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The first writer to record the myth of Pangu was thought to be Xu Zheng, in the Three Kingdoms period. However, his name was found in a tomb older than the Three Kingdoms period.
This find suggests that the tale of Pangu had been passed on by word of mouth, or in other writings now lost, long before Xu Zheng wrote it down.
In the beginning there was nothing. The universe was in a shapeless, formless first state known as “chaos.”
Over about 18,000 years, this chaos came together into a cosmic egg. Inside the egg, the perfectly opposed principles of yin and yang came into balance and created a state of perfect harmony.
In this state Pangu, a huge and powerful being, came forth (or woke up). Pangu inside the cosmic egg is a symbol of Taiji, the Great Ultimate, which holds yin and yang together.
Pangu is usually shown as a primitive, hairy giant with horns on his head. He stands for the raw, untamed forces of nature.
With a mighty swing of his giant axe, Pangu began to create the world by separating yin from yang.
This act of creation was huge. It split the chaos into two parts: the earth, shown as murky yin, and the sky, shown as clear yang.
To keep them apart, Pangu stood between the earth and the sky and pushed the sky upward.
With each passing day, the sky grew ten feet (3 meters) higher, the earth ten feet (3.05 meters) thicker, and Pangu ten feet (3.05 meters) taller. This hard task took another 18,000 years, a sign of the great effort and time it took to shape the cosmos.
In some versions of the story, Pangu did not work alone. The Four Holy Beasts (四靈獸) helped him: the Turtle, the Qilin, the Phoenix and the Dragon.
These mythical creatures stood for different parts of the natural world and the cosmic order. They gave Pangu support and guidance.
The Turtle, with its ancient wisdom, stood for stability;
the Qilin, a symbol of peace and prosperity, brought harmony;
the Phoenix, a sign of rebirth and renewal, stood for transformation;
and the Dragon, a powerful and kindly creature, controlled water and weather.
In other versions, Pangu alone separated heaven and earth, which already had the qualities of yin and yang, using his great strength and his axe.
When the 18,000 years were over, Pangu had finished his task.
Worn out from his labor, he lay down to rest and in time he died.
His body went through a wondrous change and became the very elements that make up the natural world.
His breath became the wind, mist and clouds; his voice became the thunder that echoes through the sky.
Pangu’s left eye became the Sun, giving light and warmth, while his right eye became the Moon, lighting the night.
His head formed the mountains and the farthest reaches of the earth; his blood became the rivers that flow across the land; his muscles became fertile soil for plant and animal life.
Pangu’s facial hair became the stars and the Milky Way, which light up the night sky.
His fur became the bushes and forests and made the land green. His bones became valuable minerals, resources for future civilizations, while his bone marrow became precious jewels hidden deep in the earth.
His sweat fell as rain and fed the land. Even the fleas on his fur, carried by the wind, became animals and filled the world with many species.
In other versions of the story, Pangu’s body became the mountains, forming the backbone of the earth. Every version, however, stresses the close bond between Pangu and the natural world. Each shows how his sacrifice gave birth to the many elements that keep life going on earth.
The myth of Pangu is a strong image of the creation of the world and of the fine balance of forces in the universe.
P’an-Gu
The basic idea of the yih philosophy was so convincing that it almost obliterated the Taoist cosmogony of P‘an-Ku who is said to have chiseled the world out of the rocks of eternity. Though the legend is not held in high honor by the literati, it contains some features of interest which have not as yet been pointed out and deserve at least an incidental comment.
P‘an-Ku is written in two ways: one means in literal translations, “basin ancient,” the other “basin solid.” Both are homophones, i.e., they are pronounced the same way; and the former may be preferred as the original and correct spelling. Obviously the name means “aboriginal abyss,” or in the terser German, Urgrund, and we have reason to believe it to be a translation of the Babylonian Tiamat, “the Deep.”
The Chinese legend tells us that P‘an-Ku’s bones changed to rocks; his flesh to earth; his marrow, teeth and nails to metals; his hair to herbs and trees; his veins to rivers; his breath to wind; and his four limbs became pillars marking the four corners of the world,—which is a Chinese version not only of the Norse myth of the Giant Ymir, but also of the Babylonian story of Tiamat.
Illustrations of P‘an-Ku represent him in the company of supernatural animals that symbolise old age or immortality, viz., the tortoise and the crane; sometimes also the dragon, the emblem of power, and the phenix, the emblem of bliss.
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When the earth had thus been shaped from the body of P‘an-Ku, we are told that three great rulers successively governed the world: first the celestial, then the terrestrial, and finally the human sovereign. They were followed by Yung-Ch‘eng and Sui-Jen (i.e., fire-man) the latter being the Chinese Prometheus, who brought the fire down from heaven and taught man its various uses.
The Prometheus myth is not indigenous to Greece, where it received the artistically classical form under which it is best known to us. The name, which by an ingenious afterthought is explained as “the fore thinker,” is originally the Sanskrit pramantha and means “twirler” or “fire-stick,” being the rod of hard wood which produced fire by rapid rotation in a piece of soft wood.
We cannot deny that the myth must have been known also in Mesopotamia, the main center of civilisation between India and Greece, and it becomes probable that the figure Sui-Jen has been derived from the same prototype as the Greek Prometheus.
Paul Carus, “Chinese Occultism,” in Chinese Thought (Chicago: Open Court, 1907), section “P‘an-Ku,” pp. 40–41; sacred-texts.com.
