The Songs of Chu

by Gopal Sukhu

11. The two Horn Stars make up the Horn constellation (角宿 Jiao Xiu) in Chinese astronomy; they are also called the Gates of Heaven (天關 Tian Guan). In Western astronomical terminology they are Alpha (or Spica) and Zeta in Virgo. It is part of a formation known in Chinese as Canglong 蒼龍 or Qinglong 青龍, which David Pankenier, a noted expert on Chinese astronomy, translates as Cerulean Dragon. The sun gradually proceeds through its horns, i.e., the Horn Stars, which appear above the horizon sometimes in the predawn hours and sometimes in the evening. The sun’s progress through the horns of the dragon seems to have been envisioned, according to TW, as the sun’s entry through the Gates of Heaven. It may be that the appearance of the Horn Stars in the sky was thought of as the opening of the celestial gates, and the disappearance of those stars was thought of as their closing. The progress of the seasons could be calculated by the movement of the Cerulean Dragon constellation. See a fascinating discussion of this topic in David W. Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology in Early China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 38.

  12. Gun 鯀 is the son of Zhuan Xu 顓頊 and the father of Yu 禹. He is connected with the main flood myth in China. According to the main sources, the sage-king Yao charged him with control of the flood. The dams and dikes he constructed failed to stem it. Yao then abdicated to Shun 舜, who, finding that Gun had failed, sentenced him to death on Feather Mountain. The two main pre-Han sources of Gun mythology are the Shanhaijing and the TW itself. The Shanhaijing, “Hainei jing,” tells us that Gun was the grandson of the Yellow Emperor and that his original name was White Horse (see Yuan Ke, Shanhaijing, 300). That could also mean that his original form was that of a white horse. The same source (301) also tells us that there was a Great Flood and that Gun took it upon himself to fight it with the only weapon that he thought could stop it—a kind of magically self-increasing soil known as xirang 息壤. He was in such a hurry that he took it without waiting for permission from its owner, the Lord of the Sky (who could well have been identified as the Yellow Emperor or Zhuan Xu or Shun). The Lord of the Sky was so displeased with Gun that he commanded Zhu Rong 祝融, the governor of fire, to execute Gun on Feather Mountain (the “Hongfan” 洪範 chapter of the Shujing tells us it was Shun who killed Gun). Though dead and a male, Gun gave birth to Yu (the eventual founder of the Xia dynasty) after being sliced open. The Lord of the Sky then commanded Yu to stem the flood; Yu succeeded and tranquility was restored. Guo Pu 郭璞 (276–324) comments on this passage as follows: “After Gun was killed, his body did not rot for three years. Someone cut him open with a Wu knife, and he changed into a yellow dragon.” According to other sources, including TW, Gun transformed into a yellow bear after the birth of Yu.

  Those who recommended Gun for the job were, among others, the Siyue 四岳, or the Four Mountains, Yao’s advisers, mentioned in the Shangshu, “Yaodian.” See James Legge, The Chinese Classics, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893–1894; repr., Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), 3:24–25.

  13. There are many recent scholars who think that chigui 鴟龜 refers to a creature that is a combination of owl and tortoise. There is a similar creature called xuangui 旋龜 in the Shanhaijing, but none called chigui. Wang Yi and earlier scholars take chigui as two words—“owl” and “tortoise.” One of the famous funerary flags found in the tomb at Mawangdui depicts tortoiselike creatures with owls on their backs. This may refer to the same myth that TW is alluding to. This is the only place in the literature where a collaboration between Gun, owls, and tortoises is implied.

  14. The “stopped for good” (yong e 永遏) in this case is the execution of Gun by Zhu Rong. In some versions of the myth, Gun has his belly split open by a knife manufactured in Wu. The character shi 施 in the second line of the stanza has been the object of many interpretations. Most scholars follow Hong Xingzu, who records another version of the line in which shi is replaced by chi 弛, “to slacken.” Many scholars extend this reading forcibly to mean “rot,” a meaning not otherwise attested. This forced interpretation of chi is designed to accord with the part of the story where the body of Gun lies on the ground for three years without rotting. The best solution, it seems to me, is that of Fu Xiren 傅錫壬, Chuci duben 楚辭讀本 (Taipei: Sanmin, 1974), 81, which takes it as another way of writing chi 胣, meaning “to split open the belly” or “disembowel”—which accords quite naturally with another event in the story. The three characters were interchangeable.

  15. According to Hong Xingzu and others, Gun’s flood-control method involved damming the waters. Yu’s method was channeling to drain the waters. As Sarah Allan has pointed out, the Great Flood that Gun and Yu confronted was not the result of rainfall but the overflow of water from the netherworld; see Sarah Allan, The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), 69.

  16. For the first line I use the textual variant cited by Wang Yi: yinglong he hua 應龍何畫; see Hong Xingzu 洪興祖, Chuci buzhu 楚辭補注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), 91. According to Hong Xingzu, the yinglong 應龍 is a winged dragon that figures in the Shanhaijing, “Dahuang dongjing,” as an ally of the Yellow Emperor’s in his fight with Chiyou 蚩尤, legendary leader of the Nine Li tribes of the east and a divinity associated with warfare and weapons. The war exhausted the yinglong so much that it could not rise again to the sky, where it normally served as a rain god. The earth was, as a consequence, plagued by drought, which was relieved only when people made likenesses of the dragon and displayed them to the sky; see Yuan, Shanhaijing, 248. According to Hong, the winged dragon used its tail to mark out the places where rivers, streams, and canals could be created to drain away the waters of the flood; see Hong, Chuci buzhu, 91.

  17. Only Wang Yi tells us that Kang Hui 康回 is one of Gonggong’s names (Hong, Chuci buzhu, 91). According to the Huainanzi, “Celestial Patterns” (Major et al., Huainanzi, 114), Gonggong fought with Zhuan Xu to see which one would reign as Lord of the Sky. Gonggong lost and in a rage smashed himself against Buzhou Mountain. This threw the earth off balance and the sky began to tilt toward the northwest.

  18. Mount Kunlun here refers to a mythical mountain and not the real Kunlun range. Wang Yi says that it is in the northwest and that it emits the primal energy and that its highest peak is called the Hovering Gardens (懸圃 Xuan Pu), which is a conduit to the heavens. The earliest mention of the Hovering (or Hanging) Gardens of Kunlun is in the Chuci itself—in “Li sao” and in “Tian wen.” For more information we must consult later writings, e.g., Huainanzi, “Terrestrial Forms,” tells us that they are within the gates of Kunlun and that one will develop supernatural powers if one reaches them; see Major et al., Huainanzi, 152–57. They have been variously imagined throughout the ages. Li Chenyu 李陳玉, for example, tells us, “They are the gardens of the spirit people and hover over the central peak, where they have contact with neither the sky nor the earth”; see You, Tian wen zuanyi, 126.

  19. The various gates, 440 according to the Huainanzi, send the winds in the four directions; the winds are of various temperatures and thus is the weather of the various seasons regulated. Buzhou Mountain is located northwest of Kunlun. The wind from Buzhou Mountain comes in through the northwest gate of the Kunlun wall; see Major et al., Huainanzi, 156.

  20. The earliest sources tell us that the lamp dragon (燭龍 zhulong) is a spirit of the north or northwest. Shanhaijing, “Dahuang beijing,” tells us, “Beyond the northwest sea, north of the Red Waters, is situated Zhangwei [Screen Tail] Mountain. There lives a spirit with a human face and a serpent body, but red all over. It is a thousand li long, with slit eyes that stand vertically. When it closes them, night falls; when it opens them, dawn breaks. It does not eat or sleep or breathe; it just gulps down wind and rain. It can light the dark world of the dead.” Here the place where the sun does not shine is the underworld of the dead; see Yuan, Shanhaijing, 287 and 167. Huainanzi, “Terrestrial Forms” (Major et al., Huainanzi, 167), tells us that the lamp dragon (tr
anslated there as Torch Dragon) lives north of Goose Gate but that its dwelling place gets no sunlight because it is overshadowed by Fine Feather Mountain (委羽之山 Weiyu Zhi Shan). In most sources it is described as having a human face and a dragon’s or serpent’s body. For other descriptions, see Jin, Dong, and Gao, Qu Yuan ji jiaozhu, 327.

  The Ruo 若 tree is a mythical tree that grows in the extreme west. According to Shanhaijing, “Dahuang beijing”: “In the Great Wastes there are the Hengshi Mountain, the Jiuyin Mountain, and the Dong Ye Mountains. On them grow red trees, with green leaves and red blossoms. The name of the tree is the Ruo”; see Yuan, Shanhaijing, 287. Guo Pu comments, “It grows on Kunlun in the extreme west. Its flowers are luminous red; they illuminate the earth.” See the Sibu congkan 四部叢刊 edition of Shanhaijing, 165, at the Chinese Text Project (http://ctext.org). Others say (see Major et al., Huainanzi, 157) that there are ten suns growing on the branches of the Ruo tree.

  21. The Shanhaijing mentions mountains that are covered with snow all year-round. E.g., Mad Mountain (狂山 Kuang Shan), where “there is snow in both winter and summer.” It also mentions Blazing Fire Mountain (炎火之山 Yanhuo Zhi Shan), where it is so hot that things combust upon being thrown on the ground (Yuan, Shanhaijing, 63, 272). It is hard to know if they are the places referred to in this passage. The “forest of stone,” or Stone Forest, in this passage may refer to one or another place, such as the famous Shilin (石林) in Yunnan or the Suobuya Shilin in Hubei, but no one knows for sure. As for talking animals, myth is full of them, and of course there are certain real birds like the myna and the parrot; which one is meant here is difficult to say.

  22. These lines may be a fragment (given the lack of rhyme). No one knows exactly what they refer to, but the bear brings to mind Gun, and his son Yu is in some texts associated with the dragon. On Yu and dragons, see Mark Lewis, The Flood Myths of Early China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006), 103–4.

  23. Jiang Ji 蔣驥suggested that the nine-headed poisonous snake must be Xiang Liu 相柳, a minister of Gonggong’s who was killed by Yu (quoted in Jin, Dong, and Gao, Qu Yuan ji jiaozhu, 332). Shanhaijing, “Dahuang beijing” (Yuan, Shanhaijing, 286), tells us, “One of the ministers of Gonggong was named Xiang Yao [繇, another name for Xiang Liu]. He had nine heads and the body of a snake that coiled upon itself. He nourished himself on the earth of the nine regions. Wherever he blew his breath or stopped to rest, the place became springs and bogs, the water of which was either peppery hot or bitter, so no animal could stay there. When Yu stopped the flood, he killed Xiang Liu, but his blood stank, making it impossible to grow grain, and the place flooded with water, making it impossible to inhabit. Yu stopped the place up by piling earth on it, but the earth fell away three times, so he made a pond of it. That is where the various Sky Lords built their pavilions. It is north of Kunlun.” Here the poison of the snake is indicated by its malodorous blood. The paradoxical question is, if he made every place uninhabitable by his very presence, where did he himself live? See also Yuan, Shanhaijing, 200, and Mark Lewis’s discussion of Xiang Liu in Flood Myths, 68–69.

  24. There are many realms of immortals in Chinese myth, and we don’t know which this refers to. There are also several giants. This passage is probably referring to Fang Feng 防風 (Windshield?), one of the legendary lords of the Xia dynasty, referred to in the Guoyu (“Luyu xia”) by Confucius, who said that once when Yu held a meeting of the spirits on Guiji Mountain, Fang Feng arrived late. This angered Yu so much that he killed Fang Feng, who was a giant three fathoms tall, one of whose bones could fill a wagon. He is supposed to be tutelary spirit of Feng 封 Mountain and Yu 嵎 Mountain. See Guoyu, “Luyu shang” 國語魯語上, 60–61, at the Chinese Text Project (http://ctext.org).

  25. Wang Yi takes qu 衢 in its usual meaning, “crossroads.” Hong Xingzu, quoting Liu Zongyuan’s 柳宗元 Tian dui 天對 transform of this line (有萍九歧, “There is a duckweed with nine branches”), took it to mean “branch” of a stem or bough, a meaning found only in the Shanhaijing. Zuo Si 左思, in his third-century poem “Wei Capital Rhapsody,” has the line shu yu xun miping yu zhong kui 孰愈尋靡萍於中逵 (“How is this better than searching for spreading duckweed on a thoroughfare?” Knechtges’s translation; see David R. Knechtges, trans., Wen xuan; or, Selections of Refined Literature, 3 vols. [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982–1996], 1:433). This line is clearly modeled on Zuo Si’s understanding of the TW line. Moreover, duckweed has no stems. I therefore follow Wang Yi. Hong, Chuci buzhu, 95, quoting the Shanhaijing, “Xishan jing” (Yuan, Shanhaijing, 22), tells us that the red (indicating high quality) cannabis flower grows on Floating Mountain. Hong’s is the only plausible answer I know to the question, where can one find good cannabis during a flood?

  See Shanhaijing, “Hainei nanjing” (Yuan, Shanhaijing, 220), where it says, “When the Ba snake eats an elephant, it takes three years for the bones to come out. Eating that snake is said to guard against diseases of the heart and stomach.” Shanhaijing, “Hainei jing” (Yuan, Shanhaijing, 298), says that the snake, which has a black body and green head, comes from Ba 巴 and eats elephants.

  26. This interpretation is based on the Wang Yi commentary. The river called Black Waters is mentioned about ten times in the Shanhaijing—e.g., “Hainei xijing” (Yuan, Shanhaijing, 226), where it says that it springs from the northwestern corner of a mountain, and after a number of twists and turns flows south to the realm of the “Winged People.” “Winged People” is another name for xian 仙, or “immortals,” and the mountain in question, the commentator Guo Pu tells us, is Kunlun, another residence of immortals. Wang Yi comments that Black Toe (黑趾 Heizhi) and Three Danger (三危 Sanwei) are names of mountains and, according to Huainanzi, “Shize” (Major et al., Huainanzi, 201), the name of a country. Jiang Ji (You, Tian wen zuanyi, 164) gives much secondary evidence suggesting that Black Water, Black Toe, and Three Dangers are places that produce edible things that bestow immortality. The earliest extant source to associate immortality with these three places is, of course, TW itself. Most scholars take the last line of this stanza (壽何所止 shou hesuo zhi) to mean, “When does their long life end?” This is based on one of two possible interpretations of the Wang Yi commentary, which goes as follows: Yan xianren bingming busi, qi shou du hesuo qiongzhi ye? 言仙人稟命不死，其壽獨何所窮止也？ In English it could be translated, “The passage says that immortals are endowed with deathlessness, but when only [du, ‘alone,’ or ‘contrary to what you would expect’] does it end?” In this interpretation, hesuo is taken to mean “when.” This, however, is an extension of its basic meaning, which is “where” or “in what place.” If we take hesuo in its basic sense, the part of the sentence after the comma becomes, “In what place(s) alone does their long life end?” The late Qing commentator Xia Dalin 夏大霖 is one of the few who read the passage and the commentary correctly (or at least so that it renders a question that is interestingly ironical rather than self-contradictory). His comment paraphrases the lines thus: “Everyone in the world might claim that there are medicinal herbs growing near Black Waters and Three Dangers, but where, after all, are these places? Now are they not close to the mountains and rivers around the Hanging Gardens? If [those who eat the herbs] were to become immortal, then their lives would never end—anyone can see that. On the other hand, where would they go to bring [their immortal lives] to an end—has anyone ever seen that? The proverb goes, ‘Everyone says that the spirits and immortals go to the heavens [to live]; but no one ever sees those in the heavens coming down here [to live]’ ” See You, Tian wen zuanyi, 164–65.

  27. In Chinese mythology there is more than one fish with a human face. This one is the lingyu 鯪魚, which is described as having a human face, hands, and feet, and a fish’s body. See Shanhaijing, “Hainei dongjing” (Yuan, Shanhaijing, 240). Some later sources say that it is so large it can swallow a boat. See Jin, Dong, and Gao, Qu Yuan ji jiaozhu, 336–37.

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nbsp; The Monster Sparrow, or Qidui 鬿堆 (or 鬿雀 Qique), is described in Shanhaijing, “Dongshan jing,” as an inhabitant of Beihao Mountain that looks like a chicken, but with a white head, rat’s feet, and tiger’s claws. It also eats people. See Yuan, Shanhaijing, 99.

  Yi 羿 the Archer is also known as Hou Yi 后羿. There are two main traditions about him. One depicts him as a godlike mythical figure. The other presents him as a historical figure. This passage alludes to the mythical Yi, the one who was ordered by the Lord of the Sky to save the world from certain disasters. According to Shanhaijing, “Hainei jing” (Yuan, Shanhaijing, 300), the Lord of the Sky in question was Di Jun 帝俊, who provided Yi with his main tool to deal with the disaster—a crimson bow with white-corded arrows. The main disaster according to Huainanzi, “Basic Warp” (Major et al., Huainanzi, 276), was too much heat produced by the rise of ten suns into the sky at the same time; the other disasters were caused by monsters. Yao manages to solve all the problems with his trusty bow. In the Huainanzi version of the story, however, it is not the divine Di Jun who commissions Yi, it is the very human Yao, who rides on Yi’s success to the royal throne.

  There are a number of differing accounts about where the suns came from and why they are associated with crows. In Shanhaijing, “Haiwai dong jing,” it says, “Below there is Hot Water Valley. Above Hot Water Valley there is a fusang [sometimes translated as ‘mulberry’] tree. This is the place where the ten suns bathe. It is located on the north side of the Kingdom of the Black Teeth. Growing in the middle of a great lake there is a great tree on the lower branches of which nine suns reside, and on the top branch of which one sun resides” (Yuan, Shanhaijing, 212). In Shanhaijing, “Dahuang dongjing,” it says, “In the middle of the great wilderness there is a mountain called Nieyaojundi. On the mountain grows a tree that reaches a height of three hundred li. Its leaves look like those of the mustard plant. There is a valley called Warm Springs Valley. Over Hot Water Valley [its other name] grows a fusang tree. Just as one of its [resident] suns is returning, another one goes out. Each is carried by a crow” (see Yuan, Shanhaijing, 247). Other texts, such as the Huainanzi, “Quintessential Spirit,” tell us that a crow lives in the sun and that it has three legs; see Major et al., Huainanzi, 242. Wang Yi (Hong, Chuci buzhu, 97), seemingly quoting a nonextant passage from the Huainanzi, tells us that when Yi hit each of the nine suns with an arrow, the crow within it died, dropping its feathers and wings as a consequence. Many scholars are of the opinion that Yi’s transition from god to earthly hero took place during the Han dynasty. Karlgren thought that Yi had no connection with the ten-sun myth until the Han; see Bernhard Karlgren, “Legends and Cults in Ancient China,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 18 (1946): 199–365. See some likely evidence to the contrary in Yuan, Zhongguo shenhua chuanshuo cidian, 303–4, and Hong, Chuci buzhu, 97, quote of the pre-Han Guizang to the effect that Yi shot down ten suns. For a fuller discussion of the Archer Yi myths, see Allan, Shape of the Turtle, 36.