Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West

Summary

Xiwangmu 西王母, "the Queen Mother of the West", is a divine woman who lives in the mountains of the far West in early Chinese tradition, on Jade Mountain and then on the hill of Kunlun. Her picture changes from book to book: a fearsome creature with a tiger's teeth in the Shanhaijing, a gracious queen who receives King Mu in the Biography of Mu, Son of Heaven, the keeper of the drug of immortality in the Huainanzi, and the owner of peaches that fruit only once in three thousand years in later literature.

The second chapter of the Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) says that Jade Mountain is the dwelling of the Queen Mother of the West: her form is that of a person, with a leopard's tail and a tiger's teeth; she is good at whistling and roaring, her hair is tangled and she wears a headdress, and she governs the calamities of heaven and the five punishments. The sixteenth chapter places her at the hill of Kunlun in the west, ringed by the abyss of the Weak Water, and beyond it a mountain of fire in which anything thrown bursts into flame; there is "a person who wears a headdress, with a tiger's teeth and a leopard's tail, living in a cave, named the Queen Mother of the West; on this mountain there is everything". Shanhaijing 2, 16. Another chapter places at Kunlun the tree of "no death", shamans holding the drug of "no death", and the Queen Mother leaning on a stool, with three blue birds to the south of her that bring her food.

In the Biography of Mu, Son of Heaven, King Mu of Zhou travels west and comes to her as a guest, bringing white and black jade and silk, and she bows twice and accepts. The next day he holds a feast for her at the Jasper Lake, and she sings to him: "White clouds are in the sky, the hills rise of themselves; the road is long, mountains and rivers lie between us; if you do not die, perhaps you will come again." He answers: "I return to the eastern land to set the states in order; when the people are at peace I will come back to see you; before three years are out I will return to this wild." She sings to him again: "I came to this western land and dwell in its wilds; tigers and leopards are my company, I live with magpies; I am the daughter of the Supreme Ruler." The king then climbs Mount Yan, records his visit on a rock, plants a tree, and names it "the Mountain of the Queen Mother of the West".

Then she became the keeper of the drug of immortality. The Huainanzi says that the archer Hou Yi asked her for the drug of "no death", and his wife Chang'e stole it and fled with it to the moon. Huainanzi 6. The peaches of immortality come in a later book, the Han Wu gushi (Stories of Emperor Wu of Han), attributed to Ban Gu but not his: on the night of the seventh of the seventh month the Queen Mother comes down to Emperor Wu of Han, preceded by a blue bird; he asks her for the drug of immortality, and she tells him that his heart still holds too many desires; she brings out seven peaches, eats two and gives him five, and when he keeps the stones to plant them she laughs and says that this peach fruits once in three thousand years and is not for the lower earth to grow.

The idea her stories turn on is that she who holds death holds its remedy. She lives in the West, where the sun sets and the earth ends; the oldest thing said of her is that she governs the calamities and punishments of heaven, and then the drug that prevents death is hers, and by her mountain stands a tree that does not die. The king who reaches her does not ask for immortality; it is she who tells him: if you do not die, perhaps you will come again.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method. In Chinese it means "the King Mother of the West": 西 xī, west; 王 wáng, king; 母 mǔ, mother. In Old Chinese 母 was *məʔ, m and a glottal stop, the letters of Arabic umm, mother, once the glottal stop moves to the front, so the word is one in sound and sense. In Lane umm is a mother, the source of a thing, and "the head, or chief, of a people", because they gather to him. 西 was *s-nˤər, with s, n and r, every letter of Arabic sinnawr. In Lane sinnawr is "the cat", "a lord, master, or chief; a chief of a tribe", and "the root of the tail". So the woman with a leopard's tail and a tiger's teeth who lives in a cave is, on this reading, "the sinnawr mother", a lady of the feline kind, with 王 kept in its Chinese sense of king.

Linguistic Root

Arabic umm answers 母 in sound and sense together. M is m, and the glottal stop that closes the Old Chinese word stands at the front of the Arabic word; moving a letter forward or back is one of the known laws of change in the Juthoor project. Among Lane's senses of umm is "the head, or chief, of a people; because others collect themselves together to him", the source and foundation of a thing, and umm al-qurā, Mecca. So mother and ruler meet in the Arabic word as they meet in the Chinese title. Beside *məʔ the authors give another possible form, *mˤoʔ, which also has m and the glottal stop.

Sinnawr keeps every letter of *s-nˤər in order. Lane gives it three senses that meet the picture of the Queen Mother: the cat; a lord or chief of a tribe; and the root of the tail. In the Shanhaijing she has a leopard's tail and a tiger's teeth, and she is the lady of her mountain. From the same root Lane gives sanira, of a man, "he was ill-natured, or very perverse", and in her oldest account she governs the calamities and punishments of heaven. The weak points are that the Baxter and Sagart list makes the s a prefix, and the sound family of the graph bears this out: it includes 迺 *nˤərʔ and 哂 *n̥ərʔ without s, and 西 is the same word as 棲 *s-nˤər, "bird's nest, roost", so the root is n and r with the s added in Chinese, while Starostin's database keeps the s in the root, *sǝ̄r, said sǝ̄n under the Western Han, so no single reconstruction has all three letters as root letters; and that the reading leaves aside the Chinese meaning of the word, west, and takes its sound.

Neither of the project's Chinese essays mentions the Queen Mother of the West, so the reading is proposed on the method.

Key Mythic Narratives

King Mu at Kunlun

Guo Pu, the fourth-century commentator on the Biography of Mu, explains the visit with a report from the Bamboo Annals: in the seventeenth year of his reign King Mu travelled west to the hill of Kunlun and saw the Queen Mother of the West, and in the same year she came to his court and was received as a guest. The commentator describes her as the Shanhaijing does: like a person, with a tiger's teeth, tangled hair with a headdress, and good at whistling.

She who obtained the Dao

The sixth chapter of the Zhuangzi counts her among those who obtained the Dao: the Queen Mother of the West obtained it and sat at Shaoguang, and no one knows her beginning or her end. Fuxi and Huangdi are in the same list.

The blue bird and the peach thief

In the Han Wu gushi her coming is announced by a blue bird that flies from the west and alights before the palace, and two blue birds like crows stand at her side, as the three blue birds bring her food in the Shanhaijing. In the same book a dwarf tells the emperor that the Queen Mother grows peaches that fruit only once in three thousand years, and that Dongfang Shuo stole them three times and was banished from heaven to earth for it.

Symbolic Reading

The Semitic-reading essay reads the Dao as ṭawā, the folded road that speech cannot reach, and does not mention the Queen Mother of the West; but the Zhuangzi makes her one of those who obtained that road, so that she has no known beginning or end. Her stories hold a picture of what people see in nature: the west is where the sun goes down, and the high mountains at its far end are out of reach, ringed by the Weak Water and by a fire that consumes whatever is thrown into it; from there come calamities, and from there the remedy is sought. The tiger in her first picture is the feared lord of the mountains; in the books that follow she becomes a queen who sings, receives and gives. The power that was feared becomes the one from whom help is hoped, and the mountain at the end of the earth becomes the mountain of immortality, as gathered on the sacred mountain page; the tree of no death at Kunlun belongs with the world tree.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Siduri, the alewife on the seashore at the end of the earth, faces King Gilgamesh when he comes seeking life without death, and in the Old Babylonian version she tells him that he will not find the life he seeks, so let him eat and be glad. The Queen Mother of the West stands at the other end of the earth before King Mu and sings to him that mountains and rivers lie between them, and that if he does not die perhaps he will come again. Two women at the end of the road speak to a travelling king about death; they part in that Siduri teaches Gilgamesh the way across, while the Queen Mother bids her king farewell.

In the North Iðunn keeps the apples the gods bite when they grow old, and when she was carried off the gods grew grey. The Queen Mother in the West holds the drug of no death, and in later literature peaches that fruit once in three thousand years. Both stories have a fruit held by a single keeper and a thief who takes it: Loki in the North, Chang'e and Dongfang Shuo in China.

The Bundahishn says that the White Haoma that makes whoever eats it immortal grows in the wide sea, as the tree of no death stands at Kunlun and shamans there hold the drug of no death; see Haoma. Bundahishn, West's translation.