—, also called Heaven [
] and the Lord on High [
]), the Five Lords on High (
or 
), the imperial ancestors, and other divinities, whose sacrifices were supported by the imperial government. For the educated, there were two philosophical religions, Confucianism and Daoism. For the common people, there were gods, spirits, and ghosts of various sorts, whose care was attended to by such professionals as shamans (mostly female), fortune-tellers, physiognomists, mediums, and exorcists. Such animistic cults were despised by the more intelligent Confucians, who considered them as mere superstition. The famous Confucian, Sün-dz (
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?)
(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.
(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.)
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.
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).
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.”
(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.
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.
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.
. 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.
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.
43: 4, 5 (paging of Takigawa's ed.). It is also translated by Chavannes in Mh, V, 9–10.
, 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):
(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.
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.
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.
but Han-shu 20:17a and other early authors read Yin-shou 
.
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.
whose branches and trunk are all red, with yellow leaves.”
),’ whose branches and trunk are all red, with yellow leaves, white flowers, and black fruit.”
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.”
).” Guo Po glosses 
was a precious stone.
was supposed to grow in the Kun-lun Mountains, on trees. It is said to have been like pearls.
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.
(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.”
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.
(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.
lived 53 B.C.–A.D. 18. The reference is of course to the goddess's entertainment of King Mu.
(lived before the sixth century), in a note to Shui-jing-ju 2: 35b, where the above location is repeated.
(third century B.C. and earlier) B: 11a, ch. 9, says:
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.
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:
(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. 
) 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.
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.
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
Crossref Citations
This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref.
Berger, Patricia
1990.
An Ideology of One: The Offering Shrine of Wu Liang - Wu Hung, The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1989)..
Early China,
Vol. 15,
Issue. ,
p.
223.
Zhao, Xudong
and
Bell, Duran
2007.
Miaohui, the Temples Meeting Festival in North China.
China Information,
Vol. 21,
Issue. 3,
p.
457.
Chen, Xuan
2023.
Constructing Heaven: Ceilings of the Stone Tombs in Northeast Asia (1st to 7th Century CE).
Religions,
Vol. 14,
Issue. 12,
p.
1455.