Gilt hexagonal silver plate with a feilian beast pattern

Feilian (traditional Chinese: 飛廉; simplified Chinese: 飞廉; pinyin: fēilián) or (蜚廉) is a Chinese wind spirit from a southern tradition, later identified with and subsumed under the primary wind deity Fengbo. Feilian has also been identified with a late Shang dynasty minister as well as with the mythical phoenix bird, and retained a separate identity as a mythical creature after losing its status as master of the wind.

Concept

Southern origin

Feilian is first attested in the influential poem Li sao by Qu Yuan, wherein Feilian assists the poet in part of his mystical journey. This work comes from Chu, a Zhou dynasty state which was on the periphery of the Zhou cultural sphere, and is typically dated to the 300s or 200s BCE.[1] Wang Yi, who collated and annotated the transmitted Chu ci collection centuries later, annotates this mention of Feilian with the text "Feilian is Fengbo", which demonstrates that the various wind spirits were already being systematised under a single identity.[2] Wang Yi goes on to explain that in order to ride a dragon through the clouds as the Li sao narrator does, one must borrow the strength of "jifeng" (疾風; jífēng; 'an ill wind'). This term jifeng acts as a gloss for Feilian in the Shiji. According to Deng Xiaohua (鄧曉花), fēilián (Old Chinese: ZS *pɯl-ɡ·rem; B&S *Cə.pə[r]*(k-)[r]em), might be a dialectal variant of 風 (OC: ZS *plum; B&S *prəm) "wind".[3] This same relationship was explored by Tôdô in 1959.[4] Sun Zuoyun's (孫作雲) influential 1943 study of Feilian argues that the term feilian was an alternative written representation of the sound in Old Chinese that was the pronunciation of 風; 风; fēng; 'wind'.[5] Feilian appears twice more in the Chu ci collection: once in Jiu bian and once in Yuan you, each time as a helpful spirit assisting the narrator.[6][7][8]

Evolution

Early Chinese wind spirits were many. The Shang had the masters of the four directions,[9] an eastern tradition had the naturalistic "Great Wind" (大風), another tradition considered the winnowing basket constellation (箕星,[10] comprising four stars in Sagittarius) as the controller of the winds, the south had Feilian, and theorists have speculated that a number of named mythical birds from early Chinese culture – including the phoenix and the great peng bird (鵬) of the Zhuangzi – should be considered originally to have been wind spirits.[11] The Zhou culture had two competing wind spirits: Fengshi and Fengbo, the latter of whom would end up subsuming all these traditions,[12] and lives on in the Taoist pantheon as Fang Daozhang (方道彰).[13]

In Feilian's identity as Fengbo, he carries wind with him in a bag[14] and stirs up trouble. Feilian is kept in check by Houyi, the heavenly archer and Shang legendary culture hero.[15] Feilian has become attached to the later mythology of the Yellow Emperor, against whom he contended under the leadership of Chiyou.[16]

Before consolidation into the Fengbo entity, Feilian was also thought to be able to grant immortality. Emperor Wu of Han (r.  141–87 BCE) believed this sufficiently to order the construction of several buildings dedicated to Feilian worship in pursuit of this gift of eternal life.[17] In the Huainanzi, Feilian is mentioned as a creature one can ride astride into the world of spirits where nothing perishes.[6]

As an individual

In histories of the consolidation of the Zhou conquest of Shang, the Duke of Zhou pursued Shang king Di Xin's minister Feilian to the seacoast and killed him there. This episode is narrated in the Mengzi[18] as well as the excavated text Xinian, part of the Qinghua University bamboo slips collection, a product of Chu provisionally dated around 370 BCE.[19]: 298–299 [20]: 65  According to the Shiji, which carries a not dissimilar account, Feilian's descendants would later found the state of Qin.[21] Various theories have attempted to explain how the name Feilian was attached both to an individual minister at the end of the Shang dynasty and a Chu cultural wind spirit.[22]

Form

Modern English language sources state Feilian is a winged dragon with the head of a deer and the tail of a snake.[16][15] Hawkes states Feilian is commonly depicted as a winged deer,[23] but it can encompass a multiplicity of different winged creatures.[24]

Commentary to the Shiji provide earlier textual depictions. Where Emperor Wu of Han ordered the construction of buildings dedicated to Feilian worship, Eastern Han commentator Ying Shao defined Feilian as a sacred beast, able to control the winds. Jin dynasty commentator Jin Zhuo provided a more detailed description, saying Feilian had a deer's body with a bird's head, horns, and a snake's tail, with markings like a leopard's spots.[25] Similarly, in the Huainanzi, where Feilian is ridden like a horse in the world outside the world, Eastern Han commentator Gao You states that Feilian is the name of a winged beast with long fur.[6] Western Han rhapsodist Sima Xiangru's Shang lin fu (上林賦) mentions Feilian next to another mythical creature, the xiezhi (獬豸). In annotation, Eastern Jin dynasty commentator Guo Pu equates Feilian with the "dragon sparrow" (龍雀), saying it has the head of a deer and the body of a bird, in a neat inversion of Jin Zhuo's roughly contemporaneous description.[6]

As other mythical creatures

Sun Zuoyun expanded upon his reconstruction of feilian as an alternative written representation of the word 風; 风; fēng; 'wind', using the fact that it was often used to write the word 鳳; 凤; fèng; 'phoenix' since the graphical forms had not yet differentiated,[26] to identify Feilian with the mythical phoenix. He went on to claim that several Han dynasty stone mortuary figures from Luoyang and Ya'an, all with wings, horns, claws, and feathers, should be understood as representing the Feilian.[6] During the Shang dynasty, the word for "phoenix" was sometimes written using the words for "deer" and "long-tailed bird" squished together into a single glyph; a direct reflection of the Feilian's chimeric appearance.[27]

Lin Tongyan argues that given the first character of the term feilian (飛; 飞; fēi) means "flying", and the second character (廉; lián) is pronounced similarly to 麟; lín, Feilian should be conceptualised as a type of qilin capable of winged flight.[6]

References

Citations

  1. ↑ Hawkes (1985), p. 17.
  2. ↑ Chen (2017), p. 71.
  3. ↑ Schuessler, Axel (2007). ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese. University of Hawai'i Press. p. 238. ISBN 9780824829759.
  4. ↑ Tôdô Akiyasu (藤堂明保) (1959). "Hôô to Hiren ni tsuite: Kan Tai kjôtsû kigo no ichimen" 鳳凰と飛廉につぃズ (漢タイ共通基語の一面). Tôhôgaku (in Japanese). 18: 104–114.
  5. ↑ Sun (1943), p. 14.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Lin (2010).
  7. ↑ Hawkes (1985), pp. 73, 197, 217.
  8. ↑ Jiang Liangfu (姜亮夫); Xia Zhuancai (夏傳才); Zhao Kuifu (趙逵夫); Guo Weisen (郭維森); et al. (2000) [1998]. Pang Jian (龐堅) (ed.). 先秦詩鑒賞辭典 [Dictionary for the Thorough Appreciation of pre-Qin Poetry] (in Chinese). Shanghai: Shanghai Cishu Chubanshe. pp. 743, 862, 884. ISBN 7532604845.
  9. ↑ Hu Houxuan (胡厚宣) (1956). 釋殷代求年於四方和四方風的祭祀 [Explaining the Shang dynasty search for longevity from the Four Directions and sacrifices to the Four Winds]. Fudan Academic Journal (in Chinese) (1): 61–64. Cited in Chen 2017, pp. 12–13
  10. ↑ He Xingliang (何星亮) (2008). 中國自然崇拜 [Nature Worship in China] (in Chinese). Nanjing: Jiangsu Arts and Literature Press. p. 279. Cited in Chen 2017, p. 16
  11. ↑ Zhang Aiping (張愛萍) (2005). 「風伯」與「風祝」— 中日風神神話比較研究 ["Fengbo" and "Wind ceremonies": A comparative study of wind spirit folklore in China and Japan] (in Chinese). Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press. pp. 36–38. Cited in Chen 2017, p. 16
  12. ↑ Chen (2017), pp. 71, 122–123.
  13. ↑ Chen (2017), p. 88.
  14. ↑ Newton, David (2003). Encyclopedia of Air. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. p. 134. ISBN 9781573565646.
  15. 1 2 Lurker, Manfred (2004) [1984]. The Routledge Dictionary of Gods and Goddesses, Devils and Demons (3rd ed.). Psychology Press. pp. 61–62. ISBN 9780415340182.
  16. 1 2 Roberts, Jeremy (2004). Mythology: Chinese Mythology A to Z. New York: Facts on File, Inc. p. 39. ISBN 0816048703.
  17. ↑ Shiji, vol. 28, pp. 478–479. Cited in Chen 2017, p. 67
  18. ↑ Mencius (1997) [c. 300 BCE]. "7.2: Lord Wen of Teng pt. 2". Mengzi. Hong Kong: Zhonghua Shuju.
  19. ↑ Pines, Yuri (2014). "Zhou History and Historiography: Introducing the Bamboo manuscript Xinian". T'oung Pao. Brill. 100 (4/5): 287–324. doi:10.1163/15685322-10045P01. JSTOR 24754918.
  20. ↑ Milburn, Olivia (2016). "The Xinian: An ancient historical text from the Qinghua University collection of bamboo books". Early China. Cambridge University Press. 39: 53–109. doi:10.1017/eac.2016.2. JSTOR 44075753.
  21. ↑ Shiji, vol 5: Basic Annals of Qin.
  22. ↑ Chen (2017), pp. 14–15.
  23. ↑ Hawkes (1985), p. 89.
  24. ↑ Tang Kuanxin (唐宽欣) (2017). 从鎏金飞廉纹六曲银盘看唐代东西文化的融合 [Viewing Tang dynasty east–west cultural exchange from a six-lobed silver plate with gold feilian design inlay]. Art News of China (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 20 August 2023.
  25. ↑ Shiji, vol. 28: Book of Establishing Sacrifices, p. 479.
  26. ↑ Luo Zhenyu (羅振玉) (2013). 增訂殷墟書契考釋 [Expanded and Corrected Explanations of the Writings at Yinxu]. 羅振玉學術論著集 [Collected Studies and Essays of Luo Zhenyu] (in Chinese). Vol. 1. Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Books Press. p. 206. Cited in Chen 2017, p. 15
  27. ↑ Qu Yuan (1986) [300s to 200s BCE]. Tian Wen: A Chinese Book of Origins. Volume 624 of A New Directions Paperbook Chinese Book of Origins. Translated by Stephen Field. New Directions Publishing. p. III. ISBN 9780811210119.

Sources

  • Qu Yuan; Song Yu (1985) [300s to 200s BCE]. The Songs of the South. Translated by David Hawkes. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0140443754.
  • Sima Qian; Sima Tan (1964) [90s BCE]. Shiji 史記 [Records of the Grand Historian]. Zhonghua Shuju.
  • Sun Zuoyun (孫作雲) (2003) [1943]. 飛廉考—中國古代鳥族之研究 [A study of the Feilian – research into families of birds in early China]. 孫作雲文集 [Collected Works of Sun Zuoyun] (in Chinese). Kaifeng: Henan University Press. ISBN 9787810419369.
  • Lin Tongyan (林通雁) (2010) [1988]. 从长安铜飞廉到洛阳石翼兽 [From bronze Feilians in Chang'an to stone winged beasts in Luoyang]. Meishu Yanjiu 美術研究 (in Chinese). No. 3. Shaanxi Renmin Meishu Chubanshe. pp. 49–56. Archived from the original on 18 August 2023 – via sohu.com.
  • Chen Yinwen (陳吟⽂) (2017), 中國⾵神信仰的來源、流變及實踐 [Chinese Belief in Wind Spirits: Origins, Evolution, and Practices] (PDF) (graduate thesis) (in Chinese), Taipei: National Chengchi University, archived (PDF) from the original on 20 August 2023
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