Gun

Summary

Gun 鯀 is the father of Yu the Great, the man charged in early Chinese tradition with holding back the great flood. He failed, was put to death, and his son finished the work. The Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian) makes him a son of the emperor Zhuanxu 顓頊 and a great-grandson of Huangdi. Shiji, "Xia Annals".

In the time of the emperor Yao the waters rose until they surrounded the mountains, topped the hills and seemed to reach the sky. Yao asked who could bring them under control, and the chiefs of the four quarters said: Gun. Yao refused, saying that he defied orders and ruined his own kin, but they answered that none of them was better and asked him to try Gun. Gun worked for nine years and the water did not subside. When Shun 舜 took up the government and toured the land, he saw that Gun's work had come to nothing, put him to death on Feather Mountain, Yushan 羽山, and raised his son Yu to carry on the task.

The Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) tells it another way. The flood rose to the sky, and Gun stole from the Supreme Ruler the soil that swells by itself, xirang 息壤, and dammed the flood with it without waiting for the Ruler's command. The Supreme Ruler ordered Zhurong 祝融 to kill Gun on the outskirts of Feather Mountain. From Gun, Yu was born, and the Supreme Ruler ordered Yu to spread out the soil until the nine regions were settled. A few lines earlier the same book says that Yu and Gun were the first to spread the soil and level the nine regions.

The idea his story turns on is the difference between shutting water in and guiding it. Gun blocks the water and packs earth over it; his son opens channels for it. The Guoyu (Discourses of the States) puts him in one line with Gonggong: Gonggong wanted to dam the hundred rivers and tear down the heights to fill the low ground, and perished; Gun then repeated his fault, damming the flood, and Yao put him to death on Feather Mountain; Yu, reflecting on his predecessor's error, cut through the rivers and drained the standing water. Guoyu 3, "Discourses of Zhou" II. The father wants to protect people by covering the water; the son protects them by giving the water a road. Yet Gun was not forgotten. After his death his spirit became a yellow bear that entered the Feather Abyss, the Xia offered him the suburban sacrifice, and the three dynasties, Xia, Shang and Zhou, kept sacrificing to him.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method. 鯀 Gǔn is said with an unaspirated k, a rounded vowel and n; what remains is k and n, the letters of Arabic kanna. To kanna or akanna a thing is to cover it and keep it safe; the kinn is whatever covers and shields; Ibn Fāris says that k-n is a single root meaning covering or guarding. On this reading Gun is "the one who covers and keeps", which is what the story makes him: he tried to keep people safe by covering the water with earth and shutting it in, and he himself was then held fast on Feather Mountain, as the poem "Heavenly Questions" asks.

Linguistic Root

The Shuowen jiezi glosses 鯀 as "a fish" and gives 系 as its phonetic element. The Baxter-Sagart list of Old Chinese reconstructions has no form for this graph, so the comparison rests on the known pronunciation: unaspirated k, a rounded vowel and n. Arabic kanna keeps k and n, the rounded vowel follows the k, and the doubled n is read as a single n, as often happens when a word passes between languages. In Lane, the kinn is a place of retreat such as a cave, the shelter of a wall, and anything that veils, covers or protects; al-Ṣāḥib ibn ʿAbbād's al-Muḥīṭ adds that a kunna in a mountain is a cave-like hollow, so called because it shelters from rain.

One detail of the story stands out: the place where Gun died and the son born from him have the same sound. 羽 yǔ, "feather", and 禹 Yǔ, Yu's name, are two different graphs pronounced alike in Mandarin, in Middle Chinese (hjuX) and in the modern Old Chinese reconstruction, *[ɢ]ʷ(r)aʔ, which the list gives identically for both. So the Shanhaijing says: Gun was killed on the outskirts of Yǔ, and from Gun Yǔ was born. The early texts make no comment on the coincidence.

Neither of the project's Chinese essays reads Gun's name. The Semitic-reading essay sets his flood and his son's in a table with those of Noah and Deucalion and finds the difference in the Chinese hero taming the water by digging rather than escaping it; the rereading essay names his failure with dams and his son's success with channels. The reading with kanna is therefore proposed on the method.

Key Mythic Narratives

The Shanhaijing traces Gun to Huangdi by a different line from the Shiji: Huangdi begot Luoming, Luoming begot White Horse, and White Horse is Gun. Both books place him in Huangdi's house and differ on the generations between.

In the "Great Plan" (Hongfan 洪範) chapter of the Book of Documents, the sage Jizi says that Gun dammed the flood and threw the five phases into disorder; the Supreme Ruler grew angry and did not give him the nine divisions of the Great Plan; Gun was put to death, Yu rose after him, and Heaven gave Yu the Plan.

The poem "Heavenly Questions" (Tianwen 天問) in the Songs of Chu asks a run of questions about Gun: if he was not fit to manage the flood, why did the people put him forward? Why did he heed the owls and turtles that dragged and held? Had he done what the people wished he would have succeeded, so why did the Ruler punish him? Why was he held on Feather Mountain for three years? How did Yu come from him so unlike him? How did the son complete the father's work with a different plan? The second-century commentator Wang Yi 王逸 explains some of them: for him the owls and turtles are birds and water creatures dragging Gun's body after his execution, the three years are years in which his guilt was not pardoned, and Gun was obstinate, so the question is how a sage son came from him.

In the Zuozhuan the lord of Jin falls ill and dreams that a yellow bear comes through the door of his bedchamber, and his minister asks the visiting statesman Zichan what it means. Zichan says that Yao put Gun to death on Feather Mountain and his spirit became a yellow bear that entered the Feather Abyss; that Gun received the suburban sacrifice of the Xia and the three dynasties sacrificed to him; and that Jin, now leader of the alliance, has perhaps neglected him. The minister makes the Xia suburban offering, and the lord begins to recover.

Symbolic Reading

The rereading essay takes Gun's failure as a lesson in water engineering: he tried to stop the water with dams, which for the essay is the wrong solution because it resists nature, and his son succeeded by guiding the water into channels. The early texts give his failure different causes: in the Shanhaijing his fault is taking the marvellous soil without leave; in the Book of Documents and the Shiji it lies in his character and in work that bore no fruit; in the "Great Plan" damming itself disorders the phases; in the Guoyu it repeats Gonggong's error. How to work with water is thus already a question inside these accounts, not only a modern reading of them.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Prometheus steals fire from Zeus and gives it to people, and Zeus binds him with chains he cannot escape and sends an eagle to eat his liver. Gun steals the self-swelling soil from the Supreme Ruler to hold the flood back from people, and is put to death and held on Feather Mountain. The two accounts share a theft from heaven's store made for people's sake without leave, and a punishment borne by the thief alone; they part in that Prometheus wins what he wanted by cunning, while Gun fails in the work itself, and his son completes it another way.

In other flood stories Utnapishtim survives in a boat until the waters go down; Gun and his son stay on the land and work on the water itself, the father with a dam and the son with a channel.

His theft of the self-swelling soil from the Supreme Ruler, and his execution, match Prometheus's theft of fire and his chains among the culture heroes.