Fu Xi

Fuxi or Fu Hsi ( zh, c=伏羲) is a culture hero in Chinese mythology, credited along with his sister and wife Nüwa with creating humanity and the invention of music, hunting, fishing, domestication, and cooking, as well as the Cangjie system of writing Chinese characters around 2900 BC or 2000BC. He is also said to be the originator of bagua (the eight trigrams) after observing that there were eight fundamental building blocks in nature: heaven, earth, water, fire, thunder, wind, mountain, and lake. These eight are all made of different combinations of yin and yang, which are what came to be called bagua.

Fuxi was counted as the first mythical emperor of China, "a divine being with a serpent's body" who was miraculously born, a Taoist deity, and/or a member of the Three Sovereigns at the beginning of the Chinese dynastic period. Some representations show him as a human with snake-like characteristics, "a leaf-wreathed head growing out of a mountain", "or as a man clothed with animal skins."

Names

He is also known as Bao Xi () and Mi Xi ().

Origin

Pangu was said to be the creation god in Chinese mythology. He was a giant sleeping within an egg of chaos. As he awoke, he stood up and divided the sky and the earth. Pangu then died after standing up, and his body turned into rivers, mountains, plants, animals, and everything else in the world, among which is a powerful being known as Huaxu (). Huaxu gave birth to a twin brother and sister, Fuxi and Nüwa. Fuxi and Nüwa are said to be creatures that have faces of human and bodies of snakes.

However, in some myths, Fuxi was held to be the creator, not Pangu, who worked alone and not with Nüwa.

Fuxi was known as the "original god", and he was said to have been born in the lower-middle reaches of the Yellow River in a place called Chengji () (possibly modern Lantian, Shaanxi province, or Tianshui, Gansu province).

A possible historical interpretation of the myth is that Huaxu (Fuxi's mother) was a leader during the matriarchal society (BC) as early Chinese developed language skill while Fuxi and Nüwa were leaders in the early patriarchal society (BC) while Chinese began the marriage rituals.

A divinity Taihao (, "The Great Bright One") appears, vaguely, in sources before the Han dynasty, independent from Fuxi. Later, Fuxi is identified with Taihao, the latter being his courtesy or formal name.

According to legend, the goddess of the Luo River, Mifei, was the daughter of Fuxi. Additionally, some versions of the legend state that she is Fuxi's consort. She drowned in the Luo River while crossing it and became the spirit of the Luo River.

Creation legend

According to the '' Classic of Mountains and Seas'', Fuxi and Nüwa were the original humans who lived on the mythological Kunlun Mountain (today's Huashan). One day they set up two separated piles of fire, and the fire eventually became one. Under the fire, they decided to become husband and wife. Fuxi and Nüwa used clay to create offspring, and with the divine power they made the clay figures come alive. These clay figures were the earliest human beings. Fuxi and Nüwa are commonly recognized by Chinese as two of the Three Sovereigns (along with Shennong) in the early patriarchal society in China (BC), based on the myth about Fuxi establishing marriage ritual in his tribe. The creation of human beings was a symbolic story of having a larger family structure that included the figure of a father.

Social importance

On one of the columns of the Fuxi Temple in Gansu Province, the following couplet describes Fuxi's importance: "Among the three primogenitors of Huaxia civilization, Fu Xi in Huaiyang Country ranks first." During the time of his predecessor Nüwa, society was matriarchal.

Fuxi taught his subjects to cook and various methods of hunting and fishing, including fishing with nets and hunting with weapons made of bone, wood, or bamboo. He instituted the basic family structure, as well as marriage, and offered the first open-air sacrifices to heaven. A stone tablet, dated AD 160, shows Fuxi with Nüwa.

Traditionally, Fuxi is considered the originator of the methods of divination that were passed down through the ages before the ''I Ching.'' In other versions of the story, he is credited to the writing of some of the ''I Ching'' itself. His divination powers are attributed to his reading of the ''He Map'' (or the Yellow River Map). According to this tradition, Fuxi had the arrangement of the trigrams of the ''I Ching'' revealed to him in the markings on the back of a mythical dragon horse (sometimes said to be a tortoise) that emerged from the Luo River. This arrangement precedes the compilation of the ''I Ching'' during the Zhou dynasty. This discovery is said to have been the origin of calligraphy. Fuxi is also credited with the invention of the Guqin musical instrument, though credit for this is also given to Shennong and Yellow Emperor.

The Figurists viewed Fuxi as Enoch, the Biblical patriarch. Alexander Catcott, a Hutchinsonian, identified Fuxi with the Biblical Noah (''A Treatise on the Deluge'').

Fuxi and Nüwa were also thought to be gods of silk.

Death

Fuxi is said to have lived for 197 years altogether and died at a place called Chen (modern Huaiyang, Henan), where a monument to him can still be found and visited as a tourist attraction.

Gallery

File:Anonymous-Fuxi and Nüwa.jpg, Tang dynasty painting of Fuxi (right) and Nüwa (left) unearthed in the Astana Cemetery, Xinjiang.
File:Ma-Lin-Fuxi-and-turtle.jpg, Seated portrait depicting Fuxi, painted by Ma Lin of the Song dynasty
File:Guo Xu album dated 1503 (1).jpg, Painting of Fuxi looking at a trigram sketch, painted by Guo Xu () of the Ming dynasty
File:Chinese woodcut, Famous medical figures; Emperor Fuxi Wellcome L0039312.jpg, Emperor Fuxi, woodcut print by Gan Bozong of the Tang dynasty
File:Fuxi, Qiu Ying (painting).jpeg, Fuxi, painted by Qiu Ying of the Ming dynasty, as depicted in ''Orthodoxy of Rule Through the Ages''
File:Chinese Emperor Fu Hsi, wearing traditional costume, Wellcome V0018487.jpg, Chinese emperor Fuxi, wearing a traditional costume, holding the yin yang symbol, 19th century
File:Fu Xi at Peterborough.jpg, Picture along with various scientists at Peterborough, UK
File:Imperial Encyclopaedia - Education and Conduct - pic134 - 伏羲太極圖.svg, alt=, Fuxi's Taijitu diagram (from the Gujin Tushu Jicheng by Chen Menglei)

See also

*Snakes in Chinese mythology

Notes

References

*

Further reading

* - PhD thesis

External links

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{{Authority control

Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors
Chinese gods
Mythological human hybrids
Snake gods
Creator gods
Hunting gods
Deities in Chinese folk religion
Supernatural beings identified with Christian saints
Heroes in mythology and legend
Enoch (ancestor of Noah)