronicle, however, bears
Goddesses ~ 173
mythically linked to the giant cosmic peach tree, which serves as a mas
sive sky-ladder three thousand leagues across for the gods to descend
and ascend (see chap. 14). Her function o f bestowing immortality, how
ever, was a late invention and is not mentioned in early texts. Even in
the Chronicle she only expresses a wish to the earthly ruler, “M ay you
never die,” and “For you alone does Heaven wait”; otherwise, the
account is devoid o f the trappings o f immortality which characterize
later texts. The earliest textual reference to the goddess’s power to con
fer immortality occurs is Huai-nan Tzu, in the narrative about Ch’ang
O, w ho stole the drug o f immortality from Y i, w ho had obtained it
from the goddess. In later texts, such as The Old Fable o f [Emperor] Wu
o f the Han and The Inner Chapters o f Emperor Wu o f the Han, the royal visit
o f a Chinese king or emperor to the goddess is elaborated, but the
theme shifts from immortality to longevity, showing that the potency
o f the myth o f immortality was commencing to wane.
The Queen Mother o f the West reclines on a bench throne and wears
the sheng crown on her head and holds her staff in her hand. South
o f her are three bluebirds who gather food for the Queen Mother o f
the West north o f K ’un-lun void. (Shan hai ching, Hai nei pei ching,
SPPY 12. ia)
Another two hundred and twenty leagues west are the mountains o f
San-wei, where the three bluebirds live. This mountain is one hun
dred leagues around. (Shan hai ching, Hsi tz’u san ching, SPPY 2.22a)
There are three bluebirds with scarlet heads and black eyes. One is
called the Greater Blackfeather, one is called the Lesser Blackfeather,
and one is called the Bluebird. (Shan hai ching, Ta huang hsi ching,
SPPY 16.3b)
On the lucky chia-tzu day the emperor was the guest o f the Queen
Mother o f the West. Then, bearing the white jade tablet and the dark
jade disc o f monarchy, he had an audience with the Queen Mother
o f the West. As a token o f good will, he presented her with a brocade
Goddesses ~ 175
Ch’ang O
The mythical figure o f Ch’ang O, or Heng O, has been discussed
in the context o f the myths o f Y i the Archer. The motifs o f the narra
tives w ill be summarized here. The earliest reference to this deity in
Huai-nan Tzu uses the name Heng O. Remi Mathieu notes that the
name Heng violated the taboo name o f Emperor Wen o f the Han
(r. 180-157 B.C.) and was replaced by Ch’ang, although in the late Han
period the name Heng was restored (1989, 56 n. 2). She is not the only
lunar goddess; there is a mythic narrative that relates that Ch’ang-hsi
gave birth to the twelve moons and cared for them after their passage
across the sky. The C h’ang o f Ch’ang O is written with the female rad
ical, C h ’ang o f Ch’ang-hsi without, but the two names are the same; the
hsi o f C h’ang-hsi is the same as in Hsi-Ho, and in Fu Hsi. The two
major motifs in the C h’ang O narratives are her theft and her metamor
phosis. Her theft is not o f the altruistic kind exemplified by Kun; but,
like Kun, she belongs to the trickster category o f figures in mythology.
Her metamorphosis into a toad may be read as her punishment by a
higher god. This reading is the earliest reference to the Queen Mother
o f the West’s role as donor o f immortality.
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)
Jasper Lady
The goddess Jasper Lady, Yao-chi, is a late invention whose name
is derived from Taoistic epithets based on a jadelike substance, believed
to be the purest and most refined o f mundane things. In this she resem
bles divine women described in post-Han rhapsodies. S im ila r ly , her
image is based on mythopoeic evocations o f the fertility goddess o f
M ount Kao-t’ang and M ount Wu, place-names that are mentioned in
the reading that follows. The reading consists o f a long narrative from
A Record o f Immortals, Compiled in Yung-ch’eng by Tu Kuang-t’ing ( a .d .
850- 933)- It relates how the powerful goddess Jasper Lady helped Yti to
control the flood. Without her aid, the narrative persuades, Yii would
not have succeeded; Yu’s role is to be helpless and subservient before
the divine woman.
Goddesses — 177
Ch’in/Han era, circa late third to early second century B.C. These frag
ments were collated and edited, and also in part reconstructed, by Ch’in
Chia-m o and other C h’ing scholars to form a consecutive narrative
about the larger myth o f the origins o f the Pa tribe o f Szechwan. The
mythological genealogy o f the Pa is related in the first reading, which
comes from The Classic of Mountains and Seas, in a late chapter dating
from the first century a . d . The second reading is from Ch’in Chia-m o’s
reconstructed text.
The myth o f the goddess forms a part o f the narrative o f the trials
and ultimate success o f the hero, the Lord o f the Granary, w ho was o f
the Pa tribe. It relates the aggressive encounter between the hero and
the goddess, which constitutes one o f the hero’s trials before he becomes
leader o f his people and ruler o f a new city-kingdom. The goddess is
cast in the role o f a malign deity whose evil is foiled by the resourceful
hero. In its colorful drama and its depiction o f the hero as a cunning
adversary, the myth is reminiscent o f myths o f Odysseus, w ho defeated
his enemies by his cunning, resourcefulness, and courage. The cunning
o f the Lord o f the Granary is evident in the gift he offers the goddess:
it is a green silk cord, which she accepts, through his w ily flattery, as
a decorative girdle, but which in the end ensnares her, because it is also
a hunting weapon.
It is significant that both protagonists have the element o f food in
their name, that is, salt (yen) and grain > granary (tin). This nominally
makes the account a sitiological myth. Since the larger mythic narrative
o f the Lord o f the Granary relates how he became chief o f the tribe and
then went on to found a new city, it is possible that the underlying
structure o f the submyth o f his encounter with the goddess could be
read as a contest between a matriarchal community, Yen-yang, which
was rich in the resources o f fish and salt, and a dynamically expanding
patriarchal tribe seeking conquest o f rich land and peoples beyond its
frontiers.
Chung-li. On this mountain there were two caves, one scarlet and
one black, like cinnabar and lacquer. The children o f the Pa clan were
born in the scarlet cave, and the children o f the other four surnames
were all born in the black cave. Before there were chieftains, they
were all subjects o f the spirits and gods. The Lord o f the Granary’s
given name was Wu-hsiang; his surname was that o f the Pa clan. He
set out together with the Fan clan, the Shen clan, the Hsiang clan,
and the Cheng clan—five surnames in all —and they all competed for
divine power to rule. Then they all together threw their swords at a
rock and agreed that whoever could hit the target would be elevated
to be their lord. When the son o f the Pa clan, Wu-hsiang, was the
only one to hit the target, they all sighed. Then he ordered each clan
to sail in an earthenware boat, carved with designs and painted, and
to float the boats in the river. They made an agreement that whoever
could stay afloat would become their lord. The other clans all sank,
and Wu-hsiang’s was the only one to stay afloat. So they unani
mously made him their chieftain. He became the Lord o f the Gra
nary. Now he sailed the earthenware boat from Y i River to Yen-yang.
At Salt River there is a goddess. She said to the Lord o f the Granary,
‘This land is vast, and there is all the fish and salt that come from it.
I wish you would stay here and live among us.” The Lord o f the Gra
nary refused. At nightfall the Salt Goddess suddenly came to sleep
with him. At dawn she turned into a flying insect and flew in a
swarm with other insects. They blotted out the sunlight and the
world grew pitch black for more than ten days in a row. The Lord o f
the Granary could not make out which was east or west for seven
days and seven nights. He ordered someone to hold a green silk cord
and present it to the Salt Goddess. He said to her, “This will suit you
if you wear it as a fringed belt. If we are to live together, then please
accept it from me.” The Salt Goddess accepted it and wore it as a
fringed belt. At once the Lord o f the Granary stood on a sunlit rock,
and aiming at the green cord she wore, he shot arrows at her. He hit
her and the Salt Goddess died. Then the sky cleared far and wide.
The Lord o f the Granary then ruled over Y i City, and the four clan
names submitted to him. (Ch’in Chia-mo’s reconstructed text, Shih
pen, Shih hsing, 1:93-94)
Immortality
181
182 — Chinese Mythology
ancient China, C how Tse-tsung lists three sets o f shamans’ names, in
cluding the set in this reading, and these three sets overlap. They num
ber tw enty-tw o individual shamans. Basing his research on ancient dic
tionaries, inscriptions, and textual sources, C how interprets the names
o f the six shamans in the reading as follows: P’eng denotes a “drum
sound” ; T i means “needling with a stone” or a “thorn,” “pierce,” or “a
straight root,” or “slander,” hence “to invoke curses”; Yang “refers to
the sun,” but can also mean the “m oon,” or a “lunar eclipse”; Li means
“treading on” or “stepping on” ; Fan “may have symbolized the square
object used in such a [shamanistic] dance”; and Hsiang denotes “a drum
and drumstick” (Chow Tse-tsung 1978, 72-83). Schafer noted that the
name Fan, identified as a female shaman, is engraved on Shang oracle
bones in connection with a rain ceremony or with ritual exposure (1951,
132,184). The six shamans in the reading are custodians o f the secret o f
preserving life. They are probably thought o f as being immortal them
selves, but this is not overtly stated. Although the word wu usually
applies to female shamans, the gender o f the six shamans in this reading
is not given or implied. A curious omission from this text is the Queen
Mother o f the West, w ho elsewhere in the Classic is said to be the pre
siding deity o f Jade Mountain in the K ’un-lun void.
This narrative o f the mountain paradise in the west is a valuable
document for m ythology because o f all these themes and motifs. It is
also important for its account o f the shamanistic rite o f preserving a
corpse, the body o f the god Cha Yu. The narrative may represent the
vestige o f an archaic rite o f inducing deathlessness which was enacted
in the age o f belief in immortality.
Within the seas the K ’un-lun wastes are in the northwest, and this is
God’s capital city on earth below. The K ’un-lun wastes are eight hun
dred leagues square and eighty thousand feet high. On top there is
the Tree Grain; it is forty feet tall and five spans wide. On all sides
there are nine wells with well-sills made o f jade. On all sides there
are nine gates, and at the gates there is the K’ai-ming beast on guard.
The dwelling place o f the gods is on a cliff with eight nooks. The
boundary o f the Scarlet River has a cliff on the ridge which no one
could ascend unless he were the Good Archer.. . . The gulf south of
K’un-lun is two thousand, four hundred feet deep. The body o f the
K’ai-ming beast is mostly that o f a tiger, and it has nine heads, all o f
which have human faces that look eastward. It stands on top o f K ’un-
lun. To the west o f the K ’ai-ming are the male and female phoenix
Immortality ~ 185
and the luati-bird. They all carry a serpent on their head and tread a
serpent underfoot, and there is a scarlet snake on their breast. North
o f the K’ai-ming there is the Shih-jou creature, the pearl tree, the
patterned-jade tree, the yii-ch’i tree, and the Never Die tree. The male
and female phoenix and luan-bird all wear armor plate on their heads.
And there are the Li-chu bird, the giant Grain Tree, the cypress, the
Sweet Water, and the Wise Man tree, the Man-tui, also called the
T ’ing-tree-cross-fanged. To the east o f the K ’ai-ming there are Sha
man P’eng, Shaman Ti, Shaman Yang, Shaman Li, Shaman Fan, and
Shaman Hsiang, who bear the corpse o f Cha Yu, each holding the
drug o f immortality to protect him. Cha Yii has a serpent’s body and
a human head. He was killed by Double Load and his officer. There
is also the Fu-ch’ang tree. O n its crown there is a three-headed man
who watches over the red lang-gan jade tree. To the south o f the K ’ai-
ming beast there is the Tree Bird with its six heads, and the scaly dra
gon, the cobra, the serpent, the long-tailed ape, the panther, the niao-
chih tree, Splendid Pool tree, the hummingbird, the shun-hawk, and
the Shih-jou creature. (Shan hai ching, Hai nei hsi ching, SPPY n.2b-5b)
an explanation for the size o f titans and giants. The account is set in illo
tempore, before the gods Fu hsi and the Farmer God. Despite the prolif
eration o f mythological motifs, the narrative style betrays the late pro
venance o f the text and its trend toward legend rather than primeval
myth. The story has a sophisticated framework: it consists o f a series o f
imaginary discussions between T ’ang the Conqueror o f the Shang/Yin,
who poses several questions about the origins o f things, and one Chi
o f the Hsia, w ho replies with lengthy explanations.
Emperor T ’ang o f the Yin dynasty asked another question: “In na
ture, what are the giant and minute things, the longest and the short,
similar and different kinds?” Chi o f the Hsia dynasty said: “To the
east o f Po Sea, countless thousands o f millions o f miles away, there
is a vast pool, a truly bottomless valley. Its bottomless depth is called
Kuei-hsu. All the waters o f the Eight Sides and the Nine Wilds and
the courses o f Heavenly Han flow into it, yet it neither increases nor
decreases. There are five mountains in it. One is Tai Yu. The second
is Yuan Chiao. The third is Fang Hu. The fourth is Ying-chou. The
fifth is P’eng-lai. These mountains are thirty thousand leagues high
and around, and their flat crests are nine thousand leagues across.
Each mountain is seventy thousand leagues apart, yet they are neigh
bors. The terraced viewpoints on them are all o f gold and jade. The
birds and beasts on them are all pure silky white. The pearly garnet
trees all grow densely; their blossom and fruit are richly flavored.
Whoever eats them will never grow old or die. The people living
there are all immortals and sages. They are innumerable as they flit
to and fro all day and all night. But the bases o f the five mountains
are not firmly secured, and they constantly ebb and flow with the
waves o f the tides, unable to pause even for a short while. The im
mortals and sages hated this and complained about it to God in
Heaven. God feared they might drift into the West Pole and lose the
dwellings o f the host o f immortals and sages. So he commanded Yii
Ch’iang to use fifteen giant sea turdes to bear the mountains on their
raised heads. By alternating three to a group they took turns every
sixty thousand years. For the first time the five mountains stood still.
But in the Dragon Earl’s kingdom there was a giant who, by just lift
ing his feet a few steps, reached the place where the mountains stood.
With each single throw o f his line, he caught six o f the giant sea tur
tles in succession. He bundled them onto his back and hurried back
to his own country, where he burned their shells to tell his fortune.
Immortality ~ 187
As a result, the two mountains Tai Yii and Yuan Chiao drifted
toward the North Pole and sank in the vast ocean. The immortals
and sages who scattered in exile numbered in their millions. God in
Heaven was very angry and he shrank the Dragon Earl’s kingdom to
narrow confines and shrank the Dragon Earl’s people to a small size.
Right up until the time o f Fu Hsi and the Farmer God, the people o f
that kingdom were still only a hundred feet tall. (Lieh Tzu, T ’ang wen,
SPPY 5-3b-5b)
mouth o f a corpse, plus some spit from the mouth o f the living, will
ensure that the body w ill return to life immediately (ibid., 275-77).
The reading on the P’eng-tsu myth is a shortened version o f the
original, and it opens with the account o f the long-lived hsien, or trans
cendental being. The graph for the name P’eng is the same as that o f
Shaman P’eng (Wu P’eng) in the first reading, on the K ’un-lun paradise.
It is ironic that P’eng-tsu’s description o f his state o f longevity consists
o f the typical list o f complaints o f any very old person, except that in
this case P’eng-tsu lived to be almost eight hundred years old and had
suffered the loss o f one hundred and five relatives, including parents,
wives, and children. The parallel between P’eng-tsu and Methuselah is
often drawn because o f the similarity o f their age. It is noteworthy that
in recent times the myth o f longevity has been immortalized by medi
cal science, since the name the Methuselah gene has been given to a
gene identified in some human beings as a longevity gene.
When P’eng K ’eng poured out pheasant soup, how did God enjoy his
sacrificial offering? He received the gift o f eternal life, so how did he
achieve such longevity? (Ch’u Tz’u, T ’ien wen, SPTK 3.32b)
189
190 ~ Chinese Mythology
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Love
201
202 ~ Chinese Mythology
line with the emperor’s distaste for laxity and depravity. Whether there
were originally no bawdy passages in the early texts o f myths or, as
seems more likely, such passages were bowdlerized, the result is that in
classical Chinese m ythology there is no goddess o f love such as Aphro
dite (or Venus), nor a god o f love such as Eros or Cupid, nor the am
orous adventures o f Zeus and others. Even in texts that only imply
sexual activity, such as Yii’s encounter w ith the T ’u-shan girl, the epi
sode is hedged with ambiguity and innuendo. During the Han period,
either in conjunction with puritanical censorship or in an independent
evolution, new social mores dictated that narratives on the theme o f
love should depict courteous exchanges between lovers, as with the
Queen M other o f the West and K ing M u o f Chou, or express the ideal
values o f fidelity and devotion, but in particular that they should skirt
around a direct reference to physical realism and avoid prurient excess.
In all this, o f course, the values o f the social system should be reflected
in the conventional gender roles o f the subordinate female and domi
nant male. The result is, as the readings indicate, that the mythic power
o f the narratives had been subdued by social philosophy current in the
Han and post-Han eras.
In other, more robust mythological traditions, lustful couplings
between the gods and humans usually have a procreative function.
Clearly, this functional aspect is absent from most classical Chinese
myths. This does not mean to say that the procreation myth per se is a
minor one but that procreation results not from Olympian intercourse
but through miraculous birth or following an idealized and courtly
exchange o f pleasantries. Examples are the birth o f Ch’i in the myth o f
Yii and the T ’u-shan girl and the birth o f Shao Hao in the myth o f the
Son o f the White Emperor and Huan O. M ost conceptions in Chinese
myth are divine and miraculous and are achieved without the interven
tion o f a male. The only exceptions are Kun, w ho gave birth to Yii, and
the fabled Country o f Men, where men give birth to sons only, through
their middle, back, or side. The most prestigious examples o f divine
procreation without sex are Chien Ti, ancestress o f the Shang, and
Chiang Yuan, ancestress o f the Chou, w ho trod in a giant’s footprint
and swallowed a bird’s egg.
The readings in this chapter illustrate typical aspects o f mythic
love: the battle between the sexes, the founding o f the institution o f
marriage, married love, divine courtship, separation, and bereavement.
Love ~ 203
Long ago, when the world first began, there were two people, Nii
Kua and her older brother. They lived on Mount K’un-lun. And
there were not yet any ordinary people in the world. They talked
about becoming husband and wife, but felt ashamed. So the brother
at once went with his sister up Mount K’un-lun and made this
prayer:
Oh Heaven, if Thou wouldst send us two forth to become man
and wife,
then make all the misty vapor gather;
i f not, then make all the misty vapor disperse.
At this the misty vapor immediately gathered. When the sister
became intimate with her brother, they plaited some grass to make
a fan to screen their faces. Even today, when a man takes a wife, they
hold a fan, which is a symbol o f what happened long ago. (Tu yi chih,
T S C C 3.51)
and by using the cunning ruse o f offering her an intimate love token,
a waist girdle, which turns out to be a hunting weapon. Other motifs
are the metamorphosis o f the goddess into a swarm o f insects; the dark
ening o f the world as she blots out the sun; the sunlit rock from which
the hero shoots his fatal arrow; and the restoration o f the world to
goodness and light. The sitiological m otif in the names o f the two pro
tagonists, grain and salt (Lin and Yen), suggests that the underlying
intent o f this section o f the account might be construed as the desire o f
the ruler o f a territory rich in the natural resources o f salt and fish to
acquire territory rich in grain, or vice versa. In primitive economies salt
was a prerequisite for the preservation and preparation o f staple foods.
One last m otif is discernible in this narrative, that is, the vestige o f a
local sun myth in which a goddess possesses power over the sun. If this
surmise is correct, it parallels other sun myths in the Chinese tradition,
such as that o f Hsi-Ho, in which a female deity predominates. The
theme o f gender competition mentioned at the outset also implies that
the myth might also be read as an evolving contest for supremacy
between a matriarchal and patriarchal society.
ure, one Yen Chiin-p’ing, w ho lived in the first century B.C. He was a
Taoist and an astronomer o f Shu (Szechwan), w ho was said to sight
strange stars. The text itself is attributed to the author and astronomer
Chang Hua (a .d . 232-300) but is probably a pseudepigraphic w ork o f
the Six Dynasties.
In olden days it was said that Sky River was connected to the sea.
Nowadays there is a man who lives on a little island. Year after year
in the eighth month, a floating raft comes and goes, and it never fails
to pass by at the same time. The man had a wonderful idea—he erected
a soaring compartment on the raft, packed provisions, boarded the
raft, and left. During ten days or more he still saw the stars, moon,
and sun, but from then on it became blurred far and wide, and he
could not tell whether it was day or night. He went on for ten days
or more, when suddenly he came to a place where there were what
seemed like inner and outer city walls and well-ordered houses, and
in the distance he could see many weaver women in a palace. He saw
a man leading oxen to an island bank to drink from it. The oxherd
then said in surprise, “How did you get here?” The man explained all
about his purpose in coming here and, for his part, asked where this
place was. He answered, “Go back to Shu commandery and put your
question to Yen Chun-p’ing; then you will know.” In the end the
man did not go farther up the island shore because he was to return
according to the raft’s regular time. Later on he reached Shu and
asked Yen Chiin-p’ing, who said, “O n a certain day o f a certain
month in a certain year a stranger star trespassed into the Draught
O x constellation.” He calculated the year and month, and it was just
when this man had arrived in Sky River. (Po wu chih, Tsa shui, 2, SPPY
3-3 a)
rell 1986, 6-28). Despite this obviating style, there are clear markers o f
sexual desire: the love feast, outdoor scenario, music, song, and an idyl
lic boat journey. Moreover, the elegant but elusively phrased songs that
the gods exchange contain covert declarations o f love.
The child-god w ho was born from this love has two names apart
from Shao Hao, which his mother gave him: C h ’iung Sang or Exhausted
Mulberry, and Sang C h’iu, the first being the name o f the mythical
place where his parents courted. M ulberry has the connotation o f the
Tree o f Life in the east, the world-tree, Leaning Mulberry. Other
names for the god Shao Hao are Metal Sky and Phoenix Bird. Metal is
the element that is usually an attribute o f the west, according to the tra
ditional Five Elements theory, whereas Shao Hao is more generally be
lieved to preside over the east. His “tomb” is now sited in the east, in
C h’ii-fu, Shantung, the birthplace o f Confucius.
Shao Hao ruled by the power o f metal. His mother was called Huang
O. She lived in a palace o f exquisite jade and she wove by night.
Sometimes she sailed on a wooden raft by day to amuse herself, pass
ing the vast and boundless reach o f Ch’iung Sang. At that time there
was a child-god whose appearance stood out from the ordinary. He
was called the Son o f the White Emperor, that is, the essence o f T ’ai-
po. He descended from on high to the margin o f a river and feasted
and played with Huang O. He performed the “Easy Grace” music
and had fun and games until he forgot to go home. At Ch’iung Sang
there was a lone mulberry tree on the shore o f the West Sea which
grew straight up for eight thousand feet. Its leaves were red and its
berries maroon. It bore fruit once in ten thousand years. Anyone
who ate it became as old as Heaven. The prince and Huang O drifted
on the sea. Their mast was o f cassia, the banners were plaited with
scented reeds. A pigeon made o f carved jade was fixed on the mast
head, for there is a saying that a pigeon knows the times o f the four
seasons. That is why it says in the Spring and Autumn records, “When
midsummer comes and midwinter goes, they arrange the ordinances
for this interval.” Nowadays the weathercock is a vestigial symbol o f
this. The prince and Huang O sat down together and strummed
their paulownia lute and catalpa zither. Huang O bent over her zither
and sang a clear song:
The sky is clear, the earth is wide and immense,
Ten thousand images turn to fading, changing into nothing.
We drift through skies so vast and gaze into space.
Love ~ 209
They say that when Shun the Great made a royal tour o f his territor
ies, his two queens followed the expedition. They drowned in Hsiang
River and their spirits wandered over the deeps o f Lake Tung-t’ing
and appeared on the banks where the Hsiao and Hsiang Rivers meet.
(Shui ching chu, Hsiang shui, SPTK 38.14a)
The local speckled bamboo are very beautiful, and in the Wu area the
speckled bamboo is called the Hsiang queens’ bamboo. The speckles
on it are like tear stains. (Ch’un fang p’u, Chu p’u, CFPCS 5.139)
2io — Chinese Mythology
detail about the wife’s suicide leap: “The rags that came away in their
hands turned into butterflies” (Yuan K ’o 1980.2,281). The story was also
dramatized in the Yuan dynasty, and the M ing dynasty author C h’en
Yao-wen inserted a song Han P’ing sang before committing suicide:
The text o f the love narrative from Kan Pao’s collection follows.
Prince K’ang o f the Sung had a manservant called Han P’ing. Han
P’ing married a daughter o f the Ho family, who was so beautiful that
Prince K ’ang took her away from him. P’ing deeply resented this, so
the prince imprisoned him and punished him by making him do early
morning labor on the city wall. His wife sent P’ing a letter in secret,
which was worded to disguise her meaning: “When the rain pours in
torrents and the river rises and gets deeper, our hearts will come
together at sunrise.” When the prince received her letter, he showed
it to his courtiers, but none o f the courtiers could decipher its mean
ing. His official Su Ho gave this solution: ‘“ When the rain pours in
torrents’ means to grieve and pine; ‘the river rises and gets deeper’
means to be unable to go out or come in; ‘our hearts will come
together at sunrise’ means a death wish.” Not long afterward, P’ing
committed suicide. Then his wife secretly made her clothes worn
and rotten. When the prince went up the tower with her, she threw
herself from the tower. The courtiers grabbed her, but her clothes
missed their grasp and she fell to her death. A suicide note in her belt
said, “The prince would have preferred me to live, but I preferred to
die. I request the favor that my body be buried with P’ing.” The
prince was very angry and refused to grant her wish. He ordered a
countryman to bury her so that the burial mounds would face each
other at some distance from each other. The prince said, “You went
on loving each other as husband and wife. If you can make your
212 ~ Chinese Mythology
burial mounds come together I will not stand in your way.” When
everyone was asleep, two huge catalpa trees grew up at the edge o f
the two burial mounds. In ten days they had grown to full size. They
bent their trunks across toward each other, so that the roots were
entwined below and the boughs embraced above. And there were
two mandarin ducks, a male and a female, which remained perched
on top o f the trees. They refused to leave at night or by day but
entwined their necks and sang sadly, so that people were very
moved. The people o f Sung felt sorry for them and ever after called
these trees the “loving-you tree.” (Sou shen chi, T S C C 11.77-78)
Heroes
213
214 ~ Chinese Mythology
over water and could cause severe drought, killed him. In that passage
the death o f K ’ua-fu is linked to the death o f Ch’ih Yu, and both gods
were executed because they were judged to be rebels. Metamorphosis
into w ood also links the myths o f these two gods.
Kuo P’u responded ambiguously to the mythical figure o f K ’ua-fu
in his commentary, saying, “Divine was K ’ua-fu! But he was difficult to
understand.” T ’ao Yuan-ming applauded K ’ua-fu’s audacity in his nar
rative poem: “His divine strength was very wonderful . . . . I His merits
were accomplished after his death” (Davis 1983,1:160-61).
K’ua-fu and the sun had a race. The sun went in. K’ua-fu was so
thirsty he wanted to have a drink. He drank from the river and the
Wei, but the river and the Wei were not enough. He went northward
to drink from the Great Marsh, but he did not reach it, and he died
o f thirst on the way. His abandoned stick turned into Teng Grove.
(Shan hai ching, Hai wai pei ching, SPPY 8.2b)
Hsing T ’ien and God came to this place and fought for divine rule.
God cut off his head and buried it on Ch’ang-yang mountain. Hsing
T ’ien made his nipples serve as eyes and his navel as his mouth, and
brandishing his shield and battle-ax, he danced. (Shan hai ching, Hai
wai hsi ching, SPPY 7.2a)
218 ~ Chinese Mythology
The two mountains T ’ai Hsing and Royal House are seven hundred
leagues square and eighty thousand feet high and were originally in
the south o f Chi Province and north o f Ho-yang. The Foolish Old
Man o f North Mount was almost ninety years old, and he lived op
posite these mountains. He thought it a painful burden that the
northern edge o f the mountains should make his journeys back and
forth such a long way around. So he gathered his household and put
this plan to them: “You and I will use our utmost strength to level
out a narrow pass, which will go through to Yu in the south and go
as far as the south side o f Han River. How about it?” They all agreed
with his plan. His wife expressed her doubts, saying, “With your
strength you couldn’t even destroy the hillock o f K’uei-fu, so how
could you destroy T ’ai Hsing and Royal House mountains? And
where would you put the soil and stones?” They all said, “We’ll
throw them on the tail end o f Po Sea north o f Yin-t’u.” Then leading
his son and grandson, the three men carrying poles, he broke up
rocks and furrowed the soil, and they transported them in baskets
and hods to the tail end o f Po Sea. A neighbor, the widow Ching-
Heroes — 219
ch’eng, had a son left to her who was just losing his milk teeth, and
he leaped up and went to help them.
The seasons had changed from cold to hot when they all came
back home for the first time. The Wise Old Man o f the River Bend
laughed at the Foolish Old Man and said, “Well, you aren’t very
smart. How can you, with your last bit o f strength and in your
declining years, ever break up even one hair o f this mountain, let
alone the earth on it?” The Foolish Old Man o f North Mount gave
a long sigh and said, “Your mind is thick, you just can’t understand—
you’re not nearly as good as the widow’s weak young boy. Even if
I die, there’ll be my son, who will carry on, and my son has had my
grandson born to him too, and that grandson will also have a son
born to him, and his son will have a son born to him as well, and that
son will have his grandson too. Son after son, grandson after grand
son forever and ever. This mountain won’t get any bigger, so why do
you fret that eventually it won’t be flattened?” The Wise Old Man o f
the River Bend was lost for an answer. The snake-holding god heard
o f this and, feeling concerned that this would never come to an end,
reported it to God. God was moved by his faith in his ideal and
ordered the two sons o f K’ua-o to carry the two mountains on their
backs, placing one in Shuo to the east, and placing one in Yung to the
south. Ever since then, from south o f Chi Province to the south side
o f Han River there is not a single bank to interrupt the flat ground.
(Lieh Tzu, T ’ang wen, SPPY 5.8a~9b)
Beyond the seas to the southwest, south o f Scarlet River and west o f
Drifting Sands, there is a man called Hsia-hou K ’ai who wears a green
snake in his pierced ears and rides a pair o f dragons. K’ai went up to
Heaven three times as a guest. He received the “Nine Counterpoints”
and the “Nine Songs,” and brought them down to earth. This Plain
220 ~ Chinese Mythology
reditary rule (Allan 1981, 107, m -17). The second reading is from an
early text, which is no longer extant, cited by M a Su in Hypotheses on
History; preface dated a .d . 1670. The title o f the early text is Biographies
o f Great Men.
Po Y i and Shu Ch’i were the two sons o f the ruler o f Ku-chu. Their
father wanted to make Shu Ch’i his heir. When their father died, Shu
Ch’i ceded the throne to Po Yi. Po Y i declined and said, “It was
Father’s wish.” Then he fled from the kingdom. Shu Ch’i was also
unwilling to accede, so he ran away from the kingdom too. Then the
kingdom made the middle son the successor to the throne. Then Po
Y i and Shu Ch’i heard that Ch’ang, the Lord o f the West, had a good
reputation for caring for the aged and they asked themselves whether
it would be a good idea to go and make their home there. When they
arrived, the Lord o f the West had died, and King Wu was bearing his
wooden tablet o f royal authority inscribed with the name “King
Wen,” for he was moving to the east to attack King Chou. (Shih chi,
Po Yi lieh chuan, SPPY 6i.2a-b)
compiled by Chao Yeh (fl. ca. a .d . 40). Wu and Yueh were ancient states
famous for their fine swords. The sudden appearance o f this fully
fledged myth has led Lionello Lanciotti to believe that “the origin o f
that group o f legends is not purely Chinese” (1955,106-7). He went on
to suggest that the written characters for the name M o Yeh had several
variants and were undoubtedly originally the transliteration o f a for
eign name.
The narrative o f the legendary sword makers o f Wu state, Kan
Chiang and his wife, M o Yeh, belongs to the considerable lore o f metal
lurgy, sword making, and magic swords in antiquity. For example, ac
cording to an early tradition, the sword that was used to cut open the
corpse o f Kun to release his son Yu was a Wu sword (The Storehouse of
A ll Things, T S C C 1.1b). The lore o f myth and legend derives in part
from the fact that sword making was a noble but dangerous profession.
As the reading illustrates, this profession engendered its own mythic
tradition, its own ritual, and its ow n identity as a mining community.
The idea o f a separate mining community is expressed in the central
and final passages, which speak o f hill-mining and a group o f three
hundred children from miners’ families assisting in the metallurgical
process. The evidence for a special ritual for the smelting process occurs
several times in the text: adherence to cosmological conjunctions o f
Y in and Yang and the proper season, attendance upon the witness o f
the gods, the wearing o f white hemp and grass (white symbolizing the
element o f metal and the color o f death), human sacrifice with the ritual
o f cutting o ff nails and hair, and the naming o f swords after their
makers. The multiplicity o f rituals referred to in the text suggests that
the process o f smelting ore often failed. (It is clear from the text that the
metal used was iron ore rather than bronze.) That the tradition o f metal
lurgy inspired its own lore is indicated by the opening reference to a
master sword maker, and later in the text by the reference to the author
ity o f this master in connection with a tradition o f ritual self-sacrifice.
Moreover, as Lanciotti suggested, Kan Chiang’s revelation o f the secret
o f his master’s ritual self-sacrifice only after he has failed in smelting
indicates that Kan Chiang belongs to “a dynasty o f smiths with secret
doctrines” (1955, no).
The tragic heroism o f the wife, M o Yeh, w ho throws herself into
the furnace as sacrifice to the gods o f metallurgy, is prompted by the vil
lain o f the story, King H o Lii o f Wu. Elsewhere, however, King Ho Lii
(r. 514-496 B.C.) is portrayed as a great military leader w ho conquered
the great state o f Ch’u and was an expert on metal weaponry. M o Yeh’s
Heroes — 223
suicide is only hinted at in the text. It is suggested by the verb t’ou ‘to
throw’. This verb is frequently used in the context o f women who com
mit suicide by throwing themselves into a river or o ff a tower, or, as in
this case, into a fire. The same verb t’ou is used in the story o f the suicide
o f Han Ping’s wife recounted in chapter 12. Some scholars, however,
prefer to read the M o Yeh passage not as suicide, the ultimate sacrifice
to the gods, but as a ritual act o f throwing only her hair and nail clip
pings into the furnace, a mimetic act o f animal sacrifice in antiquity. It
w ill be recalled, nevertheless, that in the mythic narrative “A t Mulberry
Forest They Pray for Rain,” in chapter 3, the Shang ruler, T ’ang the
Conqueror, performed this ritual too but then placed himself on top o f
a sacrificial pyre.
Kan Chiang came from Wu state. He had studied under the same
master as Ou the Smith and both o f them could make swords. When
Yueh state had previously sent three swords o f fine workmanship as
a gift, [King] Ho Lii acquired them and prized them. That is why the
state ordered their sword maker to make two more fine swords. One
was called Kan Chiang, the second was called M o Yeh. Mo Yeh was
Kan Chiang’s wife. When Kan Chiang made swords, he selected the
purest iron from the five mountains and the finest gold in the six cos
mic points. Then he waited for Heaven’s proper time and attended on
earth’s due season, when Yin and Yang would be in conjunction and
all the gods would be present to observe.
But the breath o f Heaven descended, and the result was that the
molten essences o f gold and iron would not fuse and refused to liq
uify. Kan Chiang did not know why this had happened. Mo Yeh
said, “Your reputation for skilled sword making came to the atten
tion o f the King, and he ordered you to make swords for him. But
three months have passed and they are still unfinished. Perhaps there
is a meaning in the failure with the smelting?” Kan Chiang said, “I do
not know what the reason is.” M o Yeh said, “In the transformation
process between gods and humans, a human is required before suc
cess can be achieved. You, sir, are now making swords. Do you think
you will be successful after the gods have taken their human [offer
ing] , or if they haven’t?” Kan Chiang said, “Some time ago, when my
master was smelting and the gold and iron substances would not
fuse, both he and his wife got into the smelting oven together, and
afterward the smelting was successful. From that time on, whenever
people have gone mining for ore for smelting, they have worn white
224 ~ Chinese Mythology
The potency o f the myth o f the two swords is evident from its lit
erary elaboration in later centuries. The following poem by Pao Chao
(a . d . ?4i2-?466) expresses the romanticized aspect o f the myth, and it
was included in the famous early medieval anthology o f love poetry,
New Songs from aJade Terrace, compiled circa a .d . 539-545:
executed by royal command o f the king o f C h’u state. The action has
moved from Wu through Yueh to C h ’u. It w ill be recalled that in gen
eral, Kan Pao’s collection o f tales constitutes reworkings o f old mythic
material, besides legend and folklore, the intent o f which was to amuse
and divert readers rather than to transmit the eternal verities o f myth.
It is probably safer to take Chao Yeh’s narrative as a version close to the
authentic myth o f sword making and to treat Kan Pao’s tale as a fictional
diversion based on an older mythical account. Certainly, his narrative
is full o f fictional color: the oath sworn by the father w ho is about to
die, the numerical m otif o f three, repetition o f speech, the riddle o f the
rock, the vow o f revenge, the king’s ominous dream, the king’s ransom,
the dirge o f the boy hero, the miracle o f his petrified corpse, the act o f
revenge, the three heads in the cooking pot, and the joint grave with its
ironic epitaph. The piece ends w ith a familiar Six Dynasties touristic
touch.
The account belongs to the category o f revenge myth which traces
its ancestry to Chou dynasty classics such as the Chronicle ofTso, which
has a similarly grisly account o f the fate o f Y i the Archer and his sons.
The revenge myth has its apotheosis in gruesome macho-sadistic stories
o f heroes in The Water Margin o f the M ing dynasty (Plaks 1987,304-58).
In his cogent article on this myth, Lanciotti has interpreted it as a
follow-up o f the narrative presented by Chao Yeh (1955, 316-22). As
w ith the name o f M o Yeh, he noted that the young hero’s name is w rit
ten with many variants, suggesting that “the origin o f that group o f
legends is not purely Chinese” (ibid., 114). The various names for the
son o f Kan Chiang, Ch’ih Pi, mean Red between the Eyebrows, One
Inch Broad between His Eyebrows, Scarlet Nose, and Scarlet Likeness
(Yuan K ’o 1980.2, 277).
When Kan Chiang and Mo Yeh were in Ch’u, Kan Chiang had to
make swords for the king o f Ch’u. After three years they were ready,
but the king was angry and decided to put him to death. The swords
were male and female. Kan Chiang’s wife was heavily pregnant and
was due to give birth. N ow Kan Chiang told his wife, “I was asked
to make swords for the king, and I completed them in three years.
But the king is angry with me. When I go, the king is sure to have
me put to death. If you give birth to a boy, tell him when he grows
up, ‘A s you go out o f the door, look south at the hill, and where a
pine tree grows above a rock, my sword lies hidden behind it.’ ”
Then, taking the female sword with him he went to have an audience
226 ~ Chinese Mythology
with the king o f Ch’u. The king grew very angry. He ordered Kan
Chiang to produce the other sword. But Kan Chiang said that there
had been two swords, one male and one female; the female sword
had been brought, but not the male sword. The king was enraged
and promptly had him put to death.
Mo Yeh’s son was called Ch’ih Pi. Later, when he had grown up,
he asked his mother, “Where is my father?” His mother said, “Your
father had to make swords for the king o f Ch’u. He finished them in
three years, but the king was very angry and killed him. When he
was about to die he charged me: “Tell your son, “As you go out o f the
door, look south at the hill, and where a pine tree grows above a
rock, my sword lies hidden behind it.” ’ ” Then the son went out o f
the door, looked south, but failed to see a mountain. All he saw was
a pine stump in front o f the hall, and nearby was a stone sticking up.
He at once cleaved open the back o f the stone with an ax and found
the sword. Night and day he longed to seek his revenge from the
king o f Ch’u. The king dreamed he saw a lad with eyebrows twelve
inches apart who said he wanted to seek revenge. The king immedi
ately offered a ransom o f a thousand pieces o f gold for this young
boy. When the boy heard o f this, he disappeared and went into the
forest. He sang sadly as he walked along. A stranger who met him
said, “You are very young. Why are you wailing so sadly?” He said,
“I am the son o f Kan Chiang and M o Yeh. The king o f Ch’u killed
my father, and I want my revenge on him.” The stranger said, “I have
heard that the king has offered a ransom o f a thousand pieces o f gold
for your head. If I go to the king with your head and your sword, I
will get your revenge for you.” The boy said, “That would be fine!”
Then he slit his own throat and held out his head and his sword and
gave them to him. He stood there, a petrified corpse. The stranger
said, “I will not fail you.” Then the corpse toppled over.
The stranger took the head and went to see the king o f Ch’u. The
king was overjoyed. The stranger said, ‘This is the head o f a very
brave man, so we must boil it in a large pot.” They boiled the head
for three days and three nights, but it would not cook through. The
head bobbed about in the boiling water, its eyes glaring with rage.
The stranger said, “The boy’s head refuses to cook through. I would
like Your Majesty to go up and look in at it yourself, then it will be
sure to cook properly.” The king at once went up to it. The stranger
chopped the king’s head off with the sword and the king’s head fell
into the boiling water. Then the stranger lopped off his own head
Heroes —« 227
and another head fell into the boiling water. The three heads all dis
solved into each other, so it was impossible to tell who was who.
Then they separated the flesh from the boiling water and buried it.
That is why the burial ground bore the name Grave o f the Three
Kings. Today it is situated in the region north o f Ju-nan in Yi-ch’un
county. (Sou shen chi, T S C C 11.71-72)
ley, he happened to meet King Hui o f the Ch’in. King Hui filled a
wicker box with gold and sent it to the king o f Shu. The king o f Shu
reciprocated with precious objects. But all the objects turned to clay,
and King Hui became angry. But his court officials congratulated
him, saying, “Heaven has singled us out for its favor. Your Majesty
will take the land o f Shu.” King Hui was overjoyed. So they made five
stone oxen, and each morning they released gold from their buttocks
and announced, “Even our ox-shit is gold!” There were a hundred sol
diers in charge o f the stone oxen. The people o f Shu were delighted
with them. He [the king o f Shu] ordered envoys to ask for the stone
oxen, and King Hui allowed them to take them. So they sent the five
brothers to receive the stone oxen. But the oxen no longer dropped
gold dung and they became angry. He sent the five brothers back to
return the oxen and they twitted the people o f Ch’in saying, “Huh!
You eastern calf-boys!” The people o f Ch’in laughed at them and said,
“We may be calf-boys, but we are sure going to take Shu!” . ..
King Hui knew that the king o f Shu enjoyed sex, so he allowed
five brides to be sent in marriage to Shu. The Shu court sent the five
brothers to receive them. As they were bringing them back to Tzu-
t’ung, they saw a huge snake that went into a cave. One o f the men
held onto its tail and tugged it, but he could not manage. The five
men came and helped together, and with loud shouts they dragged
the snake out. The mountain collapsed, and as it did, it crushed to
death the five men and the five ladies o f Ch’in with their retinue.
Then the mountain formed into five peaks crowned with a flat slab
o f stone. The king o f Shu was bitterly upset. So he climbed the
mountain and officially named it Five Bride Peak. He had the words
“Watching Brides Beacon” and “Longing Wives Terrace” incised into
the slab o f stone. Today this mountain also goes by the name o f Five
Brothers Peak. (Hua-yang kuo-chih, Shu chih, SPTK 3.2a~3b)
After King Chao o f Ch’in had attacked and conquered Shu, he ap
pointed Li Ping as prefect o f the Shu commandery. There was a river
god who took two young virgins as his brides every year. The head
officer o f the region declared, “You will have to hand over a million
in cash to pay for the brides’ dowry.” Ping said, “That won’t be nec
essary. I have young daughters o f my own.” When the time came, he
had his daughters beautifully dressed and made up, and he led them
away to be drowned in the river. Li Ping went straight up to the
throne o f the local god, poured out wine as an offering, and said,
“Up till now, I have continued our family line into the ninth genera
tion. Lord o f the River, you are a mighty god. Please show your
august presence to me, so that I may humbly serve you with wine.”
Ping held the goblet o f wine forward. All the god did was to ripple
its surface, but he did not consume it. Ping said in a thunderous
voice, “Lord o f the River, you have mocked me, so now I intend to
fight you!” He drew out his sword, then suddenly he vanished. A
little later two blue oxen were fighting on the sloping riverbank.
After a few moments Ping went back to his officers and ordered
them to help him: ‘T h e ox facing south with white tied around his
saddle will be me with my white silk ribbon.” Then he returned to
the fray. The Keeper o f Records promptly shot dead with his arrow
the ox facing north. With the Lord o f the River dead, there was no
more trouble ever again. (T ’ai-p’ing yti-lan, citing Feng su t’ung-yi,
SPTK 882.4a-b)
14
Fabled Flora
and Fauna
230
Fabled Flora and Fauna — 231
ern sea. The sky-ladder o f Chien-mu or the Tree o f Life, Leaning M ul
berry in the east, appear at these points o f perfect equilibrium, allowing
a communion between gods and humans within nature.
Within mythic nature are the mythical bestiary and vegetal myths.
They include divine creatures and plants that express concepts o f prim
itive allegory. Moral significance is attached to real or imagined charac
teristics o f animals or plants. For example, the ram o f the mythical
judge Kao Yao is endowed with the power o f discerning guilt in hu
mans. The Beast o f White Marsh knows the mysterious workings o f
the universe. A plant in the courtyard o f Yao had divine knowledge o f
the human heart and could point out flatterers at court.
A few birds and beasts came to be emblematic o f deities, such as
the bluebirds and hybrid panthers o f the Queen Mother o f the West, or
the nightjar w ith Tu Yii, the ram w ith Kao Yao, the bear w ith Yu, and
the toad with Ch’ang O. Similarly, plants came to be connected with
certain deities, such as millet with Hou Chi, maple with Ch’ih Yu, and,
later in the tradition, peaches with the Queen Mother o f the West. This
emblematic concept, however, is not a well-developed aspect o f C hi
nese mythology, as it was in the Greco-Roman tradition, w ith most o f
the gods having their emblem or attribute drawn from nature. In gen
eral, creatures in classical Chinese m ythology such as dragons, ser
pents, the tortoise, or bird o f paradise were connected w ith a number
o f different deities and carried no specific symbolic meaning in their
relationship to individual deities.
The sources for these bestial and vegetal myths constitute an early
form o f “unnatural natural history.” The material is for the most part
fragmentary. The source par excellence is The Classic o f Mountains and
Seas; other early texts, such as Chuang Tzu, Hsun Tzu, and Huai-nan Tzu,
also contain a great deal o f scattered narratives relating to nature myths.
In the Han and post-Han periods the material proliferated. The prime
examples o f this valuable literature are the lexicon o f Hsu Shen (ca. a .d .
100), A n Explication o f Written Characters; the miscellany o f Wang Ch’ung
(a . d . 27-100), Disquisitions; and The Treatise on Research into Nature o f the
third to fifth century. O f course, these fragmentary sources o f bestial
and vegetal myths are rudimentary when they are compared with the
fully developed didactic genre o f the European bestiary, such as Phi
lippe de Thaon’s Bestiary (ca. a .d . 1125) or Richard de Fournial’s Bestiary
o f Love (ca. a .d . 1250) (Preminger 1965,77). Nevertheless, the small sam
ple o f Chinese myths in this chapter should suffice to reveal the imagin
ative and colorful nature o f this genre at an early stage in its evolution.
232 ~ Chinese Mythology
Beyond the South Sea, between Black River and Green River . . . there
are nine hills bounded by rivers. Their names are T ’ao-t’ang Hill, She-
te Hill, Meng-ying Hill, K’un-wu Hill, Black-and-White Hill, Red
Gaze Hill, Ts’an-wei Hill, Wu-fu Hill, and Holy People Hill. There
is a tree with green leaves, a purple trunk, black blossoms, and yel
low fruit called the Chien-mu tree. For one thousand feet upward it
bears no branches, and there are nine tanglewoods, while underneath
there are nine root twinings. Its fruit is like hemp seed; its leaves
resemble bearded grass. T ’ai Hao used to pass up and down by it.
The Yellow Emperor created it. (Shan hai ching, Hai nei ching, SPPY
i8.3a-4a)
through which a myriad goblins pass. On top there are two gods.
One is called Holy Shu; the other is called Yii Lii. These lords super
vise and control the myriad goblins. Whenever a goblin does evil,
they bind him with a reed rope and feed him to tigers. Then the Yel
low Emperor devised a ritual ceremony so that they could expel the
evildoer in due season. They set up large peach wood figurines and
painted images o f Holy Shu and Y ii Lii and a tiger on gates and
doors and hung reed ropes from them so as to harness the evil.
(Lun heng, Ting kuei, citing a non-extant passage from Shan hai
ching, SPTK 22.i5b-i6a)
Leaning Mulberry
The solar myths attached to this world-tree were discussed in chap
ters i and 5, with the motifs o f sunrise, the crow o f the sun, Y i the
Archer, and T i Chun and his wife, Hsi-Ho, mother o f the ten suns. The
two readings are from The Classic o f Mountains and Seas, the first from a
first-century b .c . chapter, the second from a first-century a . d . chapter.
Beside T ’ang Valley there is the Leaning Mulberry, where the ten
suns are bathed—it is north o f the land o f Black-Tecth—and where
they stay in the river. There is a large tree, and nine suns stay on its
lower branches while one sun stays on its top branch. (Shan hai ching,
Hai wai tung ching, SPPY 9.3a-b)
Within the seas the K ’un-lun wastes are in the northwest, and this is
God’s capital city on earth below. The K ’un-lun wastes are eight hun
dred leagues square and eighty thousand feet high. On top there is
the Tree Grain; it is forty feet tall and five spans wide. On all sides
Fabled Flora and Fauna ~ 235
there are nine wells with well-sills made o f jade. On all sides there
are nine gates, and at the gates there is the K’ai-ming beast on guard.
The dwelling place o f the gods is on a cliff with eight nooks. The
boundary o f the Scarlet River has a cliff on the ridge which no one
could ascend unless he were the Good Archer. . . . The gulf south o f
K ’un-lun is two thousand, four hundred feet deep. The body o f the
K ’ai-ming beast is mostly that o f a tiger, and it has nine heads, all of
which have human faces that look eastward. It stands on top o f K’un-
lun. To the west o f the K ’ai-ming are the male and female phoenix
and the luan-bird. They all carry a serpent on their head and tread a
serpent underfoot, and there is a scarlet snake on their breast. North
o f the K ’ai-ming there is the Shih-jou creature, the pearl tree, the
patterned-jade tree, the yii-ch’i tree, and the Never Die tree. The male
and female phoenix and luan-bird all wear armor plate on their
heads. And there are the Li-chu bird, the giant Grain Tree, the
cypress, the Sweet Water, and the Wise Man tree, the Man-tui, also
called the T ’ing-tree-cross-fanged. To the east o f the K’ai-ming there
are Shaman P’eng, Shaman Ti, Shaman Yang, Shaman Li, Shaman
Fan, and Shaman Hsiang, who bear the corpse o f Cha Yii, each hold
ing the drug o f immortality to protect him. Cha Yii has a serpent’s
body and a human head. He was killed by Double Load and his
officer. There is also the Fu-ch’ang tree. On its crown there is a three
headed man who watches over the red lang-ganjade tree. To the south
o f the K’ai-ming beast there is the Tree Bird with its six heads, and
the scaly dragon, the cobra, the serpent, the long-tailed ape, the pan
ther, the niao-chih tree, Splendid Pool tree, the hummingbird, the
s/iwn-hawk, and the Shih-jou creature. (Shan hai ching, Hai nei hsi
ching, SPPY n.2b-5b)
be found in traditional histories since the Han period. T ike earthly rul
ers, the Yellow Emperor conducts a royal tour o f his realm in this epi
sode from the biography, and in the manner o f sage-rulers, he seeks
wisdom from others, in this case, from a god known as the Beast o f
White Marsh. This god in bestial form knows the infinitesimal number
o f metamorphosed beings and the mystery o f the cosmos. The quest o f
the Yellow Emperor for divine knowledge is cast in the heroic mold,
and his success is crowned with the reward o f the chart o f the cosmos,
for knowledge is power. His portrayal as a god w ho prays to a lesser god
in the traditional pantheon exemplifies the desacralization o f deities in
later mythography.
When King Mu had been on the throne for thirty-two years, he went
on a royal tour o f the empire-----The king drove a fleet o f eight
horses swift as dragons. One horse was called Beyond Earth, whose
hooves did not touch the ground. The second was called Windswept
Plumes, which went faster than any winged bird. The third was
Fabled Flora and Fauna — 237
While Yao was on the throne for seventy years, every year young
male phoenix flocked to him, the ch’i-lin roamed through the lush
marshes, and eagle-owls fled to the farthest desert. There was a coun
try called Chih-chih, which brought the Many-Splendored Bird to
him in tribute. It was also known as the Double-Pupil Bird, which
means that its eyes had double pupils. In appearance it was like a
rooster, and its call was like that o f the phoenix. It would often shed
238 ~ Chinese Mythology
its down and feathers, flap its fleshy wings, and fly off. It could
swoop down on wild beasts like a tiger or w olf and could cause un
natural disasters and all kinds o f evil, but it could not be harmed
itself. Sometimes, i f it was offered the essence o f rare red jade, it
might appear several times in one year, but otherwise it would fail to
appear for several years. AH the people in the land swept and sprin
kled their gateways and doorways hoping to make the Many-Splen-
dored Bird come to roost. When it did not appear, the people in the
land carved the likeness o f the bird in wood or cast its image in metal
and fixed it between their gates and doors, so that i f there were any
goblins or trolls, they would be repelled or vanquished. Nowadays,
every New Year’s morning, when people make an image o f the bird
carved out o f wood, or cast in metal, or else painted in a picture, and
then place it over the window, this is a vestige o f the custom in olden
days o f making the bird’s image. (Shih yi chi, HWTS i.iob-na)
Figure 11. The ming-chia plant; inscription reads, ‘The ming-chia plant grew
[lacuna] in the era of Yao.” Funerary stone bas-relief, Wu Liang Shrine, Chia-
hsiang county, Shantung province, a .d . 151. From Feng and Feng, Research on
Stone Carving (1821) 1934, chap. 4.
fifteenth day, and then it sheds one petal a day until the end o f the
month, when it is bare again. It is also known as the Calendar Petal and
the Portent Plant. The second reading is a dictionary definition o f the
sha-fu plant from Hsu Shen’s lexicon o f the first century a .d . According
to this account, the roots o f the sha-fu are as fine as silk thread, but its
leaves are large and prolific. It can whirl about like the wind so that it
drives away insects and cools food and drink in hot kitchens. Again the
plant is associated with Yao. The third reading tells o f the plant o f omen
which grew in Yao’s garden. This vegetal myth fits the paradigm o f the
didactic mythologem. The fragment is from The Treatise on Research into
Nature o f the third to fifth century. The monograph by Hino Iwao en
titled A New Appraisal o f Legendary Plants is an important resource for
the study o f this group o f mythic motifs (1978, 57- 59)-
240 — Chinese Mythology
When Yao became the Son o f Heaven, a ming-chia plant grew in his
garden and served the emperor as a calendar. (Yi shih, citing T ’ien-
ch’iu Tzu, PCTP 9.5b)
The sha-fu is a plant that foretells an omen. In the time o f Yao it grew
in his kitchen, and it fanned the hot atmosphere and made things
cooler. (Shuo-wen chieh-tzu, 2, SPTK 1.1b)
In the time o f Yao there was a ch’ii-yi plant growing in the garden.
Whenever a flatterer came to court, it bent forward and pointed h i m
out. It is also called the chih-ning, Point the Flatterer plant. (Po wu
chih, Yi ts'ao mu, SPPY 4.2a)
wear a cap called the chieh-chai cap, signifying the myth o f Kao Yao’s
ram (Yuan K ’o 1980.2,135).
In the era o f Yao . . . Kao Yao became grand controller. (Shuo yuan,
Chun tao, SPTK i.6b-7a)
Kao Yao’s horse muzzle means that he was perfectly truthful and the
sentences he passed were clear, for he penetrated the mind and heart
o f humans. (Pai-hu t’ung-yi, Sheng jen, T S C C 3A.178-79)
The Hsieh-chih creature has one ram’s horn, and it has the ability to
know who is a criminal. When Kao Yao was conducting a trial and
was in doubt about who the guilty person was, he would order the
ram to butt the criminal. It would butt the guilty one, but it would
not butt the innocent. Now this is a case o f a sage beast born in
Heaven who helped provide evidence in a trial. That is why Kao Yao
honored his ram, even rising from the bench to look after its needs.
(Lun heng, Shih ying, SPTK i7.ioa-b)
How did he dam the flood waters at their deepest? How did he
demarcate the Nine Lands o f the Earth? Over the rivers and seas
what did the Responding Dragon fully achieve, and where did he
242 ~ Chinese Mythology
pass? What plan did Kun devise? What did Yii succeed in doing?
(Ch’u Tz’u, Tien wen, SPTK 3.6b-7b)
Yii exhausted his strength in cutting dikes and ditches and in con
ducting the courses o f rivers and leveling mounds. The yellow dra
gon dragged its tail in front o f him, while the dark tortoise carried
green mud on its back behind him. (Shih yi chi, HWTS 2.2b)
Dragon Gate Mountain is in the east region o f the river. When Yii
melted the mountain and hewed a gateway a league or more wide,
the Yellow River flowed down the middle and a horse and carriage
could not pass between the two sides o f the river. Every year at the
end o f spring, yellow carp fight their way upstream. Those which
reach it [Dragon Gate] turn into dragons. Also, Lin Teng says, “Every
year below Dragon Gate in late spring, yellow carp fishes leave the
sea and come to the rivers and fight to leap over Dragon Gate. In one
year the carp that scale Dragon Gate number no more than seventy-
two. As soon as they scale Dragon Gate, cloudy rain follows in their
wake and heavenly fire ignites their tails and they turn into dragons.
(T’ai-p’ing kuang chi, citing San Ch’in chi, JMWH 466.3839)
15
Strange Lands
and Peoples
243
244 ~ Chinese Mythology
north (chaps. 14-17); and regions within the seas (chap. 18). Scattered
among its eighteen chapters are fragmentary accounts o f strange lands
and peoples, noted mainly for their differences and peculiarities vis-a-
vis the Chinese. While much o f this material has to do with mythology
and the stuff o f fable, it would be unwise to discount every descriptive
detail. As Malinowski has shown, sociological data probably underlie
and inform a good deal o f this kind o f early record o f things un-Chi
nese. Many inhabitants o f countries described in the Classic indicate
societies marked by physical deformity, such as the Linked-Chest, the
Three-Headed, the One-Eyed, Forked-Tongue, Odd-Arm , One-Foot,
and D w arf People. It is not difficult to conjure up parallels known to
medical science and social science, such as the condition known as
Siamese twins, or the practice o f inflicting mutilations on members o f
society, including slitting the tongue (as in Australasian bull-roaring
initiation rites), or punishing by removing a finger, limb, or even an
eye. Accounts o f peoples known as Deep-Set Eyes and as Whites are
also clearly descriptive o f un-Chinese physical characteristics. The
names o f the Country o f M en and the Country o f Women denote spe
cific social systems based on matriarchy and patriarchy at their most ex
treme, in w hich the opposite sex is eliminated at an early age. The
names o f some countries are manifestly phonetic, such as Chih, Ku-
she, and M eng Shu (the last significantly having several variants).
In terms o f methodology, The Classic o f Mountains and Seas may be
viewed as a sort o f mythological Baedeker guide to the ancient world,
an enclosed chart o f the world as it appeared to the Chinese at various
stages between the third century B.C. (chaps. 1-5), the first century B.C.
(chaps. 6-13), and the first century a .d . (chaps. 14-18). Some o f its fan
ciful accounts were put to satirical use by Li Ju-chen (a . d . 1763-ca. 1830)
in Flowers in the Mirror (Lin Tai-yi 1965, 58-127). M ost o f the readings in
this chapter are from the Classic. For a different selection o f translated
texts from a variety o f sources, see Mathieu’s Anthologie (1989,149-67)
and Schiffeler’s Legendary Creatures (1978).
Pierced-Chest Country
The tradition about the Pierced-Chest Country dates as far back as
the fourth-century B.C. text Shih Tzu, cited by Kuo P’u in his commen
tary to the account o f this country in The Classic of Mountains and Seas
(Yuan K ’o 1980.1,195). The entry in the Classic itself is very brief, and it
accentuates the deformity o f the people: “H ole-Chest Country is to the
246 ~ Chinese Mythology
east o f there [San Miao]. Its people have a cavity through their chest. It
is also said to lie to the east o f Chih Country” (ibid., 194). A longer nar
rative from The Treatise on Research into Nature (third to fifth century a .d .)
forms our reading. This myth explains the origin o f their deformity, and
it is linked to the major myth o f Yii and the flood. It is based on the epi
sode when Yii executed Fang-feng for arriving too late for the council
o f the gods. In this account, Yii is firmly associated with the Hsia. The
author o f the Treatise accredits Yii with the power o f performing a mir
acle, when he resurrects the dead with the herb o f immortality.
When the account in the Treatise is compared with the terse record
in The Classic o f Mountains and Seas, it becomes evident that several
myths are fused in the Treatise to form a new narrative, myths that are
culled from the classical tradition and mythic motifs from the Han and
post-Han repertoire. They include Yii’s founding role as ruler o f the
Hsia era, the flood, the assembly o f the gods at K ’uai-chi, Yu’s execu
tion o f Fang-feng, the apparition o f two divine dragons, the reference
to the mythic place-name T ’u-shan, the revenge o f the lesser gods for
Fang-feng’s death, the miraculous storm, double suicide, and the heal
ing role o f Yu in the miraculous revival o f the two dead avengers. A ll
these mythic and legendary strands are brought together to explain the
origin o f the Pierced-Chest People, and as such they constitute a new
etiological myth o f a country, which itself constitutes a hybrid version
o f the myth.
Long ago, when Yii was bringing order to the world, he assembled
all the lords in the wilds o f K’uai-chi, but Fang-feng arrived too late,
so he killed him. The power o f the Hsia was in the ascendant, and
two dragons came down to him from on high. Yii ordered Ch’eng-
kuang to harness them, and he traveled beyond his territory. He
toured everywhere and then came back. He reached Nan-hai and
passed by Fang-feng’s land. Because o f the stabbing incident at T ’u-
shan, two gods, the officers o f Fang-feng, were enraged when they
saw Yu, and they pierced him. A sudden gale and storm blew up and
the two dragons rose up and left. The two officers were terrified.
They stabbed themselves in the heart with their daggers and died.
Yu grieved over them, and so he pulled out their daggers and revived
them with the herb o f immortality, and they became the Pierced-
Chest People. (Po wu chih, Wai kuo, SPPY 8.4b)
Strange Lands and Peoples — 247
Odd-Arm Country
The same sources give the earliest accounts o f this country, inhab
ited by people having only one arm (variant: one thigh, Huai-nan Tzu;
Yuan K ’o 1980.2, 205). The first reading below is from a first-century
B.C. chapter o f The Classic o f Mountains and Seas. The version o f the myth
given in the second reading, from The Treatise on Research into Nature,
sets the narrative in the era o f the founder o f the Shang, or Yin, named
T ’ang the Conqueror. The account o f flying machines in the text is not
the earliest, since the tradition o f M o Tzu’s kite predates the Treatise by
about seven centuries. The account in the Treatise is the first instance,
however, o f manned flight and may be said to present a mythological
paradigm o f future technology or a technological desideratum. At
another level, the narrative may be viewed as a migration myth in the
Shang era.
Odd-Arm Country is to its north. The people there have one arm
and three eyes, for darkness and for daylight. They ride on piebald
horses. There is a bird with two heads, red and yellow in color,
which perches beside them. (Shan hai ching, Hai wai hsi ching, SPPY
7.ib-2a)
Kuo P’u’s narrative is set in the time o f the Shang King Ta Wu (or,
Wu the Great, trad. 1637-1562 B.C.). It takes the form o f the odyssey o f
one Wang M eng to obtain the drug o f immortality from the Queen
Mother o f the West. The details o f the narrative mark Wang Meng as
an adept in the art o f longevity: dietary regimen, abstention from sex,
and naturist clothing. He founds a new race o f people descended from
males through male conception and birth.
This myth o f male procreation may have its origins in puberty ini
tiation rites and the custom o f couvade, instances o f which Bruno Bet-
telheim has documented. He explained that these rites were the perfor
mance o f rebirth, in which the male initiate is seen to be born anew from
a male parent. Women are banned from such ritual, emphasizing the
male denial o f a woman’s procreative role (Bettelheim 1954, as cited by
Dundes 1984, 278-79). It may be assumed, by comparison o f this myth
with that o f the Country o f Women, that most female infants in such a
society were left to die, while male children were allowed to survive.
The Country o f Men lies north o f Wei-niao. They are a people who
wear clothes and carry a sword. (Shan hai ching, Hai wai hsi ching,
SPPY 7.2b)
The people o f Meng Shu Country have a human head and a bird’s
body. (Po wu chih, Wai kuo, SPPY 8.5a)
In Meng Hsi people have a human head and a bird’s body. Their an
cestors tamed all the beasts and fowl for the Yii clan [of Shun]. In the
era o f the Hsia Lord, the people first started to eat eggs. When the
Meng Hsi left them, male and female phoenix escorted them from
there till they came to settle here. The mountains were thick with
bamboo that grew eight thousand feet high. The male and female
phoenix fed off the fruit o f the bamboo, and the Meng Hsi ate from
the fruit o f the trees. It is eighteen thousand leagues from Chiu-yi.
(T’ai-p’ing yii-lan, citing K ’uo ti t’u, SPTK 915.9a)
Owl-Sunshine Country
The description o f the inhabitants o f Owl-Sunshine Country
makes them appear subhuman, although the wording o f the text o f the
first reading below, from a first-century B.C. chapter o f The Classic of
Mountains and Seas, clearly refers to humans: ch’i wei jen, which means
“as people, they.. . . ” The account, with its grotesque depiction o f for
eigners, belongs to the type o f hyperbolic and xenophobic ridicule o f
alien features and behavior. The fear o f these inhabitants has led the
anonymous author to portray them as wild beasts. The second reading
comes from the commentary o f the third-century a .d . writer Liu K ’uei
on a contemporary prose poem. A similar description to Liu K ’uei’s (fl.
ca. a . d . 295) occurs in the History o f the Chou, but there it refers to a crea
ture called the Chou-m i-fei-fei. The Chou-m i is the name o f a country
believed to be in the southwest; fei-fei describes a primate or simian and
is taken to be a man-eating beast rather than a cannibalistic human
(Yuan K ’o and Chou M ing 1985,293; Knechtges 1982,388 n. 223). A var
iant o f this myth reads Owl-Ram Country, as in the second reading.
253
254 Chinese Mythology
protected by birds and beasts and became the founder o f the Chou. P’an
Hu was a divine dog, w ho founded a new people o f canine and human
descent. Yii changed into a bear at the moment o f his courtship o f and
mating with the T ’u-shan girl, w ho gave birth to Ch’i, Yu and Ch’i
being the first founders o f the legendary Hsia.
Other motifs characterize founding myths. The person o f the
founder is invested with heroic qualities that mark him as a leader o f
men. Such a hero is shown to be favored by G od and endowed with the
power o f performing miracles, changing shape, invoking supernatural
aid, and conquering enemies obstructing his path to triumph. This
m otif is illustrated by the mythic narratives o f H ou Chi, T ’ang the C on
queror, and King Wen and K ing Wu o f the Chou. The founder in the
heroic mold is also one w ho is distinguished by a gift for attracting or
winning over or selecting a wise adviser, a man often identified in a
divinely inspired dream and plucked out o f obscurity. Such is the case
with T ’ang the Conqueror with his brilliant minister Y i Y in, King Wen
with his supernaturally intelligent counselor, the Great Lord Chiang
(also known as the Great Lord Wang), and K ing Wu with his resource
ful younger brother and adviser, the Duke o f Chou. Sarah Allan has ex
plored this relationship between leader and adviser in The Heir and the
Sage (1981, 91-121).
Although various myths relate the founding o f a city or a dynasty
or a country, it is usually impossible to identify their location or exis
tence. The Lord o f the Granary’s city o f Y i, for example, cannot be lo
cated. N o evidence yet exists for the historicity o f the Hsia. Equally, no
archeological sites o f ancient Hsia or early Shang cities have yet been
identified. In archeological and historical terms, what was previously
thought to represent Hsia culture is now more cautiously referred to as
Erh-li-t’ou culture datable to the third to second millennium B.C. As far
as Shang cities are concerned, the location o f the ancient Shang capitals
o f Ao and Po, which are mentioned in Shang inscriptions, has yet to be
ascertained. The archeological and historical evidence for Shang cities
commences only with the late Shang capital city o f Yin, the last capital
o f the Shang, situated near An-yang in Honan province. The Y in site
yielded inscriptions identifying eight (or nine) Shang rulers from King
Wu, a period dating from circa 1200-1050 B.C. This amalgam o f arche
ological evidence and a historical written record is the earliest for the
Shang state or city (Keightley 1983, 524).
N o known city o f ancient China’s legendary Hsia, protohistorical
early Shang and historical late Shang, or other city such as Y i is linked
Founding Myths — 255
tional theory Allan uses to force the conclusion that the Shang had a
totemic relationship w ith the ten suns believed to be birds is invali
dated, since it is not justifiable to merge several myths and to inject a
totally new m otif (ten birds) to create a neomyth to suit one’s theory. I
have discussed the motifs o f the readings in chapter 5.
The Yu-Sung clan had two glamorous daughters. They built a nine-
story tower for them. When they ate and drank, drum music was
always played for them. God ordered a swallow to go and look at
them, and it sang with a cry like “Yee-yee!” The two daughters fell
in love with it and each tried to be the one to catch it. They covered
it with a jade box. After a moment they opened it up and looked at
it. The swallow had laid two eggs. It flew away to the north and
never came back. The two daughters composed a song, a line o f
which went, “Swallow, Swallow, you flew away!” This is, in fact, the
first composition in the style o f Northern Music. (Lii-shih ch’un-ch’iu,
Yin ch’u, SPTK 6.6b)
Yin Hsieh’s mother was called Chien Ti. She was the daughter o f the
Yu-Sung clan and the second concubine o f Ti K’u. Three o f them
went to bathe. They saw a black bird drop its egg. Chien Ti picked
it up and swallowed it. Then she became pregnant and gave birth to
Ch’i. Ch’i grew up and gave meritorious service in helping Yii con
trol the floodwater. Emperor Shun therefore gave this command to
Ch’i: “The people do not have close family relationships, and the five
social relationships are in disorder. You will serve as my director o f
retinue.” He gave him the Shang fiefdom and conferred on him the
surname Tzu-shih. Hsieh flourished in the reigns o f Yao T ’ang, Yii
Shun, and Yii the Great. His accomplishments were well known
among the people, and so the people became peaceable. (Shih chi, Yin
pen chi, SPPY 3-ia-b)
and then to a later Shang king, T ’ang. With this mythical figure the epic
o f the Shang evolves from a people descended from God to a dynasty
founded by a hero. Whereas the demigod, Hsieh, or Ch’i, belongs to
archaic mythological time, T ’ang is closer to historical time. He is an
earthly ruler w ho wrests power from the evil tyrant, Chieh o f the Hsia,
and goes on to overthrow the Hsia and establish a glorious dynasty.
T ’ang’s qualities as a hero are as numerous as Chieh’s qualities as a vil
lain. The casus belli between the two is projected in the mythic narratives
as a moral campaign, a point emphasized in the first o f the following
readings, from Annals o f Master Lii. The second reading is from Histori
cal Records. The third is from a first-century a .d . chapter o f The Classic
o f Mountains and Seas. The last is from Biographies o f Women, dating from
about the third to the fourth century.
The narratives relate that T ’ang was a military hero whose army
was ready to fight and die for him, while Chieh’s army refused to
eng age in battle. They show that T ’ang was an exemplar o f moral virtue
who attracted men o f worth, such as Y i Yin, and who, when he became
king, offered himself in sacrifice for rain during a drought o f many
years. In many o f these narratives several figures are dramatically polar
ized: T ’ang against Chieh, Y i Y in against the favorite, M o Hsi, and M o
Hsi in the end against Chieh. These polarities create patterns o f binary
opposition in the mythic struggle between good and evil. Sarah Alla n
has analyzed this myth in The Heir and the Sage (1981, 77-101).
Hou Chi o f the Chou was named Ch’i, the Abandoned. His mother,
the daughter o f the Yu-t’ai clan, was called Chiang Yuan. Chiang
Yuan was Ti K ’u’s first consort. Chiang Yuan went out to the wild
fields and she saw the footprints o f a giant. Her heart was full o f joy
and pleasure, and she felt the desire to tread in the footprints. As she
trod in them there was a movement in her body as if she were with
child. She went on until her due time and gave birth to a baby boy.
. . . Chiang Yuan thought he might be a god, so she took him up at
once and brought him up until he was fully grown. Because she had
wanted to abandon him at first, his name was Ch’i. When Ch’i was
a child, he looked imposing, as if he had the bold spirit o f a giant.
Founding Myths ~ 259
When he went out to play, he liked planting hemp and beans, and his
hemp and beans were very fine. When he became an adult, he also
grew very skilled at plowing and farming. He would study the
proper use o f the land, and where valleys were suitable he planted
and he reaped. Everyone went out and imitated him. Emperor Yao
heard about him and promoted Ch’i to master o f agriculture, so that
the whole world would benefit from him and have the same success.
Emperor Shun said, “Ch’i, the black-haired people are beginning to
starve. You are the Lord Millet [Hou Chi]. Plant the seedlings in
equal measure throughout the hundred valleys.” He gave Ch’i the
fiefdom o f T ’ai with the title o f Lord Millet, and he took another sur
name from the Chi clan. (Shih chi, Chou pen chi, SPPY 4.1a, 4.1b)
When Wang the Counselor was in the market, how did Ch’ang [King
Wen] recognize him? (Ch’u Tz’u, T ’ien wen, SPTK 3.31a)
King Wen made the Great Lord Wang the Great Lord Governor of
Kuan-tan. After a year o f his being governor, even the wind did not
make a noise in the branches o f trees. King Wen dreamed that an
extraordinarily beautiful woman was standing on the road weeping.
He asked her why, and she said, “I am the daughter o f the spirit o f
Mount T ’ai, and I became the wife o f the spirit o f the East Sea. I want
to go back home, but my road is blocked because o f the governor o f
Kuan-tan. He is a good man, but even if he obstructs me in my jour
ney I shall have to continue my journey, but there is bound to be a ter
rible storm. And then his good reputation will suffer.” When King
Wen woke up he summoned the Great Lord to question him. On that
very same day it turned out that there was a terrible storm, but it
passed by the Great Lord’s city and broke out over the outskirts o f
the city. Then King Wen honored the Great Lord by making him his
commander in chief. (Sou shen chi, T S C C 4.25)
Founding Myths ~ 261
When King Wu o f the Chou was about to attack King Chou o f the
Shang, he had divination made using stalks, but the result was neg
ative, and the diviner declared, “Very bad luck.” The Great Lord
pushed aside the milfoil stalks and trod on the tortoises and said,
“What do withered bones and dead plants know about good luck or
bad luck!” (Lun heng, Pu shih, SPTK 24.9b)
When King Wu was going to attack the Yin, he boarded a boat and
crossed the river. The troops and carriages set off and then smashed
their boats up in the river. The Great Lord said, “The heir apparent
262 — Chinese Mythology
will avenge his father. Today they will all die—let there be no survi
vors!” As the troops passed the bridges o f the ferry port, they burned
them all down. (T ’ai-p’ing yii-lan, citing Liu t’ao, SPTK 482.1a)
In the capital city o f King Wu o f the Chou, the snow was more than
ten inches deep. The Revered Father [the Duke o f Chou] [textual
lacuna: ? was informed o f strangers] riding horse-drawn carriages.
He sent a messenger to hold a vessel o f rice gruel and go out to them.
He opened the gates and admitted them. He said, “It is cold today, so
why don’t you come in for some hot rice gruel to ward off the cold?”
(Pei-t’ang shu-ch’ao, sub commentary o f K ’ung Kuang-t’ao, referring to
T ’ai-kung chin kuei, K C 144.12b)
Kao Hsin had an old wife who lived in the royal palace. She devel
oped an earache. After some time the doctor cleared her ear out to
cure her and he removed a knob-worm as big as a cocoon. After the
wife had gone out, she put it in a gourd basket and covered it with
a plate. Soon the knob-worm changed into a dog and it had five-
color markings. So it was named P’an Hu, Plate-Gourd, and she
looked after it. . . . [The king] ordered his youngest daughter to be
a dutiful wife to Plate-Gourd.
Plate-Gourd led the girl up South Mountain. The grass and trees
were thick and bushy and there was no trace o f human footprints.
Then the girl took her clothes off and became bonded to him as his
servant, wearing clothes that she made as best she could, and she fol
lowed Plate-Gourd up the mountain. They entered a valley and
stopped in a stone house. The king was sorrowful when he thought
about it, and he sent his men to go and look out for her. But the sky
at once grew stormy, the mountain ranges thundered and the clouds
grew black. Those who had set out refused to go any further. After
three years or so had passed, she had given birth to six sons and six
daughters. After Plate-Gourd died, they paired off as mates and
became husbands and wives for each other. (Sou shen chi, T S C C 14.91)
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 Yii Fu. Each o f these three eras lasted sev
eral hundred years. In each era they became gods and did not die.
Their people followed their kings, taking another shape and vanish
ing like them. (T'ai-p’ing yti-lan, citing Shu wangpen chi, SPTK 888.2b)
The first ancestors o f Shu with the title o f king were Ts’an Ts’ung, Po
Huo, and Yu Fu. In the K’ai-ming reign people used to pile their hair
up, and they wore their collar on the left. They did not understand
writing and they did not yet have ritual or music. From the K’ai-ming
reign back to Ts’an Ts’ung was an aeon o f 34,000 years. (Ch’iian Shang-
ku, Ch’iian Han wen, citing Shu wangpen chi, 53.5a)
his amorous encounter and battle with her. The first reading below is
a narrative collated from fragments o f The Origin o f Hereditary Families,
commentary by Sung Chung (ca. third century a . d .) and edited in a
reconstructed text by the Ch’ing scholar Ch’in Chia-mo. The second
reading is from A History o f the Chin [Dynasty] [a . d . 265-419] by Fang
Hsuan-ling (a . d . 578-648).
The Lord o f the Granary once more sailed in his earthenware boat
and went downstream till he reached Y i City. At Y i City the rocky
cliffs zigzagged and the spring watercourse also meandered. The
Lord o f the Granary looked at what seemed like a cavern. He sighed
and said, “I’ve just come out o f a cave, if I go into another one now,
what will happen?” The cliff all at once collapsed thirty feet or more
across, but some steps were within reach o f him. The Lord o f the
Granary climbed up them. On the clifftop there was a flat rock, ten
feet square and five feet long. The Lord o f the Granary rested on it.
He threw bamboo slips to make calculations and they all touched the
Founding Myths — 267
rock. So he established his city next to it and lived there. Later on all
manner o f people followed him there in crowds. (Chin shu, L i T ’e,
Tsai-chi 20, SPPY 120.1b)
The great waterfall pool beyond the eastern sea is Shao Hao’s king
dom. Shao Hao had the god Chuan Hsu suckled here, and he threw
away his lute and zither. (Shan hai ching, Ta huang tung ching, SPPY
14.1a)
Shao Hao, Master Metal Heaven, founded his city at Ch’iung Sang
[Exhausted Mulberry]. The five colors o f the sun’s light shone down
below on the radiance o f Ch’iung Sang. (Shih Tzu, SPPY 1.16a)
Autumn. The Duke o f T ’an came to court and Duke Chao o f Ch’in
held a banquet for him. The duke asked him, “Why were Shao Hao’s
government officials named after birds?” The Duke o f T ’an said, “He
was my ancestor, so I know about it. In olden times, the Yellow
Emperor used an auspicious cloud as his official emblem; that is why
he had a cloud minister and cloud for official titles. The Flame
Emperor used fire as his official emblem, so he had a fire minister and
fire for official titles. Kung Kung used water as his official emblem;
that is why he had a water minister and water for official titles. T ’ai
Hao used a dragon as his official emblem; that is why he had a dra
gon minister and had the dragon for official titles. When my ancestor
Shao Hao came to the throne, phoenix birds suddenly appeared. He
therefore took the birds as his emblem, creating a bird minister and
the birds for official titles. The Phoenix Bird clan became astrono
mers principal. The Primeval Bird clan became controllers o f the
equinoxes. The Po-ch’ao Shrike clan became controllers o f the sol-
268 ~ Chinese Mythology