A Chinese myth in which ten sun crows, sons of the Emperor of Heaven, all rise at once and scorch the earth; the divine archer Houyi shoots down nine of them, sparing one, and is rewarded with an elixir of immortality that his wife Chang'e later drinks alone, becoming a spirit and fleeing to the moon.
Facts
Text
Source TextScattered across the Huainanzi and other Han period compilations, collated in modern scholarship such as Birrell's Chinese Mythology 1 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteSinologists read Houyi and Chang'e as originally two separate myth cycles, the solar crisis archer tale and the moon flight tale, only fused into one continuous story in later retellings, evidence used to trace how Chinese myth was assembled from independent fragments rather than transmitted as a single epic. 1 Meaning
Central MotifAn archer's rescue of a burning world followed by his wife's flight to the moon with the reward meant for them both 1 History
Historical NoteThe story survives only in scattered, sometimes contradictory citations in texts compiled centuries after any oral origin, chiefly the Huainanzi of the second century BC, so no single ancient source tells the whole connected tale as later retellings do. 1 Controversy
Point in DisputeScholars dispute whether the elixir Chang'e drinks was Houyi's reward for saving the world from the suns or a separate gift from the Queen Mother of the West, since the surviving early citations differ on the point. 1 Sources
Primary SourceNo single primary text tells the full story; the Huainanzi and later Tang and Song dynasty sources are collated against each other in Birrell's Chinese Mythology: An Introduction. 1 Connections
Associated With
Houyi, Figures Source Chinese Mythology: An IntroductionAnne Birrell
Belongs to Tradition
Source Chinese Mythology: An IntroductionAnne Birrell
Sources
1. Chinese Mythology: An Introduction
Anne Birrell, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993Chapter on solar myths: Houyi's shooting down of nine of the ten sun crowsView the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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