Fuxi

Fuxi or Fu Hsi (伏羲), also known as Paoxi, is a culture hero in Chinese legend and mythology, credited along with his sister Nüwa with creating humanity and the invention of hunting, fishing, domestication, and cooking as well as the Cangjie system of writing Chinese characters around 2,000 BCE. Fuxi was counted as the first of the Three Sovereigns at the beginning of the Chinese dynastic period.

Fuxi
An ancient painting of Fuxi (right) and Nüwa (left) unearthed in the Astana Cemetery, Xinjiang
Chinese	伏羲
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Fúxī Wade–Giles Fu-hsi IPA fǔ ɕí
Paoxi
Traditional Chinese	庖犧
Simplified Chinese	庖牺
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Páoxī Wade–Giles P'ao-hsi

Origin

Pangu was said to be the creation god in Chinese mythology. He was a giant sleeping within an egg of chaos. As he awoke, he stood up and divided the sky and the earth. Pangu then died after standing up, and his body turned into rivers, mountains, plants, animals, and everything else in the world, among which is a powerful being known as Hua Hsu. Hua Hsu gave birth to a twin brother and sister, Fuxi and Nüwa. Fuxi and Nüwa are said to be creatures that have faces of human and bodies of snakes.[1]

Fuxi was known as the "original human", and he was said to have been born in the lower-middle reaches of the Yellow River in a place called Chengji (possibly modern Lantian, Shaanxi province, or Tianshui, Gansu province).[2]

In reality, many Chinese people believe that Hua Hsu was a leader during the matriarchal society (c. 2,600 BC) as early Chinese developed language skill while Fuxi and Nüwa were leaders in the early patriarchal society (c. 2,600 BCE) while Chinese began the marriage rituals.[3]

Creation legend

According to the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Fuxi and Nüwa were the original humans who lived on the mythological Kunlun Mountain (today's Huashan). One day they set up two separated piles of fire, and the fire eventually became one. Under the fire, they decided to become husband and wife. Fuxi and Nüwa used clay to create offspring, and with the divine power they made the clay figures come alive.[2] These clay figures were the earliest human beings. Fuxi and Nüwa were usually recognized by Chinese as two of the Three Sovereigns in the early patriarchal society in China (c. 2,600 BCE), based on the myth about Fuxi establishing marriage ritual in his tribe. The creation of human beings was a symbolic story of having a larger family structure that included the figure of a father.

Social importance

On one of the columns of the Fuxi Temple in Gansu Province, the following couplet describes Fuxi's importance: "Among the three primogenitors of Huaxia civilization, Fu Xi in Huaiyang Country ranks first."[2] During the time of his predecessor Nüwa, society was matriarchal.

In the beginning there was as yet no moral or social order. Men knew their mothers only, not their fathers. When hungry, they searched for food; when satisfied, they threw away the remnants. They devoured their food hide and hair, drank the blood, and clad themselves in skins and rushes. Then came Fu Xi and looked upward and contemplated the images in the heavens, and looked downward and contemplated the occurrences on earth. He united man and wife, regulated the five stages of change, and laid down the laws of humanity. He devised the eight trigrams, in order to gain mastery over the world.

— Ban Gu, Baihu tongyi[4]

Fuxi taught his subjects to cook, to fish with nets, and to hunt with weapons made of bone, wood, or bamboo. He instituted marriage and offered the first open-air sacrifices to heaven. A stone tablet, dated AD 160, shows Fuxi with Nüwa.

Traditionally, Fuxi is considered the originator of the I Ching, which work is attributed to his reading of the He Map (or the Yellow River Map). According to this tradition, Fuxi had the arrangement of the trigrams of the I Ching revealed to him in the markings on the back of a mythical dragon horse (sometimes said to be a tortoise) that emerged from the Luo River. This arrangement precedes the compilation of the I Ching during the Zhou dynasty. This discovery is said to have been the origin of calligraphy. Fuxi is also credited with the invention of the Guqin musical instrument, though credit for this is also given to Shennong and Yellow Emperor.

The Figurists viewed Fuxi as Enoch, the Biblical patriarch.

Gallery

• 
  Seated portrait depicting Fuxi, painted by Ma Lin of the Song dynasty
• 
  Painting of Fuxi looking at a trigram sketch, painted by Guo Xu of the Ming dynasty
• 
  Emperor Fuxi, woodcut print by Gan Bozong of the Tang dynasty
• 
  Fuxi, painted by Qiu Ying of the Ming dynasty, as depicted in Orthodoxy of Rule Through the Ages
• 
  Chinese emperor Fuxi, wearing a traditional costume, holding the yin yang symbol, 19th century
• 
  Picture along with various scientists at Peterborough, UK

Death

Fuxi is said to have lived for 197 years altogether and died at a place called Chen (modern Huaiyang, Henan), where a monument to him can still be found and visited as a tourist attraction.[2]

See also

• Snakes in Chinese mythology

References

1. Millidge, Judith (1999). Chinese Gods and Myths. Chartwell Books. ISBN 978-0-7858-1078-0.
2. Worshiping the Three Sage Kings and Five Virtuous Emperors - The Imperial Temple of Emperors of Successive Dynasties in Beijing. Beijing: Foreign Language Press. 2007. ISBN 978-7-119-04635-8.
3. Cotterell, Arthur (1979). A Dictionary of World Mythology. Book Club Associates. ISBN 978-0-19-217747-6.
4. Wilhelm, Richard; Baines, Cary F. (1967). I Ching.

Fuxi Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors
Regnal titles
Preceded by Suiren	Mythological Emperor of China c. 2852–2737 BCE	Succeeded by Shennong