An ancient painting of Nüwa and Fuxi unearthed in Xinjiang, holding the tools of creation - compass and square.
Most challenging are the veils from Taoist-Buddhist tombs at Astana, in Central Asia, originally Nestorian (Christian) country, discovered by Sir Aurel Stein in 1925… We see the king and queen embracing at their wedding, the king holding the square on high, the queen a compass. As it is explained, the instruments are taking the measurements of the universe, at the founding of a new world and a new age. Above the couple’s head is the sun surrounded by twelve disks, meaning the circle of the year or the navel of the universe. Among the stars depicted, Stein and his assistant identified the Big Dipper alone as clearly discernable. As noted above, the garment draped over the coffin and the veil hung on the wall had the same marks; they were placed on the garment as reminders of personal commitment, while on the veil they represent man’s place in the cosmos. (pg. 111-12)Nibley included drawings of this depiction found on veils in the Astana Tombs in Xinjiang, China, with a caption that reads:
In the underground tomb of Fan Yen-Shih, d. A.D. 689, two painted silk veils show the First Ancestors of the Chinese, their entwined serpect bodies rotating around the invisible vertical axis mundi. Fu Hsi holds the set-square and plumb bob … as he rules the four-cornered earth, while his sister-wife Nü-wa holds the compass pointing up, as she rules the circling heavens. The phrase kuci chü is used by modern Chinese to signify “the way things should be, the moral standard”; it literally means the compass and the square. (pg. 115)See the photos at the end of the post for more examples of this icon. The veil redrawn in Temple and Cosmos is shown photographed in the second row, fourth from the left.
Wikipedia notes, “Nüwa and Fuxi were pictured as having snake like tails interlocked in an Eastern Han dynasty (206 – 220 A.D.) mural in the Wuliang Temple in Jiaxiang county, Shandong province.” It also notes the various roles of Nüwa (and sometimes with Fuxi) in Chinese mythology:
- Creator
- Woman/Man
- Mother
- Goddess
- Wife
- Sister
- Tribal leader (emperor)
- Maintainer
- Repairer
- Sun god/moon god
- Adam and Eve
Another description of Nüwa and Fuxi and their tools is found in a book entitled The Magic Square: Cities in Ancient China by Alfred Schinz:
It appears from these legends that civilization, i.e. ordered human life, begins with two personages, both portrayed as being semi-human and with mermaid tails. Nüwa and Fuxi, originally sister and brother, later became wife and husband after they had invented proper marriage procedures and family names to prevent marriages between people from the same family. Nüwa, in her own legend, had restored order between heaven and earth after a horrible catastrophe had caused heaven to tilt to the north so that it no longer covered all of the earth. This may refer to the first observation of the oblique elliptic and the angle of the pole star. Nüwa found it necessary to reestablish the four cardinal points, which she did, thereby creating the prerequisites for further observations. In the oldest pictures of her she carries a compass, the instrument related to heavenly observations. Her brother Fuxi became the first legendary emperor, which also implies the establishment of government, of law and order… On another, more practical level he is said to have invented axes for splitting wood, the carpenter’s square, ropes for hunting and fishing nets. It is worthy of special attention that the two words for compass and square, gui ju, used together denote -the rule, custom, usage- and -good behavior-, i.e., keeping order. Furthermore, it should be observed that the male-female system, the yang-yin philosophy, is expressed here in a complex manner, first as Fuxi and Nüwa, second as compass (male) and square (female), and third as Nüwa (female) with compass (male) and Fuxi (male) with square (female). The compass-square dichotomy is similar to the heaven-earth, yang-yin, relationship, which in this case means that man (Fuxi) establishes harmonious order between heaven and earth. This is also expressed in the Chinese character for king, wang, the upper and lower line indicating heaven and earth and the middle line man, all three connected by the vertical line. This represents the position and function of the ruler; it is he who establishes and keeps order by placing himself in a balanced and harmonious position between heaven and earth, so that yang and yin cooperate in a beneficial way.
[Caption] Fuxi and his sister Nüwa, he with the carpenter’s square and she with the pair of compasses. From the decoration incised in the wall of the Wu Lang tombs in Jiaxiang, Shandong, second century AD. The Chinese words for carpenter’s square, ju, and a pair of compasses, gui, together form the expression to establish order. This is what, according to their legends, Fuxi and Nüwa did. The carpenter’s square also stands for the square that is the symbol of the earth, while the pair of compasses represent the circle, the symbol of heaven. Fuxi, the male (yang), gives order to the earth (yin), and Nüwa, the female (yin), gives order to the heaven (yang).1A book entitled The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam by Victor J. Katz and Annette Imhausen relates a practical tradition about the use of these tools in Chinese history:
Here Fu Xi – the first of the “Three Sovereigns” – is shown on the right holding a ju or carpenter’s square. In some versions of this legend Fu Xi is said to have invented both the carpenter’s square and the compass, or gui – which is held in the above depiction by his consort Nü Wa (on the left). According to the Chronicles of the famous Chinese historian Sima Qian, the Emperor Yu of Xia (who reigned in the twenty-first century BCE), when attending to floods, carried with him “a plumbline in his left hand and a gnomon and compass in his right” in order to do the surveying required to bring the floods under control [Li and Du 1987, 3].2The Silk Road by Susan Whitfield and Ursula Sims-williams connects the concepts of the compass and the square with the circle and the square:
In traditional Chinese cosmology the earth was square and the heavens round and thus Fuxi holds a set square to draw the former, and Nüwa a pair of compasses to draw the circle of the earth.3Noted by Mark Edward Lewis in Writing and Authority in Early China, these symbols were used to represent cosmic order, a link between heaven and earth, and a favorable environment for the deceased:
This role of linking Heaven to Earth also figures in the depictions of Fu Xi and Nü Wa. First, in Han tombs their elongated, serpent bodies stretch from the bottom of the register to the top, and in later depictions this vertical ascent becomes even clearer. In Sichuan sarcophagi they play the iconographic role of the dragons on the Mawangdui banners who physically link the earthly realm to that of Heaven. This idea is reinforced through the regular inclusion of two other iconogrpahic traits. Fu Xi and Nü Wa are often depicted with the sun and moon, and they are shown holding a carpenters square (Fu Xi) and a drawing compass (Nü Wa). The former are metonyms for Heaven and the celestial equivalents of yin and yang. The latter suggests the linking of square Earth to the round Heaven. Most scholars agree that the role of the intertwined Fu Xi and Nü Wa was to depict the interaction of yin and yang that underlies cosmic order and thereby secure an auspicious environment for the denizen of the tomb.4Santillana and Dechend offer more explanation for the figures of Nüwa and Fuxi:
The Chinese picture illustrates in true archaic spirit (which means that only hints are given, and the spectator has to work out for himself the significance of the details) the surveying of the universe. The two characters surrounded by constellations are Fu Hsi and Nu Kua, i.e., the craftsman god and his paredra, who measure the “squareness of the earth” and the “roundness of heaven” with their implements, the square with the plumb bob hanging from it, and the compass. The intertwined serpent-like bodies of the deities indicate clearly enough, although in a peculiar “projection,” circular orbits intersecting each other at regular intervals. 5In another place some Chinese commentators have noted the uses of these tools in construction or building:
All “great instruments” were invented by the ancients to help lesser men “first rule the self and then rule others.” Although all are needed in construction, by no means do all these tools work in the same way. Level and line determine straight horizontal and vertical lines, while compass and square are needed to form perfect circles and corners. By analogy, each of the social institutions, including ritual, has its own function in building civilization, with each addressing a separate human need. It is characteristic of the sage-ruler that he always knows which tool to apply to the specific problem at hand.6There are probably hundreds of other sources which describe these symbols in Chinese tradition and mythology. You can find more by doing a Google Books search for “nuwa square compass.”
I’ve done some image searching and these two figures are almost always depicted holding the same symbols in their hands, and which have been described by many different scholars as the tools of creation and divine order. See the images below.
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- Schinz, The Magic Square: Cities in Ancient China, 25-26, link. [↩]
- Katz and Imhausen, The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam, 191, link. [↩]
- Whitfield and Sims-williams, The Silk Road, 329, link. [↩]
- Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China, 204, link. [↩]
- Giorgio De Santillana, Hertha Von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill, 272, link. [↩]
- Yan Hsiuing, Xiong Yang, Michael Nylan, The Elemental Changes: The Ancient Chinese Companion, 54, link. [↩]
This entry was written by , posted on September 17, 2008 at 10:41 am, filed under Artifacts, Scholarship and tagged ancients, celestial, chinese, civilization, compass, construction, cosmology, creation, earth, heaven, hugh nibley, marks, marriage, noah, philosophy, rituals, scholar, square, symbols, universe, veil, yin yang.
El caos comenzó a fusionarse en un huevo cósmico durante 18.000.000 de años. Dentro de él, los principios opuestos del yin y yang se equilibraron y Pangu salió del huevo, que normalmente es representado como un gigante primitivo y velludo vestido con pieles. Pangu emprendió la tarea de crear el mundo: dividió el yin del yang con su hacha gigante (hacha de la cual se desconoce el origen), creando la tierra del yin y el cielo del yang. Para mantenerlos separados permaneció entre ellos empujando el cielo hacia arriba.
Esta tarea le llevó 18.000 años, elevándose el cielo cada día un zháng (丈, equivalente a 3'33 metros) mientras la tierra se hundía en la misma proporción y Pangu crecía también la misma longitud. En algunas versiones, Pangu es ayudado por los cuatro animales principales:
la tortuga, el qilin, un ave y el dragón.
Después de otros 18.000 años, Pangu se tumbó a descansar. Era ya tan mayor que su sueño fue llevándolo lentamente hacia la muerte. De su respiración surgió el viento, de su voz el trueno, del ojo izquierdo el sol y del derecho la luna.
Su cuerpo se transformó en las montañas, su sangre en los ríos, sus músculos en las tierras fértiles, el vello de su cara en las estrellas y la Vía Láctea.
Su pelo dio origen a los bosques, sus huesos a los minerales de valor, la médula en jade y en perlas. Su sudor cayó en forma de lluvia y las pequeñas criaturas que poblaban su cuerpo (pulgas en algunas versiones), llevadas por el viento, se convirtieron en los seres humanos. Según la leyenda Pangu acabó de crear el universo hacia el año 2.229.000 A.C..1 Así, Pangu dio origen a todo lo que conocemos hoy en día.
Long, long ago, when heaven and earth were still one, the entire
universe was contained in an egg-shaped cloud. All the matter of the
universe swirled chaotically in that egg. Deep within the swirling
matter was Pan Gu, a huge giant who grew in the chaos. For 18,000 years
he developed and slept in the egg. Finally one day he awoke and
stretched, and the egg broke to release the matter of the universe. The
lighter purer elements drifted upwards to make the sky and heavens, and
the heavier impure elements settled downwards to make the earth.
In the midst of this new world, Pan Gu worried that heaven and earth might mix again; so he resolved to hold them apart, with the heavens on his head and the earth under his feet. As the two continued to separate, Pan Gu grew to hold them apart. For 18,000 years he continued to grow, until the heavens were 30,000 miles above the earth. For much longer he continued to hold the two apart, fearing the retun of the chaos of his youth. Finally he realized they were stable, and soon after that he died.
With the immense giant's death, the earth took on new character. His arms and legs became the four directions and the moutains. His blood became the rivers, and his sweat became the rain and dew. His voice became the thunder, and his breath became the winds. His hair became the grass, and his veins became the roads and paths. His teeth and bones became the minerals and rocks, and his flesh became the soil of the fields. Up above, his left eye became the sun, and his right eye became the moon. Thus in death, as in life, Pan Gu made the world as it is today.
Many centuries later, there was a goddess named Nü Wa who roamed this wild world that Pan Gu had left behind, and she became lonely in her solitude. Stopping by a pond to rest, she saw her reflection and realized that there was nothing like herself in the world. She resolved to make something like herself for company.
From the edge of the pond she took some mud and shaped it in the form of a human being. At first her creation was lifeless, and she set it down. It took life as soon as it touched the soil, however, and soon the human was dancing and celebrating its new life. Pleased with her creation, Nü Wa made more of them, and soon her loneliness disappeared in the crowd of little humans around her. For two days she made them, and still she wanted to make more. Finally she pulled down a long vine and dragged it through the mud, and then she swung the vine through the air. Droplets of mud flew everywhere and, when they fell, they became more humans that were nearly as perfect as the ones she had made by hand. Soon she had spread humans over the whole world. The ones she made by hand became the aristocrats, and the ones she made with the vine became the poor common people.
Even then, Nü Wa realized that her work was incomplete, because as her creations died she would have to make more. She solved this problem by dividing the humans into male and female, so that they could reproduce and save her from having to make new humans to break her solitude.
Many years later, Pan Gu's greatest fear came true.
The heavens collapsed so that there were holes in the sky, and the earth cracked, letting water rush from below to flood the earth. At other places, fire sprang forth from the earth, and everywhere wild beasts emerged from the forests to prey on the people. Nü Wa drove the beasts back and healed the earth. To fix the sky, she took stones of many colors from the river and built a fire in which she melted them. She used the molten rock to patch the holes in the sky, and she used the four legs of a giant turtle to support the sky again. Exhausted by her labors, she soon lay down to die and, like Pan Gu, from her body came many more features to adorn the world that she had restored.
Jan Walls and Yvonne Walls (translators and editors), 1984, Classical Chinese Myths: Hong Kong, Joint Publishing Company, 135 p. (BL1825.C48 1984)
Back to the Table of Contents of Creation Stories from around the World.
Pangu
(chino tradicional: 盤古, chino simplificado: 盘古, pinyin: Pángǔ, fue, según la mitología china, el primer ser vivo y creador del universo.
Índice
El mito de Pangu
En el principio no había nada en el universo salvo un caos uniforme y una negra masa de nada. Es inconcebible para el hombre imaginar una situación donde no existe nada.El caos comenzó a fusionarse en un huevo cósmico durante 18.000.000 de años. Dentro de él, los principios opuestos del yin y yang se equilibraron y Pangu salió del huevo, que normalmente es representado como un gigante primitivo y velludo vestido con pieles. Pangu emprendió la tarea de crear el mundo: dividió el yin del yang con su hacha gigante (hacha de la cual se desconoce el origen), creando la tierra del yin y el cielo del yang. Para mantenerlos separados permaneció entre ellos empujando el cielo hacia arriba.
Esta tarea le llevó 18.000 años, elevándose el cielo cada día un zháng (丈, equivalente a 3'33 metros) mientras la tierra se hundía en la misma proporción y Pangu crecía también la misma longitud. En algunas versiones, Pangu es ayudado por los cuatro animales principales:
la tortuga, el qilin, un ave y el dragón.
Después de otros 18.000 años, Pangu se tumbó a descansar. Era ya tan mayor que su sueño fue llevándolo lentamente hacia la muerte. De su respiración surgió el viento, de su voz el trueno, del ojo izquierdo el sol y del derecho la luna.
Su cuerpo se transformó en las montañas, su sangre en los ríos, sus músculos en las tierras fértiles, el vello de su cara en las estrellas y la Vía Láctea.
Su pelo dio origen a los bosques, sus huesos a los minerales de valor, la médula en jade y en perlas. Su sudor cayó en forma de lluvia y las pequeñas criaturas que poblaban su cuerpo (pulgas en algunas versiones), llevadas por el viento, se convirtieron en los seres humanos. Según la leyenda Pangu acabó de crear el universo hacia el año 2.229.000 A.C..1 Así, Pangu dio origen a todo lo que conocemos hoy en día.
Enlaces externos
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP83e1XbHPg es una presentación en formato de video de los contenidos expuestos anteriormente.
This story is a synthesis of three stories from classical Chinese
mythologiy. The stories come from The Classic of Mountains and Seas, an
anthology of stories collected in the first century B.C. that were
nearly as ancient then as the anthology seems to us today.
Pan Gu and Nü Wa
In the midst of this new world, Pan Gu worried that heaven and earth might mix again; so he resolved to hold them apart, with the heavens on his head and the earth under his feet. As the two continued to separate, Pan Gu grew to hold them apart. For 18,000 years he continued to grow, until the heavens were 30,000 miles above the earth. For much longer he continued to hold the two apart, fearing the retun of the chaos of his youth. Finally he realized they were stable, and soon after that he died.
With the immense giant's death, the earth took on new character. His arms and legs became the four directions and the moutains. His blood became the rivers, and his sweat became the rain and dew. His voice became the thunder, and his breath became the winds. His hair became the grass, and his veins became the roads and paths. His teeth and bones became the minerals and rocks, and his flesh became the soil of the fields. Up above, his left eye became the sun, and his right eye became the moon. Thus in death, as in life, Pan Gu made the world as it is today.
Many centuries later, there was a goddess named Nü Wa who roamed this wild world that Pan Gu had left behind, and she became lonely in her solitude. Stopping by a pond to rest, she saw her reflection and realized that there was nothing like herself in the world. She resolved to make something like herself for company.
From the edge of the pond she took some mud and shaped it in the form of a human being. At first her creation was lifeless, and she set it down. It took life as soon as it touched the soil, however, and soon the human was dancing and celebrating its new life. Pleased with her creation, Nü Wa made more of them, and soon her loneliness disappeared in the crowd of little humans around her. For two days she made them, and still she wanted to make more. Finally she pulled down a long vine and dragged it through the mud, and then she swung the vine through the air. Droplets of mud flew everywhere and, when they fell, they became more humans that were nearly as perfect as the ones she had made by hand. Soon she had spread humans over the whole world. The ones she made by hand became the aristocrats, and the ones she made with the vine became the poor common people.
Even then, Nü Wa realized that her work was incomplete, because as her creations died she would have to make more. She solved this problem by dividing the humans into male and female, so that they could reproduce and save her from having to make new humans to break her solitude.
Many years later, Pan Gu's greatest fear came true.
The heavens collapsed so that there were holes in the sky, and the earth cracked, letting water rush from below to flood the earth. At other places, fire sprang forth from the earth, and everywhere wild beasts emerged from the forests to prey on the people. Nü Wa drove the beasts back and healed the earth. To fix the sky, she took stones of many colors from the river and built a fire in which she melted them. She used the molten rock to patch the holes in the sky, and she used the four legs of a giant turtle to support the sky again. Exhausted by her labors, she soon lay down to die and, like Pan Gu, from her body came many more features to adorn the world that she had restored.
Jan Walls and Yvonne Walls (translators and editors), 1984, Classical Chinese Myths: Hong Kong, Joint Publishing Company, 135 p. (BL1825.C48 1984)
Back to the Table of Contents of Creation Stories from around the World.
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Nüwa
Nüwa, Chinese creator goddess
The story
Nüwa existed in the beginning of the world. She felt lonely as there were no animals so she began the creation of animals and humans. On the first day she created chickens. On the second day she created dogs. On the third day she created sheep. On the fourth day she created pigs. On the fifth day she created cattle. On the sixth day she created horses. On the seventh day she began creating men from yellow clay, sculpting each one individually, yet after she had created hundreds of figures in this way she still had more to make but had grown tired of the laborious process.So instead of hand-crafting each figure, she dipped a rope in clay and flicked it so blobs of clay landed everywhere; each of these blobs became a common person. Nüwa still laboriously crafted some people out of clay, who became nobles.
There was a quarrel between two of the more powerful gods, and they decided to settle it with a fight. When the water god Gong Gong saw that he was losing, he smashed his head against Mount Buzhou , a pillar holding up the sky. The pillar collapsed and caused the sky to tilt towards the northwest and the earth to shift to the southeast. This caused great calamities, such as unending fires, vast floods, and the appearance of fierce man-eating beasts. Nüwa cut off the legs of a giant tortoise and used them to supplant the fallen pillar, alleviating the situation and sealing the broken sky using stones of seven different colours, but she was unable to fully correct the tilted sky. This explains the phenomenon that sun, moon, and stars move towards the northwest, and that rivers in China flow southeast into the Pacific Ocean.
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