Numina · Book IV
Book IV
Chinese Mythology
Chinese myth reaches us mostly through the hands of people who wanted it to be history. Sima Qian dates the reigns of figures other traditions would leave timeless; the sage-kings Yao, Shun and Yu are given regnal years. Reading it means constantly asking what has been euhemerised — turned from a god into an ancestor with a birthdate.
The sources are scattered rather than canonical. The Shanhaijing, the Huainanzi, the Chuci, fragments in philosophical texts, and much later vernacular novels that fixed in the popular imagination what no classical text ever settled. Pangu separates heaven from earth and his body becomes the world; Nüwa repairs the sky with smelted stone and makes people out of loess; Yu the Great controls the flood not by surviving it but by engineering.
That last point is characteristic. The heroic act is frequently public works.
Contents
- IV.1Scattered sourcesto come
No canon: the Shanhaijing, the Huainanzi, and fragments in philosophy.
- IV.2Pangu and Nüwato come
Heaven parted from earth; the sky patched; people made from loess.
- IV.3The sage-kingsto come
Myth written as history, with reign dates attached.
- IV.4Yu and the floodto come
The hero who wins by engineering rather than by surviving.
- IV.5Heaven as a bureaucracyto come
The Jade Emperor's court, and gods with jurisdictions and paperwork.
The chapters are laid out; nothing is written into them yet. They stand so that what is missing is obvious rather than invisible.