Jiang Yuan

Jiang Yuan (Chinese: 姜嫄) is an important figure in Chinese mythology and history. She is recorded as having lived during ancient Chinese history. Jiang Yuan was the mother of Houji, who is a culture hero and revered as the god of millet.

Clan name and title

Women of her era did not have personal names recorded (and may not even have possessed them); instead, Jiang is her clan name. The Jiang clan are possibly related to the Qiang people,[1][2] a group believed to have been Tibeto-Burman in origin.[1][2] However, the American scholar Christopher I. Beckwith has recently proposed that they were of Indo-European origins instead.[3] Based on this assumption, Beckwith suggests that Jiang Yuan belonged to a clan of Indo-European origin.[3] Yuan does not seem to be a lineage name: instead, it seems to be a title signifying "origin" or "source", in reference to her role as the mother of the royal Ji family of the Zhou dynasty.

Mythological biography

Jiang Yuan was the mother of Qi (also known as Houji), credited in Chinese mythology with founding the Ji clan who went on to establish the Zhou dynasty. She was said historically to have been a consort of Emperor Ku. In mythology, she gave virgin birth to a miracle child. In some versions – such as that found in the Zhou hymn "Birth of Our People" – credit Qi with a miraculous birth after Jiang Yuan stepped into a footprint or toeprint left by the supreme deity Shangdi. The hymn records her as attempting to abandon him three times (his name Qi means "the Abandoned One"). According to mythology, the baby Houji was guarded in the street by livestock and fed by birds. Houji then (still little grown) introduced the cultivation of millet (ji) and other agricultural improvements and as the Lord of Millet set up the founding of the Zhou dynasty. Thus, the woman who gave birth to a child not sired by a husband mythologically became the ultimate human ancestor of the series of emperors known as the Zhou dynasty, the era when Chinese history as it is known truly commenced (Ferguson 1928, 6).

History

In Sima Qian's rationalistic account in the Records of the Grand Historian, Jiang Yuan is simply the first consort of Emperor Ku and Qi is one of his children. However, in his account, he credits the success of Zhou as being due primarily to the two women Jiang Yuan and Tai Ren.[4] It is possible he meant this to credit the virtue and success of their children, but it is also possible that they represented important marriage alliances, or matriarchal culture. The Jiang were closely involved with the Ji before and after their rise to empire (Tai Ren of Zhi was the wife of a male descendant of Jiang Yuan and a leader of the Ji family/Zhou dynasty, who also had an important connection to the Shang dynasty).

Religion

In Chinese popular religion, Jiang Yuan is worshiped as a goddess.[5]

References
  1. Edwin G. Pulleyblank (1983). "Chapter 14 - The Chinese and Their Neighbors in Prehistoric and Early Historic Times". In David Keightley (ed.). The Origins of Chinese Civilization. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-04229-8.
  2. Kleeman 1998, pp. 54–58
  3. Beckwith 2009, pp. 43–48
  4. Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian
  5. Yang, 152

Sources
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