Open AccessThe Gods of Earliest Creation
Author(s) -
Nie Zhi-Xiang,
Kim Echlin
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
journal of anthropology at mcmaster
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 0707-3771
DOI - 10.15173/nexus.v4i1.58
Subject(s) - heaven , harmony (color) , kingdom , earth (classical element) , literature , philosophy , history , period (music) , ancient history , art , aesthetics , paleontology , astronomy , visual arts , geology , physics
The Chinese believed that our world was at first an indistinguishable part of the universe. Whether a god created the earth or earth created a god is not clear because both were instrumental in creating each other. First to appear was a mysterious egg containing the most ancient deity, Pan Gu. But when he broke the egg, he created new life, the earth, from his own body. And so, in commodious harmony, the ancient story suggests how the gods and the cosmos created each other. Although this story is so firmly fixed in the Chinese tradition that people use the idiom, "Since Pan Gu created heaven and earth" to say "since the beginning of time", the story was only first written down by Xu Zheng in the Three Kingdoms period (A.D. 220--265).