From the Miraculous Conception to the Imperial Genealogy: The Axial Turn in Ancient Chinese Mythology and the Stratified Production of Classical Chinese Mythology

Abstract

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.

Keywords

miraculous conception / imperial genealogy / mythology / early Chinese history / knowledge production

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Higher Education Press