Chronicle
The Classic of Mountains and Seas
山海經
Anonymous · -200
Synopsis
Eighteen sections range over the known world, from the mountains of central China to the lands beyond the seas. Each mountain, each watercourse receives its entry, built on much the same model: the minerals, plants and beasts found there, the remedies drawn from them, the omens they bear. Creatures unknown elsewhere stand beside familiar species; at the edges live giants, dwarfs, men covered in feathers. The book also names some two hundred divine figures, among them the Queen Mother of the West.
Context
The text, by several hands, was composed between the beginning of the Warring States and the beginning of the Han; Liu Xiang and his son Liu Xin edited it under the Western Han. Tradition attributed it to the great Yu, an attribution doubted from the Tang onwards. Regarded as a reliable work until the Tang, it passed under the Ming and the Qing for a work of fiction; most scholars today see in it a book of geography. It preserves more ancient myths than any other surviving text, including Kuafu's race after the sun and the bird Jingwei who wants to fill the sea.
Who it is for
A collection of brief entries, without narrative, which one opens at any page; translated in full by Rémi Mathieu in 1983.
Prizes and reception
Lu Xun saw in it a book of sorcery and Mao Dun a work of geography, according to the Chinese Culture website of Hong Kong.
Sources for this page 3
The pages consulted to check this page.