China and the Sinosphere · c. 1200 BC – present
Chinese mythology
Chinese mythology has no single scripture. It accumulated: Shang diviners cracking oracle bones in the second millennium BC, the strange geography of the Shanhaijing, Han philosophers in the Huainanzi explaining how the sky came to be broken, Sima Qian folding legendary sovereigns into dynastic history, and — much later — the Ming novel Journey to the West, which gave the pantheon its most famous troublemaker. What holds it together is an administrative habit of mind. Heaven is a court with departments and paperwork; gods hold rank, are promoted, demoted, and petitioned; even death is a matter of names entered in a register. The recurring drama is what happens when something refuses to be filed.
- Region
- China and the Sinosphere
- Era
- c. 1200 BC – present
- Language
- Old Chinese
- Chief deity
- The Jade Emperor
- Figures
- 43 entries · 13 gods · 6 goddesses · 1 primordial · 11 heroes · 1 spirit · 11 monsters
- Sources
- Shanhaijing · Chuci · Huainanzi · Shiji · Shangshu · Journey to the West
The register and what escapes it
Tianting
The Celestial Court: heaven run as an empire, with ranks, registers, and a mandate that can be withdrawn.
Hundun
Primordial chaos — the formless age before the ledger, and everything that still refuses a place in it.
Pangu · Nüwa · Sun Wukong · Chiyou
Gods & goddesses
32 entries
The Jade Emperor
Sovereign of heaven, who rules a sky organised as a civil service and keeps the paperwork.
kingship · sky · order · justice
Cangjie
writing · wisdom
Chang'e
moon · immortality · night
Changxi
moon · night · order
Dijun
kingship · sky · protection
Fengbo
storms · war
Fu Xi
creation · wisdom · writing · fate
Gong Gong
chaos · sea
Gun
chaos · sea
Gusou
trickery
Hou Yi
sun · war · protection · immortality
Houji
agriculture · order
Houtu
agriculture · order · kingship
Jingwei
sea · rebirth · fate
Kuafu
sun · travel
Nüba
sky · war · chaos
Nüwa
creation · protection · order · magic
Pangu
creation · chaos · order
Qi
kingship · war · music
Shennong
agriculture · healing · order
Shun
kingship · justice · order
Sun Wukong
trickery · chaos · magic · immortality
The Yellow Emperor
kingship · war · order · healing
Xiang
trickery
Xihe
sun · sky · order
Xiwangmu
immortality · fate · magic · protection
Yandi
fire · kingship · war
Yao
kingship · justice · order · sky
Yinglong
war · storms · sky
Yu
kingship · order · sea
Zhuanxu
order · winter · kingship
Zhurong
fire · order
Monsters
11 entries
Chiyou
Bronze-headed lord of war and fog, named in the oldest Chinese book as the first to make disorder.
war · chaos · monsters
Fengxi
In the Tianwen, the great boar that Yi shoots before an offering of fat the Sovereign Lord does not approve; in the Huainanzi, one of six harms to the people, captured by Hou Yi in the Mulberry Forest at Yao's command.
monsters · hunting
Jiuying
In the Huainanzi, one of the six harms of Yao's time, killed by Hou Yi on the Xiong River; to its commentator Gao You, a prodigy of water and fire; to a note in Luo Mi's Lushi, a name for fierce men; and to the readers Wu Renchen reports, nine of the ten suns.
monsters · chaos
Qiongqi
In the Shanhaijing, a bristled ox on Mount Gui or a winged tiger that eats men from the head; in the Shenyijing, a beast that eats the honest and feeds the wicked; in the Zuozhuan, the name the people gave a slanderer of the Shaohao clan, cast out by Shun among the Four Perils.
monsters · chaos
Taotie
In the Zuozhuan, the nickname of a greedy man whom Shun cast out among the Four Perils; in the Lüshi Chunqiu, a head with no body on the Zhou tripods, which eats a man and is harmed before it can swallow.
monsters · chaos
Taowu
The unteachable son of Zhuanxu whom the people named for his wickedness — one of the Four Perils whom Shun banished to the four borders of the world.
chaos · monsters
Xiangliu
Gong Gong's nine-headed minister, who fed off nine mountains and left marsh wherever he leaned — and whose blood, once Yu killed him, would grow no grain.
monsters · chaos · sea
Xingtian
Beheaded by the Emperor for contending with him for godhead, he took his nipples for eyes and his navel for a mouth, and danced with shield and axe.
war · chaos · monsters
Xiushe
In the Huainanzi, the last named of the six harms of Yao's time, cut apart by Hou Yi at Dongting; to its commentator Gao You, a great snake of the elephant-swallowing kind, and to Li Bai, the snake whose bones became the hill of Baling.
monsters · chaos
Yayu
In the Shanhaijing, a snake-bodied, human-faced being that Erfu and his servant Wei kill, its corpse flanked by six shamans holding the drug of no-death; in the Huainanzi, one of six harms to the people, killed by Hou Yi at Yao's command.
monsters · chaos
Zaochi
In the Shanhaijing, the shield-bearer whom Hou Yi fights and shoots dead in the wilds of Shouhua; in the Huainanzi, one of six harms to the people, executed at Yao's command in the wilds of Chouhua.
monsters · war
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