The Han people, like many ancient peoples of the world, have their own history of creation. The ancestors of the Han people passed down their legendary history of the origin of the world, the activities of their ancestors, and the formation of their nation by word of mouth over a long period of time, and then recorded and preserved it in the relevant ancient Chinese books by the literati of later generations. Among the creation myths and legends of the Han people, the legend of Fuxi and Nuwa, which has been widely spread, is a historical trace reflecting the history of the couple who were the founders of the Chinese ancestors at the time of the creation of the century and the beginning of the farming civilization on the Huangdi land.
This article is an attempt to interpret the creation myths and legends of the ancient Chinese ancestors with oriental colors through some sporadic accounts in Chinese ancient books. It is hoped that a glimpse of the early history of the ancestral couple of the Chinese ancestors, who reproduced and started the farming civilization on the Huangtu land. The title of the article and the discussion of the "founder couple" is borrowed from the book "Concise Encyclopedia Britannica", the "Adam and Eve" interpretation of the reference[1]. The purpose is to make a brief and immature comparison while stating a crude knowledge. In view of the limitations of learning and insight, fallacies and superficiality are unavoidable, and I implore you to give us your advice.
Fu Xi and Nuwa are the "gods and goddesses" who nurtured the Chinese ancestors
The accounts of Fu Xi and Nuwa in the ancient Chinese books are mostly passed on orally by the Chinese ancestors for a long time, and then processed and recorded by the literati in the later generations. Therefore, there are many strange, repetitive and difficult-to-understand points in some of the contents, while others are obviously fictitious, dreamy and wrong. However, these ancient Chinese creation myths and legends are by no means totally absurd and illusory. In fact, it is these myths and legends that contain the deep understanding and simple expression of the Chinese ancestors of their own creation history.
The account of the legend of Fuxi and Nüwa is rather messy in the ancient Chinese texts. According to the record of "Shiben - Emperor's Lineage", it says: "Taihao Fuxi Clan." From this, it is clear that the Chinese ancestors have long believed that Fuxi is the Taihao Fuxi Clan.
It is worth mentioning that many of Fuxi's deeds are interconnected with those of Nüwa. For example, Du Guangting of Shu in the Fifth Dynasty, in Volume 8 of Recorded Strange Records, recorded: "Chenzhou is not too much of the ruins of Hao, in the city of Dongguan, there is a temple of Fuxi and Nuwa." According to this record, we can know that around the end of the Tang Dynasty, the legend of Fuxi and Nuwa's brother and sister marrying and reproducing their offspring had already been widely circulated in Chinese folklore. According to the interpretation of historical materialism, sociology and ethnology, this actually reflects the stage of social development experienced by the Chinese ancestors during the era of the legend, when siblings were married to each other within the clans.
1. Fuxi was a "god" and a "god-man" born of a woman
In the myths and legends of the Chinese ancestors, all the great men who built great feats and created great deeds and who were honored as gods by their descendants were generally born of a union between their mothers and the gods. The way in which such women united with the gods usually manifested itself in the form of women trampling on the large footprints of the gods, or women swallowing the large eggs laid by the birds of the gods, and then conceiving and giving birth to them. According to the poem "Poetry Containing the Mist of the Gods," cited in volume 78 of the Taiping Yuban, "The Great Trail came out of the Lei Ze, and Huaxu trampled on it, giving birth to Fuxi." It is clearly stated that Fuxi was conceived by his mother, Huaxu, who trampled on the great footprints of the gods.
The Classic of Mountains and Seas - Hai Nei Dong Jing also says: "There is a god of thunder in the Lei Ze, with the body of a dragon and the head of a man." The ancestors of the Huaxia people have always taken the legendary "dragon" as their totem worship. Therefore, the Han Chinese and the ancient Huaxia are also known as the "dragon" heir. In the minds of the Chinese ancestors, the God of Thunder was a deity of great power. So they described their ancestor, Fu Xi, as the god of thunder with a dragon body and human head and great power, who was born from a union with a woman in the world, a "godman" with magical power.
We can see here that the Chinese ancestors, in their own creation myths and legends, have not only created an ancestor who will be revered for generations to come. They also created a "god" with the body of a dragon and the head of a man, who united with Huxu in a "great sign" and gave birth to the first ancestor, Fuxi. Here we again see the long history of the Chinese ancestors, the abyss of "god-making".
In the minds of the Chinese forefathers, Fuxi is, along with Nuwa, a representative of the "divine power" that nurtured the Chinese forefathers and initiated the era of farming civilization. Zhouyi, the first of the Six Classics, which was written earlier and is regarded as the first of the Six Classics by the Chinese ancestors, has this description: "Bao Xi's didn't exist, and Shen Nong's did." "When the Shennong clan was gone, the Yellow Emperor, Yao, Shun and Yu made it." This actually points out to us that the Chinese ancestors, who emphasized the humanistic inheritance, had already clearly and unambiguously ranked the supreme ancestor Fuxi before the Yandi Shennong, as well as the Huangdi, who created the humanistic ancestor.
2. Fuxi is the originator of the Chinese ancestors from the realm of the gods
In the early myths and legends of the Chinese ancestors, the gods were different from the human beings. The gods had great power and lived apart from man. The gods lived in heaven and were able to descend to the earth, whereas man could not reach heaven. Legend has it that the gods came up to heaven and earth from a place called Duguang Mountain. This is the "Huainanzi - 墬 shape training" recorded: "Kunlun Qiu, or on the times, is called the cool wind of the mountain. Dengzhi and do not die ...... or on the times, is the dimension on the sky, Dengzhi Nai God, is called the residence of Tai Di."
Because Fuxi is a god-man born after the intercourse between a god and a woman, Fuxi can also edge the heavenly ladder to build wood to ascend to heaven. The "Classic of Mountains and Seas" (山海經-海内经) states, "Within the South China Sea, between the Black Water and the Green Water, there is a wood named Jianmu, which Dahuo has passed through." The "Jianmu" mentioned here is used by the gods to ascend to heaven. Therefore, "Jianmu is in Duguang, where all the gods go up and down. There is no view in the sun, and there is no sound when you call out." And "Dahuo Yuanxuan" means that the founder, Fu Xi, could also climb the Jianmu wood and go up and down between heaven and earth and the gods and men, just like the gods."
However, it is also Fuxi's ability to climb up and down, reflecting that in the minds of the Chinese ancestors Fuxi was just a man who was different from the gods in the era of the "Jedi Heavenly Passage". Fuxi is a separate from the world of God, with the power of God for invention, leading the people to create a farming civilization, the implementation of social change of the ancestor. Therefore, the founder of the Fu Xi can be Chinese ancestors revered as a legend of the age of the gods, and with its unprecedented achievements, long remembered in the hall of Chinese civilization.
3. Nuwa is the female ancestor who nurtured the Chinese forefathers with the yellow earth
The legend of Nuwa's creation of man had a profound influence on the Chinese forefathers. The Huainanzi Zhanlin Xun (淮南子-说林训) describes it as a deification: "The Yellow Emperor gave birth to the yin and yang, the upper parallel gave birth to the ears and eyes, and the mulberry forest gave birth to the arms and hands. This is why Nuwa has seventy transformations." According to Gao Lian, a scholar at the end of the Han Dynasty, "The Yellow Emperor, the ancient god of the sky, was the first to create man, giving birth to yin and yang." "Shang Pian and Sang Lin are all names of gods." Therefore, the Huainanzi Shulinxun explains that "Nuwa, the king of the world, also made seventy changes in the creation of the world. This means that the creation of the world is not the work of one person." [2] This is not only more objective, but also more accurate. [2] This not only reflects objectively that Nuwa was able to accomplish the great task of social evolution, the "creation of man", with the help of "all the gods". At the same time, it also scientifically reflects the fact that the Chinese ancestors of the Fuxi and Nüwa eras were in the historical entity of the Mother Clan Society.
The legend of Nuwa's creation of man, as cited in Taiping Yuban (太平御览), is recorded in this way: "It is commonly said that the heavens and the earth were opened up without any people, and that Nuwa rolled up the yellow earth to make a human being, and that the labor force was not enough to provide for it, and that it was drawn into the mud and lifted up as a human being." This account, though late, may have had its origin earlier than that stated in the Huainanzi. The most romantic and meaningful part of the story is that Nuwa "rolled yellow earth" to create man. The fact that Nuwa used "yellow earth" to nurture the Chinese ancestors is not only a romantic and vivid revelation of the social development of the female ancestor, who nurtured the Chinese ancestors; it is also a scientific and classic reflection of the historical roots of the Chinese ancestors, who had an inherent and inseparable relationship with the yellow earth that nourished them and their farming culture.
There is also a legend in the Book of Customs that says, "Nuwa prayed to the shrine of the gods, prayed to be the matchmaker, and set up the marriage of the faint." This legend reflects connotations that are both intriguing and thought-provoking. On the one hand, it is certainly a continuation and development of social evolution after the creation of man by Nuwa. On the other hand, it profoundly reflects and reveals the marriage that was taking place among the Chinese ancestors in the time of Fuxi and Nuwa, as well as the major changes in the social system caused by marriage. That is, the matriarchal society led by the female ancestor "praying to the shrine" is gradually transitioning to the patriarchal society "for the female matchmaker, due to the placement of the marriage in the dark".
Matriarchal farming civilization in the age of Fuxi and Nüwa
The law of social development of historical materialism tells us that the Chinese ancestors in the age of Fuxi and Nüwa were in the period of transition from a matriarchal to a patriarchal society. During this period, the Chinese ancestors were basically inherited according to their mother's lineage, so they were said to be "only aware of their mothers, not their fathers" in the ancient Chinese texts. It was only at that time that the Chinese ancestors, too, were gradually transitioning to a patriarchal society. That's why they named a male ancestor, like Fuxi, who was honored by later generations, and portrayed the male ancestor as a "god" with magical powers, born of a union between a "god" and a woman.
According to the Dancing Dance, Volume 100 of the Regulus Chronicle, "The Yellow Emperor traveled to the country of Huaxu, which is also a country of immortals. Note: "Fuxi was born in this country." It is clear that the legendary Huaxu is not only the mother of Fuxi who gave birth to him, but also the mother of the Chinese ancestors of the legendary era. But also the legendary era of Chinese ancestors of a country name, or a clan, tribal name. Therefore, the state of Huaxu, where Fuxi was born, was in fact a matrilineal clan (tribal) society that practiced intermarriage within the clan (tribe), as ethnologists say nowadays.
In such a matrilineal society, it was popular for men and women of different generations to marry and reproduce within their clans. Thus, we see the legendary Fuxi and Nuwa, who were both brother and sister, as well as husband and wife. At that time, the Chinese ancestors not only knew their mother, Huaxu, clearly; at the same time, due to the development of society, they were able to speculate, or fabricate, that the father of their patriarchal ancestors was a "god" who had left "great traces" but could not be traced back.
1. Fuxi and Nuwa were brother and sister who married each other
The Chushu-Tianwen states, "Nuwa has a body, who made it?" The Han Dynasty scholar Wang Yi's note on this passage reads, "Rumor has it that Nüwa has a human head and a snake's body, and that she has seventy transformations in one day." And according to "Selected Writings: Wang Yanshou's Fugue for the Palace of Lingguang Lu", "Fuxi's scaly body, Nuwa's serpentine body." This is the image of Fuxi and Nuwa as husband and wife, two in one, as depicted by the Chinese ancestors. In recent times, images of Fuxi and Nuwa with two heads and a serpent's body have been found in some places in the south of China, which also confirms the image of the two couples as one.
The Tang Dynasty's Li Hubi (李冗), in the next volume of his book "Dui Yi Zhi (独异志)", added: "In the past, when the universe was in its infancy, there were only two people, the brother and sister of Nvwa, in Kunlun. And there are no people in the world. The discussion as husband and wife, but also since the shame. Brother and sister went up to the Kunlun Mountain, incantation: 'If the sky sends my brother and sister to be husband and wife, and the smoke is all together; if not, make the smoke scattered.' Thus, the smoke was combined, and the sister came to her brother." This is a more detailed account of a brother and sister discussing being husband and wife.
It is no coincidence that Liang Yujiao of the Qing Dynasty, in his "Han Book of People", Volume 2, quoted from the "Spring and Autumn Annals of the World", also said, "Huaxu gave birth to a man as Fuxi, and a woman as Nuwa." From this, we can see that the legend of the Chinese ancestors that Fuxi and Nuwa were siblings born from the same mother, and that they married each other and reproduced their offspring, is widely spread and well-founded. This also reflects the fact that the Chinese ancestors of the legendary era did experience a stage of social development in which siblings were married to each other within the clans.