|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 6:51:53 GMT -5
The Bear, not the Dragon, is the original symbol of ChinaThis might seem peculiar but 2000 years ago it was true as since the Neolithic cultures to the Han dynasty, the bear their symbol always appearing in centre while the dragon on its side. Even though the bear mythological and cultural value continued right after the Han and it continued to be an animal on artefacts, it lost its symbol being of China.
"Professor Ye used a large number of archeological objects and images to prove that the Chinese were originally "descendants of the Bear" before gradually becoming "descendants of the dragons".
"The gradual decline of the deity-bear belief was caused by the rise in the belief in the deity-dragon, another mythical image able to move from the darkness to the light, from heaven to beneath the sea. This is an excellent example of how cultural elements of the big tradition were lost under the influence of the small tradition."
"Thus, one has reason to suspect that the original sacred symbol of Chinese civilization was a real beast, the bear, rather than a fictive creature, the dragon".
books.google.com.pk/books?id=IoCFEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA308&dq=bear%20as%20symbol%20of%20chinese%20civilization&hl=en&newbks=1
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 8:14:54 GMT -5
The identical characteristics of the earliest Sinic civilizations upon which ancient Chinese civilization is based notably also prominently features the Bear Totem, a privilege few animal got, as shown earlier: The key "genes" of Chinese civilization identity that would come to influence the development of the region, in chronological order, are as follows:
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 8:25:31 GMT -5
Fig.45. Jade accessory with Bear and Jade Tiger Patterns, Han Dynasty, stored in Tianjin Museum of Art, excerpted from Complete Works of Chinese Fine Arts - Art and Crafts Collection 9 (No. 194The jade accessory with the bear and the dragon and tiger pattern (Fig. 45) of the Han Dynasty now kept Tianjin Museum of Art clearly shows the spatial relationship among the three animals, with the dragon and the tiger on the sides and the bear in the middle.books.google.com.pk/books?id=Xr_2DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA126&dq=bear%20in%20han%20dynasty&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=Han Dynasty. Height: xin (1.5 cm). A tiny circular plaque in the form of a curling bear, in a contemporary, distressed bronze mount. This rare and fine jade succeeds dramatically despite its minute size, containing detail and having a sculptural quality. The Han period saw an exciting flowering of such naturalism, and the bear was a popular subject in jade, bronze and pottery.books.google.com.pk/books?id=NTbSBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA115&dq=jade%20bear%20in%20han&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_A RARE SMALL JADE FIGURE OF A BEAR, SHANG DYNASTY | 商 玉熊
The Animal in Chinese Art, Oriental Ceramic Society, London, 1968, no. 374, pl.12 B.
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 8:49:35 GMT -5
"The third type of evidence helps to explain difficult problems that are either not solved or addressed in the inherited literature. Taking the puzzle of the clan name "Youxiong" as an example, the sacred nature of the bear and the ritual activity of offering sacrifices to bear deities can still be found among ethnic (predominantly hunter) groups in the north, such as the Oroqen, Ewenki, and Hezhe peoples. In the Nuo rituals recorded in The Rites of Zhou, the palm of Fang Xiangshi, a Chinese ritual exorcist, is covered with a bear's skin. Does this obscure detail have its origins in the rites of the Yellow Emperor? Answering this question relies on looking to what is known about the big tradition. The Goddess Temple in Niuheliang, Jianping. Liaoning Province, discovered in the 1980s, is a religious building site of the Hong- shan culture, who built it around than 5000 years ago (Fig. 4.2). Along with the statue of the goddess, skulls of real bears and clay sculptures of bears were also discovered.
One may categorize these unearthed cultural relics and images as the fourth type of evidence. This evidence demonstrates that the ancient inhabitants of north China did worship the bear god 5000 years ago, perhaps even regarding the bear god as ancestrally tied to them, spiritually connected to their people (in other words, their "totem") The legends of Fuxi named "Huangxiong" from 5000 years ago, the Yellow Emperor's clan name being "Youxiong", and the motif of "transforming into bear" in the myth of sage kings such as Gun and Yu from 4000 years ago are not literary creations based on the whims of later generations, but the surviving fragments of a vague memory of the big tradition passed down in myth and legend. Before the emergence of widespread agriculture, human beings had to survive through hunting and gathering. Hundreds of thousands of years of hunting will be bound to leave behind traces based on the close observation to animals".
"For example, people take it for granted that the original form of the Chinese character熊(xiong, bear) is 能(neng, can). Few people have asked this question from ancient to modern times: why does the later character 熊 have four dots under 能? Knowing the profound tradition of bear deity worship and that ancient peoples regarded the hibernation of bears as symbolic of resurrection from the dead, it is understandable that the ancient peoples of China abstracted the concept of 能 from the image of the largest carnivorous bear on the East Asian continent. In addition to pictographic Chinese characters that preserve old concepts to this day, there is still a large amount of traditional information that exists in the form of living fossils. For example, in order to obtain the life-regenerating energy of the bear deity through imitation, bear exercise is practiced through the five animal exercises (wu qin xi, 禽戏), which teach people to learn the active posture of the bear (according to the principle of bionics) and thus to obtain an enhanced practical benefit. Without the perspective of the big tradition, the history of the character 能 would be inexplicable. Also, it is impossible to fully understand the essence of the bear exercise, the mystery of Fuxi, or the fact that the Yellow Emperor and nearly 30 kings of Chu named themselves 熊(xiong, bear) without reference to the big tradition."
books.google.com.pk/books?id=IoCFEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA27&dq=Tang%20dynasty%20and%20bear%20totem&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj91uqrwaeGAxUtXvEDHSFrDG4Q6AF6BAgGEAM#v=onepage&q=Tang%20dynasty%20and%20bear%20totem&f=false
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 11:31:35 GMT -5
"5,000 years ago of the "heavenly bear" (Ye, 2012) represented by the double bear- head objects with three holes, rather than a creation of the Han Dynasty. Since the god bear lives in heaven, the way it ascends to heaven may be manifested as a winged beast, or the image of driving dragons and phoenixes, or as the image of a bipedal upright creature with human-like posture. In his work A Request to God, Qu Yuan asked: "Is it true that Xia Yu became a yellow dragon and split out of the belly of Bo Gun who turned the bear, and the 'bear body' (Gun's corpse) immediately was carried by dragon to the river and sea together and swim freely?" This is exactly what Qu Yuan asked about the content of the murals in the ancestral temple of Chu State during the Warring States Period where the God Bear rides a dragon to travel in space."Fig. 5.8 The images of the tomb gates of Han stone reliefs with two dragons twining around three jade disc(bi) or coiled above each other to symbolize the heavenly gate, and the images of double gods and bears dancing under the gate of heaven unearthed from Zoucheng, Shandong
books.google.com.pk/books?id=ii3_EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA149&dq=bear%20in%20han%20dynasty&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwis0q_f-6aGAxWzBNsEHcxsBpcQ6AF6BAgLEAM#v=onepage&q=bear%20in%20han%20dynasty&f=false
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 11:41:12 GMT -5
"In the brick carving of the gable wall of No. 61 Western Han Tomb in Shao gou, Luoyang, "the picture of dragon, phoenix, and four god bears with two jade disc(bi) holding", the four bears are depicted as a bipedal upright creature with human-like posture on the clouds (Fig. 5.9). Among them, the two gods on the outside of the image are wearing colorful costumes, which are completely different from the so- called Fang Xiangshi wearing bear skin image. In other words, Fang Xiangshi is the image of the human wizard disguised as a bear, while the god bear is a bear-shaped god or immortal simulating the image or posture of a human being. The god bear, dressed in red and green on the left, stretched out his right arm to hold the hanging jade, and even held a sharp machete in his left hand. Who in what location has ever seen such an image of Fang Xiangshi?"Fig.5.9 "The picture of dragon, phoenix, and four god bears holding two jade disc(bi)" from the brick carving of the gable wall of No. 61 Western Han Tomb in Shao gou, Luoyang "Based on the image of immortals ascending to the heaven by dragon in the Western Han Dynasty, one can roughly imagine the scene of the God bear ascending to heaven by dragon in the murals of the ancestral temple of Chu sought after by Qu Yuan. Whether the dragon riders are human, bear, or monkey, in short, they are not ordinary secular beings, but some incarnation of gods. The following image of a monkey-shaped man driving the dragon carved on the jade wares of the Western Zhou dynasty, should be the important source of the image of ascending to heaven in the same mythology of the pre-Qin period."
"Fifth, the image of human with monkey-like head. Like the image of god bear, it is undoubtedly the incarnation of gods, rather than ordinary natural animals. The image of human with monkey-like head representing gods appeared in the Western Zhou Dynasty, such as the dragon-driven jade pendant with a monkey face unearthed in the tomb of Guo State of the Western Zhou Dynasty (Fig. 5.10) in Sanmenxia. The main body is in the shape of a crouching human with a monkey face."
"Of "inter-evidence", and, by taking the interpretation of the rare white jade ring with godly bear and hornless dragon patterns unearthed from Tomb 1 of the Western Han dynasty in Beishantou village, Chaohu city, Anhui Province in 1998, as an example, gives full play to the systematic reference effect of various images, with an attempt to restore the original imagination of the ancient ascension myth, and reconstructs the lost landscape of the ancient heaven. Both the identification and analysis of the series of attached divine objects (hornless dragon, bird dragon, chi hu [螭虎, a mythical creature with both dragon and tiger features], and fairy rabbit) center on the image of a "heavenly bear", and the effective use of inter-evidence aims at the interpretation of the phenomenon of mutual identification between gods and ancestor spirits, for the explanation to the totem belief that the bear was taken as the holy name of the Chu (kingdom) royal family, and the further revelation of the significance of knowledge innovation and expansion prospect of interdisciplinary research methods".
books.google.com.pk/books?id=ii3_EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA149&dq=bear%20in%20han%20dynasty&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwis0q_f-6aGAxWzBNsEHcxsBpcQ6AF6BAgLEAM#v=onepage&q=bear%20in%20han%20dynasty&f=false
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 11:46:54 GMT -5
"The identification process and rationale are as follows: judging from the image of a bear standing on two feet, it is not an isolated case because an image of a godly bear is relatively common in the artistic style of the Han dynasty (Ye, 2015). There is no reason to interpret the bipedal animal form as a dragon, and to confuse it with other chi long (hornless dragons) around the bear. The common standing bear images in the portraits of the Han dynasty are mostly symbols of heaven or ascension to the fairyland, and their image characteristics are obviously different from the wild bears in reality. Focusing on the image of a standing bear carved on the jade ring, its forelimbs do not need to support the body like a quadruped animal, but lift up over their shoulders which is undoubtedly imitates the unique posture of a biped. The standing bear's head turns to the right, as if paying attention to the chi long (hornless dragon) on the right. Starting from the jade ring, clockwise, one can see the first thing, that is, the long curly tail of the hornless dragon that the standing bear touched with his right foot. Looking for its body and head along the tail, one can easily see the image of a hornless dragon looking back and bend its body. The hornless dragon's head is characterized by having ears but no horn, wide mouth and its upper and lower tusks facing each other. It is easy to overlook the unapparent lower tusk, because the..."
books.google.com.pk/books?id=ii3_EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA149&dq=bear%20in%20han%20dynasty&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwis0q_f-6aGAxWzBNsEHcxsBpcQ6AF6BAgLEAM#v=onepage&q=bear%20in%20han%20dynasty&f=false
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 11:51:46 GMT -5
"image of the lower tusk is not very obvious, it is easy to be overlooked, which will lead to the misidentification of the big head of this image as the small pointed head, thus mistaking the Hornless dragon for the deer. Looking up again from the image of the hornless dragon, the foil animal on the right side of the bear, one can see a beast that embraces a plant whose body is smaller than that of the bears and the hornless dragon, and its characteristics are not obvious. Based on the fact that one long ear stretches out and partially blocks the plant it is holding, it can be preliminarily judged as the motif of the fairy rabbit holding the Ganoderma grass (immortal medicine). The length of the Ganoderma grass and the fairy grass is greater than the height of the fairy rabbit's body, making this image a bit humorous and funny. Looking up again, one can see the fourth image, another hornless dragon looking back and curling its tail. Among the five hornless dragons in the entire picture, it is the only the hornless dragon that does not open its mouth, so the fierce looks with protruding tusks cannot be seen. Looking forward, above the curling tail of the fourth image, the closed-mouthed hornless dragon, one can see another large curly tail protruding in the opposite direction. Following the tail, one can see the fifth image: still a hornless dragon, whose body is fully extended instead of being turned back. Its long tail is more than twice as long as that of the hornless dragon behind it. It crawls on a flat surface with a wide open mouth. Jade craftsmen deliberately portrays its lower jaw twice as long as its upper jaw. The upper and lower tusks are facing each other, making it very wild. Looking forward along the widely opened mouth of the hornless dragon, one can see the sixth image, a combination of a bird's head and a hornless dragon's body, with its trunk and tail hidden in the cloud, with no need or possibility to show them. Its head is like a parrot, but its beak is wide but it has no tusks, which is obviously different from other hornless dragon images. Perhaps this is a variant of chi-phoenix portrayed by the jade craftsman. Such modelling has already appeared on the jade implements of the Warring States. It can be seen that such an image of chi-phoenix is not an invention or creation of the artists of the Western Han dynasty, but inherits the modeling tradition of previous generations. Looking along the beak and front paws of the bird, one can see the seventh image, the foil image on the left side of the bear god in the center, or looking back at the hornless dragon with curly tail, the fifth hornless dragon, with his mouth open, and tusks up and down. It forms a symmetrical image in the overall composition with the hornless dragon image on the right side of the godly bear. This is also an important "internal evidence" basis for the author to identify who is the main image (bear) and who is the foil image among the seven images".
"They are all based on the myth of ascension. The images of two dragons wearing bi (ring) that appeared in a large number of patterns in the art of the Han dynasty undoubtedly have a unified mythological meaning: to reach the gate of heaven with the help of the dragon's supernatural transportation ability. Figure 6.3 is an image of the portrait brick of the Han dynasty unearthed in Xinye city, Henan Province. Based on the narrative content of the myth image, the author named it "The Scene of the Heavenly Kingdom of Two Dragons through the Jade Bi and Four Phoenixes Guarding the Central Bear God." Both this image and the decorative image of the white jade ring of the Western Han dynasty unearthed in Chaohu city are designed to highlight the supreme divinity of the heavenly bear, and both adopt a six-to- one image contrast method to highlight the supreme status of the central heavenly bear. The difference lies in the fact that the composition of the six-to-one image on the jade ring chooses five dragons and one fairy rabbit; the six-to-one image of the portrait brick image adopts the composition format of two dragons and four phoenixes guarding the godly bear. The heavenly bear in the center is also standing on two legs with arms open. In terms of the composition logic which the six-to-one image narrative follows, the cosmic space of liuhe (the world or the univers) was used to highlight the supremacy of the seventh aspect of liuhe: the central bear god. (Ye & Tian, 1997)."
Page 140:
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 11:56:56 GMT -5
In the forty-sixth year (of King Cheng's reign)... in October in winter, his son Shang Chen forced him to abdicate by surrounding him with palace guards. King Cheng asked to eat a bear's paw before being executed, but was refused. In the Chinese lunar year of Ding Wei, Cheng Wang strangled himself (Sima, 1962, pp. 1695-1699).Starting from Xiong Li, the son of Yu Xiong, until Xiong Fuchu the last king of the Chu state, during whose reign the state was destroyed by the Qin state, for nearly 800 years, the sacredness of "xiong" (bear) has been continued in the name of the Chu royal family, and has never been changed. According to the above historical data, for the ancestors of the Chu people, from cave bear to Yu Xiong, "bear" is their name, not the surname. Later, more than 40 kings of Chu took Xiong (bear) as the surname, and they had transformed the name of "Xiong" from the ancestral era into a unified royal family name. In terms of the completion of this transformation, it started with the three generations of Xiong Li, Xiong Kuang, and Xiong Yi, the son, grandson and great grandson of Yu Xiong respectively. When Xiong Yi was appointed a duke by King Cheng of the Zhou dynasty in the faraway land of Chu, Sima Qian specifically noted "surname Mi". What is puzzling is that since Sima Qian knew the surname Mi, why didn't he call Mi Li, Mi Kuang, Mi Yi, or even Mi So-and-so, but Xiong Li, Xiong Kuang, Xiong Yi, and Xiong So-and-so for the future generations? The indignant words from Xiongtong, King Wu of the Chu state, for the cultural legitimacy of the Chu state may prompt the answer to this question. His words have been quoted above: "My ancestor is Yu Xiong, the teacher of King Wen (of the Zhou dynasty)." These words actually contain superiority and sense of pride in the cultural identity of the people of the Chu state, and there is even a little bit superiority of the people of the Chu state who were named after "xiong" (bear) over Saint King Jichang (of the Zhou dynasty). The surname of the people of the Zhou state is Ji, exactly the same surname as that of the Yellow Emperor, the ancestor of China, which is extremely glorious. The people of the Chu state were considered barbarians or Chu barbarians because they were located in the south. Only by relying on the Yellow Emperor's sacred name of the Xiong clan could they surpass Ji Lian, Lu Zhong, Zhu Rong, and Zhuan Xu, and directly trace their clan lineage back to the origin of the Chinese race. This may explain why the people of the Chu state did not want to highlight their already marginalized surname "Mi", but emphasized the holy name "Xiong" (bear)."
books.google.com.pk/books?id=ii3_EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA149&dq=bear%20in%20han%20dynasty&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwis0q_f-6aGAxWzBNsEHcxsBpcQ6AF6BAgLEAM#v=onepage&q=bear%20in%20han%20dynasty&f=false
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 12:08:59 GMT -5
"Therefore, such roundabout tactics as not highlighting the surname Mi but the "Xiong" (bear) family were adopted, just because the fancy name of Xiong (bear) was from the common ancestor of Huaxia (Han Chinese) ethnic group-The Yellow Emperor."
"Since Chu people's naming strategy for cultural legitimacy couldn't exceed the ruler of the Zhou dynasty, whose surname was Ji, what they could do was use the name of the Yellow Emperor as their ancestors through the inheritance and radiation effect of the godly bear totem-the cave bear and Yu Xiong, and then the unified holy name of the royal family of the Chu state for more than forty generations over 800 years. On the one hand, Xiongtong, King Wu of the Chu state, recognized the status of barbarians of his own nation. On the other hand, he made it clear: "If you want to observe China's politics, please, the royal family, respect our name." This represented the Chu state in the realistic context of the vassal struggle for hegemony in the Eastern Zhou dynasty. The symbol strategy adopted by the state aimed to transform his barbaric identity into Chinese orthodoxy. Unfortunately, after Sima Qian's transcript, not many people in academic circles had paid attention to the secrets of Xiong (bear) as the name of Kings of the Chu stat. As far as the author can see, only Mr. Wang Guowei's brilliant disciple Jiang Liangfu, a scholar of The Songs of Chu (楚辞) has proposed a speculation about this phenomenon: for the reason of the preference of the royal family of the Chu state to the surname Mi for the "Xiong" name, it can never be explained clearly without considering totem worship (Jiang, 1984, pp. 130-131). However, there are few echoes. Discussion on this issue was still shelved and no progress has been made. I believe that the key to solving the problem lies in the integration of multiple evidences, and through the inter-evidence cultural interaction, culture of the Chu state, which bears phenomena having lasted for more than 800 years is combined with the narrative chain of the heavenly bear image, which has lasted for thousands of years. The narrative tradition (the little tradition) and the image narrative tradition (the great tradition) are connected as a whole, reconstructing a relatively complete coherent cultural text of the bear totem myth from the prehistoric period to the civilization period (Ye, 2007)."
"In addition to the bear name of kings of the Chu state, Records of the Grand Historian (史记) tells about the request of King Cheng of the Chu state to eat bear's paws before his death, which also needs attention and explanation. Because this peculiar event fits well with the "totem sacrament theory" summarized by anthropology: a person who regards a certain animal as a sacred totem shows that he is reunited with the totem by sharing the flesh or blood of the totem. Sima Qian's record of this incident is based on a brief narrative in The Commentary of Zuo: The First Year of Duke Wen (左传·文公元年): “In October in winter, King Cheng of the Chu state was surrounded by the palace guards. The king's request to eat bear's paws before death was refused and he committed suicide." The suicide of a king of the Chu state left a great repercussion in history. The reason was not the way of suicide, but the way of eating before death, hoping to combine into one with the ancestors of the bear totem of the Chu people. To understand the principle of the totem sacrament, we can cite the living primitive culture which is still preserved in the world to give vivid circumstantial evidence. That is the sacrament of the bear totem of the aboriginal Aino people in Japan. The manifestation is sometimes the same as the death expeсtation of King Cheng of the Chu state, only eating a certain part of the body of the totem."
"The Bear's brain is extracted from his head and eaten, and the skull, severed from the skin, is hung on a pole near the sacred wands (Harrison, 1913, p. 97)."
"the ancestor of the two ministers of the Jin state, and the prophetic significance of shooting the bear was to decree the destruction them. What did it mean that the spirit of the ancestor of man appeared in the heavenly court as a heavenly bear? These mythological scenes of dreams that appeared in Sima Qian's historical narratives can be proved by the account of the ancestral spirits of the late kings in heaven in The Book of Songs (诗经), from which "The Chapter of Daya Xiawu" (大雅·下武), for example, notes that "the spirits of the three former Kings were in heaven, and King Wu lived in Haojing as decreed by heaven." Mao Chuan noted that "the three kings refer to King Tai, King Ji, and King Wen." Worrying that Mao Chuan's note wasn't clear enough, Zheng Xuan added: "Soon after the death of the three kings, they ascended to heaven, their spirits remaining in heaven (Ruan, 1980, p. 525). "This shows the imaginary trump card of the myth of "The Death of a King" (Ye, 2010). "The three kings in heaven" means that the souls of the three generations of Zhou people's ancestors ascended to heaven after death, just like the so-called "spirits remaining in heaven" popular in later generations. If the statement of spirit or soul is not specific, then it is not difficult to understand that in the mythical heavenly imagination spirit or soul can be restored to a specific image or a totem. Jianzi of the Zhao state dreamed of the appearance of the ancestor spirits of the two ministers of the Jin state in the image of a bear in heaven, that is, the appearance as a totem. In the mythological narratives of northern hunting peoples, the encounter between the protagonist and the elves or totem animals often occurred in hunting situations. Jianzi's dream that the heaven god asked him to shoot the bear he saw in the heavenly kingdom needs to be explained in light of the background of the hunting myth.
Wang Chong, an atheistic thinker in the Han dynasty, held that the belief of the bear as the ancestor of man was illogical, and hence questioned Jianzi's babble after such a dreaming experience. Targeting at Wang Chong's questioning about this matter in On Balance: Absurdity(论衡·奇怪篇), Yang Kuan (2006, p. 10-11), a scholar of ancient history, put forward a counterpoint: Wang Chong believed that bears (including brown bears) were different from human beings and therefore could not be the ancestors of the two ministers of the Jin state, although the ancients did believe this. What we now regard as superstition, the ancients regarded as science; what we now regard as supernatural, the ancients regarded as practical matters. The ancients believed that man was descended from the heaven god, so the bear and the brown bear beside shangdi (Chinese god) were the ancestors of the two ministers of the Jin state.
In ancient mythology, there was such species as bears beside shangdi(上帝, Chinese god), and now The Record of the Yao Emperor (尧典) notes that the Emperors of Yao and Shun also had bears under their control, and they were the heaven god, so bears are definitely beasts. Grand Rituals: Virtues of the Five Emperors(大戴礼·五帝 德篇) claims that the Yellow Emperor "taught bears (including brown bears), yellow weasels, leopards, tigers skills to fight against the Chiyou Emperor". Accordingly, it is enough to prove that bears (including brown bears) belong to the beast in the myth, and it can also prove that the Yellow Emperor is shangdi (上帝,Chinese god)."
"people as their totem", the bear totem pedigree of the Chu state is more clear and complete, ranging from the Yellow Emperor and Zhuanxu all the way to the last King of the Chu state, Xiong Fuchu, who was destroyed by the army of the Qin state in 222 BC.
Youxiong, the Yellow Emperor-Zhuanxu-Xuexiong-Yuxiong-Xiong Li- Xiong Kuang-Xiong Yi-Xiong Ai... Xiong Fuchu
To sum up the above discussion, in the ancient Chinese imagination of the kingdom of heaven, there are ancestral spirits in the image of godly bear totem. This is the belief background for our interpreting the image of the five hornless dragons surrounding the heavenly bear on the jade ring. There is a logical relationship between the image of the bear god in the heaven and the bear totem ancestors of the people of the Chu state: in the case of offering sacrifices to heaven and ancestors, the heaven god and totem ancestors are separated; in the case of simply offering sacrifices to the ancestors, totem ancestors are gods or the heaven god. This is the mystery of the "heavenly bear" as the beginning of the creation myth of the Chu state.
Liu Xin's Ode to Sweet Spring Palace (甘泉宫赋) (Fei, 1993, p. 237)in the Han dynasty portrayed the scenery of the heavenly kingdom: "I soared like a phoenix into the gate of heaven and tiptoed through the bright court of the Yellow Emperor" The mythological message revealed in the sentence is: the common ancestor of Huaxia (Han Chinese) ethnic group, the Yellow Emperor, is waiting for his descendants for reunion in the heaven. Could there be a more desirably ideal place to go after death than this? The Yellow Emperor was called Youxiong in the memory of Huaxia (Han Chinese) ethnic group, and the country founded by the Yellow Emperor was called Youxiong state. The names recorded in Historical Records (史记) by Sima Qian vaguely reveal the truth of the sacred bear symbol taken as the totem by the Yellow Emperor. Looking at it this way, one may find why the godly bear (heavenly bear) appeared again and again in the ancestor's imagination of the scene of the kingdom of heaven. More importantly, the reason why the godly bear was repeatedly appointed as the main god in the center of the kingdom of heaven, that is, as the heaven god, is explained intuitively with reference to the celestial scene of the Chu culture narrated in the image of the white jade ring."
books.google.com.pk/books?id=ii3_EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA149&dq=bear%20in%20han%20dynasty&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwis0q_f-6aGAxWzBNsEHcxsBpcQ6AF6BAgLEAM#v=onepage&q=bear%20in%20han%20dynasty&f=false
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 12:15:43 GMT -5
The image of the heaven godly bear on the carriage plate ornaments of the Tomb of the King Liang of the Western Han dynasty in Mangdang Mountain, Yongcheng city, Henan Province (quoted from The Cemetery of the King Liang of the Western Han Dynasty in Mangdang Mountain, edited by Yan Genqi)
"portrait brick and so on. There are several common ways of expression, such as the independent appearance of the bear god, accompanied by other types of mythical animals; the appearance of pairs of two bears; and the group performance of three bears and even four bears. The jade ring of Tomb 1 of the Han dynasty in Beishantou village, Chaohu city, Anhui Province is the first kind of representation: the indepen- dent bear god, surrounded by five hornless dragons and a fairy rabbit, who hugs a giant Ganoderma-grass-like plant. There are a total of seven images of beasts. The heavenly bear is located in the center of the kingdom of heaven, which corresponds to the situation of the two dragons and four phoenixes guarding the central bear god on the bricks of the Han dynasty in Fig. 6.3.
As the fourth-dimension evidence of the newly unearthed images, it has a rich and diverse form of expression, with a huge space for interpretation. Among the cultural relics of the Han dynasty that, in space, are closer to those of the Chu culture, there are also gold and bronze objects that can also be listed, such as the image of the godly bear biting the prey on the gold belt buckle unearthed from the Tomb of the King of the Chu state of the Western Han dynasty in the Lion Mountain of Xuzhou city, Jiangshu Province, the image of the heavenly bear on the carriage plate ornament of the Tomb of King Liang of the Western Han dynasty in Mangdang Mountain (Fig. 6.4), the gilt bronze bear-shaped ceremonial roof of the Tomb of King Liang of the Western Han dynasty in Mangdang Mountain (Fig. 6.5), etc. These precious image materials are all from the top cultural relics of the king-level tombs, which can be contrasted and interpreted with the jade images of the Tomb 1 of the Western Han dynasty in Beishantou village, Chaohu city, Anhui Province. The following is a brief explanation of the images of two metal carriage plate ornaments from the tomb of King Liang of the Western Han dynasty in Mangdang Mountain.
"The second to fifth types of cultural relics of carriages and horses with the image of godly bears are all from Burial Pit 1 of Tomb 2 (the tomb of Empress Dowager Li) on Baoan Mountain. Hereby enumerate the following:
The second type is gilt copper bulbs, with a total of 911 pieces into 4 types. "For the first type, there are 12 pieces in spherical shape with ten cast with the image of a bear on the sphere. The bear's head and four claws are clearly visible, but the body is invisible with two parallel beams behind. It is marked specimen BM2K1: 690, diameter 3.45, height 1 Cm. On the spherical surface of the other two is cast the image of a sheep with a curved foot, and a beam on the back is used for connection,
and they are marked specimen BM2K1: 700, diameter 2.4, height 0.7 cm. (p. 58)". The third type is copper gilt jieyue (节约,a cube-shaped hollow device for connecting horse bridles), totaling 5 pieces. "They were shaped like a sphere, and the image of a squatting bear is cast on the sphere. The bear's head and four claws are visible, and the body is invisible. The four ring buttons on the back are arranged in two horizontal and two vertical positions, and they form a square. Specimen BM2KI: 1601, 4.2 cm in diameter."
The fourth type is one of the 4 sorts of 408 silver neck junctions. "I-shape, 6 pieces, silver quality, with a raised invisible bear shape on the front and a plain back (p. 55)."
The fifth is the only two gold-gilt copper baton tops. The archaeological report stated: "It is gold-gilt copper in quality, spherical in shape, hollow inside, and flat at the bottom. Specimen BN2K1: 1753, the image of a bear is embossed on the spherical surface, with its head and limbs visible, while the body is invisible. The sides are decorated with cloudy moiré patterns. The top of the bear's head and the bottom of the lower limbs are symmetrically opened with rectangular holes on the sides to penetrate the pins. There is a stick under the flat bottom. (pp. 64-65)".
The above 5 types of godly bears, put together, can be regarded as a representation mode that symbolizes the myth of heaven. The material carrier is gold-gilt copper or silver, both of which are sacred materials monopolized by the ruling class, and are also the object of metal worship formed after the worship of jade. The meaning of respect and dignity is self-evident. The purpose of the ceremonial baton is similar to that of a scepter, symbolizing power and the authority of God. The gold baton set unearthed at the Sanxingdui site in Guanghan city, Sichuan Province, is a unique case in China. The gold-gilt copper baton top of the Western Han dynasty is also rare among the unearthed objects. Why is the image of a bear preferred as a top ornament? It goes without saying that the top of the baton points directly to the sky, and the image of the heavenly bear is used to decorate the baton top, which contains..."
"Based on the images of cultural relics in the museums visited during the author's investigation in northwest China as well as image materials unearthed in recent years, this chapter aims to further reveal the mythological figures and origins of and faiths in owls and bears in the prehistoric great tradition. The mutual interpretation of the evidence interrelation is also employed to reconstruct the myth view of the heavenly bear in the Han dynasty. The images are divided into six categories to analyze, in terms of their functions: the first is the image of the heavenly bear occupying the central position in the celestial city, which is comparable to the heaven god or the Polaris (Taiyi); the second is the three-bear-foot shape commonly seen in the artifacts of the Han dynasty, implying that the godly bear is so strong that it can be accessible to three realms of gods, humans and ghosts without any limit; the third is female bears' image symbolizing fertility and life regeneration, thus highlighting the characteristics of female reproduction; the fourth includes the single bear, double bears or multiple bears that symbolize the immortality of the gods; the fifth is the beast god representing the nomadic culture of the grassland; the sixth is the image of fangxiangshi (fortune-tellers who play the role of exorcising evil and ghosts).
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 16:37:04 GMT -5
Fig. 4.20 The stone bear of Xinglongwa Culture, unearthed in Linxi, Inner Mongolia, approximately 8,000 years ago Fig. 4.21 A bear jaw unearthed in the Goddess Temple in Niuheliang "In Linxi, except for the stone relief goddesses, people found stone bears (see Fig. 4.20).""Although the bear is big, its sleeping pattern throughout the year makes people think that it can revive after death. Therefore, it has enormous energy. So the character of the bear (“熊”) is based on “能” (energy), meaning the energy of life that can repair itself and revive after death. The Xinglongwa culture of Linxi shows that people were growing millet 8,000 years ago, and they worshiped goddess and bear. So it is not strange that a bear skull was unearthed from the 5,000-year-old Niuheliang Goddess Temple (see Fig. 4.21). The Niuheliang Goddess temple contains both the goddess and the bear." (p.93-95)"How to explain Youxiong in the sky? If you are familiar with Greek mythology, you will know that the Little Dipper is part of the mythological system. It looks like a bear cub after you connecting several stars. Together with the Big Dipper, they are both in our childhood imagination. So did people in ancient times. They thought of the stars as gods in the appearance of bears. So on earth, bears were imagined to be gods descending to the world. That is the second tier of evidence, which is more effective than the first tier. One article in the Chu Silk Manuscript 楚帛书 unearthed in Changsha is on China’s Genesis. After the sky was separated from the earth, the earliest characters came out were “heavenly bear”. Some people say it is “big bear”. The bear is the archetype of the ancestor we found. How to understand the heavenly bear? We have to look into the third tier of evidence, culture preserved by word of mouth. It contains the cultural memory that remains unchanged over thousands of years, from which we can seek evidence. The third tier of evidence contains the oral and intangible cultural heritage. The Hezhe people and Oroqen people in north China have mythologies in which the bear was their ancestral totem. The bear is usually related to the gods or is the avatar of a god. These legends sound like mythologies, but are remnants of the heavenly bear culture in the prehistoric age. As is known to all, the hunting age predates the agricultural age. The hunting people’s mythology is the most original and the oldest mythology. From the manifestation of heavenly gods in the culture of the ethnic minority group, we can understand how the idea of heavenly bear originated. Five thousand years ago, Asia and Americas were not separated by the Bering Strait yet but were connected. The American Indians’ ancestors arrived in the Americas from here. Their second most important totem was the bear. The American Indian sorcerer’s sacrifice costume (see Fig. 4.8) was covered by the bear pattern, which means the heavenly bear descended to the earth. All the positive energy is shown through clothing." (p.85)books.google.com.pk/books?id=fSbsDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA55&dq=bear%20totem%20in%20chu&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 16:45:52 GMT -5
A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization by Shuxian Ye is a great book exploring and explaining the keys features and origin of the Ancient Chinese civilization. Already, earlier we have seen various praiseworthy texts from this book explaining the symbolic and old bear totem in ancient Chinese. The contribution of this book to this thread's informative constitution is beyond words. In order to know more about the Bear cult in China, I am thoroughly showing text in context to bear from this great masterpiece by prof. Shuxian Ye. Some details of the book:. "A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization is both a comprehensive summary of Shuxian Ye’s research efforts in the project of “Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization” and a captivating work of scholarship about the prehistoric Chinese civilisation, specifically between the Neolithic age and the formation of the Early State.
Traditional Chinese studies had long been grounded on Confucian classics and the humanities before the rise of the School of Doubting Antiquity in the early 1900s. Since then, the debates on “doubting the ancient” and “interpreting the ancient” have dominated modern studies of prehistoric China. Reconciling these two approaches, Ye integrates mythological and archaeological paradigms to re-assess and interpret archaeological findings and textual myths in the context of literary anthropology, in order to “reconstruct 8000 years of Chinese mythistory” (480)."www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02560046.2023.2215281Page count:511 Published:August 26, 2022 Format:ebook Publisher:Springer Nature Singapore Language:English Author:Shuxian Ye Translators:Hui Jia, Jing Hua
Note: The page numbers are according to EPUB.
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 21:16:00 GMT -5
"Among recently discovered archaeological materials there were a large number of images of bear and owl deities, a religious tradition that was existed in the Xia and Shang Dynasties but gradually faded out over the course of the Western Zhou Dynasty. In order to demonstrate the decline of bear, dragon, owl and phoenix worship, one must connect and utilise numerous pieces of evidence available to us. Archaeological findings clearly demonstrate that owl worship preceded phoenix worship." (p.263)"Taking the puzzle of the clan name “Youxiong” as an example, the sacred nature of the bear and the ritual activity of offering sacrifices to bear deities can still be found among ethnic (predominantly hunter) groups in the north, such as the Oroqen, Ewenki, and Hezhe peoples. In the Nuo rituals recorded in The Rites of Zhou, the palm of Fang Xiangshi, a Chinese ritual exorcist, is covered with a bear’s skin. Does this obscure detail have its origins in the rites of the Yellow Emperor? Answering this question relies on looking to what is known about the big tradition. The Goddess Temple in Niuheliang, Jianping, Liaoning Province, discovered in the 1980s, is a religious building site of the Hongshan culture, who built it around than 5000 years ago (Fig.4.2). Along with the statue of the goddess, skulls of real bears and clay sculptures of bears were also discovered. One may categorize these unearthed cultural relics and images as the fourth type of evidence. This evidence demonstrates that the ancient inhabitants of north China did worship the bear god 5000 years ago, perhaps even regarding the bear god as ancestrally tied to them, spiritually connected to their people (in other words, their “totem”) The legends of Fuxi named “Huangxiong” from 5000 years ago, the Yellow Emperor’s clan name being “Youxiong”, and the motif of “transforming into bear” in the myth of sage kings such as Gun and Yu from 4000 years ago are not literary creations based on the whims of later generations, but the surviving fragments of a vague memory of the big tradition passed down in myth and legend." (p.324-25)"Anthropologists have drawn up a history of the evolution of the myth of the bear god from prehistoric times to the era of early civilization based on the existing bear worship practices and rituals of existing hunting nations (Ye 2007a). This is a level of understanding of the big tradition that Confucius and Sima Qian could never have imagined possible." (p.330)"Today’s scholars can thus finally realize the connection between the rise of the dragon and phoenix myths in the small tradition, and the loss of bear and owl worship in the big tradition" (p.361)"The emergence of C-shaped jade objects embodies the process. It is not strange in mythology to see fertilized eggs turning into the fetus, the fetus into a bear, the bear into a person, a person into a bear, and a bear into a dragon. Freed from the shackles of rational thinking, it is easy to see the law of the mythological world is the law of metamorphosis. Lin’s views above coincide with those of Chinese scholars, whereby the dragon image can be derived from the image of the fetus. This is evidenced to some degree by the animal-shaped jades of the Hongshan culture such as the pupa-shaped jade and small bear-shaped jade excavated from Zelimu Meng, Inner Mongolia. The latter depicts a bear’s head and a pupa’s body, which may simulate the embryonic bear (Sun 1998, 107). The bear skulls and bear statues unearthed from the Niuheliang Temple of a Goddess in the Hongshan culture indicate that the bear totem culture in northeast Asia has profound historical roots. The creation myth of Korea, the Tangun myth, is also a standard bear totem narrative, which extends the mythological symbolism of rising from the dead (drawing on interpretations of the bear’s hibernation in the winter and summer as an archetype) to the political myth that imperial power was endowed by gods (“bear man” in Japanese mythology). The image of Ungnyeo (웅녀 / 熊女, bear woman) and mother of Tangun embodies the tradition that the Stone Age bear god was understood to be female. This corresponds to the bear mother model in Europe (Gimbutas 1989, 116–117), and to the bear bone fragments and jade carvings of the “bear dragon” unearthed from the Niuheliang Goddess Temple of the Chinese Hongshan culture (Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology 1997, 82) (Fig. 7.1)." (p.718,19,20)Image of a jade bear of Hongshan culture. Bear is in a sitting position with front and hind legs folded together. A hole can be seen in the neck area. Fig. 7.1 (This picture has been posted earlier but again is for another view) "Today, evidence indicates that there are multiple sources for the dragon’s image. The jade dragon fetus, that is, the penannular-shaped jade dragon and C-shaped dragon of the Hongshan culture suggests the dragon’s head and body are very likely to be derived from conceptions of the bear and the snake." (p.725)
"Evidence for it being the former seems to be more plausible, since real bear skulls and clay bear claws have also been found in the temple (Ye 2007a). The name “jade pig-dragon” has also been corrected to “jade bear-dragon” by Guo Dashun, the discoverer of the artefact. When referring to the broader archaeological background of prehistorical Eurasia, one finds that both the snake and bear were the main symbols for belief in goddesses in the Neolithic Age. Meanwhile, snake goddesses and bear goddesses have been discussed respectively in Chaps. 14 and 15 of the book The Language of the Goddess, by Gimbutas. A common feature of both creatures is periodic hibernation, which is associated with the resurrection of supernatural power." (p.936)
www.google.com.pk/books/edition/A_Mythological_Approach_to_Exploring_the/IoCFEAAAQBAJ?hl=en
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 21:23:41 GMT -5
"The dragons that appeared in preQin documents are often featured going up to heaven and down into water, acting as a mediator or carrier between heaven or gods and man. Qu Yuan once asked in his poem “Questions to Heaven”, “Where are hornless dragons with bears on their backs, which themselves amuse?” (2006, 67). This question may be answered by citing the myth in which the Yellow Emperor, also named Youxiong, rode dragons to heaven." (p.1032)"The written documents about the two emperors date back no further than 2000 years; but the non-written archaeological materials, especially newly excavated image narratives of the jade bear and jade huang, were created earlier than any Chinese ancient written classics, even earlier in fact than the oracle bone inscriptions." (p.1053)"If the divine sign of the Youxiong State was xiong (熊, the bear), one might compare it to the simplified Chinese character 国 (guo, kingdom), structured by玉 (jade) in the middle. This could be a manifestation of recognizing jade culture once again in the modern era, revealing a core value of Chinese culture. The image of the deity bear, preserving substantial cultural memories of the time when Sima Qian lived, was commonly depicted in the jade carvings and stone reliefs of the Han Dynasty. From then on, however, it gradually disappeared and finally faded from Chinese people’s minds. In 1980 a mysterious jade object, a three-hole jade with double bear heads, unearthed in Tomb 2 of Locality 16 at the Niuheliang site, intrigued the academic community. This evidence suggested a connection between the deity bear and jade myths. Discussions of ancient mythological beliefs rooted in physical evidence such as the deity bear figurines carved in jade are much more concrete than those referring only to the inherited literature. Vehicles appeared in the ancient cultures of West Asia about 5000 years ago, the late Neolithic age, but not in East Asia. Therefore, the origin of the name Xuanyuan, related in its meaning to vehicles, presupposes the actual use of vehicles. This means that the name Xuanyuan appeared later than the name Youxiong. Archaeological reports reveal that the earliest vehicle rut in China was found at the Erlitou site, Yanshi, Henan, and is about 3700 years old, while the unearthed bear skulls and clay sculptures in the Niuheliang Goddess Temple are 5500 years old. This comparison serves as evidence that the mythological imagination of the deity bear appeared in China much earlier than that of the sacred vehicle to heaven (xuanyuan). There is no need to rush to propose farfetched theories based on insufficient evidence. In terms of the semimythical history of the Yellow Emperor, the popular approach is to narrow the scope of research to a specific regional culture. For instance, it is believed that the Yellow Emperor culturally belongs to the Yangshao culture of the Central Plain, the Longshan culture of the Central Plain or the Hongshan culture in the north. However, such simple answers must be taken with a pinch of salt, in that it may be preferable to gain an overall understanding with a wider scope than to a rush to eitheror judgments. Of all the fresh materials, The Silk Book of Chu (Chu Bo Shu, 楚帛书), created in the Warring States Period and unearthed in Zi-danku, Changshan, is the first example of written material that puts forward the concept of “tian/da xiong (天(大)熊, heavenly/big bear)” during the pre-Qin period, and this serves as a sufficient reference with which to investigate the origin of the Yellow Emperor’s names." (p.1081,82,83,84)"The bear, meanwhile, is the most important animal in Shamanistic arts. The main function of the bear is to embody the concept of “life transformation” in Shamanism. The combination of man and bear was a major theme. “Representations of bears vary from naturalistic depictions of the entire animal, the head or the skull, to realistic portrayals of an animal in a “flying” posture with incised designs representing the skeleton, to extremely abstracted representations of this “flying” form” (Sutherland 2001, 138). Sutherland also analysed the Shamanistic theme represented by the sculptures of human-animal combinations: the transformation between humans and animals. This knowledge provides a background to prehistoric beliefs through examining the human-animal images as they appear in primitive artistic form. The mythical image of the feixiong (flying bear) shares exactly the premise as the idea of the tianxiong (heavenly bear)." (p.1087-88)"The mythological scene on a Han Dynasty stone relief depicts how Fuxi and Nüwa, with a human head and a body of snake, become entangled with each other by their tails. The dancing Youxiong is situated above the centre in the sky, and thus, this humanoid deity bear is a heavenly bear. The Han Dynasty Shenxiong-shaped pot excavated in Hua County, Shanxi Province (Fig. 11.1) shows a bear moulded into the shape of “sages clasping to primal unity”. These images relate to the mythological symbolism of Youxiong in a direct or indirect fashion. These may be counted as the fourth type of evidence in the discussion below." (p.1091)A photograph depicts a pottery pot of the western Han dynasty, unearthed from Hua County Shanxi province. Fig. 11.1 A bear-shaped pottery pot of the Western Han Dynasty www.google.com.pk/books/edition/A_Mythological_Approach_to_Exploring_the/IoCFEAAAQBAJ?hl=en
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 21:27:00 GMT -5
"In bamboo documents of the Warring State Period, the character熊 (xiong) is considered to be a mythic image, such as the “flying bear” and “eagle bear” in the ancient arts, examples of which can be found from excavated objects like the eagleheaded bear marble sculpture unearthed from No.1001 Tomb in the Yin Ruins at Houjiazhuang (Su 1984) and the flying bear-shaped crystal vase of the Western Han Dynasty used for fending off evil (Gu 2005). The expression “neng deficiency and neng surplus” (能缺能盈) or “yi deficiency and yi surplus” (一缺一 盈) emphasizes how the bear’s annual cyclic activity is in line with changing seasons. From the perspective of mythological thinking, people worshiped bears because they were considered deities or immortals that could revive from death; meanwhile, humans sought to imitate the bear’s seasonal work and rest cycle, according to the principles of bionics. For instance, the ancestral state of the Chu people was called Xiongying (熊 盈, bear surplus). Through the lines “I am the descendant of Zhuanxu” from Qu Yuan’s “Lisao”, it is known that the Chu people regarded Zhuanxu as their ancestor, the offspring of Youxiong, and the Yellow Emperor. Thus, it may be concluded that the state of Xiongying and the state of Youxiong are of the same origin. This in turn makes it easier to solve the question of why more than twenty emperors of Chu adopted names related to the bear. Those who have read The Classic of Mountains and Seas must feel it is natural to connect it to the myth of the bear mountains and lairs. It is said that bear caves close in winter and open in summer, in which time deities frequently appear, in accordance with the understanding that the deity bear dies during hibernation and revives in spring and summer in a cyclic manner. Also, the correspondence between “xiong” (bear) and “yi” (one) in these myths exposes the fact that as the source of all things in two different types of creation myths, “taiyi or dayi” and “daxiong or tianxiong” are almost synonymous. As thought developed from the concrete to the abstract, the creation myth of “Tianxiong at the beginning” may be prior to that of Taiyi producing water." (p.1112, 13, 14, 15)
"What now needs to be added is that the myth in which the sun is the creator and the myth that regards the deity bear as the creator actually correspond with each other metaphorically. The cycle of the bear’s hibernation and awakening is in line with that of the sun’s yearly path. From the perspective of mythological imagery, while the sun is born from dark chaos, the deity bear is actually the personified image of chaos, or perhaps even existed before chaos, the archetype of which can be found in the inherited literature Penetration into the Hexagram Qian and the excavated literature The Silk Book of Chu." (p.1122)
"According to Chen (2005, 232), the ancient peoples of the Central Plain regarded the heavenly centre stone as a symbol to define the centre of the earth and its connection with heaven, as well as seeing it as a cultural item which embodied respect for the centre and the worship of heaven. The widespread belief and myths about the heavenly centre stone in the original land of the Youxiong State offer a general explanation for the events recorded in Rong Cheng Shi by which Yu (the founder of the Xia Dynasty) established the central bear flag, as well as the phenomenon by which the bear is always placed in central position in archaeological images. This helps to explain the various unsolved cultural phenomena in primitive times by which Xiong (bear) was honoured as sacred name, such as Youxiong, Daxiong, Xuexiong, Xiongyin and Xionghu." (p.1142-43)
www.google.com.pk/books/edition/A_Mythological_Approach_to_Exploring_the/IoCFEAAAQBAJ?hl=en
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 23:20:24 GMT -5
"Later, this author noticed that images of bears and red birds stand opposite one another on many cultural relics. In addition to the familiar four-deity system—eastern blue dragon, western white tiger, southern red bird and northern black tortoise, is there an example of a deity bear image from before the popularization of the “red bird in the north” image on cultural relics of the Han Dynasty? A pair of bronze objects unearthed from the tomb of Prince Liu Sheng of the Western Han Dynasty in Mancheng, Hebei Province, present a marvellous composition of a bear standing on a bird (Fig. 11.2). In contrast, a pedestal excavated at the site of the Guangming beverage factory in Jinghe industrial park, Shaanxi Province, demonstrates another unique composition: a tortoise with a bird perching on its back." (p.1145)A photograph depicts two bronzes bear shaped treading on a bird unearthed from a tomb of Han dynasty Mancheng, Hebei province. Fig. 11.2 Bronzes in the shape of bear treading on a bird unearthed from a tomb of the Han Dynasty, Mancheng, Hebei Province. Photographed at the Hebei Museum"When comparing the two images, it is clear that the deity bear and the tortoise hold a somewhat interchangeable role. That is to say that the bear once served as the symbol of the North before the worship of the red bird came into existence. But why would bears be the only beings to have such a connection with the North? This fact can largely be attributed to the myths of astronomy and astrology that existed at that time."
"The deity bear is thus symbolically located in the position of the Big Dipper, also known as the star of the emperor. In ancient myths, the bear variably occupies both the central northern position, corresponding to the red bird. Yet the symbolism of the bear in the central position is not clear. Moreover, some Han Dynasty stone reliefs display the image of the deity bear and a cypress, which together are regarded as a symbol of vitality. As told in the Chu bamboo book Rong Cheng Shi (容成氏), Yu set up the system of five directional flags, in which the sun, moon, snake and bird represented the four directions of east, west, south and north respectively, surrounding and protecting the deity bear, represented in the central flag, like the stars rotating around the Big Dipper."
"A stone lintel relief of a Han Dynasty tomb unearthed at Dabaodang, Shenmu, Shaanxi Province. Photographed at the Yulin Museum Figure 11.4 shows the model of the chariot of the emperor, represented by the Big Dipper in the stone relief of the Han Dynasty. The four stars at the head of the dipper symbolise the carriage of the chariot, while the three stars that form the handle represent the shafts. On the chariot sits the Emperor of the Central Heaven, who is surrounded by divine birds." A photograph depicts a chariot of the emperor represented by the Big Dipper based on stone relief carving of the Han dynasty."Figure 11.5 displays the mysterious chariot-shaped bronze excavated from the tomb of Qing Shi Huang’s ancestors in Lixian, Gansu Province. There is no appropriate explanation for its shape and usage. If it is to be believed that the Qin people are the descendants of Zhuanxu, they must also be descendants of the Yellow Emperor. Li Xuanbo argued that the name of the Qin people should be interchangeable with “xiong”. Their ancestors were conferred the land of Qin for their contributions to horse-breeding on the western frontier. The bronze carriages used in ancient times, which were used as sacrificial vessels of symbolic significance in ancient myths, are different from the practical carriages excavated alongside the terracotta army of Qin Shi Huang. The bronze carriages surrounded by four birds and four tigers may symbolise the chariot of the emperor, while the deity bear in the top centre embodies the totemic memory of the ancestors Zhuanxu and the Yellow Emperor, both of the Youxiong clan."www.google.com.pk/books/edition/A_Mythological_Approach_to_Exploring_the/IoCFEAAAQBAJ?hl=en
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 23:24:59 GMT -5
"Therefore, it is reasonable to suppose that the three-hole jades, more complicated in design to imitate the colorful mythical imagination, acted as symbols for traversing the earth, the heavens and the human world. The image of double bear heads symbolises Tianxiong’s divine power of being able to travel between heaven and earth. Every hole forms a ring standing for the rainbow bridge between heaven and earth on top, joining the hidden symmetrical bridge underneath. Unlike semi-circular jade huang, these mythical images find parallels in Indian myths—copper rings (bracelet) and copper bears." (p.1157-58)"Guo Dashun, Gu Fang and other scholars appraised the three-hole jade with double bear heads in terms of the process used in crafting it, acknowledging its uniqueness among all the jades—the bear heads are engraved with the most difficult round jade-carving technique. Jades of the Hongshan culture are rarely carved in this way, so it is obvious that Hongshan people valued and were familiar with the carvings of bears, reflecting the tradition of offering sacrifices to bears in their culture. Hongshan shamans put bear-dragon jade carvings on their clothes to increase their supernatural power through the deity bear’s resolution, courage and invincibility. (Gu 2006, 374) (p.1159)"The combined use of ring and bear imagery should be interpreted as making clear that the creature depicted is a god from heaven rather than a beast in the forest. Or else, according to the nomenclature in the Silk Book of Chu and the Nihongi, it is directly called “Tianxiong”. Therefore, an elementary understanding of the mythical background of “Youxiong” worship in the time of the Yellow Emperor, dating to 5000 years ago, has been achieved. It is not hard to understand why the name Youxiong appeared before Xuanyuan." (p.1161)"In order to reaffirm the symbols of Chinese cultural industry, one needs to restore the truth of the heavenly bear myth behind the Yellow Emperor’s clan name Youxiong, and to re-establish the deity bear as an iconic symbol of Chinese civilization (Fig. 11.7)." (p.1165-66)".Photograph depicts a bronze chariot ornament with heavenly bear motif of the western han dynasty, unearthed from Han tomb of the king of Jiangdu at Dayunshan, Xuyi county, Jiangsu province. Fig. 11.7 Heavenly bear motif of the Western Han Dynasty: A bronze chariot ornament unearthed from the Han tomb of the King of Jiangdu at Dayunshan, Xuyi County, Jiangsu Province. Photographed at the Nanjing Museum "As symbols of resurrection, the concept of the dragon and the bear are a mythological heritage from the prehistoric Stone Age. Transformation into a bear or a dragon can also be understood as a symbolic expression of mythological parthenogenesis." (p.1263)
www.google.com.pk/books/edition/A_Mythological_Approach_to_Exploring_the/IoCFEAAAQBAJ?hl=en
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 23:32:08 GMT -5
"Chinese Dictionary: The ancient flags had bear and tiger images. As written in The Rites of Zhou, “Bear and tiger images are painted on flags. And Shidu makes flags”. Zheng Xuan explains: “Shidu is the official in charge of six townships and six counties. Those who can paint bears or tigers will get paid. Bears and tigers symbolise valour and vigour, which can frighten away enemies.” The given purpose of frightening away enemies with bear and tiger images may be too superficial. These two fierce animals represent a profound totem (ancestral spirit) worship tradition. Chu states, during the transition from the Shang to the Zhou Dynasty, were often called “Tiger states” or “Bear states”. Their 25 generations of rulers used “bear” in their state titles. As the ancient tradition of bear and tiger flags had profound prehistoric religious and mythological significance, the use of such flags by those states was logical. Moreover, these animal symbols in flags would be passed down over 4000 or 5000 years, from Yu’s central bear flag to the dragon flag, dragon robe, dragon throne and dragon bed of the Qing emperors. As for the question of which came first, the bear or the dragon, there is other evidence to consider. The genealogy provided in the Annals of Chu by Sima Qian tells states that the ancestors of the Chu State, also the descendants of the Yellow Emperor, came from “bear caves”. The unearthed Chu bamboo books in Baoshan depict religious rites 能祷 (nengdao). The Chinese character 能 (neng) is the original form of 熊 (xiong, bear). The religious rites of the Chu state correspond to its earlier title “Bear State”. The reason why the bear was used as a symbol in the central flag is clear from the story of Yu setting flags recorded in Chu bamboo books. The origins of flags as classifiers are closely connected to their function within the framework of ancestral spirit worship." (p.1288-90)
"From the Yellow Emperor to Yu and from the Xia Dynasty to the Chu State, the continuous heritage of the bear-deity symbol from the prehistoric era is evident. A systematic analysis of the bamboo book Rong Cheng Shi not only allows one to better understand the legend of Yu, but also enhances the credibility of the Yellow Emperor legends. During the Xia era ruled by Yu, the derogatory terms for people in the four directions bordering ancient China, invented in the context of Huaxia centralism, e.g. man (蛮), yi (夷), rong (戎) and di (狄), did not yet exist. However, the symbol system of five directional flags including the two celestial bodies (sun and moon), and three animals (snakes, birds, and bears) points to an early form of the “four barbarians” view of the neighbouring states. For example, the snake symbolises the south, which corresponds to etymological rules for the proper names for the south such as man (蛮), shu (蜀) and min (闽), which view snakes as long worms. There is a worm (虫) component in each name. The dragon, which does not exist in reality, is a composite of the bear on the ground, the bird in the sky, and amphibians in water. The features of a bear’s head, a snake’s body and an owl’s claws can still be clearly seen in later images of the divine dragon, which can fly in the sky, swim in water and walk on land. The metamorphosis of the bear, snake and bird in The Tales of the Marvellous helps explain the origins of the dragon’s abilities. The Yellow Emperor’s name, Youxiong, the myth motif of Gun and his son transforming into a bear, and the bear titles of 25 Chu states reveal elements of the ancient totem heritage and culture which was almost lost in transition to agricultural civilization. Thus, one has reason to suspect that the original sacred symbol of Chinese civilization was a real beast, the bear, rather than a fictive creature, the dragon (Fig. 13.2)." (p.1292,93,94)
"The bear-god images commonly found on stone reliefs in Nangyang, Xuchang, Xuzhou and Linqin are not the original inventions of Han artists, but are inherited from the central bear-god totem culture that had existed since the Yellow Emperor. After the Han Dynasty, images of the bear totem gradually disappeared, and the profound totem ideas rooted in prehistoric society were slowly forgotten as China became an agricultural civilization. The jade bear carvings handed down over generations still retain elements of the cultural memory of the prehistoric big tradition." (p.1297)
"The fourth type of evidence refers to unearthed archaeological objects and the images they bear. Bear-god images, confirmed by western archaeology, in Eurasia date back 8000 to 10,000 years (Gimbutas 1999, 13). Although the inherited literature points to the Xia Dynasty and the Yellow Emperor’s reign as the origins of the bear totem, this does not prove that the East Asian bear totem tradition only began at this time. Recent archaeological discoveries direct attention to more distant prehistoric times for the origins of the bear totem in East Asia. In the 1980s, bear skulls and clay bear heads and claws were unearthed in the Niuheliang Goddess Temple in Jianping County in the province of Liaoning. Since then, the fact that the ancestors of the Hongshan culture (5000 or 6000 years ago) worshiped a bear god became known to the world. In 2006, this author identified earlier bear-shaped stone carvings of Xinglongwa in Linxi County Museum of Inner Mongolia. In the meantime, goddess statues, dating back about 7800 years, have been unearthed as well (Ye 2007a). This corresponds fully with the prehistoric goddess religion discovered by archaeologists of the European Neolithic period. That is, the bear is an incarnation, or animal symbol, of the goddess. Compiled by the Archaeological Institute of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the book Baiyin Changhan (2004, 308) also highlights an unearthed bear-shaped stone carving from the same period: “It is round, having short ears and an erect body posture, two small round pits representing two eyes, and a mouth protruding forward. It has a height of 2.7 cm and a diameter of 1.5 cm.” From bear-shaped stones in the Xinglongwa culture to clay bear-god carvings in the Goddess Temple of the Hongshan culture, all the way through to bearshaped carved idols of shell in the lower Xiajiadian culture, the making of bear totem idols was a tradition that stretched and developed into the artistic modelling of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, in which the image of jade bear production became separated from the original totem worship and survived until the jade industry of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty (1736–1795). Though certainly smaller, jade production is still handed down over generations to this day. The excavators of the Niulianghe relics, Sun Shoudao and Guo Dashun, wrote that the Hongshan culture, dating back at least 5000 years, worshiped bears and that the dragon images on jade carvings unearthed in the Niuheliang stone tomb are actually bear-dragons. Research into the legendary Five Emperors era should be linked to the cult objects discovered from the Hongshan culture (Guo 2005, 207). By connecting jade sculpture to jade dragons unearthed from the Fu Hao ruins in Anyang, this author has already found how the beardragon entered Chinese history from the Xinglongwa and Hongshan cultures, and identified its relationship with Shang and Zhou bronze beast face patterns and taotie (a mythical beast) patterns (Ye 2006b)". (p.1305-08)
"The system of worshipping icons like bears, dragons and owls gradually became a profound tradition during the four thousand years from the Xinglongwa to Hongshan, and then into the Erlitou and Yin-Shang cultures, which together can be called the “owl-bear” period." (p.1368)
"Moreover, some other objects from Tomb 1001 also have owl-like images. One is called a “vertical marble sculpture of an animal with a bird’s beak” (No. R007503). It is a mythical image combining an owl’s head and a bear’s body and can be regarded as the origin of the eaglebear jade sculptures the later ages." (p.1585)
"In the 1980s, the site of a goddess temple built 5500 years ago was excavated in Niuheliang, Jianping County, Liaoning Province. In the temple, remnant clay sculptures of bears and birds of prey were discovered as well as goddess statues. This presents a similar prehistoric symbolic system of goddesses and animals as proposed by M. Gimbutas, supporting the prehistoric “bear goddess” and “bird goddess” theories in detail." (p.1627)
"Unlike the worship of ancient god Greek civilizations, goddesses were less personalized in Chinese civilization and were more often embodied in various symbols. This author notes that the images of pigs, frogs, bears, owls, and eagles also have connections with the beliefs of prehistoric goddesses after systematic research (Ye 1998; 2004; 2007a; 2008b). Although the connections are often not so evident, their deep foundations in mythological thinking are worth follow-up studies. Marija Gimbutas has concluded that although there is no trace of tigers in “the language of the goddess”, it is reasonable to see tigers as divine in Chinese mythology as bears and lions on Western cultural relics, and to explore the inner connection between the core of belief in the tiger myths and the goddess religion, taking into account the unique ecological environment and species distribution that defined these beliefs." (p. 1717-18)
"After King Wen resigned, he studied the Eight Diagrams in the Information Tower, where he explored both astronomy and geography. When the Information Tower started to be built, human bones were found when the ground was dug for a foundation. After the tower was built, King Wen dreamed of Jiang Ziya in the tower, who was the later Duke Zhou, also named as “Flying Bear”. This is the story of “dreaming the flying bear at night”. (p.1859)
"According to the second type of evidence—the Silk Book of Chu, which records the Youxiong creation myth, using xiong (bear) as names for the king of Chu and the Kingdom of Chu, combined with the fourth type of evidence, which are rare treasures like the bear chariot found in the tombs of the ancestors of Qin Shi Huang and the Hongshan culture’s three-hole jade with double bear heads, the study probes bear worship mythology and assesses its prevalence before the rise of dragon worship. It also explores the major tradition of narrative imagery in bear god manifestations from the Xinglongwa and Hongshan cultures to the stone reliefs of the Han Dynasty." (p.1966)
www.google.com.pk/books/edition/A_Mythological_Approach_to_Exploring_the/IoCFEAAAQBAJ?hl=en
|
|
|
Post by Montezuma on Jul 29, 2024 23:37:03 GMT -5
A 2,000 year old 'Bear leg' ding of bronze discovered in China"Unlike most ding, which usually have two handles and simple tripod legs, this particular ding's three legs were carefully designed by its ancient creator in the shape of bears with two perky ears and an open snout that makes them look to be a bit surprised or smiling."
"This well-conceived mechanism has led researchers to theorize that the "bear leg" ding was once used as a "pressure cooker" similar to those from the Western Han Dynasty (206BC-AD25). The two figurines on the handles must be flipped up in order to put the lid in place. The two other figurines on the lid are then clipped across the handles in order to lock the food vessel." www.globaltimes.cn/page/202104/1220033.shtml
|
|