Pangu

This article is about Chinese mythology. For the iOS jailbreaking tool, seePangu Team.For other uses, seePangu (disambiguation).

Pangu
Portrait of Pangu fromSancai Tuhui
Traditional Chinese	Bàn Cổ
Simplified Chinese	Bàn Cổ
Literal meaning	Ancient dome
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Pángǔ Wade–Giles P'an2-ku3 IPA [pʰǎn.kù] Yue: Cantonese Jyutping pun4gu2 Southern Min HokkienPOJ Phoân-kó͘ Middle Chinese Middle Chinese /buɑnkuoX/

Pangu(Chinese:Bàn Cổ,PAN-koo) is a primordial being and creation figure inChinese mythologyandTaoism.According to the legend, Pangu separated heaven and earth, and his body later became geographic features such as mountains and roaring water.

Legend

The first writer to record the myth of Pangu was thought to beXu Zhengduring theThree Kingdomsperiod. However, his name was found in a tomb predating the Three Kingdoms period.

In the beginning, there was nothing and the universe was in afeatureless, formless primordial state.This primordial state coalesced into acosmic eggfor about 18,000 years. Within it, the perfectly opposed principles ofyin and yangbecame balanced and Pangu emerged (or woke up) from the egg. Pangu inside the cosmic egg symbolizesTaiji.Pangu is usually depicted as a primitive, hairygiantwith horns on his head. Pangu began creating the world: he separated yin from yang with a swing of his giantaxe,creating the earth (murkyyin) and the sky (clearyang). To keep them separated, Pangu stood between them and pushed up the sky. With each day, theskygrew ten feet (3 meters) higher, the earth ten feet thicker, and Pangu ten feet taller. This task took yet another 18,000 years.

In some versions of the story, Pangu is aided in this task by theFour Holy Beasts( tứ linh thú ), theTurtle,theQilin,thePhoenix,and theDragon.In others, Pangu separated heaven and earth, which were alreadyyinandyang,with his axe.

After the 18,000 years had elapsed, Pangu died. His breath became the wind, mist and clouds; his voice, thunder; his left eye, the Sun; his right eye, the Moon; his head, the mountains and extremes of the world; his blood, rivers; his muscles, fertile land; his facial hair, the stars and Milky Way; his fur, bushes and forests; his bones, valuable minerals; his bone marrow, precious jewels; his sweat, rain; and the fleas on his fur carried by the wind became animals.

In other versions of the story, his body turned into the mountains.

Origin

Three main elements describe the origin of the Pangu myth. The first is that the story is indigenous and was developed or transmitted through time toXu Zheng.Senior ScholarWei Juxianstates that the Pangu story is derived from stories during the WesternZhou Dynasty.He cites the story of Zhong (Trọng) and Li (Lê) in the "Chuyu ( sở ngữ )" section of the ancient classicsGuoyu.In it, King Zhao ofChuasked Guanshefu (Xem bắn phụ) a question: "What did the ancient classic" Zhou Shu ( chu thư ) "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 ( Lữ hình ), who converses withKing Mu of Zhou.King Mu's reign is much earlier and dates to about 1001 to 946 BC. In their conversation, they discuss a "disconnection" between heaven and earth.

Derk Boddelinked the myth to the ancestral mythologies of theMiao peopleandYao peoplein southern China.

This is how Professor Qin Naichang (Đàm nãi xương), head of theGuangxi Institute for Nationality Studies,reconstructs 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 theprehistoric Delugeby 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.

19th-centurycomparative religionscholarPaul Caruswrites:

P'an-Gu: 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-Gu 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 BabylonianTiamat,"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 thefour corners of the world,which is a Chinese version not only of the Norse myth of the GiantYmir,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 phoenix, 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 andSui -Jen(i.e., fire-man) the later being the ChinesePrometheus,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.

The missionary and translatorJames Leggediscusses Pangu:

P'an-ku is spoken of by the common people as "the first man, who opened up heaven and earth." It has been said to me in "pidgin" English that "he is all the same your Adam"; and in Taoist picture books I have seen him as a shaggy, dwarfish, Hercules, developing from a bear rather than an ape, and wielding an immense hammer and chisel with which he is breaking the chaotic rocks.

Other Chinese creation myths

See also:Chinese creation myth

The Pangu myth appears to have been preceded in ancient Chinese literature by the existence ofShangdiorTaiyi(of theTaiyi Shengshui). Other Chinese myths, such as those ofNüwaand theJade Emperor,try to explain how people were created and do not necessarily explain the creation of the world. There are many variations of these myths.

In Bouyei culture

According toBouyeimythology, after Pangu became an expert in rice farming after creating the world, he married the daughter of theDragon King,and their union gave rise to the Buyei people.This is celebrated by the Bouyei people on June 6, as a holiday.

The daughter of the Dragon King and Pangu had a son namedXinheng(Tân hoành). When Xinheng disrespected his mother, she returned to heaven and never came down, despite the repeated pleas of her husband and son. Pangu was forced to remarry and eventually died on the sixth day of the sixth month of thelunar calendar.

Xinheng's stepmother treated him badly and almost killed him. When Xinheng threatened to destroy her rice harvest, she realized her mistake. She made peace with him and they went on to pay their respects to Pangu annually on the sixth day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar. This day became an important traditional Buyei holiday forancestral worship.

This legend of creation is one of the main characteristics that distinguishes the Buyei from theZhuang.

Worship

Pangu is worshipped at a number of shrines in contemporaryChina,usually withTaoistsymbols, such as theBagua.

The Pangu King Temple (Bàn Cổ hoàng miếuorBàn Cổ hoàng miếu) built in 1809 is located inGuangdong Province,northwestHuadu District(west of G106 / north of S118), north ofShiling Townat the foot of the Pangu King Mountain.The Huadu District is located north ofGuangzhouto the west of theBaiyun International Airport.

The term for the primordial supercontinentpangeais translated as Pangu in Chinese, referring to the creation myth.

See also

• Tiamat(Ancient Mesopotamian)
• Nu (mythology)(Ancient Egyptian)
• Chaos (cosmogony)(Ancient Greek)
• Ymir(Norse)
• Gaia
• Kingu
• Korean creation narratives
• Manu (Hinduism)
• Panguite,meteoritic mineral named after Pangu, discovered in 2012
• Protoplast (religion)
• Purusha
• Thần Trụ Trời
• Tlaltecuhtli
• Yama

Bibliography

• Xu Zheng( từ chỉnh;pinyin:Xú Zhěng; 220–265 AD), in the bookThree Five Historic Records( ba năm lịch kỷ;pinyin:Sānwǔ Lìjì), is the first to mention Pangu in the story "Pangu Separates the Sky from the Earth".
• Ge Hong( cát hồng;pinyin:Gě Hóng; 284–364 AD), in the bookMaster of Preserving Simplicity Inner Writings( Bão Phác Tử nội thiên;pinyin:BaopuziNeipian), describes Pangu (Werner, E.T.C.Myths and Legends of China(1922)).
• Ouyang Xun( Âu Dương tuân;pinyin:Ōuyáng Xún; 557–641 AD), in the bookClassified Anthology of Literary Works( nghệ văn loại tụ;pinyin:Yiwen Leiju), also refers to Pangu.
• Carus, Paul (1852–1919) in the bookChinese Astrology, Early Chinese Occultism(1974) based on an earlier book by the same authorChinese Thought.This book was a bestseller (1907).

Additional sources

• Mentions of Pangu as Adam fromThe Papers of Charles Daniel Tenney

External links

• Media related toPanguat Wikimedia Commons