P'AN KU

Pinyin Pan Gu, central figure in Chinese Taoist legends of creation. P'an Ku, the first man, is said to have come forth from chaos (an egg) with two horns, two tusks, and a hairy body. Some accounts credit him with the separation of heaven and earth, setting the sun, moon, stars, and planets in place, and dividing the four seas. He shaped the earth by chiselling out valleys and stacking up mountains. All this was accomplished from P'an Ku's knowledge of yinyang, the inescapable principle of duality in all things. Another legend asserts that the universe derived from P'an Ku's gigantic corpse. His eyes became the sun and moon, his blood formed rivers, his hair grew into trees and plants, his sweat turned to rivers, and his body became soil. The human race, moreover, evolved from parasites that infested P'an Ku's body. These creation myths date from the 3rd to the 6th century. Artistic representations frequently depict P'an Ku as a dwarf clothed with leaves. Additional reading Further information may be found in H.H. Dubs, The History of the Former Han Dynasty, 3 vol. (193855). Both Ch'en Shou-yi, Chinese Literature: A Historical Introduction (1961); and Burton Watson, Early Chinese Literature (1962), discuss Pan Ku as historian and writer.