Record #27
Chinese Phoenix
A sacred bird whose appearance signals harmony, legitimacy, and heavenly order.
Original Text
The sacred books of the Chinese may be disappointing for the reason that they lack the pathetic element to which we have been accustomed by the Bible. But occasionally, all at once in their even-tempered discourse, we are moved by some intimacy. This one, for instance, recorded in Book VII of the Confucian Analects (Waley translation):
The Master said, How utterly have things gone to the bad with me! It is long now indeed since I dreamed that I saw the Duke of Chou.
Or this one from Book IX:
The Master said, The phoenix does not come; the river gives forth no chart. It is all over with me!
The chart, or sign (explain the commentaries), refers to an inscription on the back of a magical tortoise. As for the Phoenix, it is a bird of brilliant colours, not unlike the pheasant and peacock. In prehistoric times it visited the gardens and palaces of virtuous emperors as a visible token of celestial favour. The male (Feng), which had three legs, lived in the sun. The female is the Huang; together they are the emblem of everlasting love.
In the first century a.d., the daring unbeliever Wang Ch’ung denied that the Phoenix constituted a determined species. He said that just as the serpent turns into a fish and the rat into a tortoise, the stag in times of widespread prosperity takes the form of the unicorn, and the goose that of the Phoenix. He explained these mutations by the ‘wellknown liquid’ which, some 2,3;6 years b.c., in the courtyard of Yao - who was one of the model emperors - had made the grass grow scarlet. As may be seen, his information was deficient, or rather, excessive.
In the Infernal Regions there is an imaginary structure known as the Tower of the Phoenix.
The Master said, How utterly have things gone to the bad with me! It is long now indeed since I dreamed that I saw the Duke of Chou.
Or this one from Book IX:
The Master said, The phoenix does not come; the river gives forth no chart. It is all over with me!
The chart, or sign (explain the commentaries), refers to an inscription on the back of a magical tortoise. As for the Phoenix, it is a bird of brilliant colours, not unlike the pheasant and peacock. In prehistoric times it visited the gardens and palaces of virtuous emperors as a visible token of celestial favour. The male (Feng), which had three legs, lived in the sun. The female is the Huang; together they are the emblem of everlasting love.
In the first century a.d., the daring unbeliever Wang Ch’ung denied that the Phoenix constituted a determined species. He said that just as the serpent turns into a fish and the rat into a tortoise, the stag in times of widespread prosperity takes the form of the unicorn, and the goose that of the Phoenix. He explained these mutations by the ‘wellknown liquid’ which, some 2,3;6 years b.c., in the courtyard of Yao - who was one of the model emperors - had made the grass grow scarlet. As may be seen, his information was deficient, or rather, excessive.
In the Infernal Regions there is an imaginary structure known as the Tower of the Phoenix.