Gonggong

Summary

Gonggong 共工 is the power of water in early Chinese tradition who rose against the order of the world. He fought the emperor Zhuanxu 顓頊 for rule and butted Mount Buzhou 不周山, breaking the pillar of heaven; in other accounts he raised the flood in the time of the emperor Shun until Shun banished him to the north. The Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) makes him a descendant of Yandi 炎帝: Zhurong, of Yandi's line, came down and settled by the Jiang River, and begot Gonggong.

The third chapter of the Huainanzi, on heaven, tells that Gonggong contended with Zhuanxu to be supreme ruler, and in his rage butted Mount Buzhou: the pillar of heaven broke and the cord of the earth snapped. Heaven tilted to the northwest, so the sun, moon and stars shifted that way; the earth sank in the southeast, so the waters and the dust ran there.

For some writers this break is where Nüwa's story begins. Wang Chong 王充, in the first century, reports in his Lunheng (Discourses Weighed in the Balance) what the scholars' books of his day said: Gonggong butted the mountain, the pillar of heaven broke and the cord of the earth snapped, and Nüwa melted stones of five colours to patch the sky and cut the legs of a great turtle to set up the four quarters. He then objects: anyone strong enough to break the pillar of heaven could not have lost a war, and if heaven were qi, vapour like cloud and smoke, it could have no pillar to break. Lunheng, "On Heaven". The Liezi reverses the order: Nüwa patched the sky first, and afterwards Gonggong butted the mountain. Liezi 5. In the sixth chapter of the Huainanzi Nüwa repairs a world whose pillars have fallen, without naming who brought them down.

In the flood stories Gonggong is the master of the overflowing water. The eighth chapter of the Huainanzi says that in Shun's time he stirred up the floodwaters until they reached Kongsang; the Dragon Gate had not yet been opened, people climbed the hills and clung to trees, and Shun sent Yu, who cut through the rivers and drained the water into the eastern sea. Huainanzi 8. In the Book of Documents a minister recommends him to the emperor Yao, and Yao refuses: his words are calm and his deeds contrary, he looks humble and yet "swells to the sky", the very phrase the book uses of the flood a few lines later. Shun then banishes him to Youzhou, in the same sentence in which Gun is put to death on Feather Mountain. Book of Documents, "Canon of Yao". The Shiji adds that Yao, against his own judgment, tried him as "master of works" and he proved corrupt, and that Shun banished him to Youling in the north, as he put Gun to death on Feather Mountain in the east, giving each of the four offenders a quarter of the world.

The idea his stories turn on is that water and rule are one matter in these accounts. Gonggong seeks rule by force and breaks the pillar of heaven; he seeks mastery of the water, dams the rivers and raises the flood; either way the world falls out of order: heaven tilts, the waters run off, the land drowns. Out of that disorder come the works of repair: Nüwa patches the sky in the version that joins the two stories, and Yu opens channels and kills Gonggong's nine-headed minister. The Guoyu (Discourses of the States) holds that Gun followed Gonggong's road and perished, and that Yu left it and succeeded.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method. In Chinese 共 gòng means "together, all", and 工 gōng means "work" and "officer"; in the Book of Documents 共工 is the title of the officer in charge of works, which Shun gives to a man named Chui, and the Shiji says that Gonggong himself was tried as "master of works". Both syllables begin with k and end with a nasal made at the back of the mouth. In them we hear Arabic al-qinqin, with q and n doubled. In al-Khalīl's Kitāb al-ʿAyn the qinqin is "the guide who sees where water lies under the earth and digs the channels", the man who knows where water runs underground and cuts the conduits for it. On this reading Gonggong is "the master of water-works", which is what his stories make him: a man with power over water, who dams rivers and raises floods, but uses that power to ruin, until Yu comes with the same knowledge of water and repairs.

Linguistic Root

In Middle Chinese 共 is gjowngH and 工 kuwng; the modern Old Chinese reconstruction gives *N-k(r)oŋʔ-s and *kˤoŋ. The initial N- of the first is a prefix and its final -s a suffix, so the core of both words is k, a rounded vowel and a nasal made at the back of the mouth. In the comparison Arabic q stands for k, since q, k and j form one group that merges in other languages, and n stands for the back nasal, as it does for the dragon's name lóng. The doubling in qinqin answers the doubled syllable of the name.

Al-Khalīl gives the plural qanāqin and cites a verse of al-Ṭirimmāḥ describing animals that muffle their chewing for fear of death and listen "as the qanāqin listen", so that in the verse the qinqin is the very type of the attentive listener. The qunī are conduits, dug channels for water. Lane does not record qinqin, but from the same letters he gives qunna, "an isolated mountain": a distant echo that comes from the story rather than the name, since Gonggong struck a mountain.

Neither of the project's Chinese essays reads or mentions Gonggong. The weak points of the reading are that qinqin is a rare word, and that the step from a title of works to a knowledge of water needs the story's help.

Key Mythic Narratives

"Heavenly Questions" asks: Kanghui raged, so why did the earth tilt to the southeast? Wang Yi's commentary says that Kanghui is Gonggong's name and retells the butting of the mountain as the Huainanzi has it.

In the Shanhaijing Gonggong has a minister named Xiangliu 相柳, also called Xiangyao, a snake with nine human heads that feeds on nine mountains; wherever it touches turns into a bitter marsh. Yu killed it, its blood ran foul so that nothing would grow there, Yu filled the place in and three times it sank, so he made it a pool beside which the rulers built their terraces. The same book names a "Terrace of Gonggong" towards which archers dare not shoot.

The Guoyu gives a speech by a prince of Zhou: Gonggong abandoned the way of the ancients, sank into pleasure, and wanted to dam the hundred rivers and tear down the heights to fill the low ground; neither heaven nor the people helped him, and he perished. The commentators differ on his age: Wei Zhao 韋昭 cites Jia Kui that he was a lord descended from Yandi, of the Jiang clan, who contended with Gaoxin for the throne, and holds that the Gonggong of Yao's time was someone else. The same speech says that the grand-nephews of Gonggong, the chiefs of the four quarters, helped Yu with his work, so that the destroyer's own house took part in the repair.

Symbolic Reading

The rereading essay does not name Gonggong, but it reads the breaking of the sky that Nüwa repaired as a collapsed dam, and the flood as a real flood of the Yellow River. On that reading the butting of the mountain and the breaking of the pillar picture the event that loosed the water on people. The text itself names what people see every day: the rivers of China run east and southeast, and the stars move west, so the story explains the direction of the water and of the sky by a single act. Mount Buzhou in the story is a pillar that holds up heaven, as mountains stand at the centre of the world in other myths, the theme gathered under Sacred Mountain.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the Theogony Typhon rises against Zeus after his rule is settled and almost takes the world, until Zeus defeats him. Gonggong contends with Zhuanxu for rule and does not win, but leaves the world tilted to this day. Each story has a last challenger who shakes the new order, and they end differently: Typhon is hurled into Tartarus, while Gonggong leaves his mark on the course of the rivers and the stars.

His minister Xiangliu is a nine-headed snake whom Yu kills and whose blood spoils the ground; Lotan is a seven-headed snake whom Baal overcomes at Ugarit; Yamata no Orochi is an eight-headed snake whom Susanoo kills in Japan. All three are many-headed serpents tied to water, the image gathered under divine combat with sea and serpent, and the killer differs: Yu a worker on the water, Baal the lord of rain, Susanoo a banished god.

His breaking the pillar of heaven undoes the separation of heaven and earth, and his raising the flood waters brings back what other creation stories call the primordial waters.