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Myths and Legends of China
Myths and Legends of China, by E. T. C. Werner
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Myths and Legends of China, by E. T. C. Werner
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Title: Myths and Legends of China
Author: E. T. C. Werner
Release Date: March 4, 2005 [EBook #15250]
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Myths and Legends of China, by E. T. C. Werner
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Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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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 shên hsien t'ung chien , in thirty-two volumes, the
Shên hsien lieh chuan , in eight volumes, the Fêng shên yen i , in eight volumes, and the Sou shên 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 Père Henri Doré,
comprised in the valuable series Variétés Sinologiques , published by the Catholic Mission Press at Shanghai.
The native works contained in the Ssu K'u Ch'üan 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 Hsüeh-hsün, 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
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Myths and Legends of China, by E. T. C. Werner
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Peking February 1922
Contents
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 frontières réelles?... Ces frontières sont d'une netteté qui
ne permet aucune erreur. L'Asie est là où cesse la vulgarité, où naît la dignité, et où commence l'élégance
intellectuelle. Et l'Orient est là où sont les sources débordantes de poésie.
Mardrus , La Reine de Saba
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CHAPTER I
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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
CHAPTER I
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known as Tibetans; in what is now the province of Yünnan 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. Nü Kua, one of the alleged creators of human beings, and Nü 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 Sumêru 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.

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