Early Chinese mythology refers to primordial myths originating in the regions along the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, known as the Central Plains. They are the very source of the Central Plains culture. As the Central Plains culture sphere expanded, its myths were gradually embraced by regions beyond the Central Plains and thereby contributed to the formation of a widespread Chinese cultural identity. During their regional reception, the early Chinese mythology integrated with local landscapes and cultural features, historical developments, and folk customs of the receiving regions, thereby acquiring unique regional characteristics. When these adapted myths were recognized as indigenous narratives by local communities, a sense of cultural belonging to the broader Chinese civilization naturally emerged. This process of regional reception has enriched and refined early Chinese mythology, resulting in more complex plots and diverse characters. This evolution illustrates a distinctive developmental trajectory—from fragmented, concise narratives to cohesive and intricate systems—while also reflecting a historical trend: As diverse populations collaborated with the Central Plains people in shaping Chinese mythology, they progressively cultivated a shared cultural identity. The regional reception of early Chinese mythology was driven by multiple factors, including the ideological influence of the great unity concept, large-scale tribal migrations, and the compatibility between the Central Plains myths and local cultures. It demonstrates the inherent logic behind the development of early Chinese mythology and the inevitable trend toward a unified Chinese cultural identity across regions during this process.
A distinctive feature of classical Chinese mythology lies in the co-existence and commingling of deities and humans. While it remains difficult to ascertain whether ancient myths formed a self-contained system, the evolution from the miraculous conception myths of individual tribes to the myths of the Chinese nation marked by the imperial genealogy encapsulates the fundamental system and historical trajectory of Chinese mythology. This system of mythology, completed in the late Warring States Period, combined political succession, Confucian orthodoxy, and bloodline into a single framework, serving as a crucial hallmark of the establishment of the Chinese nation as a whole. During the Han Dynasty, both miraculous conception myths and imperial genealogy myths continued to evolve. Their primary feature was the incorporation of political succession, Confucian orthodoxy, and bloodline, in various ways, into the framework of virtue orthodoxy based on the Five Elements (wuxing). This not only provided an underlying structural principle for the imperial genealogy but also offered theoretical legitimacy for a range of political situations. From the Wei and Jin dynasties onwards, such theories, once active on the political stage, gradually faded and were repositioned in the field of historiography, marking the end of classical Chinese mythology. In this process, the stratified production of classical myths is fully evidenced, which is a fundamental law of classical Chinese mythology.
The evolution of mythological motifs is a common phenomenon in the transmission of myths. This article takes the representative Pangu myth from cultural ancestor myths as an example to explore, at a theoretical level, the relationship between the evolution of mythological motifs and their hierarchical structure. It elaborates on several aspects, including the changes in the expression of mythological motifs, the extension of the connotation of mythological motifs, and the evolution of the nature of mythological motifs. Additionally, it analyzes the impact of mythological carriers, narrators, the folk environment of myth transmission, and research outcomes on the evolution of mythological motifs.
In early Chinese literature, depictions of supernatural beings not only relate to their forms and appearances but also cover a rich array of sounds. As a culminating work in high antiquity for the representation of sounds, The Classic of Mountains and Seas portrays numerous animals’ sounds, which are largely simple imitations of human and beast voices. Based on the object of imitation, these sounds can be classified into four types: imitation of birds and beasts, natural vocalizations of birds and beasts, imitation of humans, and imitation of nature. Sound endows animals with vigorous vitality and extraordinary capacities. Sound writing can be regarded as an art of characterization, through which these creatures are seen as supernatural beings that feature human emotions and vocalizations, and thus can be studied within the human purview. This approach reflects the sacred narrative tradition of Chinese literature in which things are apprehended through sounds. Among other things, mountain valleys, deep marshes, and night hours constitute the spatio-temporal dimension of supernatural sounds and embody cultural significance such as ancestral worship of mountains and rivers and wushu (intermediation rituals) beliefs. Supernatural sounds can generate an “auditory impact,” which, in conjunction with visual impact, impels listeners to construct two kinds of soundscapes—positive and negative. A study of such sounds and soundscapes addresses a gap in previous research on supernatural beings, which focused on appearances and visual effects and paid little attention to sounds and auditory effects. The study can therefore enrich the connotations of supernatural beings and expand the scope of mythological studies. It helps to correct the “deafness” in current mythological studies and corroborate the completion time of The Classic of Mountains and Seas. Furthermore, it provides clues for exploring the writing modes of animal sounds in Han rhapsodies or supernatural sounds in tales of the strange of the Six Dynasties, thereby being conducive to in-depth, interdisciplinary research in relevant fields.
The generation of the myth of “Hou Yi shooting the suns” was neither a linear derivation process nor a linear interpretation within a single category of texts. Rather, it was a process of collection, reorganization, and integration of multiple discourse sources and complex threads. In this process, the story of “Hou Yi shooting the suns” absorbed a variety of knowledge, concepts, and discourse, including enduring cultural traditions, fictionalized historical narratives, social experiences such as drought relief, and real-life elements. It was also shaped by the values of Confucianism, Mohism, and Daoism. The cultural construction of the myth involved the recognition of historical events, the aggregation of knowledge and concepts, the refinement of discourse, and the articulation of values pursued by the elite. During the Qin and Han dynasties, the myth was eventually associated with the governance philosophy of Emperor Yao, marking the complete cultural connotation of the early narrative.