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Myths and Legends of China by E. T. C. Werner

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Myths & Legends of China

By

E.T.C. Werner

H.B.M. Consul Foochow (Retired) Barrister-at-law Middle Temple Late
Member of The Chinese Government Historiographical Bureau Peking
Author of "Descriptive Sociology: Chinese" "China of the Chinese" Etc.


George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd.
London Bombay Sydney




In Memoriam

_Gladys Nina Chalmers Werner_



Preface

The chief literary sources of Chinese myths are the _Li tai shen hsien
t'ung chien_, in thirty-two volumes, the _Shen hsien lieh chuan_,
in eight volumes, the _Feng shen yen i_, in eight volumes, and the
_Sou shen chi_, in ten volumes. In writing the following pages I
have translated or paraphrased largely from these works. I have also
consulted and at times quoted from the excellent volumes on Chinese
Superstitions by Pere Henri Dore, comprised in the valuable series
_Varietes Sinologiques_, published by the Catholic Mission Press
at Shanghai. The native works contained in the Ssu K'u Ch'uean Shu,
one of the few public libraries in Peking, have proved useful for
purposes of reference. My heartiest thanks are due to my good friend
Mr Mu Hsueeh-hsuen, a scholar of wide learning and generous disposition,
for having kindly allowed me to use his very large and useful library
of Chinese books. The late Dr G.E. Morrison also, until he sold it
to a Japanese baron, was good enough to let me consult his extensive
collection of foreign works relating to China whenever I wished, but
owing to the fact that so very little work has been done in Chinese
mythology by Western writers I found it better in dealing with this
subject to go direct to the original Chinese texts. I am indebted to
Professor H.A. Giles, and to his publishers, Messrs Kelly and Walsh,
Shanghai, for permission to reprint from _Strange Stories from a
Chinese Studio_ the fox legends given in Chapter XV.

This is, so far as I know, the only monograph on Chinese mythology
in any non-Chinese language. Nor do the native works include any
scientific analysis or philosophical treatment of their myths.

My aim, after summarizing the sociology of the Chinese as a
prerequisite to the understanding of their ideas and sentiments,
and dealing as fully as possible, consistently with limitations of
space (limitations which have necessitated the presentation of a
very large and intricate topic in a highly compressed form), with
the philosophy of the subject, has been to set forth in English dress
those myths which may be regarded as the accredited representatives
of Chinese mythology--those which live in the minds of the people and
are referred to most frequently in their literature, not those which
are merely diverting without being typical or instructive--in short,
a true, not a distorted image.

_Edward Theodore Chalmers Werner_

_Peking_
_February_ 1922



Contents



Chapter

I. The Sociology of the Chinese
II. On Chinese Mythology
III. Cosmogony--P'an Ku and the Creation Myth
IV. The Gods of China
V. Myths of the Stars
VI. Myths of Thunder, Lightning, Wind, and Rain
VII. Myths of the Waters
VIII. Myths of Fire
IX. Myths of Epidemics, Medicine, Exorcism, Etc.
X. The Goddess of Mercy
XI. The Eight Immortals
XII. The Guardian of the Gate of Heaven
XIII. A Battle of the Gods
XIV. How the Monkey Became a God
XV. Fox Legends
XVI. Miscellaneous Legends
The Pronunciation of Chinese Words





_Mais cet Orient, cette Asie, quelles en sont, enfin, les frontieres
reelles?... Ces frontieres sont d'une nettete qui ne permet aucune
erreur. L'Asie est la ou cesse la vulgarite, ou nait la dignite,
et ou commence l'elegance intellectuelle. Et l'Orient est la ou sont
les sources debordantes de poesie._

_Mardrus_,
_La Reine de Saba_





CHAPTER I

The Sociology of the Chinese


Racial Origin

In spite of much research and conjecture, the origin of the Chinese
people remains undetermined. We do not know who they were nor whence
they came. Such evidence as there is points to their immigration
from elsewhere; the Chinese themselves have a tradition of a Western
origin. The first picture we have of their actual history shows us, not
a people behaving as if long settled in a land which was their home and
that of their forefathers, but an alien race fighting with wild beasts,
clearing dense forests, and driving back the aboriginal inhabitants.

Setting aside several theories (including the one that the Chinese
are autochthonous and their civilization indigenous) now regarded
by the best authorities as untenable, the researches of sinologists
seem to indicate an origin (1) in early Akkadia; or (2) in Khotan,
the Tarim valley (generally what is now known as Eastern Turkestan),
or the K'un-lun Mountains (concerning which more presently). The
second hypothesis may relate only to a sojourn of longer or shorter
duration on the way from Akkadia to the ultimate settlement in China,
especially since the Khotan civilization has been shown to have
been imported from the Punjab in the third century B.C. The fact
that serious mistakes have been made regarding the identifications
of early Chinese rulers with Babylonian kings, and of the Chinese
_po-hsing_ (Cantonese _bak-sing_) 'people' with the Bak Sing or Bak
tribes, does not exclude the possibility of an Akkadian origin. But
in either case the immigration into China was probably gradual, and
may have taken the route from Western or Central Asia direct to the
banks of the Yellow River, or may possibly have followed that to the
south-east through Burma and then to the north-east through what is
now China--the settlement of the latter country having thus spread
from south-west to north-east, or in a north-easterly direction along
the Yangtzu River, and so north, instead of, as is generally supposed,
from north to south.


Southern Origin Improbable

But this latter route would present many difficulties; it would seem
to have been put forward merely as ancillary to the theory that the
Chinese originated in the Indo-Chinese peninsula. This theory is
based upon the assumptions that the ancient Chinese ideograms include
representations of tropical animals and plants; that the oldest and
purest forms of the language are found in the south; and that the
Chinese and the Indo-Chinese groups of languages are both tonal. But
all of these facts or alleged facts are as easily or better accounted
for by the supposition that the Chinese arrived from the north
or north-west in successive waves of migration, the later arrivals
pushing the earlier farther and farther toward the south, so that the
oldest and purest forms of Chinese would be found just where they are,
the tonal languages of the Indo-Chinese peninsula being in that case
regarded as the languages of the vanguard of the migration. Also, the
ideograms referred to represent animals and plants of the temperate
zone rather than of the tropics, but even if it could be shown, which
it cannot, that these animals and plants now belong exclusively to the
tropics, that would be no proof of the tropical origin of the Chinese,
for in the earliest times the climate of North China was much milder
than it is now, and animals such as tigers and elephants existed in the
dense jungles which are later found only in more southern latitudes.


Expansion of Races from North to South

The theory of a southern origin (to which a further serious objection
will be stated presently) implies a gradual infiltration of Chinese
immigrants through South or Mid-China (as above indicated) toward
the north, but there is little doubt that the movement of the races
has been from north to south and not _vice versa_. In what are now
the provinces of Western Kansu and Ssuch'uan there lived a people
related to the Chinese (as proved by the study of Indo-Chinese
comparative philology) who moved into the present territory of Tibet
and are known as Tibetans; in what is now the province of Yuennan were
the Shan or Ai-lao (modern Laos), who, forced by Mongol invasions,
emigrated to the peninsula in the south and became the Siamese; and in
Indo-China, not related to the Chinese, were the Annamese, Khmer, Mon,
Khasi, Colarains (whose remnants are dispersed over the hill tracts
of Central India), and other tribes, extending in prehistoric times
into Southern China, but subsequently driven back by the expansion
of the Chinese in that direction.


Arrival of the Chinese in China

Taking into consideration all the existing evidence, the objections to
all other theories of the origin of the Chinese seem to be greater
than any yet raised to the theory that immigrants from the Tarim
valley or beyond (_i.e._ from Elam or Akkadia, either direct or _via_
Eastern Turkestan) struck the banks of the Yellow River in their
eastward journey and followed its course until they reached the
localities where we first find them settled, namely, in the region
covered by parts of the three modern provinces of Shansi, Shensi,
and Honan where their frontiers join. They were then (about 2500 or
3000 B.C.) in a relatively advanced state of civilization. The country
east and south of this district was inhabited by aboriginal tribes,
with whom the Chinese fought, as they did with the wild animals and the
dense vegetation, but with whom they also commingled and intermarried,
and among whom they planted colonies as centres from which to spread
their civilization.


The K'un-lun Mountains

With reference to the K'un-lun Mountains, designated in Chinese
mythology as the abode of the gods--the ancestors of the Chinese
race--it should be noted that these are identified not with the range
dividing Tibet from Chinese Turkestan, but with the Hindu Kush. That
brings us somewhat nearer to Babylon, and the apparent convergence
of the two theories, the Central Asian and the Western Asian, would
seem to point to a possible solution of the problem. Nue Kua, one of
the alleged creators of human beings, and Nue and Kua, the first two
human beings (according to a variation of the legend), are placed
in the K'un-lun Mountains. That looks hopeful. Unfortunately, the
K'un-lun legend is proved to be of Taoist origin. K'un-lun is the
central mountain of the world, and 3000 miles in height. There is
the fountain of immortality, and thence flow the four great rivers
of the world. In other words, it is the Sumeru of Hindu mythology
transplanted into Chinese legend, and for our present purpose without
historical value.

It would take up too much space to go into details of this interesting
problem of the origin of the Chinese and their civilization, the
cultural connexions or similarities of China and Western Asia in
pre-Babylonian times, the origin of the two distinct culture-areas
so marked throughout the greater part of Chinese history, etc., and
it will be sufficient for our present purpose to state the conclusion
to which the evidence points.


Provisional Conclusion

Pending the discovery of decisive evidence, the following provisional
conclusion has much to recommend it--namely, that the ancestors
of the Chinese people came from the west, from Akkadia or Elam,
or from Khotan, or (more probably) from Akkadia or Elam _via_
Khotan, as one nomad or pastoral tribe or group of nomad or pastoral
tribes, or as successive waves of immigrants, reached what is now
China Proper at its north-west corner, settled round the elbow of
the Yellow River, spread north-eastward, eastward, and southward,
conquering, absorbing, or pushing before them the aborigines into
what is now South and South-west China. These aboriginal races, who
represent a wave or waves of neolithic immigrants from Western Asia
earlier than the relatively high-headed immigrants into North China
(who arrived about the twenty-fifth or twenty-fourth century B.C.),
and who have left so deep an impress on the Japanese, mixed and
intermarried with the Chinese in the south, eventually producing the
pronounced differences, in physical, mental, and emotional traits,
in sentiments, ideas, languages, processes, and products, from the
Northern Chinese which are so conspicuous at the present day.



Inorganic Environment

At the beginning of their known history the country occupied by the
Chinese was the comparatively small region above mentioned. It was
then a tract of an irregular oblong shape, lying between latitude 34 deg.
and 40 deg. N. and longitude 107 deg. and 114 deg. E. This territory round the
elbow of the Yellow River had an area of about 50,000 square miles,
and was gradually extended to the sea-coast on the north-east as far as
longitude 119 deg., when its area was about doubled. It had a population of
perhaps a million, increasing with the expansion to two millions. This
may be called infant China. Its period (the Feudal Period) was in
the two thousand years between the twenty-fourth and third centuries
B.C. During the first centuries of the Monarchical Period, which lasted
from 221 B.C. to A.D. 1912, it had expanded to the south to such an
extent that it included all of the Eighteen Provinces constituting
what is known as China Proper of modern times, with the exception of
a portion of the west of Kansu and the greater portions of Ssuch'uan
and Yuennan. At the time of the Manchu conquest at the beginning of the
seventeenth century A.D. it embraced all the territory lying between
latitude 18 deg. and 40 deg. N. and longitude 98 deg. and 122 deg. E. (the Eighteen
Provinces or China Proper), with the addition of the vast outlying
territories of Manchuria, Mongolia, Ili, Koko-nor, Tibet, and Corea,
with suzerainty over Burma and Annam--an area of more than 5,000,000
square miles, including the 2,000,000 square miles covered by the
Eighteen Provinces. Generally, this territory is mountainous in the
west, sloping gradually down toward the sea on the east. It contains
three chief ranges of mountains and large alluvial plains in the north,
east, and south. Three great and about thirty large rivers intersect
the country, their numerous tributaries reaching every part of it.

As regards geological features, the great alluvial plains rest upon
granite, new red sandstone, or limestone. In the north is found the
peculiar loess formation, having its origin probably in the accumulated
dust of ages blown from the Mongolian plateau. The passage from north
to south is generally from the older to the newer rocks; from east to
west a similar series is found, with some volcanic features in the
west and south. Coal and iron are the chief minerals, gold, silver,
copper, lead, tin, jade, etc., being also mined.

The climate of this vast area is not uniform. In the north the winter
is long and rigorous, the summer hot and dry, with a short rainy season
in July and August; in the south the summer is long, hot, and moist,
the winter short. The mean temperature is 50.3 deg. F. and 70 deg. F. in the
north and south respectively. Generally, the thermometer is low for
the latitude, though perhaps it is more correct to say that the Gulf
Stream raises the temperature of the west coast of Europe above the
average. The mean rainfall in the north is 16, in the south 70 inches,
with variations in other parts. Typhoons blow in the south between
July and October.


Organic Environment

The vegetal productions are abundant and most varied. The rice-zone
(significant in relation to the cultural distinctions above noted)
embraces the southern half of the country. Tea, first cultivated
for its infusion in A.D. 350, is grown in the southern and central
provinces between the twenty-third and thirty-fifth degrees of
latitude, though it is also found as far north as Shantung, the chief
'tea district,' however, being the large area south of the Yangtzu
River, east of the Tungting Lake and great Siang River, and north of
the Kuangtung Province. The other chief vegetal products are wheat,
barley, maize, millet, the bean, yam, sweet and common potato, tomato,
eggplant, ginseng, cabbage, bamboo, indigo, pepper, tobacco, camphor,
tallow, ground-nut, poppy, water-melon, sugar, cotton, hemp, and
silk. Among the fruits grown are the date, mulberry, orange, lemon,
pumelo, persimmon, lichi, pomegranate, pineapple, fig, coconut, mango,
and banana, besides the usual kinds common in Western countries.

The wild animals include the tiger, panther, leopard, bear, sable,
otter, monkey, wolf, fox, twenty-seven or more species of ruminants,
and numerous species of rodents. The rhinoceros, elephant, and tapir
still exist in Yuennan. The domestic animals include the camel and the
water-buffalo. There are about 700 species of birds, and innumerable
species of fishes and insects.


Sociological Environment

On their arrival in what is now known as China the Chinese, as already
noted, fought with the aboriginal tribes. The latter were exterminated,
absorbed, or driven south with the spread of Chinese rule. The Chinese
"picked out the eyes of the land," and consequently the non-Chinese
tribes now live in the unhealthy forests or marshes of the south,
or in mountain regions difficult of access, some even in trees (a
voluntary, not compulsory promotion), though several, such as the Dog
Jung in Fukien, retain settlements like islands among the ruling race.

In the third century B.C. began the hostile relations of the Chinese
with the northern nomads, which continued throughout the greater
part of their history. During the first six centuries A.D. there was
intercourse with Rome, Parthia, Turkey, Mesopotamia, Ceylon, India,
and Indo-China, and in the seventh century with the Arabs. Europe
was brought within the sociological environment by Christian
travellers. From the tenth to the thirteenth century the north
was occupied by Kitans and Nuechens, and the whole Empire was under
Mongol sway for eighty-eight years in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. Relations of a commercial and religious nature were held
with neighbours during the following four hundred years. Regular
diplomatic intercourse with Western nations was established as a result
of a series of wars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Until
recently the nation held aloof from alliances and was generally averse
to foreign intercourse. From 1537 onward, as a sequel of war or treaty,
concessions, settlements, etc., were obtained by foreign Powers. China
has now lost some of her border countries and large adjacent islands,
the military and commercial pressure of Western nations and Japan
having taken the place of the military pressure of the Tartars already
referred to. The great problem for her, an agricultural nation, is
how to find means and the military spirit to maintain her integrity,
the further violation of which could not but be regarded by the student
of sociological history as a great tragedy and a world-wide calamity.


Physical, Emotional, and Intellectual Characters

The physical characters of the Chinese are too well known to need
detailed recital. The original immigrants into North China all
belonged to blond races, but the modern Chinese have little left of
the immigrant stock. The oblique, almond-shaped eyes, with black iris
and the orbits far apart, have a vertical fold of skin over the inner
canthus, concealing a part of the iris, a peculiarity distinguishing
the eastern races of Asia from all other families of man. The stature
and weight of brain are generally below the average. The hair is black,
coarse, and cylindrical; the beard scanty or absent. The colour of
the skin is darker in the south than in the north.

Emotionally the Chinese are sober, industrious, of remarkable
endurance, grateful, courteous, and ceremonious, with a high sense
of mercantile honour, but timorous, cruel, unsympathetic, mendacious,
and libidinous.

Intellectually they were until recently, and to a large extent
still are, non-progressive, in bondage to uniformity and mechanism
in culture, imitative, unimaginative, torpid, indirect, suspicious,
and superstitious.

The character is being modified by intercourse with other peoples
of the earth and by the strong force of physical, intellectual,
and moral education.


Marriage in Early Times

Certain parts of the marriage ceremonial of China as now existing
indicate that the original form of marriage was by capture--of which,
indeed, there is evidence in the classical _Book of Odes_. But a
regular form of marriage (in reality a contract of sale) is shown
to have existed in the earliest historical times. The form was not
monogamous, though it seems soon to have assumed that of a qualified
monogamy consisting of one wife and one or more concubines, the
number of the latter being as a rule limited only by the means of the
husband. The higher the rank the larger was the number of concubines
and handmaids in addition to the wife proper, the palaces of the
kings and princes containing several hundreds of them. This form it
has retained to the present day, though associations now exist for
the abolition of concubinage. In early times, as well as throughout
the whole of Chinese history, concubinage was in fact universal,
and there is some evidence also of polyandry (which, however, cannot
have prevailed to any great extent). The age for marriage was twenty
for the man and fifteen for the girl, celibacy after thirty and twenty
respectively being officially discouraged. In the province of Shantung
it was usual for the wives to be older than their husbands. The
parents' consent to the betrothal was sought through the intervention
of a matchmaker, the proposal originating with the parents, and
the wishes of the future bride and bridegroom not being taken into
consideration. The conclusion of the marriage was the progress of the
bride from the house of her parents to that of the bridegroom, where
after various ceremonies she and he worshipped his ancestors together,
the worship amounting to little more than an announcement of the union
to the ancestral spirits. After a short sojourn with her husband the
bride revisited her parents, and the marriage was not considered as
finally consummated until after this visit had taken place.

The status of women was low, and the power of the husband great--so
great that he could kill his wife with impunity. Divorce was common,
and all in favour of the husband, who, while he could not be
divorced by her, could put his wife away for disobedience or even
for loquaciousness. A widower remarried immediately, but refusal
to remarry by a widow was esteemed an act of chastity. She often
mutilated herself or even committed suicide to prevent remarriage,
and was posthumously honoured for doing so. Being her husband's as
much in the Otherworld as in this, remarriage would partake of the
character of unchastity and insubordination; the argument, of course,
not applying to the case of the husband, who by remarriage simply
adds another member to his clan without infringing on anyone's rights.


Marriage in Monarchical and Republican Periods

The marital system of the early classical times, of which the above
were the essentials, changed but little during the long period of
monarchical rule lasting from 221 B.C. to A.D. 1912. The principal
object, as before, was to secure an heir to sacrifice to the spirits of
deceased progenitors. Marriage was not compulsory, but old bachelors
and old maids were very scarce. The concubines were subject to the
wife, who was considered to be the mother of their children as well
as her own. Her status, however, was not greatly superior. Implicit
obedience was exacted from her. She could not possess property, but
could not be hired out for prostitution. The latter vice was common,
in spite of the early age at which marriage took place and in spite
of the system of concubinage--which is after all but a legalized
transfer of prostitutional cohabitation to the domestic circle.

Since the establishment of the Republic in 1912 the 'landslide' in the
direction of Western progress has had its effect also on the domestic
institutions. But while the essentials of the marriage contract remain
practically the same as before, the most conspicuous changes have been
in the accompanying ceremonial--now sometimes quite foreign, but in a
very large, perhaps the greatest, number of cases that odious thing,
half foreign, half Chinese; as, for instance, when the procession,
otherwise native, includes foreign glass-panelled carriages, or the
bridegroom wears a 'bowler' or top-hat with his Chinese dress--and
in the greater freedom allowed to women, who are seen out of doors
much more than formerly, sit at table with their husbands, attend
public functions and dinners, dress largely in foreign fashion,
and play tennis and other games, instead of being prisoners of the
'inner apartment' and household drudges little better than slaves.

One unexpected result of this increased freedom is certainly
remarkable, and is one not likely to have been predicted by the most
far-sighted sociologist. Many of the 'progressive' Chinese, now that
it is the fashion for Chinese wives to be seen in public with their
husbands, finding the uneducated, _gauche_, small-footed household
drudge unable to compete with the smarter foreign-educated wives
of their neighbours, have actually repudiated them and taken unto
themselves spouses whom they can exhibit in public without 'loss
of face'! It is, however, only fair to add that the total number
of these cases, though by no means inconsiderable, appears to be
proportionately small.

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