by Gopal Sukhu
Our Lady of Forked Paths mended Big Turtle’s clothes,
and they spent the night in the lodge.
Why did the wrong head fall—hers,
as she risked all for love?
Tang sought to bring the masses to his side.
How did he benefit them?
After Ao capsized the boat at Zhenxun,
what way was left to capture them?40
When Jie attacked Meng Mountain,
what did he gain?
Why was Moxi so utterly unmoored?
And how did Tang punish her?41
Shun lived at home with a single worry:
Why had his father kept him a bachelor?
If Yao had not informed Shun’s parents first,
how could he marry two daughters to him?42
When Djou’s luxury was just sprouting,
who guessed how tall it would grow?
When he built a ten-story tower of jade,
who foresaw where it would end?43
She rose to the status of Lord of the Skies.
By what path did she get there?
Nü Wa had a body too.
Whose handiwork was that?44
Shun deferred to his younger brother Elephant,
but in the end suffered at his hands.
How could Elephant act the cur and the swine,
yet never see danger or defeat?45
The state of Wu managed to last,
expanding as far as the Southern Mountains.
Who could have predicted such a thing
when the two men first arrived?46
Swan adorned and jade embedded were the vessels
from which dined the Lord of the Skies.47
Why would he grant Jie the kingdom of Xia
Only to cut off the Xia royal line?48
Then the Lord of the Skies came down to inspect,
and found himself face-to-face with Yi Yin.
After Jie suffered the Tendril exile,
why did his subjects rejoice in surrender?
If Lady Jiandi was hidden in a tower,
how did Di Ku choose her for a wife?
When the Dark Bird delivered the gift,
why was she delighted?49
In good works, Hai took up where Ji, his father
and model of virtue, left off.
So why did he end up dying in Youhu
herding those cows and goats?50
He danced the shield dance—
why did he long for her?
Whose luscious flesh hid the ripple of her ribs?
And how did she fatten herself?51
He was but a herd boy in Youyi—
how did he meet her?
She got out before the attackers reached their bed.
From whom had the order come?52
In virtue Heng took up where his father Ji left off.
How did he obtain his brother’s draft oxen?
Why did he go to administer the rewards
instead of merely returning?53
Twilight Wei was next in line to the throne;
Youdi would know no peace then.
How could she abandon her child and yield to passion
with so many birds perched in the brambles?54
And the benighted brother, being as lewd as he was,
endangered the older Hai.
How could such changeable and deceitful men
produce such glorious and enduring posterity?55
Tang the Accomplished reached the Youshen kingdom
during his eastern tour.
Why, when he begged for a mere servant,
did he receive a lucky consort?56
She found an infant beside the river
in the trunk of a living tree.
Why did they so hate him that he had to go
with the Youshen bride as part of her dowry?57
The prison at the Double Source let Tang go,
but what crime had he committed?
Failing, for once, at restraint, he praised himself before the Sky Lord.
Who talked him into it?58
That morning we met with him, eager to swear the sacred oath.
How is it we all arrived at the same time?
A kettle of hawks high in the air—
what brings them together?59
King Fa hacked apart the body of Djou.
Shu Dan did not approve.
Why, having looked deep into the heart of Fa,
did he secure, with many sighs, the Mandate for Zhou?60
Heaven granted the House of Yin rule over all the lands
as a prize for what merit?
Yet, after Yin rose, it was overthrown,
as penalty for what crime?61
They wrangled to be first to send their forces.
How did they dispatch them?
Together they sped forward to attack both flanks.
How were they commanded?62
Lord Zhao came to the end of his wanderings
when he arrived in the southland.
What benefit did he bring
to deserve the white pheasant?63
King Mu of Zhou was an expert charioteer,
but why leave no place untraveled?
Journeying to the far corners of the kingdom,
what was he looking for?64
The demon couple dragged their wares in to hawk.
What did they yell in the marketplace?
Whom did King You of Zhou punish,
and how did he win Lady Baosi?65
Heaven’s Mandate is changeable.
Whom does it punish, whom does it bless?
Though he gathered his allies many times,
Huan of Qi ended up a victim.66
That evil King Djou,
who disordered his mind?
Why despise loyal ministers
and trust slander and flattery instead?67
How was Bi Gan so contrary
that it sank him?
How was Lei Kai so compliant
that it entitled him?68
How can sages share one virtue
but, in the end, have different ways?
Mei Bo was turned into mincemeat;
Ji Zi pretended to be insane.69
Ji was the first son.
Why did the Sky Lord hate him so?
When they cast him out onto the icy ground,
why did the birds keep him warm?70
How is it that his archery skills
were so uncommon that he could serve as commander?
He gave the Sky Lord such a horrific shock.
Why was he granted glorious posterity?71
Bo Chang shouted his orders to the languishing masses.
Holding the whip he acted as their herdsman.
Why did Heaven have him destroy the earth altar at Qi
and grant him sway over the kingdom of Yin?72
They moved all that they owned to Qi.
On whom else could they depend?
Yin had a woman leading his mind astray,
but who warned him?73
Shou served him the minced and pickled bodies.
The Earl of the West reported the crime to Heaven.
Why did Djou call down Heaven’s punishment on himself?
What way was that to save Yin from doom?74
Master Wang was in his shop.
How did Chang know his true nature?
His knife beating time, his voice aloft,
What about him pleased Earl Chang?75
Martial King Fa set forth to destroy Yin.
Why such rage?
Charging in a chariot that bore his father’s corpse.
Why so impetuous?76
He hanged himself in the Northern Forest,
for what reason?
What moved Heaven and struck the earth,
frightening the fears of whom away?77
When August Heaven is about to make someone king,
how does it alert him?
Once it charges him with the ordering rites,
why send someone else to replace him?
At first Tang made Zhi [Yi Yin] his slave.
Later he made him close adviser.
How did he remain Tang’s minister, even after death,
honored with sacrifices along with the royal line?78
Eminent Shou Meng’s grandson
suffered separation and banishment in his youth.
How is it that he grew up to become brave and fierce
and was able to make known his dignity everywhere?79
Peng Keng offered up pheasant stew.
Why did the Sky Lord relish it so?
He rewarded him with such a long life.
Why was Peng not satisfied?80
Together in the center they guided the herd.
Why did the sovereign rage at them?
Bees and ants, tiny lives—
what made their efforts sure to succeed?81
They surprised a woman by picking ferns.
How did the deer help them?
Going north they arrived at a bend in the river.
Why were both happy to settle there?82
The older brother had a wild dog.
Why did the younger brother want it?
He got it for a hundred liang,
but wound up losing his income.83
Thunder and lightning at twilight—
Return! Why worry?
If we do not even maintain our prestige,
what can we expect from the Lord of the Sky?84
If I hide in a cave,
what then will I have to say?
In its heyday, Chu raised great armies.
How long could it last?
If you wake up and change your ways,
I’ll have nothing to say.
Guang of Wu struggled to be king of his state
and was long victorious over us.85
Circling villages and passing through hamlets,
she found her way to the hills
to indulge in an unseemly act.
How could she have produced a Zi Wen?86
I [Zi Wen] informed him about why
Du Ao’s reign was not long.
How could one who killed his king to take the throne
come to fame far and wide for his loyalty?87
NOTES
1. “Tian wen” (henceforth TW) is not an account of the beginning of the universe; it alludes to several accounts while asking skeptical questions about them. China has several cosmogonic myths. Some have anthropomorphic agents such as Pangu 盤古, who, confronted by chaos, separated it into yin and yang (complementary opposites such as light and dark or earth and sky) with a gigantic ax. Impersonal forces such as the Dao figure in others. A recently discovered manuscript from the ancient state of Chu, called Taiyi sheng shui 太一生水 (The grand one generates water), posits Taiyi (Great Unity or the Grand One), which is sometimes taken as another name for the Dao, as the origin, which at the primal stage gives birth to water, which then evolves into the universe. See Sarah Allan, “The Great One, Water, and the Laozi: New Light from Guodian,” T’oung Pao, 2nd ser., 89, fasc. 4/5 (2003): 237–85. The writer of “Tian wen” may also be alluding to theories such as the one found in the “Heaven and Earth” chapter of the Zhuangzi, which holds that in the beginning there was nonbeing. See Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 131–32. For quotations from the relevant old commentaries on this section and the rest of the poem, see You Guo’en 游國恩, Tian wen zuanyi 天問纂義 (Taipei: Hongye wenhua, 1993), 12–14.
2. There are a number of similarities between this section of TW and the beginning of the “Celestial Patterns” (天文 “Tianwen”), chapter 3, of the Huainanzi. Here the phrase pingyi 馮翼 is used to describe the chaotic state before the formation of Heaven and Earth. The beginning of the “Celestial Patterns” section, in the original Chinese, uses the expression pingping yiyi 馮馮翼翼. The sinologist John Major generously shared with me an unpublished draft for a book chapter that demonstrates how certain sections of the Huainanzi, especially chapters 3 and 4, provide answers to many of the questions asked in the early sections of TW, often in the same order. The first three quarters or so of chapter 3, for example, seem to correspond intentionally with sections 1–8 of TW. See John S. Major et al., trans., The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).
3. Shi 時 (time) in this passage is usually read as a substitute for shi 是 (this), as it was by Hawkes. By taking it as written, I am following Tang Bingzheng 湯炳正, Li Daming 李大明, Li Cheng 李誠, and Xiong Liangzhi 熊良知, Chuci jinzhu 楚辭今注 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1997), 82. There is much debate about the meaning of san he 三合, some scholars recommending that it be taken as an alternative writing of canhe 參合 (combine). In this passage, san he, I believe, should be taken as written; it refers to the three (san) possible combinations (he) of yin and yang: (1) equal yin and yang, (2) more yin, and (3) more yang. I was inspired by the discussion of this passage in Jin Kaicheng 金開誠, Dong Hongli 董洪利, and Gao Luming 高路明, Qu Yuan ji jiaozhu 屈原集校注, 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996), 2:298, especially their quote from the Yuanchen ji 元辰紀, a text with which I am unfamiliar. I did not adopt their interpretation of san he as yin, yang, and heaven, however.
4. The sky in many accounts is described as a hemispherical cover over the earth. The Yijing tells us the sky is a sphere, though some took “sphere” to mean “hemisphere.” See the commentaries on this passage by Qing scholars Xu Wenjing 徐文靖 and Jiang Ji 蔣驥 in You, Tian wen zuanyi, 29, where Jiang Ji is quoted citing the theory that the nine skies enclose the earth like the layers of an onion. The notion that the sky was a sphere around the earth was also held by Yang Xiong (53 B.C.E.–18 C.E.), according to Su Xuelin 蘇雪林. See Su, Tian wen zheng jian 天問正簡 (Taipei: Wenjin, 1992), 57, for this and other theories about the shape of the sky. See also Jin, Dong, and Gao, Qu Yuan ji jiaozhu, 2:298–99. This TW passage seems to allude to the idea that the sky consists of nested spheres, like an onion enclosing the earth.
5. There has been much controversy over the centuries about the meaning of these lines. Wang Yi took guan 斡 to mean “turn” and wei 維 to mean “cord.” One of the main points of contention is whether this “turning cord” is the one attached to the Big Dipper’s handle, which turns to indicate the seasons, or the si wei 四維, “four cords” or “four corners,” each midway between the four cardinal directions (northeast, southwest, etc.). Wen Yiduo (1899–1946), in Tian wen shitian 天問釋天, pointed out that one of the ancient meanings of guan (or wo) (in the Shuowen jiezi, but accessible through the Hanyu da cidian) is a dipper (or ladle) handle. The three stars that make up the handle of the Big Dipper are called, in Chinese, the wei xing 維星, or “cord stars,” for the ancients saw only the distance from the cup of the dipper to the first star as the handle and the rest of the stars as forming a cord.
6. The sky was once thought to be divided up into nine sections (this time not in vertical layers but in side-by-side fields known as fenye 分野) that correspond to the Nine Regions (九州 Jiu Zhou) of China. In effect, each region (or “province”) of China had its own sky. In theory, land and sky are divided equally. In fact, the borders between the terrestrial regions are irregular. The question posed here is how could the celestial regions (fenye) correspond exactly to the earthly ones. The Pole is slightly off center because in ancient times the divinity Gonggong 共工 rammed against one of the pillars holding up the sky in a rage over his defeat by the god-lord Zhuan Xu in their battle over which one would become Lord of the Sky. The broken pillar was Buzhou (“Not Whole” or “Imperfect”) Mountain. Since it is in the northwest, its damage caused the sky to tilt down in the northwest. This caused the Sky Pole (天極 Tian J
i), the axis around which the sky revolves, to tilt down toward the northwest, lifting the southeastern part of the sky off the mountain-pillar supporting it there and at the same time breaking the cords binding sky to earth, causing a downward tilt in the land. The result was a southeastern gap in the contact of the sky with the earth.
7. This passage refers to how the ancient Chinese (and many other) astronomers divided so many celestial phenomena by twelve, e.g., the twelve-year cycle of the Year Star, the twelve lunations, the twelve two-hour periods of the day, etc.
8. The mythical itinerary of the sun is described here. Valley of Dawn (暘谷 Yanggu) is where the sun takes its morning bath before rising. (Some texts have 湯 and others 暘; when the two characters are used interchangeably, they are both pronounced yang.) The Dimming Stream (蒙汜 Mengsi) is where it rests after it sets.
9. In China one speaks of the rabbit or toad in the moon rather than the man in the moon. Hawkes preferred to follow Wen Yiduo in reading gu tu 顧菟 as “toad,” for which there is scant support. I follow Wang Yi in taking tu 菟 = 兔 as “rabbit,” a common substitution. Gu is a verb meaning “to take care of” and, by extension, “to raise.”
10. Nü Qi 女岐 is a very obscure figure. Some say that she is the same as Jiuzi Mu 九子母 (Mother of Nine Sons), who is mentioned in a note by Ying Shao in the “Basic Annals of Cheng Di” (成帝本紀); see Hanshu 漢書, comp. Ban Gu 班固 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 301. He tells us that Jiuzi Mu was painted on the walls of one of the crown prince’s lodges, perhaps to express the hope for many sons. He implies that Jiuzi Mu is another name for an asterism, also known as the Wei Xing 尾星, or Tail Stars, or the Jiuzi Xing 九子星 (Nine-Son Stars), thus designated because it is composed of nine stars. Yuan Ke 袁珂, Zhongguo shenhua chuanshuo cidian 中國神話傳說詞典 (Shanghai: Shanghai cishu, 1985), 42, offers the ancient lore about Nü Qi and the links between her and later stories.
There are many theories about Bo Qiang 伯強, or the Earl of Violence. The most convincing identifies him with Yu Qiang 隅強, described in the Huainanzi, “Terrestrial Forms” (see Major et al., Huainanzi, 169), as a wind god who was generated by the wind from Buzhou Mountain. He is also sometimes identified with the Wind Earl 風伯 and the Winnowing Basket star 箕星. He is mentioned in the Shanhaijing with slightly different characters (禺彊). There he is described as having a human face and a bird’s body. See Yuan Ke 袁珂, Shanhaijing jiaoyi 山海經校譯 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985), 202.
