Page 244 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A-Z 237
‘Supreme One’ (tai yi) dwelt in the Kunlun. The only divinity who received visitors
in the Kunlun, however, was the Queen Mother of the West ( Xi-wang-mu). This is
probably connected with an earlier belief according to which mountains – especially the
Kunlun – were regarded as the place where ‘the ten thousand things have their origins
and where yin and yang alternate with each other for ever’.
The Chinese cosmogony differs from the Indian one in that the Kunlun is located not
in the centre of the earth but in the West, at the source of the Yellow River. As Buddhism
made inroads into China – i.e. since about the 1st century AD at the latest – Indian and
Chinese cosmological concepts began to mingle with each other. Sumeru was now seen
as the source of four great rivers which flowed north, south, east and west; and the
Yellow River was, of course, the one flowing eastwards.
Virtually every mountain had its resident mountain god. The late classical belief that
the spirits of the dead live in the mountains, persisted in North China, and sacrifices were
accordingly made to mountains. In later times we find many reports of governmental
attempts to ban the cult of mountain spirits, partly perhaps because of their erotic
character: for example, young girls were ‘married’ to the mountain. The Wu-shan
mountain in the western part of Central China is celebrated because a goddess once
appeared there to a great prince with whom she performed the ‘clouds and rain game’.

Poet in the mountains

It was the mountains which generated clouds and rain, the Chinese believed.
In pictures, cloud-capped mountains symbolise the earth, while waves symbolise the sea.
The expression ‘mountains and seas’ (shan hai) refers to China as a whole; and this is
also the title of the oldest geography book. A most solemn oath was to swear by