A RECORD OF ALL THINGS UNDER HEAVEN
As gathered from the oldest accounts that remain
PROLOGUE — CHAPTER THREE
On the Matter of Hundun — 混沌 — Primordial Chaos
Hundun is written with two characters.
The first character is Hun — 混. It means: turbid water. Abundantly flowing. Muddled. Mixed together. Confused.
The second character is Dun — 沌. It means: dull. Confused. Without differentiation.
Together — 混沌 — they mean: muddled confusion. The state in which all things are present but none are distinct. The condition before any distinction was made.
This word has been written three different ways across the old texts. 混沌 — hundun. 渾沌 — hundun. 渾敦 — hundun. The characters shift. The meaning does not.
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The records do not agree on what Hundun was.
Four accounts exist. They are recorded here in the order they were found. None of them are declared more true than the others. The reader will note that the four accounts describe four different things. This is recorded without explanation. Explanation is not available.
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The First Account. From the Zhuangzi — 莊子 — The Complete Works of Zhuang Zhou.
The Emperor of the South Sea was named Shu — 儵.
Shu means: brief. Quick. The thing that arrives fast and does not remain.
The Emperor of the North Sea was named Hu — 忽.
Hu means: sudden. The thing that happens without warning.
The Emperor of the Central Region was named Hundun — 混沌 — Primordial Chaos.
Shu and Hu met often in the territory of Hundun. Each time they came, Hundun received them well. He gave them what he had. He was generous without calculation. He was kind without effort.
He had no face.
He had no eyes. He had no ears. He had no nostrils. He had no mouth. He had no opening of any kind. He was complete and closed.
Shu and Hu conferred. They said to each other: every person has seven holes — 七竅 — qiqiao. Two for seeing. Two for hearing. Two for breathing. One for eating and speaking. Without these seven holes a person cannot perceive anything. Hundun has received us well. He has given us much. We have given him nothing. Let us give him what every person deserves.
They bored the first hole on the first day.
The second hole on the second day.
The third hole on the third day.
The fourth hole on the fourth day.
The fifth hole on the fifth day.
The sixth hole on the sixth day.
On the seventh day — Hundun died.
The Zhuangzi records no grief after this. No mourning. No explanation of what the death meant. The story ends at the death.
What came after Hundun died is everything that follows in this record.
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A Tang dynasty — 唐朝 — Tang Chao — poet later wrote of this:
How pleasant were our bodies in the days of Chaos.
Needing neither to eat or piss.
Who came along with his drill and bored us full of these nine holes?
Morning after morning we must dress and eat.
Year after year, fret over taxes.
A thousand of us scrambling for a penny.
We knock our heads together and yell for dear life.
The poet added two holes to the original seven. He was not wrong to add them.
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The Second Account. From the Shanhaijing — 山海經 — The Classic of Mountains and Seas.
On Tian Shan — 天山 — Heaven Mountain — there is a god.
Its shape is like a yellow sack.
Its color is red like cinnabar fire.
It has six feet and four wings.
It has no face. It has no eyes.
It knows how to sing and knows how to dance.
It is Dijiang — 帝江 — Emperor Long River.
This is the complete entry. The Shanhaijing adds nothing further. It moves to the next mountain.
The name Dijiang — 帝江 — means: Emperor Long River. Some records say this is the Yellow Emperor — 黃帝 — Huangdi — under another name. Some records say it is a separate being entirely. The records do not agree. Both positions are noted here. Neither is declared correct.
The six feet correspond to the six directions — 六合 — liuhe — north, south, east, west, up, down. All of space.
The four wings correspond to the four seasons — 四季 — siji. All of time.
No face. No eyes. Space and time with nothing looking out from inside them.
It sings and dances. This is the only thing recorded about what it does.
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The Third Account. From the Zuozhuan — 左傳 — The Chronicle of Zuo.
The Yellow Emperor — 黃帝 — Huangdi — had an unworthy descendant.
This descendant concealed righteousness and hid villainy. He was fond of practicing cruel deeds. He associated with the wicked. He was stubborn, deceitful, and unfriendly. He formed cliques with those like himself.
The people of the world called him Hundun — 混沌.
He was one of the Sixiong — 四凶 — the Four Perils. The four most dangerous beings in the ancient world. The others were Qiongqi — 窮奇, Taowu — 檮杌, and Taotie — 饕餮.
When the sage emperor Shun — 舜 — came to power, he banished all four. He cast them into the four distant regions to serve as warnings to the spirits and wild things at the edges of the world.
Hundun was banished to one of these edges. Which edge is not recorded.
In this account Hundun is not primordial chaos. He is a man. A wicked descendant. His wickedness was so complete that his name became the word for chaos itself.
Whether the man was named after the chaos or the chaos was named after the man — the records do not say.
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The Fourth Account. From the Shen Yi Jing — 神異經 — The Classic of Divine Wonders.
On Kunlun Mountain — 崑崙山 — Kunlun Shan — at the center of the world, there lives a creature.
Its form is like a dog. It has long hair. It resembles a bear. It has no claws. It has eyes but cannot see. It has two ears but cannot hear. It has a belly but no five internal organs — 五臟 — wuzang. It has intestines but they do not coil. They run straight through. Food passes through without stopping.
When a person of virtuous conduct approaches it — it attacks them.
When a person of vicious conduct approaches it — it leans against them. It is gentle with them. It favors them.
Its name is Hundun — 混沌.
It gnaws its own tail. It spins in circles. It looks up at the sky and laughs.
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These are the four accounts.
The Hundun of the Zhuangzi — 莊子 — is an emperor with no face who dies of kindness.
The Hundun of the Shanhaijing — 山海經 — is a god on a mountain shaped like a yellow sack who sings and dances and has no eyes.
The Hundun of the Zuozhuan — 左傳 — is a wicked man descended from the Yellow Emperor, one of the four great dangers of the ancient world.
The Hundun of the Shen Yi Jing — 神異經 — is a creature on Kunlun Mountain that attacks the virtuous and favors the wicked and gnaws its own tail.
They share one name. They share the absence of a face. Beyond this the records do not agree.
All four are recorded here because all four are in the record.
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On the names of Shu — 儵 — and Hu — 忽.
Shu and Hu together form a near-homophone of hushu — 惚恍 — confusion, chaos, Hundun itself. The two emperors who destroyed Hundun carry his name in their names combined.
Whether this was intentional is not recorded.
The Zhuangzi does not explain it.
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On what the death of Hundun means.
The text does not explain this either.
Many readers over many generations have offered explanations. Order imposed on chaos destroys it. The gift of senses is the beginning of suffering. What is complete needs nothing added. The road to harm is paved with good intentions.
These explanations are noted.
They are not recorded as the meaning of the story because the story does not provide its own meaning.
The Zhuangzi — 莊子 — ends the story at the death and moves on.
What is left after Hundun dies is the differentiated world. The world of eyes that see and ears that hear and mouths that eat and noses that breathe. The world in which taxes must be paid and pennies must be scrambled for and heads knock together.
The world in which this record was written.
The world in which this record is being read.
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After Hundun died, the egg appeared.
Inside the egg: Pangu — 盤古 — Coiled Antiquity.
This is the next chapter.
END OF CHAPTER THREE