Page 185 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols 178
said, ‘sweated blood’. There was an ancient cult of an ‘ancestral horse’, a deity of some
kind to whom sacrifices were made. In the Yi-jing the dragon (male) and the horse
(female) are the two creatures chosen to represent the two sexes; but in later mythology,
the horse symbolises the yang (male principle) while the female principle ( yin)
is symbolised by the cow.
A string of eight horses represents the famous horses of King Mu, who is supposed to
have lived in the 10th century BC. In the great Ming novel ‘Journey to the West’ (Xi-you
ji) we find the expression yi-ma = ‘horse of the will’, as a metaphor for wilfulness and
inconstancy. A galloping steed is probably a reference to the mount of General Guan Yu
(later Guan-di), which was called ‘Red-hare-horse’. The white horse which often
appears in Buddhist texts stands for purity and loyalty.
A picture showing a man and a horse laden with precious things expresses a wish for
an official post with the comfortable living that goes with it. A monkey (hou) riding
on a horse expresses the wish that the recipient of the picture may be rewarded with noble
rank (hou) straight away (ma shang = literally, ‘on horseback’).

A warrior draws an arrow from the breast of his lord’s wounded horse

In modern Taiwan, ‘horse’ is a vulgar expression for ‘girl-friend’ – but the use of
‘horse’ as a coarse way of referring to a girl is very ancient. As far back as the 16th

century we hear about a market in the town of Yang-zhou where ‘skinny horses’ (ou-ma)
were sold. More than a hundred prostitutes were on offer, and clients could bargain with
the girls directly without having to make use of a go-between.
The expression ‘getting off the horse’ refers to a shaman who is calling on the gods to
visit him. In the language of prostitutes, ‘riding the horse’ means menstruating; and a
‘horse-bucket’ (ma-tung) is a toilet bucket, a symbol for babies in marriage ritual.
‘Horse-eye’ is a metaphor for the orifice of the penis, and ‘the horse shakes its hoof’ is
one of the 30 positions in sexual intercourse.