Cosmogony-p'an Ku and the Creation Myth


The Fashioner of the Universe

The most conspicuous figure in Chinese cosmogony is P'an Ku. He it was
who chiselled the universe out of Chaos. According to Chinese ideas,
he was the offspring of the original dual powers of Nature, the _yin_
and the _yang_ (to be considered presently), which, having in some
incomprehensible way produced him, set him the task of giving form
to Chaos and "making the heavens and the earth."

Some accounts describe him as the actual creator of the universe--"the
ancestor of Heaven and earth and all that live and move and have their
being." 'P'an' means 'the shell of an egg,' and 'Ku' 'to secure,'
'solid,' referring to P'an Ku being hatched from out of Chaos and
to his settling the arrangement of the causes to which his origin
was due. The characters themselves may, however, mean nothing more
than 'Researches into antiquity,' though some bolder translators
have assigned to them the significance if not the literal sense of
'aboriginal abyss,' or the Babylonian Tiamat, 'the Deep.'

P'an Ku is pictured as a man of dwarfish stature clothed in bearskin,
or merely in leaves or with an apron of leaves. He has two horns on
his head. In his right hand he holds a hammer and in his left a chisel
(sometimes these are reversed), the only implements he used in carrying
out his great task. Other pictures show him attended in his labours
by the four supernatural creatures--the unicorn, phoenix, tortoise,
and dragon; others again with the sun in one hand and the moon in the
other, some of the firstfruits of his stupendous labours. (The reason