The Myths of Bashu in Chinese Culture

Deng Jingwu

The Myths of Bashu in Chinese Culture

Deng Jingwu*

Ⅰ

Myth, is the record of a nation’s mental activity in the understanding and perception of the world, and “encyclopedia” in its childhood; all the categories of humanities and social sciences today can find their origins in myths which cover such disciplines as philosophy, economics, history, religious studies, literature and fine art, as well as astronomy, geography, hydraulic engineering, and botany. When humans began to open their eyes to see the world, and gradually transcended primitive ways of life, they began to consciously and proactively create their own means of understanding their lives and the world in which they lived. Humans, weak in strength, were naturally filled with worship and respect for the powerful forces of nature in the fight for survival. Their interpretation and imagination of the mysterious natural phenomena became an original artistic creation of high imagination, without consciousness. From “upright beasts” living, “a primitive form of life,” humans experienced an evolutionary journey through manual work and creation of the tools needed for survival, including human consciousness with advanced problem solving thinking abilities. Our primitive ancestors started to look at the outside world with human consciousness and from their new point of view. With the appearance of the first advanced phase, verbal communications, humans, from childhood, started to state their thinking about the relationships between nature and themselves, their living conditions and inventive processes, their passions, namely pleasure, anger, sorrow, and joy in the fight for survival. As Lu Xun said, “Our ancient ancestors saw the universe constantly changing, as these phenomena were beyond human ability to understand and interpret, they created stories to help themunderstand, namely myths today.”

The Mythical Bird Jingwei Trying to Fill up the Sea with Pebbles

These stories were in the form of “children text.” They had a sincere dialogue with nature, and regarded all natural objects as being as emotional and spiritual as themselves, namely to have everything personified like the sun, the moon, wind, rain, thunder, mountains and rivers, grass and trees, and animals. This primitive thinking is mythical thought, and the accumulated materials are the ancient myths and legends. The children of the East and the West seemingly started to consciously examine nature; no matter they became conscious after eating the “fruit of wisdom” on the sly or opening their eyes “at the dawn of civilization.” The morphological representation of the objective world and the way of moving in circles were reflected in their thinking and ideas, thus all their creative activities for survival took the unique mark of objective existence. In ancient Greek mythology, Poseidon was placed next to the god Zeus and the queen of heaven, Hera, which was a present from the Mediterranean–Aegean Sea; the thinking of “original sin” of the ancient Hebrew people was determined by the barren land of West Asia. Through this children’s mode of discourse, the creation of myths and legends marked the beginning of the history of human culture. The ancient Greek myth “Prometheus stealing fire for the world” and the ancient Chinese myth Gun stealing Xi–rang(a never–ceasing growing soil) for the mortal world,showed the care and love of god to humans.

The earliest record of Chinese myths isClassic of Mountains and Seas(Shan–hai Ching). The popular stories likeThe Mythical Bird Jingwei Trying to Fill up the Sea with Pebbles(a symbol of dogged determination), andKua Fu Chasing the Sun(overestimate oneself and try to do something beyond one’s ability)come from this book. The story of the goddess patching the sky is found inHuainanzi(Writings of the Maters of Huainan)andThe Works of Liezi, while the story ofNvwa Created Man(Nvwa is a goddess in Chinese Mythology) originates fromFeng Su Tong(Records of Customs)of the Han Dynasty. The myth of Bashu is an extremely important component of Chinese mythology. The Great Basin of Bashu has a long history of life, and the ancient Bashu ancestors created many myths and legends out of magnificent and fantastic imaginations in human childhood. These myths and legends are the most attractive and characteristic content at the initial stage of regional culture, and have had a profound influence on Chinese culture and literature, like King Yu combating the floods, people’s worship of great stones, ordinary people becoming immortal, Chang Hong’s blood turning into jade, as well as worship of the snake totem.

II

The Dinosaur Fossils of Dashanpu Zigong

“Ziyang Dinosaur” and “Hechuan Dinosaur,”particularly the unearthed dinosaur fossils of Dashanpu Zigong, prove that the natural historyof the Bashu area has covered a long time. The excavation of the “Daxi Culture” Ruins and the discovery of “Wushan Man” provide new grounds supporting the argument for the doctrine“humans originated in Asia.” The excavation of the “Yangzishan Tutai” Architectural Complex of Chengdu Twelve Bridges and the discovery of the“Sanxingdui” cultural relics in Guanghan and the“Jinsha Ruins” all confirm the great scale of the early civilization of ancient Shu. The unearthed“Sanxingdui Bronze Civilization” artifacts have shocked the world. The advanced smelting and casting technology, the unique and strange shapes, a variety and a huge number of various bronze wares, and the characters “Bashu language and pictures”left on “Ba sword and Shu dagger” represent the glorious Bashu culture and the great achievements of its highly developed civilization. The developed material civilization is the inevitable outcome of the creator’s extraordinary imagination and great intelligence. There should be a highly developed spiritual culture to match it, in line with the basic laws of the development of human history. The Great Basin of Bashu is endowed with a distinctive geographic position and climate conditions at the specific longitude and altitude of earth. The specific landform and vegetation landscape and local products determine the way of capturing food and the way of living and labor of the ancient ancestors of Bashu, based on which, specific consciousness and modes of thinking came into being. This consciousness and modes of thinking were manifested in the ancient myths and genesis legends of Bashu.

In the ancient Shu myths, various mythological figures are seen in ancient books and records, like the Yellow Emperors, Lei Zu, Da Yu, Can Cong, Yu Fu, Du Yu and Bo Guan. They jointly formed a complete historical context, and became the important elements of ancient Chinese myths, for example, “Gun Yu combating floods,” “Can Cong with protruding eyeballs,” “Yu Fu becoming immortal,” “Du Yu turning into cuckoo,” “Zhu Li coming out of a well,” “Five men with unusual strength cutting into a mountain,” and others.The Classic of Mountains and Seas. Internal Classicsonce described the beautiful Chengdu Plain, “In the southwest, there was a place named Duguangye, where black water flew by and Hou Ji (minister of agriculture under the legendary Shun) was buried. There produced beans, rice, broomcorn millet and millet, a variety of grains had natural growth and sowing was possible in both summer and winter. Luan (a mythical bird like the phoenix) was singing lightheartedly and phoenix was dancing freely. The Liushou Tree blossomed and yielded fruit with lush growth of trees and grass. All kinds of birds and beasts lived a harmonious life in groups. The grass growing here would not die, either in bitter winter or hot summer.” Nv Wa refined multicolored stones to patch the sky, broke the legs of Ao (a huge legendary turtle) to support the four poles of heaven, filled the sea to create land with Xi–rang and flood control, and rolled soil into men, women and various animals. These “Genesis” myths project a period of“historical shadow” of humans on Chinese lands in the Chinese people’s childhood. The legend of Nv Wa is widespread in Bashu and it is said Nv Wa was so exhausted after finishing patching heaven that she died in Western Shu. Today Ya’an is still called “the broken part of the heaven in Western Shu” due to wet weather, and the colorful pebbles in the river out of Ya’an City are said to be the left over multicolored stones when Nv Wa patched heaven.

The main content of Bashu myths are as follows.

The ancient ancestors of Bashu were in the pursuit of an immortal life, which is represented in the myths. The legend of the long–living Peng Zu who died at the age of eight hundred is one of the examples.Biographic Sketches of Kings of Shudescribed that the three generations of Kings of Shu, Can Cong, Bo Guan and Yu Fu “l(fā)ived several hundred years and became the apotheosis of immortality” and “many common people became immortal along with the Kings.” A kind of primitive consciousness of eternal life is presented here. The story of “Du Yu turning into cuckoo” is the product of a highly developed farming on the land of Bashu in ancient times. The great Shu King (Du Yu) transformed himself into a cuckoo, and did not forget about reminding his people that “it is time for seeding” persistently and touchingly. He even cried to bleed. In the legend of Zhang Heng(the son of Zhang Ling, “Taoist master” and founder of Taoism on the Chengdu Plain), he flew up to heaven and became an immortal, which also reflects the aspiration of the Bashu ancestors in pursuit of an eternal life. It is easy to understand that the basic images of Bashu’s ancient myths have become the mode, as a basis, of the later Chinese fairy tales, and constituted the main frame of Chinese Taoism.“Taoist priest” has become another name of Chinese style immortals, and “Yu Hua” has become a code word for the specific process mode of Chinese style“ascending to heaven and becoming immortal.”

Modern science has proven that humans have experienced a long “Stone Age.” The memory of their survival state at that time has evolved into the myth “Stone is the source of human life,” like “Yu was born in Shi–niu County,” “Yu’s wife became a stone and Qi was born after the stone cracked”recorded by Sima Qian. Chang Qu, a Shu man, in the Jin Dynasty, recorded inChronicles of Huayang Chronicles of Shuthat in the ancient times “When the Shu King died, five men with unusual strength, had a huge stone, three Zhang (1 Zhang= 3.333 meters) long and weighing 30,000jin, erected before the tomb of the King as a tombstone, namely Stalagmite Site today. The customs started with Can Cong. After Can Cong’s death, his officials constructed a sarcophagus and stone coffin for him, so the Shu people followed this burial pattern. It was recorded inNatural History, written by Zhang Hua of the Jin Dynasty that one man walked into the Milky Way accidentally at night, and came across another man leading a herd of cattle, and the latter gave him a stone. The man returned to Chengdu and asked his friend Yan Jun–ping what the stone was for, the stone immediately and quickly got bigger. The stone was called “Zhi Ji Shi.” Cao Xuequan of the Ming Dynasty recorded in Volume 2 ofShu Notes of Geographic Attractions, “It was the custom of Chengdu to visit the Haixuan Temple in the east of the city on March 21st every year and people touched stones in the pond to pray for a baby.”Today, many streets in Chengdu are named after stones in memory of the “worship of great stone”in the ancient times. Stone’s legends, as the source of life, have been rooted in the hearts of people in the Bashu Basin. The legends also have profound influence on Chinese literature (like the story of“stone monkey” inJourney to the West), and have become a folk custom for baby–praying in the Bashu area. It was recorded inLong An Fu Recordsof the Qing Dynasty that stone “expedited baby delivery,”and there was a stone in the cave of Shu, which “was as red as blood, and smelled fishy after it was boiled; the water expedited baby delivery,” and “pregnant women had an easy labor when they held it in hand.”The phenomenon of “worship of great stone,” as a source of life in Bashu, was so popular over a long history, that Du Fu, who just arrived in Chengdu, was extremely surprised, so he wrote a poem Visit to Stalagmite Site.

The word “Cang Sang” (the vicissitudes of life) has its origin in the myth of flood control “the deep, blue sea and mulberry fields,” which is a “historical shadow” as well. The mythologist Yuan Ke believes that like the Chinese myth of Gun and Yu combating the floods, “in the ancient Shu Kingdom,there were stories of mythological flavor like King Wang (Du Yu) transformed himself into a cuckoo and flood control by Li Bing and his son.” As the source of life for human reproduction, water was a threat to the survival of humans as well. Therefore, there were following legends like Gun stealing Xi–rang from the emperor of heaven and raising the river banks to keep the floods out, Da Yu diverting floods, and Li Bing turning into a herd of cattle and a rhinoceros to defeat the water monster. There is concentrated embodiment of the ancient Chinese ancestors’ dialectical understanding of water in these legends. In the 1960s on the Chengdu Plainiheard about legends like Guan–yin Bodhisattva creating land with Xi–rang in folk stories, suggesting deep cultural antecedents of the image of “Xi–rang.”

The mating graph (human’s head with snake’s body) of Fu Xi and Nv Wa (see the portrait brick of the Han Dynasty) in Chinese culture belongs to the snake totem myth. The primary writing forms of characters like Yu, Can, Shu and Ba are related to the S–shaped long “worm” (Wen Yiduo interpreted, in accordance withOrigin of Chinese Characters, that Yu originated from a worm, that is, the original character of a snake; Xu Shen wrote inOrigin of Chinese Characters, “Ba, a worm, or a snake which swallowed an elephant, was a pictographic character.”) The stone snake unearthed in the Chengdu Jinsha Ruins, and the legend about two snakes of intelligence, from Mount Emei and Mount Qingcheng, on the shore of West Lake of “an earthly paradise,” support the long history of the Bashu myth, “snake totem.” The Snake god has been duplicated unconsciously. Madam White Snake, from Mount Emei of Shu had boundless powers for summoning wind and calling for rain, and bringing the dead back to life, meanwhile she had strong maternal love as a wife, thus becoming a favorite typical mode of god. The story about the two snake spirits’ arrival at West Lake, which were originally from Mount Emei and Mount Qingcheng of Shu, is the result of the Bashu people’s worship of the “snake totem.”

Two Lord Gods in the pedigree of local gods in China are derived from Bashu. Wen Qu Xing (Emperor Wenchang), the legendary deity of imperial examinations and literary affairs), was a native of Zitong of Shu; the valiant Yang Erlang, God of War, was worshipped for his “protruding eyeballs,” from “Mount Mei” (or “Mount Min,” he had seven sworn brothers in Mount Mei) to “Guan Kou” (he was once based in Guan Jiang Kou). InJintang County Annals, revised during the reign of Emperor Jiaqing of the Qing Dynasty, there was interpretation, “Li Bing was the Emperor of Sichuan, historically recognized as the King of the Vassal State Qin. Today the god, who was offered sacrifices by the people, was Li Bing’s son——ErLang. In water control, Li Bing made proposals while Erlang accomplished them. It must be truth since people handed down the story by generations. Therefore, people worshipped Erlang more than his father.” In fact, it is a deceitful talk with eloquence, intentionally masking the Bashu natives’ preference for the “protruding eyeballs” god and neglects the achievements of “King of Qin Vassal State.” We may prove it with evidence of the Shu people’s preference in the Song Dynasty. It was recorded inA Legendary Ferocious Person of Shuthat the later emperor of Shu, Yan, worshipped Erlang God and admired his outlook, “Yan was in a military uniform and golden armor, wearing a hat with pearls and brocade sleeves, holding a bow and arrow. Common people saw him as Guan Kou God (Erlang God).”Yi Jian Zhi (Yi Annals), written by Hong Mai of the Song Dynasty, described the passion of the Shu people for Erlang God, “Guan Kou God was worshipped in the ancestral temple and appointed as a King. A special temple supervisor was responsible for daily issues, and the Shu people worshipped Erlang carefully.A sheep was killed as sacrifice in every important season or when people prayed for blessings, and as many as 40,000 sheep were killed annually.” Here it reflects the psychological value of the Shu people’s worship of a regional, native god.

III

It is believed by human cultural theory that myth is neither fiction nor arbitrary fantasy. It is a kind of intuitive thinking for the world and an original thinking pattern to understand and interpret the world, before humans could think in a rational way.Homer’s Epic, once regarded as absurd and unreasonable and the same as the “Arabian Nights” over several centuries, was proved to be, astonishingly true, after the discovery of Mycenae–Minoan Ruins, particularly, the excavation of the Ruins of the ancient city of Troy. Therefore, myths and legends of ancient times have been recognized as “the shadow of history” in human childhood.

Classic of Mountains and Seas

At the beginning of the Chinese civilization, Pre–Qin philosophers often processed and transformed myths and legends to promote their respective theories,Chuang–tzuis the most typical, who expressed his thoughts in fables, and who presented his ideals in ancient stories. Myths gradually evolved into fables, which is the main literary pattern of ancient Chinese myths and legends. Myths and legends evolved into ancient story–telling, which is the main political and historical pattern of myths and legends. Each Fang Guo (feudal princes who pay allegiance to a common sovereign) had its own representative classics of regional culture, likeClassical Six Artsof Lu State(music, archery, mathematics, ritual, chariot–riding and calligraphy),Five Official Skillsof the Qi State(Poetry, Time, Spring and Autumn, Yi and Bu), andThree Books and Five Classics oftheChuState (three books refer to the books ofFuxi, Shennong, and the Yellow Emperor, and five classics refer to the books of Shao Hao, Zhuan Xu, Di Ku, Yao and Shun). “Bashu should have their own classics, andClassic of Mountains and Seasmay be the representative example of the Bashu culture spreading in the region (Meng Wen–tong:A Slight Discussion about the Writing Time and the Regions It Was Generated, refers toOn Bashu Ancient History, Sichuan People’s Press, 1981). The interpretation of Chinese human history inClassics of Mountains and Seas Internal Classicsis, “Hou Ji led the common people to sow seeds and grow food crops. His grandson was named Shu Jun, who started to cultivate fields with cattle. A man called Da Bi Chi Yin established the earliest state in China. Yu and Gun finished planning territory and there were nine administrative division units later… when there were big floods, Gun stole Xi–rang from the emperor of the heavens to block the floods, without approval of the emperor. The emperor was angered and ordered Zhu Rong to kill Gun in Yujiao. Later, Gun gave birth to a baby boy, who was Yu. Ultimately, the emperor approved Yu to resist floods with soil.”

The Bashu area was placed in “the central part of the world” inClassic of Mountains and Seas. Classic of Mountains. Classic of the Mid Mountainsrecorded mountain ranges like Mount Min, Mount Lai and Mount Ju (Meng) and the flow of rivers. Guo Pu of the Jin Dynasty directly pointed out that“Du Guang Ye” was “a city of three hundred li in the center of the world” in notes toClassic of the Mid Mountains. He grasped the core value of the book. This view revealed that the ancient ancestors of Bashu had the heroic spirit of Rong Di (non–Chinese peoples of the north and west) and arrogant consciousness of their central location in the world even though they lived in the remote West.

The Legend “Kua Fu chasing the sun” described a giant named Kua Fu “miscalculating his strength, conceived the vain ambition of overtaking the fleeting rays of the sun” and he made endless efforts until he died of thirst. This unbending, bold and combatant spirit of “unawareness of one’s limitation,” as well as the totem features of “one man from whose ears hung two yellow snakes and who was holding two yellow snakes” promulgated the unique local personality of the Bashu ancestors. The image of “A Ba snake swallowed an elephant and spit out the bones of the elephant after three years”is the typical accumulation of this kind of regional humanistic spirit.

In addition to theClassic of Mountains and Seas,Chronicles of Huayangpreserves the largest number of Bashu ancient myths and legends, written by Chang Qu, a native of Shu in the Jin Dynasty. After a long history, particularly under the high pressure of the ideological and cultural unity policy of Qin Shihuang’s “uniform script” and burning classic books of a hundred schools of thought, the Bashu regional culture was regarded as a barbarian culture of a vassal state and was banned and replaced by a centralized culture. In memory of Bashu history and with enthusiasm of reconstructing the Bashu culture, Chang Qu wrote the bookChronicles of Huayang. In addition to Chang Qu, Li Bai once wrote in his poem, “Bashu had a history as old as 48,000 years” to provide a key limit to the riddle of history “nobody knows when Can Cong and Yu Fu founded the Bashu State.” Lai Min, a scholar of Shu in the Three Kingdoms Period, wrote a slightly earlier work Theory of Shu than Chang Qu, and an even earlier work isShu Wang Ben Ji. Both recorded a large quantity of Bashu myths and legends. The text meaning of Chronicles of Huayang, which was beyond scholars of the past, is that it is a self–contained life history and cultural history of the Bashu Great Basin in a kind of independent standard of a vassal state, based on the remaining classics and historical materials, folk myths, legends and stories.

Finally, a special cultural phenomenon is worthnoting. In the Han Dynasty, when “Qin’s Brick and Han’s Tile” completely prevailed, Chengdu People carried heavy stones far away with great difficulty in the mountainous area to construct school buildings. The value of “Worship of Great Stones” played a critical role here. The Shu people were born with the help of stone, cultivated by stone, and finally returned to stone. Ernst Cassirer, a modern Jewish thinker in Germany believed, “Myth becomes a philosophical issue, as it represents the original orientation of the human spirit and an independent construction of human consciousness. To study a comprehensive human cultural system, you have to trace it back to myth.” He even stated that a nation’s myths were not determined by its history, but that history was determined by myths instead. From the view point that humans are creative subjects in history, myths, as the intuitive way to grasp images and a way to elaborate the world of ancient ancestor, are the accumulation of human knowledge and survival experiences. Meanwhile, they affect and regulate value judgments and creative methods by humans, as a kind of thinking pattern and collective unconsciousness. Humans create in given conditions and develop new cultures in the context of existing cultures. This is also the reason for our discussion of the content, characteristics and performance patterns of the ancient myths of Bashu, so we can better understand the occurrence and development of Bashu culture and literature.

(Translator: Huang Yan; Editor: Jia Fengrong)

This paper has been translated and reprinted with the permission ofJournal of Literature and History, No. 2, 2016.

*Deng Jingwu, professor, Chinese Culture and Urban Heritage and Popularization Base of Sichuan Province.