| Fuxi | |
|---|---|
 Fuxi and Nüwa on a hanging scroll in color on silk. | |
|
Other Names |
Fu Hsi |
|
First Appearance |
Chinese Myth |
|
Created by |
Unknown |
Origin[]
Fuxi or Fu Hsi is a culture hero in Chinese mythology, credited along with his sister and wife Nuwa with creating humanity and the invention of music, hunting, fishing, domestication, and cooking, as well as the Cangjie system of writing Chinese characters around 2900 BC or 2000 BC.
Fuxi was counted as the first mythical emperor of China, "a divine being with a serpent's body" who was miraculously born, a Taoist deity, and/or a member of the Three Sovereigns at the beginning of the Chinese dynastic period.
Some representations show him as a human with snake-like characteristics, "a leaf-wreathed head growing out of a mountain", "or as a man clothed with animal skins."
Pangu was said to be the creation god in Chinese mythology. He was a giant sleeping within an egg of chaos. As he awoke, he stood up and divided the sky and the earth. Pangu then died after standing up, and his body turned into rivers, mountains, plants, animals, and everything else in the world, among which is a powerful being known as Huaxu. Huaxu gave birth to a twin brother and sister, Fuxi and Nüwa. Fuxi and Nüwa are said to be creatures that have faces of human and bodies of snakes.
However, in some myths, Fuxi was held to be the creator, not Pangu, who worked alone and not with Nüwa.
Fuxi was known as the "original god", and he was said to have been born in the lower-middle reaches of the Yellow River in a place called Chengji (possibly modern Lantian, Shaanxi province, or Tianshui, Gansu province).
Public Domain Appearances[]
All published appearances of Fuxi from before January 1, 1930 are public domain in the US.
Public Domain Literary Appearances[]
- Classic of Mountains and Seas