Pangu
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- For the 1st century Chinese historian, see Ban Gu.
Pangu (Traditional: 盤古; Simplified: 盘古; pinyin: Pángǔ; Wade-Giles: P'an ku) was the first living being and the creator of all in Chinese mythology.
The Pangu legend
In the beginning there was nothing in the universe except a formless chaos. However this chaos began to coalesce into a cosmic egg for eighteen thousand years. Within it, the perfectly opposed principles of yin and yang became balanced and Pangu emerged (or woke up) from the egg. Pangu is usually depicted as a primitive, hairy giant with horns on his head (like the Greek Pan) and clad in furs. Pangu set about the task of creating the world: he separated Yin from Yang with a swing of his giant axe, creating the Earth (murky Yin) and the Sky (clear Yang). To keep them separated, Pangu stood between them and pushed up the Sky. This task took eighteen thousand years, with each day the sky grew ten feet higher, the Earth ten feet wider, and Pangu ten feet taller. In some versions of the story, Pangu is aided in this task by the four most prominent beasts, namely the Turtle, the Qilin, the Phoenix, and the Dragon.
After the eighteen thousand years had elapsed, Pangu was laid to rest. His breath became the wind; his voice the thunder; left eye the sun and right eye the moon; his body became the mountains and extremes of the world; his blood formed rivers; his muscles the fertile lands; his facial hair the stars and milky way; his fur the bushes and forests; his bones the valuable minerals; his bone marrows sacred diamonds; his sweat fell as rain; and the fleas on his fur carried by the wind became human beings all over the world. The distance from Earth and Sky at the end of the 18,000 years would have been 65,700,000 feet, or over 12,443 miles.
The first writer to record the myth of Pangu was Xu Zheng (徐整) during the Three Kingdoms (三國) period.
Source documents
- Xu Zheng (徐整; pinyin: Xú Zhěng; 220-265 AD), in the book "Three Five Historic Records" (三五歷紀; pinyin: Sānwǔ Lìjì, Sanwu Liji), is the first to mention Pangu in the story "Pangu Separates the Sky from the Earth".
- Ge Hong (葛洪; pinyin: Gě Hóng; 284-364 AD), in the book "Master of Preserving Simplicity Inner Writings" (抱朴子内篇; pinyin: Baopuzi Neipian), describes Pangu (ETC Werner, Myths & Legends of China, 1922).
- Ouyang Xun (欧阳询; pinyin: Ōuyáng Xún; 557-641 AD), in the book "Classified Anthology of Literary Works" (藝文類聚; pinyin: Yiwen Leiju), also refers to Pangu.
- Carus, Paul (1852-1919) in the book "Chinese Astrology, Early Chinese Occultism" (1974) based on an earlier book by the same author "Chinese Thought", published in 1907.
Origin of this myth
Three main views emerge to describe the origin of the Pangu myth.
- The first is that the story is indigenous, and developed or was transmitted through time to Xu Zheng. The evidence for this is slender indeed. It can only be assumed from the following discussion:
- Senior Scholar Wei Juxian states that the Pangu story is derived from Western Zhou Dynasty (西周朝) stories 1000 years earlier. He cites the story of Zhong (重) and Li (黎) in the "Chuyu" section of the ancient classics Guoyu (國語). In it, the King Zhao of Chu asked Guanshefu (观射父) a question: "What did ancient classic "Zhou Shu" mean by the sentence that Zhong and Li caused the heaven and earth to disconnect from each other?" The "Zhou Shu" sentence he refers to is about an earlier person, Luu Xing, who is having a conversation with the King Mu of Zhou (周穆王). King Mu's reign is much earlier and dates to about 1001 to 946 BC. In their conversation, they discuss the "disconnection" between heaven and earth.
- An indirect but possibly more substantive conclusion is that China is unique in not "creating" its creator. In this view, Xu Zheng (徐整) (or a relatively recent predecessor) perpetuates the Pangu myth from other cultural influences:
- Professor Qin Naichang, head of the Guangxi Institute for Nationality Studies proposes the myth originated in Laibin city, Guangxi, in the center of the Pearl River Valley. He believes that there are older stories of Pangu from this region and that they originally involved two people. He suggests China has no myth about the creation of the universe and that the Chinese mythology of Pangu had came from India, Egypt, or Babylon. Apparently, this story mingled in with the origin stories of other cultures, eventually changing into the later narrative more popular today.
- This is professor Naichang's reconstruction of the true creation myth preceding the myth of Pangu. Note that it is not actually a creation myth:
- "A brother and his sister became the only survivors of the prehistoric Deluge by crouching in a gourd that floated on water. The two got married afterwards, and a mass of flesh in the shape of a whetstone was born. They chopped it and the pieces turned into large crowds of people, who began to reproduce again. The couple were named 'Pan' and 'Gou' in the Zhuang ethnic language, which stand for whetstone and gourd respectively."
- From Paul Carus, Chinese Astrology, Early Chinese Occultism, 1974, from an earlier book by the same author, Chinese Thought, 1907, Chapter on “Chinese Occultism.” Note: in 1907 the Wade-Giles system of transliteration was used.
- “P’an-Ku: The basic idea of the yih philosophy was so convincing that it almost obliterated the Taoist cosmology of P’an-Ku who is said to have chiseled the world out of the rocks of eternity. Though the legend is not held in high honor by the literati, it contains some features of interest which have not as yet been pointed out and deserve at least an incidental comment.
- “P’an-Ku is written in two ways: one means in literal translations, “basin ancient”, the other “basin solid”. Both are homophones, i.e., they are pronounced the same way; and the former may be preferred as the original and correct spelling. Obviously the name means “aboriginal abyss,” or in the terser German, Urgrund, and we have reason to believe it to be a translation of the Babylonian Tiamat, “the Deep.”
- “The Chinese legend tells us that P’an-Ku’s bones changed to rocks; his flesh to earth; his marrow, teeth and nails to metals; his hair to herbs and trees; his veins to rivers; his breath to wind; and his four limbs became pillars marking the four corners of the world, -- which is a Chinese version not only of the Norse myth of the Giant Ymir, but also of the Babylonian story of Tiamat.
- “Illustrations of P’an-Ku represent him in the company of supernatural animals that symbolize old age or immortality, viz., the tortoise and the crane; sometimes also the dragon, the emblem of power, and the phenix, the emblem of bliss.
- “When the earth had thus been shaped from the body of P’an-Ku, we are told that three great rivers successively governed the world: first the celestial, then the terrestrial, and finally the human sovereign. They were followed by Yung-Ch’eng and Sui-Jen (i.e., fire-man) the later being the Chinese Prometheus, who brought the fire down from heaven and taught man its various uses.
- “The Prometheus myth is not indigenous to Greece, where it received the artistically classical form under which it is best known to us. The name, which by an ingenious afterthought is explained as “the fore thinker,” is originally the sanskrit pramantha and means “twirler” or “fire-stick,” being the rod of hard wood which produced fire by rapid rotation in a piece of soft wood.
- “We cannot deny that the myth must have been known also in Mesopotamia, the main center of civilization between India and Greece, and it becomes probable that the figure Sui-Jen has been derived from the same prototype as the Greek Prometheus.”
Other Chinese creation myths
This myth appears to have been preceded in ancient Chinese literature by the existence of Shangdi or Taiyi. Other Chinese myths, such as those of Nuwa, or the Jade Emperor, try to explain how people were created; and do not necessarily represent "world creation" myths. It is important to note there are many variations of these myths.
Pangu worship
Pangu is worshipped at a number of shrines in contemporary China. However, most if not all of these are modern creations built since the 1970s. In these shrines, Pangu is usually depicted in stereotypical "caveman" regalia, with leopard-skin tunics and long hair. Taoist symbols, such as the Bagua, are associated with Pangu in these shrines.