Officer of the earth
Houtu does not enter the record through a story. He enters as the answer to a question. In the Zuozhuan, under the twenty-ninth year of Duke Zhao, a dragon is seen in the outskirts of Jiang, and Wei Xianzi asks Cai Mo whether it is true that the dragon is the wisest of creatures, since no one ever takes one alive. Cai Mo turns the question around. Every kind of thing, he says, has its officer, and a thing withdraws when its office is abandoned; the water office has lapsed, and so dragons are no longer caught. That is why antiquity kept the officers of the five phases, 五行之官, and he names them one by one: the officer of wood is Goumang, of fire Zhurong, of metal Rushou, of water Xuanming. The last is 土正曰后土 — the officer of earth is called Houtu.
Wei Xianzi then asks which families supplied these five officers, who are sacrificed to at the altars of the soil and the grain. The answer gives Houtu a father and a personal name.
顓頊氏有子曰犁，為祝融；共工氏有子曰句龍，為后土，此其二祀也。后土為社；稷，田正也。
“Chuen-héuh had a son called Le, who became the Chuh-yung. Kung-kung had a son called Kow-lung, who became the How-t‘oo. These shared in two of the sacrifices. How-t‘oo was sacrificed to at the altar of the land; at that of the Spirit of the grain, the director of Agriculture.” — Chunqiu Zuozhuan 春秋左傳, “Duke Zhao, Year 29” 昭公二十九年, tr. James Legge (The Chinese Classics, vol. 5, 1872; Hong Kong University Press reprint, 1960)
The man and the post are two different things here. 句龍, Gou Long, is Gong Gong’s son. 后土 is what he becomes: 為后土, the same verb that makes Zhuanxu’s son Li into Zhurong in the clause before. Legge keeps the distinction in his English by giving both posts the definite article, “the Chuh-yung” and “the How-t‘oo”, as offices and not as names. Then 后土為社: the officer of earth is the one worshipped at 社, the altar of the soil. Its partner, the altar of the grain, belongs to 稷, the director of the fields, and Cai Mo goes on to name two men who held that sacrifice: Zhu, the son of Lieshan, through the Xia and before it, and Qi of Zhou (Houji) from the Shang onward. In this passage the soil altar has only one name, and the name is Houtu.
The nine lands brought to order
The Guoyu sets the same man inside a rebuke. A sea bird called Yuanju has settled outside the east gate of Lu for three days, and Zang Wenzhong has ordered the people of the state to sacrifice to it. Zhan Qin calls this poor government. Sacrifice, he says, is one of the great institutions of a state, and the sage kings gave it a rule, which begins 法施於民則祀之: the one whose laws reached the people is sacrificed to. Then he lists the figures who met that rule. First comes the son of Lieshan, Zhu, who could grow the hundred grains and the hundred vegetables, and after him Qi of Zhou, and both are sacrificed to as 稷, the grain. Next comes a sentence about a father and a son. It opens on the father, 共工氏之伯九有也, when the line of Gong Gong held sway over the nine regions, and then turns to the son.
其子曰后土，能平九土
“His son was called Houtu, and he was able to bring the nine lands to order.” — Guoyu, “Discourses of Lu I” 魯語上; tr. Mythos Atlas
The sentence ends 故祀以為社, and so he was sacrificed to as the altar of the soil. The quotation stops short of it only because the printed text breaks the sentence with commentary. That commentary is Wei Zhao’s, from the third century AD, and it supplies what the base text leaves unsaid. The son is Gou Long, 句龍, the name the Zuozhuan gives, and he 佐黃帝為土官, assisted the Yellow Emperor as officer of the earth. The nine lands, 九土, are 九州之土, the soil of the nine provinces. And the name is a title, as Wei Zhao says directly: 后，君也，使君土官，故曰后土也 — hou means lord; he was made lord of the earth office, and so he is called Houtu.
One word in the gloss is looser than the text it explains. The base text says 其子, his son; Wei Zhao writes 共工之裔子, a scion of Gong Gong’s line. The note after the sentence ties him to the altar outright: 社，后土之神也, the altar of the soil is the spirit of Houtu. The Yellow Emperor himself is the next name on Zhan Qin’s list, for giving names to the hundred things.
The Law of Sacrifices
The Liji carries the same list a second time, in its chapter “Law of Sacrifices” 祭法, with no sea bird, no rebuke and no commentary. The rule is given in full. Sacrifice goes to the one whose laws reached the people, to the one who died at his work, to the one whose toil secured the state, to the one who warded off great calamity, and to the one who withstood great disaster. The grain comes first again: the son of the lord of Lishan, Nong, could grow the hundred grains, and when the Xia declined Qi of Zhou carried on his work, so they were sacrificed to as 稷. Then the sentence about Houtu follows, this time unbroken.
共工氏之霸九州也，其子曰后土，能平九州，故祀之以為社。
“Hâu-thû, a son of the line of Kung-kung, that swayed the nine provinces, who was able to reduce them all to order, and was sacrificed to as the spirit of the ground” — Liji, “Law of Sacrifices” 祭法; The Lî Kî, Book XX (“The Law of Sacrifices”), tr. James Legge (1885), Sacred Books of the East vol. XXVIII
Placed beside the Guoyu, this is the same sentence with a few characters retouched. The father’s dominance, 伯 there, is 霸 here. The nine regions and the nine lands, 九有 and 九土, both become 九州, the nine provinces. And 祀以為社 gains a 之. The grain clause changes more. The son of Lieshan is Zhu in the Guoyu and Nong in the Liji; the place 烈山 is written 厲山; and Qi of Zhou takes over the work when the Xia rises in one book, 夏之興也, and when it declines in the other, 夏之衰也. Wei Zhao saw the parallel himself. His note on 烈山 in the Guoyu says that the “Law of Sacrifices” writes it 厲山, and the same note calls Lieshan a title of Yandi. By that reading, the son of Yandi holds the grain altar and the son of Gong Gong holds the altar of the soil.
The father is the one point on which every base text agrees. The Shanhaijing’s “Classic of Regions Within the Seas” 海內經 gives Gong Gong two sons in a single run of begettings. Gong Gong fathers Shuqi, whose head is square and flat and who restores the soil. Gong Gong also fathers Houtu, and Houtu fathers Yeming. So both of Gong Gong’s sons in that line are tied to the soil. The Shanhaijing’s “Great Wilderness: North” 大荒北經 gives Houtu a descendant by another line: Houtu fathers Xin, and Xin fathers Kuafu, whose own entry quotes the passage.
Spirit of the centre
The Liji’s “Monthly Ordinances” 月令 give Houtu a place, not a deed. Each season in that calendar has its days, its divine ruler and its attending spirit. In the first month of summer the ruler is Yandi and the spirit is Zhurong. Just before the first month of autumn, the text adds a short supplementary section for the centre, the phase of earth.
中央土。其日戊己，其帝黃帝，其神后土。
“Right in the middle (between Heaven and Earth, and the other elements) is earth. Its days are wû and kî. Its divine ruler is Hwang Tî; and the (attending) spirit is Hâu-thû.” — Liji, “Monthly Ordinances” 月令; The Lî Kî, Book IV (“Yüeh Ling”), tr. James Legge (1885), Sacred Books of the East vol. XXVII
Hwang Tî is Legge’s spelling of 黃帝. The Yellow Emperor rules the centre, and Houtu attends him there. The rest of the section fills in the correspondences. The creature of the centre is the one with no covering but its skin, the note is gong, the number is five, and the taste is sweet. The sacrifice is at 中霤, which Legge calls the middle court, and of the victim the heart is offered first. In this season the Son of Heaven occupies the great chamber of the grand temple, rides behind yellow horses under a yellow flag, and wears yellow robes and yellow gems. The yellow belongs to the ruler’s dress for the season. The text does not describe the spirit at all.
Two of these notices agree in pairing Houtu with the Yellow Emperor. The “Monthly Ordinances” make him the spirit who attends that ruler’s season. Wei Zhao, in his commentary on the Guoyu, makes him that ruler’s officer of the earth. Nothing in any of these texts gives Houtu a face, a body or a story beyond one act. What they give him is an office, a father, a title that makes him lord of the earth office, and an altar.
