NU WA
I dunno about you but I actually studied the story of Pan Gu and Nu Wa in primary school. I think it was in the textbook then.
Well, I talked about Pan Gu (and Pan) in my earlier blog post. Now I am going to introduce Nu Wa as well and parallel it to the bible story of creation.
These are the characters in the Taoist version of Creation - the creation of the world (Pan Gu) and the creation of mankind (by Nu Wa). The following explanation of who Nu Wa is, is from Wikipedia.
In Chinese mythology, Nüwa (Traditional Chinese: 女媧; Simplified Chinese: 女娲; Pinyin: nǚwā) is mythological character best known for creating and reproducing people after a great calamity.
Nüwa is seen to be a creator deity. However, not many stories ascribe to her the creation of everything; they usually confine her to the creation of mankind. Many of these stories feature mankind being created or restored after a catastrophe.
It is said that Nüwa existed in the beginning of the world. She felt lonely as there were no animals so she began the creation of animals and humans, which means she had given names for those animals.
On the first day she created chickens. On the second day she created dogs. On the third day she created sheep. On the fourth day she created pigs. On the fifth day she created cows. On the sixth day she created horses. On the seventh day she began creating men from yellow clay, sculpting each one individually, yet after she had created hundreds of figures in this way she still had more to make but had grown tired of the laborious process.
This is a ceremony of begging to bear children.
So instead of hand crafting each figure, she dipped a rope in clay and flicked it so blobs of clay landed everywhere; each of these blobs became a person.
In this way, the story relates, were nobles and commoners created from the hand crafted figures and the blobs respectively. Another variation on this story relates that some of the figures melted in the rain as Nüwa was waiting for them to dry and in this way sickness and physical abnormalities came into existence.
God created Adam out of the dirt of the earth (clay). So it is interesting how Nu Wa had the same idea. Could it be a case of a game of "Chinese Whispers"?
Check this picture of Nu Wa from an ancient Chinese text out...
There is also the story of Nu Wa Bu Tian (Nu Wa mends the heaven). Notice the name Nu Wa also sounds very much like Noah?
ReplyDeleteBtw, you publish all these notes. Should you be including the source? Dont want you to get into trouble with copyright law.
ReplyDeleteYup I mentioned Nu Wa Bu Tien in the blog post on Timelines (Bible vs China)... at the end I spoke about the Noahic floods and similar stories to it. =)
ReplyDeleteThen I came to moderate comments and saw this ha ha ha. Cool.
I have also put up the sources already on a blog post on the bibliography of where i got my stuff.
Actually most of the word studies in earlier posts were done on my own during quiet time.
Only the Shang Di stuff were taken from books and wiki. =)
Thank you very much for doing all the research. I have always wanted to study more into this but never had the time to do it. It has been great fun contributing whatever little I could. :P
ReplyDeleteHehe no worries =D
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading your comments and finding out more too!
I grew up in an English Ed family and my grandma whom I lived with as a child was into worshipping everything and everywhere. Thank God she embraced Christ a few years before she was diagnosed with cancer and passed on.
I remember going to temples with her - what to do, she couldn't leave me at home...lol. I was in Kindergarten then. So I always was bemused by all the rituals and stuff. I "bai bai" when I was told to do so and put coins into the compartment of this black colour female statue dressed in colourful robes and sitting on a tiger.
But I think at a young age I was not too impressed by them... lol. My grandma found me one day at her kitchen altar - I had plucked out ALL the joss sticks and was tossing the ash about haha.
I met a Christian who became a Taoist medium (shakes head) once and it saddened me.
Probably he felt that Taoism was similar to Christianity thanks to all these so called "almost the same" things we've dugged up in our research today. =p
Whatever it is, I am not fond of Taoism - the sort practiced locally especially. It has branched far away from a school of thought into a pretty hedonistic religion.
I mean what's the deal with burning hell money? Why should anyone prepare to be destined for Hell when there is Heaven they can prepare to head up to?
It always puzzles me ha ha.