Shot and offered up
The Tianwen, the “Heavenly Questions” of the Chuci, gives Fengxi one line in a passage about an archer called Yi. The passage runs to four couplets. The first sends Yi down, the second asks about the Earl of the River and the lady of the Luo, the third tells the shot, and the fourth asks about an offering.
帝降夷羿，革孽夏民。胡䠶夫河伯，而妻彼雒嬪？馮珧利決，封豨是䠶。何獻蒸肉之膏，而后帝不若？
“The Lord sent down Yi of the Yi to change the woes of the people of Xia. Why did he shoot the Earl of the River, and take that lady of the Luo to wife? Gripping his bow, his thumb-ring ready, he shot Fengxi. Why, when he offered up the fat of the steamed flesh, did the Sovereign Lord not approve?” — Chuci, “Tianwen”; tr. Mythos Atlas
Fengxi’s couplet, like the first, asks nothing. The page ends both with a full stop, and the couplet after each of them ends in a question mark. 馮珧利決: Yi grips the bow, 珧, and has his 決 ready. This entry renders 決 as the thumb-ring an archer wears to draw the string; Wang Yi, in the next section, reads the word otherwise. Then 封豨是䠶, and the word order puts the quarry first: it was Fengxi that he shot. The couplet gives a bow and a ring and a shot, and of Fengxi it gives only the name. It says nothing of its size or shape, of where it lived, or of any harm it did.
The text quoted here writes the verb 䠶, not 射, in this couplet and in the one about the Earl of the River alike. That is the graph of this edition, not a slip: Hong Xingzu’s edition of the poem prints the same graph and notes that another version has 射. Wang Yi’s gloss, in the next section, writes the verb 射 in his own words.
The last couplet turns the shot into a question. 何獻蒸肉之膏: why, when he offered up the fat of the steamed flesh, 而后帝不若, did the Sovereign Lord not approve? The couplet does not say whose flesh it was. It follows straight on the shot, and it is Wang Yi, not the poem, who says that the flesh was Fengxi’s. Nor does the couplet say why the Sovereign Lord, 后帝, withheld his approval. The poem asks, and leaves the question standing.
A divine beast
Wang Yi’s Chuci zhangju prints the Tianwen a couplet at a time and follows each couplet with his gloss. On the shot he takes three words one by one, then says what the Tianwen’s Fengxi is, and then says what the couplet means.
馮，挾也。珧，弓名也。決，射韝也。封豨，神獸也。言羿不修道德，而挾弓射韝，獵捕神獸，以快其情也
“馮 means to grip. 珧 is a name for a bow. 決 is an archer’s guard. Fengxi is a divine beast. This says that Yi did not cultivate the Way and its virtue, but, gripping his bow and his archer’s guard, hunted down a divine beast for his own pleasure.” — Wang Yi, Chuci zhangju, “Tianwen”; tr. Mythos Atlas
珧 is a name for a bow, and Wang Yi says no more about it; Hong Xingzu, citing the Erya, makes it a bow decorated with shell at its two ends. 決 Wang Yi glosses as 射韝, an archer’s guard. Hong Xingzu reads the word differently: citing the commentary on the Yili, he makes 決 a ring of ivory worn on the right thumb to hook the string, and gives the name of archer’s guard to a separate piece of gear. This entry’s rendering of the Tianwen follows the thumb-ring.
封豨，神獸也: Fengxi is a divine beast. This is the only statement in the texts quoted here of what Fengxi is. The Tianwen gives only the name, and Wang Yi adds the word 神獸, divine beast, and nothing about its shape. He does not call it a boar or a pig. The boar is in the name: Hong Xingzu glosses its first character as great, and cites the Fangyan for its second, which he writes with a different graph, as a word for the pig in southern Chu.
The gloss then turns from the beast to the archer, and it does not flatter him. 言羿不修道德: Yi did not cultivate virtue. He gripped his bow, 獵捕神獸, hunted down and caught a divine beast, and did it 以快其情, for his own pleasure. In Wang Yi’s reading no one sends Yi against Fengxi and the beast has harmed no one. The hunt is the archer’s own indulgence.
The Lord of Heaven does not approve
Between the two glosses Wang Yi’s page prints the Tianwen’s last couplet, as the heading for the next gloss. The quotations in this entry stop before that heading and start again after it, so both are in Wang Yi’s own words. His heading writes 後帝 where the Tianwen text quoted above writes 后帝, and his gloss keeps 後帝.
蒸，祭也。後帝，天帝也。若，順也。言羿獵射封豨，以其肉膏祭天帝，天帝猶不順羿之所為也
“蒸 means to sacrifice. The Sovereign Lord is the Lord of Heaven. 若 means to approve. This says that Yi hunted and shot Fengxi, and sacrificed the fat of its flesh to the Lord of Heaven, and the Lord of Heaven still did not approve of what Yi had done.” — Wang Yi, Chuci zhangju, “Tianwen”; tr. Mythos Atlas
蒸，祭也: Wang Yi does not read 蒸 as steaming. For him it is a word for sacrifice, and Hong Xingzu adds that it names the winter sacrifice. On that reading the flesh in the couplet is not steamed meat but meat offered in sacrifice. The Sovereign Lord becomes 天帝, the Lord of Heaven, and the one who does not approve is Heaven’s own ruler.
Two small words carry the story. 以其肉膏, with the fat of its flesh: 其, its, makes the flesh Fengxi’s, and so this gloss is the only text quoted here that says Fengxi died and was offered up. The Tianwen sets the shot and the offering one after the other and does not join them. Then 天帝猶不順: 猶, still, sets the refusal against the offering. Yi offered the fat, and even so the Lord of Heaven did not approve of what he had done. Wang Yi gives no reason in this gloss. The reason he offers, if there is one, is in the gloss before it: a man without virtue, hunting a divine beast for his pleasure.
Taken in the Mulberry Forest
The Huainanzi has another archer and another story. It sets the scene in the reign of Yao, when ten suns come out together, the crops are scorched and the people have nothing to eat. Then it names six harms: 猰貐、鑿齒、九嬰、大風、封豨、修蛇皆為民害, Yayu, Zaochi, Jiuying, Dafeng, Fengxi and Xiushe were all a harm to the people. Fengxi stands fifth. Yao sends Yi, 堯乃使羿, and the commission takes the six one clause at a time. Fengxi’s clause is the last of them.
斷修蛇於洞庭，禽封豨于桑林，萬民皆喜，置堯以為天子
“He cut Xiushe in two at Dongting and captured Fengxi in the Mulberry Forest. All the people rejoiced, and they set up Yao as Son of Heaven.” — Huainanzi, “Benjing”; tr. Mythos Atlas
The verb is 禽, to capture. Each target in the commission has its own verb: Zaochi is executed, 誅; Jiuying is killed, 殺; Dafeng is netted, 繳; the ten suns are shot, 射; Yayu is killed, 殺; Xiushe is cut in two, 斷. Fengxi alone is taken. The passage does not say how, and it names no net, no trap and no bow. It does not say what became of Fengxi afterwards, and nothing in it says that Fengxi died.
The Mulberry Forest, 桑林, is the place, and the passage gives it no description and no direction. It gives Fengxi no body either. Fengxi is a name in a list and a clause in a commission, and the passage does not call it a beast, a boar or anything else. With Fengxi taken the commission is done, and the next words are the people’s joy, 萬民皆喜, and the enthronement of Yao.
Here the archer is Yao’s man. He acts at Yao’s command, the harm is a harm to the people, and the capture ends in their joy. In the Tianwen the Lord, 帝, sends Yi down, and his shot ends in an offering that the Sovereign Lord does not approve.
Which Yi
The Tianwen calls its archer 夷羿, Yi of the Yi, and does not name Yao. Wang Yi’s gloss on that first couplet stands just before the lines quoted above and is not quoted in this entry. It makes 夷羿 a feudal lord who murdered the ruler of Xia and took his place: he sat in the Son of Heaven’s seat, gave himself up to hunting, changed the ways of Xia and became a grief to all the people. On that reading the Yi who shoots Fengxi is not Yao’s archer but a usurper in the time of Xia, and the pleasure-hunt of Wang Yi’s later gloss fits the man.
Hong Xingzu says so more directly. Beside the shooting couplet he sets the Huainanzi’s account, in which Yao sends Yi to capture Fengxi. Then he says that this line shows the Yi of Youqiong, 有窮, shooting one too, and turning, for his part, into a harm to the people. He goes on to quote the Zuozhuan on Bofeng, and ranks Bofeng’s nickname with Qiongqi and Taotie, as names earned by wickedness.
In the commentators’ view, then, there are two archers named Yi. Yao’s Yi takes Fengxi in the Mulberry Forest at Yao’s command, and the people rejoice. The Yi of Youqiong, in the time of Xia, shoots a Fengxi for his own pleasure and offers its fat to a Lord of Heaven who does not approve. This atlas has one Hou Yi, the archer of the ten suns, and both relation fields above link to him. The fields follow the atlas; the commentators would divide them.