An ox on Mount Gui
The Shanhaijing walks its mountains one after another. Each entry gives the distance from the last stop, names the mountain, and then lists what the mountain holds. In the “Classic of the Western Mountains” the route goes two hundred and sixty li farther west and comes to Mount Gui. The entry has a beast, then a river with its shells and its winged fish, and the beast comes first.
其上有獸焉，其狀如牛，猬毛，名曰窮奇，音如獆狗，是食人
“On it there is a beast. Its form is like an ox, and it has a hedgehog’s bristles. Its name is Qiongqi. Its voice is like a howling dog’s. It eats people.” — Shanhaijing, “Classic of the Western Mountains”; tr. Mythos Atlas
The entry gives five things in five short clauses: a body, a coat, a name, a voice and a food. The body is an ox’s, 其狀如牛. The coat is 猬毛, hedgehog hair, which this entry renders as a hedgehog’s bristles. The voice is 音如獆狗, like a dog that howls. The last clause is the plainest of the five: 是食人, it eats people. The entry’s own words say nothing about wings or a tiger. It does not say whom the beast eats, or why, and it names no deed, no enemy and no master.
The pattern is the book’s own. The stop just before Mount Gui on the same route is Mount Zhongqu, and its beast is the Bo: shaped like a horse, with a voice like a drum, it eats tigers and leopards. Qiongqi gets the same frame of form, name, voice and food. On Mount Gui it is an ox with a hedgehog’s bristles and a dog’s howl that eats people, and the text then moves on to the river.
A winged tiger
Another part of the book gives Qiongqi another body. The “Classic of Regions Within the Seas: North” is a run of short entries, most of them a few clauses long, and Qiongqi’s comes straight after one on the Taoquan, a blue-green beast shaped like a dog.
窮奇狀如虎，有翼，食人從首始，所食被髮
“Qiongqi’s form is like a tiger’s, and it has wings. It eats people, starting from the head. Those it eats wear their hair unbound.” — Shanhaijing, “Classic of Regions Within the Seas: North”; tr. Mythos Atlas
Here the body is a tiger’s, 狀如虎, and it has wings, 有翼. There is no ox, no hedgehog’s coat and no voice. The food is the same, people, but this entry adds the manner: it starts from the head, 食人從首始. The entry on the Taoquan just before it ends with the same words, so the detail is not Qiongqi’s alone. Then comes 所食被髮, those it eats wear their hair unbound. The unbound hair belongs to the victims, not to the beast, and the text does not say why it is these people that Qiongqi eats.
The page then sets Qiongqi north of the Taoquan, and adds a second report in four characters: one version says that it starts from the feet. So this entry already records a disagreement, about which end of a man the beast begins with. A few entries later the book uses Qiongqi as a fixed point on its map, and places the Jiao, a being marked like a tiger, to the east of Qiongqi.
The two entries do not give one picture. On Mount Gui, Qiongqi is shaped like an ox, with a hedgehog’s bristles, and nothing is said of wings. In the northern regions within the seas it is shaped like a tiger, with wings, and nothing is said of bristles. Both eat people and both bear the name. The Shanhaijing gives both bodies, and it does not join them or prefer one. The Shenyijing, below, has the winged tiger, so the tiger has two witnesses to the ox’s one. That is a count, not a ruling, and this entry does not choose.
It eats the honest
The Shenyijing, a book of marvels attributed to Dongfang Shuo, gives the winged tiger a mind. Its chapter on the northwestern wilds opens with Qiongqi, and the entry spends more words on what the beast does than on what it looks like.
西北有獸焉，狀似虎，有翼能飛，便剿食人。知人言語，聞人鬥，輒食直者；聞人忠信，輒食其鼻；聞人惡逆不善，輒殺獸往饋之。名曰穷奇，亦食諸禽獸也
“In the northwest there is a beast. Its form is like a tiger’s, it has wings and can fly, and it is quick to seize people and eat them. It understands human speech. When it hears people quarrel, it eats the one who is in the right. When it hears that a man is loyal and true, it eats his nose. When it hears that a man is wicked, rebellious and not good, it kills a beast and takes it to him as a gift. Its name is Qiongqi. It also eats all kinds of birds and beasts.” — Shenyijing, “Classic of the Northwestern Wilds”; tr. Mythos Atlas
The body agrees with the northern regions of the Shanhaijing: like a tiger, winged, and here able to fly, 有翼能飛. What is new is the judgement. 知人言語: the beast understands what people say, and it uses what it hears to choose its prey. In a quarrel it eats 直者, the one who is upright, the party in the right. Of a man who is loyal and true, 忠信, it eats the nose, 食其鼻. The nose is the man’s, not the beast’s, and the text does not say why it takes that part. A wicked man it does not eat at all. It kills a beast and brings it to him, 往饋之, as a gift of food.
So the beast turns justice upside down. Where a judge would punish the wrongdoer and protect the honest man, Qiongqi eats the honest man and feeds the wrongdoer. The last clause puts the appetite back inside an animal: it also eats birds and beasts. The page writes the name 穷奇, with a simplified first character inside a traditional text. That is how this transcription prints it, and the quotation keeps it as printed.
The next entry in the same chapter is Gong Gong, a man of the northwestern wilds with a human face and red hair, and a snake’s body with human hands and feet, who is greedy, wicked, foolish and stubborn. The book sets the two side by side. It does not say that they are kin, or that they are one.
A name for a slanderer
The Zuozhuan has no beast. Under Duke Wen’s eighteenth year it records a speech about the reigns of Yao and Shun, and in that speech Qiongqi is a name that people gave to a man. The speech first praises sixteen worthies whom Shun, as Yao’s minister, raised to office. Then it turns to the worthless sons of old clans. The Dihong clan had one, whom the people called Hundun. The second belongs to the Shaohao clan.
少皞氏有不才子，毀信廢忠，崇飾惡言，靖譖庸回，服讒蒐慝，以誣盛德，天下之民，謂之窮奇
“The emperor Shaou-haou [Preceded Chuen-héuh] had a descendant devoid of ability [and virtue]. He sought to overthrow faith, and disowned loyalty. He delighted in evil speeches and tried to make them attractive; he was at home with slanderers, and employed the perverse; he readily received calumnies, and sought out men’s iniquities, to stigmatize what was sincere. All the people under heaven called him Monster.” — Chunqiu Zuozhuan 春秋左傳, “Duke Wen, Year 18” 文公十八年, tr. James Legge (The Chinese Classics, vol. 5; Hong Kong University Press reprint, 1960)
Every charge concerns words and good faith. He destroyed faith and cast off loyalty, 毀信廢忠. He dressed up evil speech. He was at ease with slander and gave office to the crooked, 靖譖庸回. He took in calumny and hunted out other men’s faults, and all of it served to defame men of great virtue, 以誣盛德. For such a man the people had a name, 謂之窮奇: they called him Qiongqi. Legge does not transliterate the name. He translates it, as Monster. His bracket sets Shaou-haou, his spelling of Shaohao, before Chuen-héuh, his spelling of Zhuanxu, whose son comes next in the speech. That is an order of reigns, not a line of descent.
The Shenyijing’s beast eats the loyal and the true. The Zuozhuan’s man casts off loyalty and defames virtue. The two texts share the moral, though not the body, and neither cites the other.
Zhuanxu’s worthless son is Taowu, and the speech says that these three lines carried their wickedness down the generations until Yao’s time, and Yao could not remove them. Then it names a fourth, Taotie, of the Jinyun clan. Shun, as Yao’s minister, receives the lords at the four gates, 賓于四門, and banishes the four clans, 流四凶族, Qiongqi among them. He casts them out to the four borders, 投諸四裔, to hold off the demons of the wilds, 以禦螭魅. When Yao died, the speech goes on, all under heaven took Shun as Son of Heaven with one mind, because he had raised the sixteen and removed the Four Perils.
Kong Yingda’s subcommentary notes that the four names are not made in the same way. Hundun and Taowu, he says, are named for their appearance, and Qiongqi and Taotie are named for their meaning. On his reading, Qiongqi in the Zuozhuan is a name for a kind of conduct.