Kunlun

Summary

Kunlun 昆侖 is the mountain of the gods in early Chinese tradition, in the far north-west. The Shanhaijing calls it "the lower capital of the Supreme Ruler", and the Huainanzi makes it a ladder of tiers rising from earth to heaven. The great rivers flow out of it, the Queen Mother of the West lives by it, and the tree of no death grows on it.

The second chapter of the Shanhaijing, the Classic of Mountains and Seas, says: four hundred li south-west of the mountain before it is the hill of Kunlun, which is truly the lower capital of the Supreme Ruler. The god Luwu governs it; his body is a tiger's with nine tails, his face a man's, his claws a tiger's, and he governs the nine regions of heaven and the seasons of the Supreme Ruler's gardens. On it is a beast like a ram with four horns that eats people, a bird like a bee as big as a mandarin duck whose sting kills beasts and withers trees, and a tree like the pear with yellow flowers and red fruit tasting like a plum without a stone; whoever eats it does not drown. Out of it flows the Yellow River to the south, the Red River to the south-east and the Yang River to the south-west.

The eleventh chapter describes it like a city: the mound of Kunlun lies in the north-west, the Supreme Ruler's lower capital, eight hundred li square and ten thousand fathoms high, and on its top grows "tree-grain" five fathoms tall. On its sides are nine wells with railings of jade and nine gates, each guarded by the beast Kaiming, which has a body like a tiger's and nine heads with human faces, and stands on Kunlun facing east; it is the place of the hundred gods. No one but the good Yi can climb the rocks of its edge. North of Kaiming stands the tree of no death; east of him six shamans surround the corpse of Yayu, holding the drug of no death to ward death from him; and north of the mound the Queen Mother of the West sits leaning on a stool, with three blue birds who fetch her food. The sixteenth chapter says: south of the western sea, on the edge of the Flowing Sands, between the Red River and the Black River, is a great mountain called the hill of Kunlun; the abyss of the Weak Water surrounds its foot, and beyond that is the mountain of blazing fire, where anything thrown catches fire; the Queen Mother of the West is there, and on this mountain there is everything.

The fourth chapter of the Huainanzi tells that when Yu filled the flood with self-swelling earth and made the great mountains from it, he dug out the mound of Kunlun to level the ground. Inside it are walls layered nine deep; on its top grows tree-grain; to its west stand trees of pearl and jade and the tree of no death; around it are four hundred and forty gates, and at its north-west corner the north gate opens to let in the wind of Mount Buzhou. In it is a pool round which yellow water flows three times and returns to its source, and it is called the cinnabar water; whoever drinks it does not die. From its four corners four rivers flow out, "the divine springs of the Supreme Ruler, with which the hundred medicines are blended and the ten thousand things are watered". Then it says: whoever climbs twice the height of the hill of Kunlun reaches the Mountain of Cool Wind, and whoever climbs it does not die; whoever climbs twice that reaches the Hanging Garden, and whoever climbs it becomes a spirit able to command wind and rain; whoever climbs twice that reaches heaven, and whoever climbs it becomes a god; this is the dwelling of the Great Ruler.

The idea the account of Kunlun turns on is that it is the place where the earth reaches heaven. It is a mountain with walls, gates and guards like a royal city, which is why it is called the Supreme Ruler's capital on earth, and it is built in tiers: each level climbed gives something greater, first not dying, then command of wind and rain, then godhood. Water goes out of it to the four quarters of the earth, so it is the source of life on earth as well as its road to heaven. The road is guarded: a nine-headed beast at the gates, water and a mountain of fire around it, and none but Yi can climb its rocks, which is why Yi went there to ask for the drug of no death.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method. In Old Chinese 昆侖 was two syllables with the same rhyme, *kˤun and *rˤun, so the letters that carry the word are k, r and the n the two syllables share, the letters of Arabic qarn, plural qurūn. In Lisān al-ʿArab the qarn is a small mountain standing alone, or a piece that stands apart from a mountain, or a small mountain; the qarn of a mountain is its summit; the qarn of the sun is its highest part, the first of it that appears at rising. Lane gives the qarn of a desert as its most elevated part, and qarana al-shayʾ bi-l-shayʾ, "he connected a thing with a thing". On this reading Kunlun is the summit that joins earth to heaven, which is what Wang Yi says in his commentary on "Heavenly Questions": Kunlun is a mountain in the north-west, and its summit, called the Hanging Garden, connects up to heaven. The first syllable alone, *kˤun, is qunna letter for letter, and Lane gives qunna as "an isolated mountain".

Linguistic Root

Baxter and Sagart give 昆 as *[k]ˤu[n], "elder brother", and the graph joined to it, 侖, belongs to the family of 論, 倫 and 輪, reconstructed *[r]ˤu[n] or *[r]u[n], meaning discussion, order and wheel. They bracket the k, the r and the final n, since their identity is uncertain: the final n may have been r. The two syllables share their rhyme and differ in their first letter, k in the first and r in the second, so k, r and n are the letters by which we read the word. K is answered by q in the Juthoor group of back-of-the-mouth letters, r is r and n is n.

In Lisān al-ʿArab, as the lexicon page gathers it: the qarn is a small mountain standing alone, or a piece that stands apart from a mountain, or a small mountain, plural qurūn; the qarn of the sun is the first of it at sunrise and its highest part, or its first ray. On the same page Dozy gives the qarn of a mountain as its summit, plural qurūn. In Lane, qarana shayʾan bi-shayʾ is "he connected, coupled or conjoined a thing with a thing"; the qarn of a desert is its most elevated part; qunna is "an isolated mountain"; and qulla "the top, or highest part, of a mountain". So three senses fall on Kunlun: a mountain standing alone, a summit, and the joining of one thing to another; it is the solitary mountain at the far west whose summit connects with heaven.

The weak point is that the reading sets aside the n at the end of the first syllable as a rhyme, and a Chinese word of two rhyming syllables may not divide into a root at all. Neither of the project's Chinese essays names Kunlun, so the reading is proposed on the method.

Key Mythic Narratives

Kunlun in "Heavenly Questions"

The poem "Heavenly Questions" asks: Kunlun and the Hanging Garden, where is its base? The walls layered nine deep, how many li high? The gates of the four quarters, who goes in and out of them? The north-west gate always open, what air passes through it? Wang Yi explains: Kunlun is a mountain in the north-west from which the primal breath comes out; its summit is the Hanging Garden, which connects up to heaven; and he says the Huainanzi makes it twelve thousand li high.

King Mu on Kunlun

A note on the second chapter of the Shanhaijing quotes the Biography of Mu, Son of Heaven: on an auspicious day the Son of Heaven climbed the hill of Kunlun to see the palace of Huangdi, raised a mound over the burial place of Fenglong, and added a mound on the mountain of Kunlun, to inform later generations. The Queen Mother's page tells how King Mu reached Kunlun and met her there.

The Ruo tree and the sun

In his commentary on the Lisao Wang Yi says the Ruo tree stands at the far western end of Kunlun, that its flowers light the earth below, and that the poet breaks a branch of it to strike the sun and turn it back. In this commentary Kunlun lies on the sun's road, in the west where it goes in; see Xihe. Lisao with Wang Yi's commentary.

The prayer of Nüwa and her brother

In a late account from the Duyizhi, Nüwa and her brother were alone on Mount Kunlun when the world opened, and prayed that the smoke would gather if heaven allowed them to marry; see the sacred marriage.

Symbolic Reading

The Chinese essay rereading the myths reads the accounts of the beginnings as engineering, astronomy and politics, and says the Chinese read their myths as history. The essay does not name Kunlun, but the Huainanzi itself makes it a work of Yu, whom the essay reads as the father of water engineering: Yu digs out the mound of Kunlun and levels the land after the flood, and the four rivers flow from it to the quarters. In the Shanhaijing and the Huainanzi the Yellow River flows out of its north-east corner, so in the story the mountain is the place from which the water of the farmed plain comes.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Kunlun is the Chinese witness of the sacred mountain. Baal's palace is built on Mount Saphon, Zeus sits in council on Olympus, and golden Meru stands at the centre of the world in the books of India. Kunlun, like them, is a dwelling of the gods, but it adds that it is built in tiers to be climbed, and that each tier climbed gives a longer life.

Four rivers flow out of it to the quarters, as in Genesis a river goes out of Eden and divides into four heads, and the tree of no death grows on it as the tree of life grows in the middle of the garden; see the world tree. Genesis 2:9–14.

Water and a mountain of fire surround it, and a nine-headed beast guards its gates, as the scorpion-men guard Mount Māšu, from which the sun comes out, in the epic of Gilgamesh, and only Gilgamesh goes in. Immortality is sought at Kunlun from the Queen Mother of the West, as Gilgamesh seeks it from Utnapishtim at the end of the earth.

In the Persian Bundahishn the sun turns around Mount Alburz, which has a hundred and eighty apertures in the east and a hundred and eighty in the west; every day the sun comes in through one aperture and goes out through another. The mountain there lies on the sun's road, as the Ruo tree stands at Kunlun where the sun goes in; see the sun's journey. Bundahishn 5, West's translation.