Kuafu

Summary

Kuafu 夸父 is a man of huge body in early Chinese tradition who ran after the sun until he caught it as it went in; he grew thirsty, drank the Yellow River and the Wei and they were not enough, set out for a great marsh in the north and died of thirst on the way, and the staff he threw down became a forest.

The eighth chapter of the Shanhaijing, the Classic of Mountains and Seas, says: "Kuafu raced the sun and entered the sun. He was thirsty and wanted to drink; he drank from the River and the Wei, and the River and the Wei were not enough, so he went north to drink from the Great Marsh. Before he got there he died of thirst on the road. He threw away his staff, and it became the Deng forest." The same chapter places the land of Kuafu, or in one version of Bofu, east of the land of Nie'er: its people are big, each holding a green snake in his right hand and a yellow snake in his left, and the Deng forest lies east of it, two trees. The River in these books is the Yellow River, and the Wei is its greatest tributary.

The seventeenth chapter tells it again with his descent and with two deaths. In the Great Wilderness is a mountain called Chengdu Zaitian, "Chengdu that carries heaven", and on it a man with two yellow snakes hanging from his ears and two yellow snakes in his hands, named Kuafu. Houtu, Sovereign Earth, begot Xin, and Xin begot Kuafu. Kuafu did not measure his strength; he wanted to chase the sun's light and caught up with it at Yu Valley. He was going to drink from the River, but it was not enough; he was going to the Great Marsh, but died here before he reached it. Then the same passage says that the dragon Yinglong, having killed Chiyou, killed Kuafu too, and went to live in the south, which is why the south has much rain. The fourteenth chapter says that after killing Chiyou and Kuafu Yinglong could not go back up to heaven, so drought became frequent below; when drought comes people make his image and heavy rain falls. He is the dragon by whom rain is sought.

The Liezi retells the story and adds to it: Kuafu did not measure his strength; he wanted to chase the sun's shadow and followed it to the edge of the "corner valley". He grew thirsty and went to drink from the River and the Wei; they were not enough, and he was about to go north to drink from the Great Marsh when he died of thirst on the road. He threw down his staff, and, soaked by the fat and flesh of his corpse, it grew into the Deng forest, which spread for several thousand li. The fourth chapter of the Huainanzi places the land of Kuafu in the north and says he threw down his whip, which became the Deng forest.

The idea the story turns on is that the man who measures himself against the sun burns with its thirst. He runs from the east to where the sun goes in and catches it at its setting, then needs more water than the two greatest rivers of his land can give, and dies on the road to water. The book's word for his fault is "he did not measure his strength". But what he leaves returns to the land: his staff, watered by his body, becomes a forest, and in the other version he is killed by the dragon who brings the rain. Heat and thirst stand at the start of the story, trees and rain at its end.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method. In Old Chinese 夸 was a k with rounded lips, then r and a vowel, and 父 was a voiceless p and a vowel, so the letters of the name in order are k, r and p, the letters of karaba and qaraba. In Lane karaba is "it was, or became, near; drew near"; one says karabat al-shams, "the sun was near to setting", and karabat ḥayāt al-nār, "the fire was near to being extinguished"; akraba is "he hastened, sped, ran"; and karb is grief and distress. Qaraba is "he journeyed to water, there being between him and it a night's journey"; qārib is one seeking water by night, "not applied to one doing so by day"; and Lane notes that in qarabat al-shams li-l-maghīb, "the sun was near to setting", the q is a substitute for k. On this reading the name carries the whole story: he ran after the sun, drew near it as it drew near its setting, then went by night towards the water, and distress took him before he reached it.

Linguistic Root

Baxter and Sagart give the first syllable as *[kʷʰ]ˤra, a voiceless aspirated k with rounded lips in a pharyngealized syllable, bracketed because its identity is uncertain; in Chinese it means to boast, to exaggerate. Arabic k answers it, and q stands with it in one group of back-of-the-mouth letters in the Juthoor laws; Lane himself treats the two as one in karabat al-shams and qarabat al-shams li-l-maghīb. R is r. Chinese p is answered by Arabic b, since Arabic has no p, and both belong to the labial group. So the three letters stand in place with no reordering.

In Lane under k-r-b: karaba, "it was near, drew near"; karaba an yafʿala, "he was near to doing so"; karabat al-shams, "the sun was near to setting"; karabat ḥayāt al-nār, "the fire was near to becoming extinguished"; akraba, "he hastened, sped, ran"; karb, sorrow, grief, distress; and kārabahu, the same as qārabahu, "the k is substituted for q". Under q-r-b: qaraba, "he journeyed to water, there being between him and it a night's journey"; qarab, "a journey by night in order to arrive at the water on the morrow"; and qārib, one seeking water by night only. In the story Kuafu catches the sun as it goes into Yu Valley, so what follows is night, and he goes towards the marsh and dies before he reaches it, as the qārib has a night between himself and the water.

The weak point is that Baxter and Sagart read 父 in men's names as an honorific suffix, *p(r)aʔ, much as Arabic abū is a title of honour, so the b may come from the suffix and not from the name. If so, the name keeps only 夸, which means "boast" in Chinese, and that is what the book says of him: he did not measure his strength. Neither of the project's Chinese essays names Kuafu, so the reading is proposed on the method.

Key Mythic Narratives

The corner valley and the abyss of sunset

The Shanhaijing writes the valley where Kuafu caught the sun 禺谷, and the Liezi writes it 隅谷, "the corner valley". The graph 隅 was pronounced ngju in Middle Chinese, the same as 虞 in 虞淵, the Yu Abyss, which the Huainanzi makes the sun reach at "yellow dusk" and go into at its bank. So the place where Kuafu caught the sun is, in both books, the place where it sets; see Xihe. Baxter and Sagart, p. 143; Huainanzi 3.

The beast Kuafu

The second chapter of the Shanhaijing describes an animal on Mount Chongwu like a monkey with patterned arms, like a leopard or tiger, good at throwing, named Jufu, and a note in the text says that it is also written Kuafu.

Symbolic Reading

The Chinese essay rereading the myths reads the dragon as a symbol of typhoons and monsoon winds. In Kuafu's story the man who drinks the two rivers dry stands against the dragon who brings rain to the south: Yinglong kills him in one version and thirst kills him in the other, and in both water comes after him, as trees from his staff or as rain in the south.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Kuafu is one of those who go after the sun in the sun's journey. The closest story to his is that of Gilgamesh in the ninth tablet of the epic: he reaches Mount Māšu, which guards the rising of the sun, takes "the road of the sun" inside the mountain for twelve double-hours in dense darkness, and comes out ahead of the sun. Gilgamesh outruns the sun on its road beneath the earth and lives; Kuafu races it across the earth, catches it and dies of thirst.

In the North the wolf Sköll chases the sun until he takes her at the end of time; see Sól and Máni. Phaethon drives the chariot of his father Helios for one day and the earth burns; Ovid says the rivers dried up and the Nile fled and hid its head, as Kuafu drinks the Yellow River and the Wei and they are not enough. Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.235–259. Heracles bends his bow at the sun when its heat troubles him, as Yi shot down nine suns.

Heracles leans his club against an image of Hermes at Troezen, and the club, of wild olive, takes root in the earth and grows into a tree, as Kuafu's staff becomes a forest.