¹ For the sake of a readier indication of Chinese pronunciation, I am using a modification of the current Wade-Giles romanization for Chinese words, adapted from that of Dr. Chas. S. Gardner (cf. his Chinese Traditional Historiography, p. xi). To change my romanization into the Wade-Giles system, for initial p-, t-, k-, ch-, substitute p'-, t'-, k'-, ch'-, respectively. For initial b-, d-, g-, j-, read p-, t-, k-, ch-. For initial r-, read j-. Before i and ii, for initial ts-, dz-, s-, read ch'-, ch-, hs-. Before other vowels, for ts- and dz-, read ts'- and ts-. For final -zh, read -ih. For tz, dz, sz, read tz'u, tzu, ssu (in each case respectively).

² Her name, Si-wang-mu, is a quite peculiar Chinese phrase, so that it has been given various interpretations. Wang-mu is a phrase used regularly to mean “Queen-mother,” and her name has frequently been interpreted by sinologists to mean “Queen-mother of the West.” But a Queen-mother implies a living reigning son, and nowhere in ancient literature are we told of Si-wang-mu's son. Hence this phrase must mean “Mother and Queen [or goddess] in the West.” This interpretation is confirmed by the fact that in popular usage she was called merely “the Mother” (cf. passage 23 ad finem). É. Chavannes, (Memoires historiques [hereafter denoted by Mh], II, 8) and É. Huber (Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême Orient [hereafter denoted by BEFEO], 4, 1904, 1128) have interpreted this name as I do.

Speculative sinologists have identified Si-wang-mu variously. Forke, A. (‘Mu Wang und die Königen von Saba,’ Mitteil. d. Seminars f. Oriental. Studien, 7, 117–172Google Scholar) identified her with the Queen of Sheba, reviving an identification by Ch. de Paravey in 1853 (‘Archéologie primitive. Traditions primitives conservées dans les hiéroglyphes des anciens peuples,’ etc. in Annales de philosophies chrétienne. Cf. the devastating review by É. Huber, in BEFEO, 4, 1904, 1127–1131). A. H. Giles (Adversaria Sinica, 1–19, ‘Who Was Si wang mu?’) identified her with Juno. (Cf. the even more devastating review by P. Pelliot in BEFEO, 6, 1906, 416–421.)

J. Legge (Chinese Classics, III, proleg., 150–151) and É. Chavannes (Mh II, 7–8; V, app. II), following Ruan Yüan and certain other Chinese scholars, identify Si-wang-mu as a western tribe. There is, however, no positive evidence to support this interpretation of the name. It is based merely upon the circumstance that in certain very old Chinese texts, such as the Erh-ya (cf. passage 20) and the Annals Written On Bamboo (cf. passage 6), the term Si-wang-mu is used as if it were a place or tribal name. It is, however, a common feature of classical Chinese style to make no distinction between the use of personal, tribal, and place designations, so that the usage of this name in those sources is quite consistent with the interpretation of Si-wang-mu as a goddess. In view of the ample and uniform evidence, from the fourth century B.C. and later, that Si-wang-mu was a goddess, I see no reason for interpreting this name in any other manner. Pelliot, who is perhaps the most eminent living sinologist, after years of hesitation, has finally come to the conclusion that Si-wang-mu was a very ancient Chinese mythological figure and that from the first she was feminine (T'oung Pao 27, 1930, 392).

³ After the Former Han period (206 B.C.–A.D. 23), popular Daoism made the Mother Queen of the West one of its divinities and developed her into a Daoist immortal, so that she has become quite unlike the goddess of Han times. She has been given nine sons and twenty-four daughters, a marvellous palace in the Kun-lun Mountains with a fountain of precious stones, where the magic Feast of Peaches is held every six thousand years. Women aged fifty are still presented with her image to lengthen their life, and offerings are made to her in times of drought. Cf. E. T. C. Werner, Myths and Legends of China, 136–138; Dictionary of Chinese Mythology, 163–164.

^3a Cf. H. C. Creel, The Birth of China, 180. (Reference from Mrs. C. W. Bishop.)

⁴ From ch. 6, 3: 11a (this and other Chinese works are quoted, except where noted, by the paging in the Commercial Press's “Sz-ku Tsung-kan”); also translated in Yu-lan Fung, Chuang Tzu, 118. This chapter is generally considered to be genuine.

Shao-guang was interpreted anciently as the name of a cave, a mountain, or a region in the west. I have understood it as referring to a tall narrow peak, suitable for spying upon the country. (Do the Han hill-censers and hill-jars denote this mountain?)

⁵ Cf. É. Chavannes, Mission Archéologique, tome I, partie 1, 123–125, 232, 264, figs. 1211, 1212; Pl. XLIV, XLV, fig. 75, 76, where the Father and Mother were stationed opposite each other (cf. Fairbank, W., ‘The Offering Shrines of “Wu Liang Tz'u”,’ Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 6, 1941, 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 20). In this representation, dating from A.D 147, the Mother Queen is represented with wings.

⁶ The Shan-hai-jing (lit., “The Classic of Mountains and Seas”) is a composite book; this chapter probably dates from before the second century B.C., certainly before 6 B.C.; cf. H. Maspero, La Chine antique, 610, n. 1.

⁷ Cf. Chavannes, Mission Archéologique, I¹, 126–130; Pl. XLIV, fig. 75.

⁸ Shan-hai-jing 2: 13a states that “the high Kun-lun Mountains are verily the lower capital city of the Lord of Heaven.”

Guo Po (276–324) glosses passage 2 as follows: “She has charge of the emanations which produce calamities, the five types of punishments, injury, and violent death.” (His explanation implies a philosophic background of a later date than that in passage 2, in that he believes the Mother merely to set free emanations [chi ], which in turn produce calamities, etc., instead of sending them directly.)

It is noteworthy that the conception of punishment after death does not appear in connection with the Mother Queen. This conception did not enter China until Buddhism brought it in the first century A.D. For Han China, retribution is confined to this life.

Passage 2 constitutes a quite adequate disproof of the assertion by H. Maspero (‘The Mythology of Modern China,’ in Asiatic Mythology, 382), that Si-wang-mu was originally a Goddess of Epidemics, in command of the demons of the plague. Such a conception narrows her function unduly. His only evidence is passages 22, 23, and 24 of this paper. He interprets them to mean that “a terrible epidemic was announced, against which only those would be safe who placed upon their door certain charms of the Lady-queen of the West.” E. Percival Yetts (Catalogue of the George Eumorfopoulos Collection, II, 39) declares that Maspero's identification is questionable. W. Eberhard (‘Beiträge zur kosmologischen Spekulation der Chinesen der Han-Zeit,’ Baessler Archiv, Bd. XVI, Heft 1–2, p. 33) declares that Si-wang-mu was a “Dürregöttin,” using as his evidence our passages 23 and 24. Careful examination of those passages shows, however, that both these assertions are misunderstandings. According to Liu Hsin's preface to the Shan-hai-jing (dated 6 B.C.), this book contains the outstanding account of popular Han mythology and its first thirteen chapters (at least) were read widely in Han times. Its evidence has then a very high value for Han popular beliefs.

⁹ From Shan-hai-jing 2: 16b.

Mt. San-wei is mentioned in the Book of History, II, i, 12 (Legge's trans., ‘Chinese Classics,’ III, p. 40); III, i, 78 (p. 125); III, ii, 6 (p. 132). Guo Po states that it is “in the present Dun-huang Commandery.” Sadao Aoyama's Shina Rekidai Chimei Yoran , 241, locates these mountains 20 li southeast of Dun-huang (which is in 94° 47′ E, 40° 8′ N). This place was then not far from the Mother Queen's mountain (cf. passage 19).

Guo Po glosses passage 3, “The three green birds have charge of bringing food to the Mother Queen of the West. They nest apart from her on this mountain.”

¹⁰ Shan-hai-jing 12: la. This chapter was taken by the compilers of the Shan-hai-jing from another work than that now in ch. 2. Ch. 12 probably dates from the second or first century B.C.; cf. Maspero, La Chine antique, 610, n. 1.

¹¹ The Weak River probably got its name because it had not the strength to flow into the ocean like other rivers. Guo Po, however, glosses, “Its water cannot support goose-down.”

¹² This volcano is mentioned in the Book of History, III, iv, 6 (Legge, p. 168; cf. his notes). In the Tien-shan (lit., “the Mountains of Heaven”), north of the present Kucha, Chinese Turkestan, there was anciently a volcano. Li Dao-yüan (died 527), in his Shui-jing-ju 2:13a (Wang Sien-chien's ed.), quotes Shzh Dao-an's (lived third or fourth century) Record of the Western Frontier Regions (Si-yu-ji ) “Two hundred li [ca. 50 miles in Han times] north of Chütz [the present Kucha] there is a mountain on which in the night there is the light of fire and in the daytime there is smoke.” Kucha is north of the Taklamakan desert, while the ancient Kun-lun Mountains were south of it, so that the phrase in the text, “beyond them,” must be interpreted liberally. Before Han times, Chinese Turkestan was very little known.

¹³ Shan-hai-jing 16: 4b, 5a. This chapter was added to the book by Guo Po in the fourth century A.D., but it undoubtedly contains quite ancient material.

In this passage, Guo Po seems to have combined two different ancient descriptions of the Mother Queen.

¹⁴ This year was 985 B.C., according to the classical chronology, but 946 B.C. by the (more probably correct) chronology of the Annals Written on Bamboo.

¹⁵ Ju-shu Ji-nien B: 9b, 10a. This work is a set of annals ending with the year 299 B.C., so that they represent ideas of the fourth century B.C. and much earlier. This book was buried in a tomb of that date, lost, and recovered in A.D. 281. Subsequently it suffered alterations, chiefly excisions, in the tenth to thirteenth centuries.

Yet it is fundamentally sound and contains quite ancient material; cf. C. S. Gardner, Chinese Historiography, 7, n. 1.

Passage 6 is also translated by E. Biot, in Journal Asiatique, 3me serie, XIII, 1842, 391–392, and by J. Legge, in ‘Chinese Classics,’ III, prolegomena, 150–151.

¹⁶ The present text reads “three hundred pieces of wu-ribbon.” Wu is plainly a textual error — it is an unknown word. I have followed Guo Po's quotation of this passage in a note to Shan-hai-jing 2: 15a.

¹⁷ Nowhere is there any account of the King's return.

In his quotation of this passage (cf. n. 16), Guo Po has a third song at this point, which adds to the romantic effect:

The Mother Queen of the West for a second time chanted sighingly to the Son of Heaven, saying:

“When you come to this western land,

To dwell in this place,

Tigers and leopards will form troops for you,

Large and small birds will dwell with you.

Your happy life will have no end

And I will be my Lord's spouse.

“You will be [deathless, belonging to] all generations,

And I will moreover secrete you.

For you I will ‘blow organ-pipes until their tongues are all moving’ [a line from

Book of Odes, II, I, i, 1 (Legge's trans., ‘Chinese Classics,’ IV, 245)]

Until in your heart of hearts you will be ‘free from all concern,’ [A phrase from

ibid., I, VIII, x, 4 (Legge, 160)]

And of all the people of the world

Only Heaven's [bliss] will equal yours.”

In the present text, after the next paragraph concerning King Mu's visit to Mt. Yen-dz, there is a different version of this third song:

At the Mountain of the Mother Queen of the West, he thought of returning

home, for he remembered the people of the world. He became sad and chanted,

saying,

“When I came to this western land,

And dwelt in this waste,

Tigers and leopards formed troops for me,

Crows and small birds dwelt with me,

My happy life has had no end

And I have been a god.

“But a Son of Heaven has a high duty

Of which he cannot be worthy.

When I think of the benefits of the people of the world,

My tears flow and suddenly fall.

“When you ‘blow the organ-pipes until their tongues are all moving,’

And in my heart of hearts I am ‘free from all concern,’

All the people of the world

Have only Heaven upon whom to depend.”

This song is merely a variant of the other one quoted by Guo Po. One or two words have been changed, and the second stanza has been added. But the four-word regularity has been spoiled: a word has been taken from the end of line 6 and an extra word put into line 10. The result of this change has been to alter the goddess's seductive song into the King's assertion of his duty, making him treat her as Aeneas did Dido. Since tense, voice, and conjunctions are usually omitted in Chinese, and personal subjects are not expressed unless they are emphatic, this radical alteration of the meaning necessitated comparatively little change in the text. The change was probably made by someone who thought that an attempt by a great goddess to seduce a visiting King was undignified and immoral.

Both these versions of the third poem cannot date from the archaic period (fourth century B.C. or earlier), because they both use in the nominative case the archaic Chinese dative and objective first personal pronoun, wo . The second poem uses the correct nominative first personal pronoun, wu . Between the fourth and the second centuries B.C., the distinction between these two pronouns was dropped. This third poem is probably a later addition, possibly by Guo Po, written after this book was found in A.D. 281. The underlying concept, that the Mother Queen attempted to induce the King to return to her, is, however, found in the two genuine poems, so that the third poem merely elaborates the original conception.

¹⁸ Mu Tien-dz Juan ch. 2, 3; 2: 8b, 3: 1a–2a. This book was found in the same tomb with the Annals Written on Bamboo, and also dates from before 299 B.C. It, however, bears the character of a romance, not of a serious history. Cf. Gardner, Chinese Historiography, 44, n. 53; A. Hummel, Autobiography of a Chinese Historian, 80, n. 4, is more sceptical of it.

Passage 7 is also translated by De-kun Jeng, in the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 64, 1933, 138–140.

¹⁹ Shzh-ji 43: 4, 5 (paging of Takigawa's ed.). It is also translated by Chavannes in Mh, V, 9–10.

The present text of the Memoirs of King Mu, the Son of Heaven, nowhere contains anything that would imply that the King forgot his duties in enjoying the Mother Queen's entertainment or that he was recalled by a rebellion. We then have here a different tradition that developed when the Memoirs of King Mu had been lost.

The Lie-dz , which Maspero (La Chine antique, 491, n. 1) believes to date from the end of the third century B.C., but which I, along with many recent Chinese critics, prefer to date in the third century A.D., amplifies the present text of the Memoirs of King Mu as follows (Lie-dz, ch. 3, A: 17a; also trans. by R. Wilhelm in his Lia Dsi, 31):

(9) Thereupon [King Mu] was entertained as a guest by the Mother Queen of the West and banqueted her on the Green Jasper Pool, where the Mother Queen of the West, without accompaniment, sang songs to the King and the King accompanied her. Their words are sad. Thereupon he looked upon the place where the sun enters [the earth for the night]. In one day he traveled ten thousand li. The King thereupon sighed and said, “Alas! If I were not so full of virtue, I could have yielded to her pleasures. But later generations would after my death have criticized me for it, [saying that] I had done wrong!”

In the Lie-dz, King Mu's trip is described as an illusion due to a magician. The Tien-wen (attributed to Chü Yüan [ca. 340–ca. 290 B.C.]) couples King Mu's wanderings with a magician (cf. A. Conrady, Das Älteste Dokument zur Chinesische Kunstgeschichte, T'ien-wen, 135–137, v. 137–139), but does not mention the Mother Queen of the West. The legend of this Mother evidently belonged to north China, not to the Yangtze valley, where Chü Yüan lived.

²⁰ Ju-shu Ji-nien A: 8a; also trans. by Biot in Jour. Asiat., 3me serie, XII, 550, and by Legge, ‘Chinese Classics,’ III, proleg., 115.

²¹ Da-Dai Li-ji 11:12b, ch. 76, sect. 5; also trans. by R. Wilhelm in his Li Gi, 97. This book was compiled in the first century B.C., out of older materials.

²² Shang-shu-Da-juan 2: 6b. This book was supposed to have been compiled out of older materials by Master Fu , who died some time during 179–157 B.C. It was lost in the fourteenth century, and its fragments were collected and published in the eighteenth century. This passage is quoted by Meng Kang (lived during 220–240 A.D.) in a note to Han-shu 21 A: 3a (paging of Wang Sien-chien's ed.), also elsewhere.

²³ The text reads Jün-shou but Han-shu 20:17a and other early authors read Yin-shou .

²⁴ Han-shu 30: 50b, 70b, 81a list his works, with Ban Gu's note to the first of these, ”Not an ancient work.”

²⁵ Sün-dz 19: 3b, fascicle 27 (Wang Sien-chien's ed.). Instead of “Mother Queen of the West (Si-wang-mu ),” the present text reads Si-wang-guo , lit., “The Country of the King [or Queen] of the West.” But this phrase does not make sense, and no person or place, real or mythical, by the name of Si-wang-guo is known. The characters guo and mu are similar, so that they might have easily been confounded by a copyist. I have emended guo to mu.

²⁶ “Sweet dew” was a Chinese mythological liquor; cf. H. H. Dubs, trans., The History of the Former Han Dynasty (hereafter denoted by HFHD), II, ch. 8, n. 21. 5.

²⁷ Shan-hai-jing 15: 5a declares, “To the east there are ‘sweet flowers’ whose branches and trunk are all red, with yellow leaves.”

²⁸ Shan-hai-jing 15: 5a declares, “On it there is ‘sweet Chaenomeles japonica (gan-ja ),’ whose branches and trunk are all red, with yellow leaves, white flowers, and black fruit.”

²⁹ Guo Po glosses the mention of this creature in Shan-hai-jing 6:3b as follows: ” It stores up flesh. Its shape is like an ox's liver. It has two eyes. When one has eaten of it, but has not eaten it up, suddenly it revives and is renewed just as it was before.”

³⁰ Shan-hai-jing 15: 5a declares, “There there are green horses and there are red horses, whose name is thrice-piebald (san-jui ).” Guo Po glosses ibid. 14: 4a as follows: “A horse with green and white mixed hair, making it piebald.”

³¹ The süan was a precious stone.

³² White coral was supposed to grow in the Kun-lun Mountains, on trees. It is said to have been like pearls.

³³ Shan-hai-jing 2: 7b–8a declares, “There are birds, whose shape is like that of a tartar pheasant, with stripes of all colors. Their name is the luan bird. When they appear, the world is peaceful and tranquil.” Guo Po glosses, “According to an old explanation, the luan is a bird like a chicken. It is an auspicious bird. In the time of King Cheng of the Jou dynasty, the western Rung barbarians presented one to him.” The luan was a mythological bird of the phoenix species.

³⁴ Shan-hai-jing 16: 2b–3a. This passage precedes that translated in passage 5.

³⁵ The text reads “three-footed crow,” which mythological creature was, however, located in the sun and not anciently connected with the Mother Queen. Hence I have emended this phrase. The respective characters are quite similar to each other.

³⁶ Quoted in Han-shu 57 B: 17b, 18a.

Jang Yi (lived during 227–232) glosses, “These Yin Mts. are in the Kun-lun Mts., 2700 li to the west. The figure of the Mother Queen of the West is like that of a human being, with a leopard's tail, a tiger's head, and tangled hair which shines on her white head. She has a stone capital city with a golden house and a cave in which she lives. The three green birds … have charge of taking food to the Mother Queen of the West on the north of the high Kun-lun Mts.”

³⁷ Huai-nan-dz 6: 8a. This work was written for Liu An , King of Huai-nan (died 122 B.C.), by eight of his learned men. The “aged old lady of the west” is of course the Mother Queen. Here she is merely one of the great gods who care for the well-being of the country.

³⁸ Huai-nan-dz 7: 10a. Gao Yu (wrote 205–212) glosses: “Heng-o [now called Chang-o ] was the wife of Yi [the divine archer], who had begged the drug from the Mother Queen of the West. Before he had taken it, Heng-o stole and ate it, so that she succeeded in becoming an immortal. She took refuge [from Yi] in the moon.” A more modern version of this myth is to be found in Werner, Myths and Legends, 183–188.

The legend connecting the Mother Queen of the West with the pill of immortality appears first in the Huai-nan-dz. It is not in the Shan-hai-jing, where Yi is merely a great hero and archer, and where his shooting down of the nine superfluous suns is not even mentioned. This myth hence seems to date from the second century B.C., and is later than the more ancient conceptions in the Shan-hai-jing.

³⁹ Quoted in Han-shu 87 A: 17a. Yang Hsiung lived 53 B.C.–A.D. 18. The reference is of course to the goddess's entertainment of King Mu.

⁴⁰ Han-shu 28 Bi: 10a, b.

⁴¹ By Sun Hsiao (lived before the sixth century), in a note to Shui-jing-ju 2: 35b, where the above location is repeated.

⁴² As Chinese geographical knowledge of regions west of China increased, the location of the Mother Queen of the West was pushed farther and farther westwards. A quite early passage in the Erh-ya (third century B.C. and earlier) B: 11a, ch. 9, says:

(20) Gu-ju, the Bo-hu, the Mother Queen of the West, and Rzh-hsia are the four outermost wildernesses.

Gu-ju was a northern region, known already in Shang times, extending from the present Lu-lung, Hopei to Jao-yang, Re-ho. It was then the very ancient “northernmost ” region, north from the present Shantung. The Bo-hu are the people who place “the doors of their houses on the north,” because they live south of the sun — the ancient southernmost location. The Mother Queen of the West's mountain was where the sun went down, so that she naturally belongs in this list of the four quarters. Rzhhsia was the region “below the place where the sun” comes out in the morning.

Since the Erh-ya early became one of the authoritative classics, the Queen Mother of the West came to be conceived as living in the westernmost country. When Jang Chien and other Chinese envoys explored central Asia in the first century B.C., they naturally inquired for this goddess. Part of their report (Shzh-ji 123:13 [also trans. by Hirth in Jour. Amer. Orient. Soc'y. 37, 1917, 97 (45), and by de Groot in Chinesische Urkunden zur Geschichte Asiens, II, Die Westlande China, 18]; this passage is repeated in Han-shu 96 A: 28b [trans. in de Groot, op. cit., 91]) contains the statement:

(21) According to the tradition of the elders in Parthia, in Tiao-jzh [Chaldaea] there is the Weak River and the Queen Mother of the West, but they have never been seen [there].

In 166 A.D., there arrived at the Chinese capital a man (probably a merchant) from the Roman empire, who called himself, “An envoy from the King of Rome, Aurelius” (cf. F. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient, 42 [33]); the Chinese also sent an envoy to the west, who seems to have reached the Persian Gulf, so that more accurate knowledge of the west was available. The Wei-lio (written between 239 and 265) accordingly locates the Queen Mother of the West on a Jade Mountain west of a sea west of the Roman orient (cf. Hirth, op. cit., 77, [77]). This location was repeated by later historians (cf. ibid. 51, [21]; 43, [34]; 82, [37]; 86, [63]; 87, [71]; 95, [23]). This “scientific” location did not, however, affect the popular religious belief in Han times; knowledge of it was probably confined to a few learned men in the imperial court.

⁴³ The Secret Memoir of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (Han Wu Nei-juan ) is devoted to a visit by the Mother Queen of the West to Emperor Wu, in which she gives the Emperor directions for becoming an immortal. This book is attributed to Ban Gu, but really dates from the fifth century A.D.

⁴⁴ Cf. John Batchelor, The Ainu and their Folklore, 41 ff.; E. W. Hopkins, History of Religions, 48.

⁴⁵ From The Annals of Emperor Hsiao-ai, Han-shu 11: 6b.

⁴⁶ From The Treatise on the Five Elements, which discusses portents; Han-shu 27 Ca: 22a.

⁴⁷ From The Treatise on the Ornaments of Heaven, which discusses astronomy and astrology, Han-shu 26: 59b.

⁴⁸ Their interpretations of its portentous meaning are quoted in the Han-shu; cf. HFHD, III, ch. 11, n. 6. 9, ad finem.

⁴⁹ No doctrine was more continuously reiterated in imperial edicts of the Former Han period. When a flood, earthquake, famine, cold spell, epidemic, comet, or some other calamity appeared, the emperor usually issued an edict in which he accepted the blame for the calamity, laying it upon the inadequacies of his government; cf. HFHD, I, 4: 9a, 16b; II, 8: 6b, 9a; 9: 2a, 3b, 4b, 5b; 10: 2b, 4a, 5b, 14a. In 7 B.C., after some solar eclipses, earthquakes, and floods, Emperor Ai said in an edict, “Owing to Our lack of virtue, the common people have suffered punishment in Our place.” (HFHD, III, 11: 4a.)

⁵⁰ In 18 B.C., one of the imperial concubines, the Favorite Beauty née Ban a great-aunt of Ban Gu, was accused of having practised black magic. She replied that if she had done evil and had tried to get the spirits or gods to aid her, if they had any knowledge of human activities, how could she hope not to be accused by them of disloyalty to her lord; whereas if they had no knowledge, what good would it have done her to appeal to them? (Cf. HFHD, II, 366.) This dilemma implies that the gods and spirits are thoroughly moral beings.

⁵¹ Cf. passage 7, paragraph 2.

⁵² Cf. Mh, II, 129, n. 3; Chavannes, Documents Chinois, 30 f.

⁵³ Cf. Chavannes, Sculpture sur pierre en Chine, pl. X; Mission Archéologique, pl. XLVI, fig. 77.

⁵⁴ Cf. Chavannes, Sculpture, pl. XXXVIII, third register of the gable; Mission Archéologique, pl. LXXXVI, fig. 161; LXXXVII, fig. 162; vol. I¹, pl. DXV, fig. 1237; p. 80, 264.

⁵⁵ Cf. passage 24. In one of the Elegies of Chu, entitled, The Great Summoning (Chu-tz 10: 3a, “Da-jao” , attributed to Chü Yüan, more probably by a disciple, Jing Chai [third century B.C.]), the poet declares that among the spirits in the shoreless deserts of the west there is one

With a pig's head and vertical eyes,

Hairy, with disordered hair,

Long claws, protruding teeth,

And wild forced laughter.

⁵⁶ Cf. passage 22.

⁵⁷ Cf. passage 23 ad finem.

⁵⁸ Cf. HFHD, III, ch. 99, app. III; Han-shu 99 B: 7a.