Gun (, lit. "big fish"), also known as Count of Chong (), was a figure in

Chinese mythology Chinese mythology () is mythology that has been passed down in oral form or recorded in literature in the geographic area now known as Greater China. Chinese mythology includes many varied myths from regional and cultural traditions. Much of ...

, sometimes noted as the father of

Yu the Great Yu the Great (大禹) was a legendary king in ancient China who was famed for his introduction of flood control, his establishment of the Xia dynasty which inaugurated dynastic rule in China, and his upright moral character. He figures prominen ...

, the founder of the

Xia dynasty The Xia dynasty () is the first dynasty in traditional Chinese historiography. According to tradition, the Xia dynasty was established by the legendary Yu the Great, after Shun, the last of the Five Emperors, gave the throne to him. In trad ...

. Gun was appointed to the task of controlling the

Great Flood A flood myth or a deluge myth is a myth in which a great flood, usually sent by a deity or deities, destroys civilization, often in an act of divine retribution. Parallels are often drawn between the flood waters of these myths and the prima ...

Emperor Yao Emperor Yao (; traditionally c. 2356 – 2255 BCE) was a legendary Chinese ruler, according to various sources, one of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. Ancestry and early life Yao's ancestral name is Yi Qi () or Qi (), clan name i ...

on the advice of the

Four Mountains Four Mountains or Four Peaks () variously interpreted from Chinese mythology or the most ancient level of Chinese history as being a person or four persons or four gods, depending upon the specific source. The ambiguous Four Mountains feature promi ...

. Gun used dykes to try to stop the flooding but the dykes collapsed, killing many people.

In mythology

According to

Sima Qian Sima Qian (; ; ) was a Chinese historian of the early Han dynasty (206AD220). He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for his ''Records of the Grand Historian'', a general history of China covering more than two thousand years b ...

Records of the Grand Historian ''Records of the Grand Historian'', also known by its Chinese name ''Shiji'', is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories. The ''Records'' was written in the early 1st century by the ancient Chinese hist ...

, Gun's father was

Zhuanxu Zhuanxu (Chinese: trad. , simp. , pinyin ''Zhuānxū''), also known as Gaoyang ( t , s , p ''Gāoyáng''), was a mythological emperor of ancient China. In the traditional account recorded by Sima Qian, Zhua ...

, grandfather was

Changyi Changyi (? – ?) was the second son of the legendary Yellow Emperor and the father of Zhuanxu. History According to the ''Records of the Grand Historian'' by Sima Qian, the Yellow Emperor had twenty-five sons, two of the known ones who were b ...

, and great-grandfather was the

Yellow Emperor The Yellow Emperor, also known as the Yellow Thearch or by his Chinese name Huangdi (), is a deity ('' shen'') in Chinese religion, one of the legendary Chinese sovereigns and culture heroes included among the mytho-historical Three Sovereig ...

, Changyi & Gun being mere officials, not emperors. Book of Han, quoting Lord Yu Imperial Lineage, stated that Gun was a five-generation-descendant of Zhuanxu. The

Classic of Mountains and Seas The ''Classic of Mountains and Seas'', also known as ''Shan Hai Jing'', formerly romanized as the ''Shan-hai Ching'', is a Chinese classic text and a compilation of mythic geography and beasts. Early versions of the text may have existed sinc ...

stated that Gun (also known as "White Horse" Báimǎ) was the son of Luómíng, who in turn was the son of the Yellow Emperor. Also in many versions of the mythology, Gun appears as a demi-god. In legends, he even discovered some of the secrets of the gods. In order to make dykes that would ward off floods, he stole

Xirang ''Xirang'' (), also known as ''hsi-jang'', Swelling Earth, self-renewing soil, breathing earth, and living earth is a magical substance in Chinese mythology that had a self-expanding ability to continuously grow – which made it particularly effec ...

() (self-renewing soil) from the gods. After the dykes were finished, when the water levels rose, the magical earth of the dyke also rose to keep the water out. It worked very well at first, but when the dykes rose too high (in the legend, they rose to nine ''rèn'' 仞 (an ancient Chinese measure of between 1 and 3 meters)), they collapsed, resulting in the death of many people in the subsequent flood. Some legends say that Gun was executed by

Emperor Shun Emperor Shun () was a legendary leader of ancient China, regarded by some sources as one of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors being the last of the Five Emperors. Tradition holds that he lived sometime between 2294 and 2184 BC. Tradition a ...

on Feather Mountain (at the present day

Lianyungang Lianyungang () is a prefecture-level city in northeastern Jiangsu province, China. It borders Yancheng to its southeast, Huai'an and Suqian to its south, Xuzhou to its southwest, and the province of Shandong to its north. Its name derives fro ...

Jiangsu Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its ...

) with the sword of Wu, other sources however state that he committed suicide by jumping into an abyss, transformed into an animal and became the god of the abyss. Before his death he told his son,

, to finish his job.

also records that Gun has family ties to ''Huantou'' "Happy Head", also known as ''Huandou'' "Happy Helmet", one of the Four Criminals. In turn, Zhang Shoujie's ''Correct Meanings of Records of the Grand Historian'' (史記正義) identifies Gun with the ''Taowu'' ("Block-Stump"), another of those four.

Etymology

According to Schuessler (2009), 鯀 (

standard Chinese Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standa ...

''gǔn'' <

Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 ...

*''kwə̂nʔ'') is the same word as 鮌 (''gǔn'' < OC *''kwə̂nʔ'') and 鯤 (''kūn'' < OC *''kûn''), the latter being a mythical giant fish mentioned in

Zhuangzi Zhuangzi may refer to: * ''Zhuangzi'' (book) (莊子), an ancient Chinese collection of anecdotes and fables, one of the foundational texts of Daoism **Zhuang Zhou Zhuang Zhou (), commonly known as Zhuangzi (; ; literally "Master Zhuang"; als ...

. In his treatise "Commentaries on a miscellany of marine creatures in Fujian" ( ''Mǐnzhōng hǎicuò shū''), Ming scholar Tu Benjun () states that the zh, 馬鮫, labels=no ''mǎjiāo'' " Chinese mackerel, Chinese seerfish" is also called zh, 章鮌, labels=no ''zhānggǔn''.

Wolfram Eberhard Wolfram Eberhard (March 17, 1909 – August 15, 1989) was a professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley focused on Western, Central and Eastern Asian societies. Biography Born in Potsdam, German Empire, he had a stron ...

(1968) suggests that Chinese texts' descriptions of 鯀 ''Gǔn'' as a "naked one" and "dark fish" ( zh, 玄魚, labels=no) fit the eel.Eberhard, Wolfram. 1968. The Local Cultures of South and East China. E. J. Brill. p. 350-351

Note

References

24th-century BC people Executed Chinese people People executed by China by decapitation Four Evildoers {{china-hist-stub

In mythology

Etymology

See also

Note

References