Huang Dehai - Illustrated Myths & Legends of China

Illustrated

MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF CHINA

Mural: Four Spirits in the Cloud (detail)

See .

Illustrated

MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF CHINA

The Ages of Chaos and Heroes

By Huang Dehai, Xiang Jing and Zhang Dinghao
Translated by Tony Blishen

Better Link Press

Handscroll: Gods of the Five Planets and 28 Stellar Mansions (detail)

See pages .

Copyright 2018 Shanghai Press and Publishing Development Co., Ltd.

All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction, in any manner, is prohibited.

This book is edited and designed by the Editorial Committee of Cultural China series.

Text: Huang Dehai, Xiang Jing, Zhang Dinghao

Translation: Tony Blishen

Interior Design: Li Jing and Hu Bin (Yuan Yinchang Design Studio)

Cover Design: Wang Wei

Copy Editor: Diane Davies

Editor: Wu Yuezhou

Editorial Director: Zhang Yicong

Academic Consultants: Wu Yigong, Sun Yong, Shi Dawei, Zhao Changping

Senior Consultants: Sun Yong, Wu Ying, Yang Xinci

Managing Director and Publisher: Wang Youbu

ISBN: 978-1-60220-170-5

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Printed in China by Shenzhen Donnelley Printing Co., Ltd.

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Quanjing provides the images on .

PREFACE

A DISTANT CONSCIOUSNESS

C hinese mythology has a multitude of arterial branches that have played a part in the education of both family and nation and turned a group of people dwelling with nature into a civilized community conscious of its own identity. The virtues and deeds of the heroic figures of legend such as Pangu, Nwa, Fuxi, Shennong the Flame Emperor and Yu the Great have been widely acclaimed. Their sense of morality courses unceasingly through the veins of the people, relaying an integrated spiritual model of the Chinese race.

Science has flourished but in the centuries that have elapsed since reason came to dominate the world, things that have remained despite all efforts to remove them, may have done so because they possess some particular strength. Myth and legend, for example, has not disappeared without trace from the modern world, but thrives and spreads in the fields of literature and art. Myth and legend is not a relic of the ancient past but a distant consciousness to which we are closely bound.

There is not a single unfamiliar story in Chinese mythology. These stories are concealed, latent in our living world in simple and definite forms, handed down by word of mouth, growing and multiplying. Our ancestors emerged from chaos, foraged for food in groups, sought out suitable places in which to live, pursued and fought and escaped from wild animals. From their settlements they cautiously crossed rivers, climbed the peaks of mountains and looked out on the four corners of the earth. They made their way through forests into the open spaces. They enjoyed the warmth of the sun, the sound of rain and water and experienced the cold chill of snow and ice. As time passed their limbs grew more adaptable and their minds quicker, encompassing love and hate. They developed from individuals into groups, to city-states and nations and to fresh wars and peace. Poverty gave way to wealth but once material needs were satisfied there remained the cultivation of mind and spirit as well as matters of good and evil, greed and desire and praise and punishment. Every aspect and corner of a culture was encapsulated in the form of a story.

Mural from the West Slope of Mogao Cave No. 249 (detail)

Western Wei Dynasty (535556)

Dunhuang

Dunhuang Academy, Gansu Province

Fengbo and the Rain Master is the god of wind and rain in Chinese mythology. This mural shows King Asura in the center, with four eyes and four arms, standing in the ocean with hands raised, holding the sun and the moon with the sea beneath his feet. Painted above his head are the mountain Sumeru and the heavenly palace of Daoli with its door half open, half shut. Fengbo and Rain Master and others stand at the left of King Asura (see the detail on ). The whole has a sense of the interplay of thunder and lightning and the combination of wind with rain.

Each generation rewrote the original myths and legends on the basis of the vicissitudes of their own time, thus maintaining the vitality of the legends. The inner meaning of a myth lies in the process of birth and rebirth with its tendency towards a perfection of form that occurs continuously in the study of mythology. For instance, at a time when usurpation of authority was common in society, rewritten legends would somehow have something added to them. As an example, the more people were able to climb the Jianmu, Tree of the Ladder to Heaven and see the beauty of heaven and hear the stories of the gods, the more they were filled with envy, expecting that they, too, would one day become gods. But familiarity breeds contempt, they came to feel that there was nothing particularly special about the gods and gradually became presumptuous and disrespectful. Inevitably, this brought about the later punitive separation of earth from heaven. The retellings of later generations (and even the audacious rewriting) are part of the process of the constant re-creation of ancient legends. Through this process new meanings and forms are added and thus those seemingly remote myths always maintain their vigor.

The Greek gods of Olympus were not just waiting there to be excavated or dredged up, like a buried cultural object or a sunken ship. It was only with the poets Homer and Hesiod that the genealogy of the gods was established. Similarly, it was only through Virgil and Ovid that the Roman people learned of the sources of their own legends. We can conjecture that the western culture of Greek and Roman legend powerfully expresses the childhood of human society. Nevertheless, the understanding of early Chinese culture on the part of the western reader generally extends as far as Confucius and Laozi and no further. An analysis based on the co-ordinates of world culture suggests that the era of Confucius and Laozi equates with the period of the rise of Greek philosophy. The date of the death of Laozi is more or less that of the birth of Socrates and distant less than ten years from the passing of Confucius. In fact, the equal and opposite culture of China has a similarly rich mythological tradition that has nurtured the world imagination and sense of emotional well-being of generations. Through a combination of text and illustration this book seeks to present a succinct yet vivid description of these distant and ancient stories.

Searching the Mountains (detail)

Song Dynasty (9601279)

Anonymous

Ink and color on silk

Height 53.3 cm by length 533 cm

Palace Museum, Beijing