The Gold of the Gods (8 page)
A decorative visiting card on which Mr. Chi had written greetings and recommendations to his friend Chiang Fu-Tsung with a fine brush made smiling men in uniform silently open all doors till we reached the Director’s office. He greeted me in German—only when I apologized for being late did he wave my excuses away with a long sentence in Chinese.
“You are a friend of my friend, you are my friend. Welcome to China. What can I do for you?” he asked. As we approached a low table, he gave an order aloud—to whom? Even before we could sit down, museum guards brought paper-thin porcelain cups and a decorated pot full of herb tea. The Director filled our cups.
I went straight to the point and said that I was interested in the Baian Kara Ula finds and that I should like to see the scholar’s report on the stone plates that was here in Taipeh. My enthusiasm was dampened when Mr. Chiang explained that this extensive report had not shared the Museum’s odyssey, but was still preserved in the Peking Academy, with which he had no contact. He noticed my intense disappointment, but could give me very little consolation with the rest of his information.
“I know about your efforts. They delve deeply into the prehistory of peoples. I can only help with our primeval ancestor Sinanthropus, who was discovered in 1927 in the valley of Choukoutien, 25 miles southwest of Peking. In the opinion of the anthropologists, this Sinanthropus Pekinensis, Peking Man, is similar to
homo Heidelbergensis
, but in any case resembles the Chinese race, as it exists today in 800,000,000 examples. Peking Man is supposed to come from the Middle Pleistocene, i.e. to be about 400,000 years old. After that there is really no more prehistory.”
The Director explained that there was no further evidence of Neolithic cultures in North China until the third millennium B.C. when the Yang-Shao culture on the Huang Ho produced painted ribbon pottery. About the second millennium B.C. came the Ma-Shang culture, the black pottery culture and the stone and copper culture of Sheng Tse Ai of Shantung, followed by the luxuriant decoration which came in with the beginning of the Bronze Age with the
t’ao t’ieh
, or monster mask, and Li Wen with its broken right-angled representations of thunder. From the fifteenth to the eleventh centuries there was a highly developed script with more than 2,000 pictographic and symbolic characters which were used for oracular inscriptions. In all periods, it was the task of Chinese rulers, the “Sons of Heaven,” to see that the course of nature unfolded in an orderly manner.
“As far as I know, for I am not a prehistorian, there is nothing in the Middle Kingdom to lend wings to your special fantasy, no stone axes, no primitive tools, not even traces of cave paintings. And the oldest inscribed bones were dated to 3000 B.C.”
“What was on the bones?”
“So far it has proved impossible to decipher the inscriptions.”
“Isn’t there anything else?”
“A single vase that was excavated at An-yang near Honan. It was dated to 2800 B.C.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Chian, but surely China must have some evidence of its prehistory. There must be something to show the development from the prehistorical to the historical period. Are there no mysterious ruins, no crumbled cyclopean walls?”
“Our Chinese history can be traced back without a gap to the Emperor Huang Ti and he lived in 2698 B.C. It is a known fact that the compass existed as early as that. Therefore time cannot have begun with Huang Ti! But what happened before him, my dear friend, lies in the stars.”
“What do you mean, in the stars?”
Was there a tidbit left for me in this conversation after all? There was. Mr. Chiang smiled:
“From the very earliest times the dragon has always been the Chinese symbol of divinity, inaccessibility and invincibility. P’an Ku is the legendary name of the constructor of the Chinese universe. He created the earth out of granite blocks which he caused to fly down out of the cosmos. He divided up the waters and made a gigantic .hole in the sky. He divided the sky into the eastern and western hemispheres.”
“Might he have been a heavenly regent, who appeared in the firmament in a spaceship?”
“No, my friend, the legend says nothing about spaceships, it only mentions dragons, but it describes P’an Ku as he who mastered chaos in the universe. He created the Yin Yang, the conception of the dual forces in nature. Yang stands for male power and the heavens, Yin for female beauty and the earth. Everything that happens in the cosmos or on earth is subordinate to one of these two symbols, which have penetrated deeply into Chinese cosmological philosophy.”
According to legend, every ruler and “Son of Heaven” is supposed to have lived for 18,000 terrestrial years and if we take this estimate at its face value, P’an Ku brought order into the heavens 2,229,000 years ago! Perhaps these astronomical calculations may be a few years out here and there, but what does it matter with such a family tree?
P’an Ku, whose legend is said to have spread throughout China, was depicted differently in different regions, which is not surprising in view of the vast size of this country with its surface area of 3,800,000 square miles. Sometimes he is a being with two horns on his head and a hammer in his right hand, sometimes he appears as a dragon mastering the four elements, sometimes he holds the sun in one hand and the moon in the other, sometimes he is chipping away at a rock-face, watched by a snake.
Actually, the P’an Ku legend in China is probably not so old as the mighty man himself. Travelers from the kingdom of Siam (Thailand) are reputed to have brought the legend to China for the first time in the sixth century.
“Chinese mythology describes Yan Shih Tien-Tsun as the ‘father of things,’” said the Director. “He is the unfathomable being, the beginning and end of all things, the highest and most inconceivable being in heaven. In later times he was also called Yu Ch’ing. If you write about him, you must take care not to confuse Yu Ch’ing with the mysterious Emperor Yu, who is reputed to have caused the Flood. Do you know the legend of Yuan Shih Tien Wang?”
I shook my head. The Director took a volume of the Dictionary of Chinese Mythology from his shelves.
“There, read the story in your hotel. You will find some stories in the dictionary that are fascinating when considered in connection with your theories. For example, the legend of the goddess Chih Nu who was the patron saint of weavers. While she was still young, her father sent her to a neighbor who kept watch over the ‘Silver Stream of the Heavens,’ obviously the Milky Way. Chih Nu grew up and became very beautiful. She spent the days and nights playing and laughing, never was there a wilder or crazier lover in heaven than Chih Nu. The Sun King grew tired of these goings-on and when she bore a child to her guardian friend, he ordered the ardent lover to take up his post at the other end of the Silver Stream and only to see the lovely Chih Nu once a year on the seventh night of the seventh month.”
“The story of the king’s children who could not meet each other!”
“The legend has a happy ending for the lovers. Millions of shining heavenly birds formed an endless bridge over the Milky Way. So Chih Nu and her guardian could meet whenever they wanted.”
“If the shining heavenly birds were really spaceships patrolling between the stars, it seems perfectly plausible for the lovers to have met as often as they wished.”
Mr. Chiang Fu-Tsung stood up:
“You
are
a visionary! But of course you’re not forced to kowtow to traditional explanations. Perhaps modern interpretations of myths and legends are justified, perhaps they will throw new light on things. There is a lot we don’t know yet.”
Bronze vessels from the period of the Shang dynasty (1766-1122 B.C.) automatically reminded me of the other side of the Pacific. Nazca pottery, pre-Inca work much more recent than the Chinese vessels, exhibits very similar ornaments: geometrical lines, opposed squares and spirals. A jade axe, a small copy of a larger one. The divine symbol of the dragon with a trail of fire is engraved on the greenish stone; the firmament is decorated with spheres. I remembered identical representations on Assyrian cylinder seals.
Altar trappings for the worship of the god of the mountains and clouds is the orthodox archaeological label under a right-angled object dating to 206 B.C. A mountain is visible, but it is dwarfed by a giant sphere with a trail of fire. This sphere, which has three small spheres arranged geometrically above it, is so big that it seems to be quite unrelated to sun, moon and stars. Altar trappings? It is far more likely that in the remote past this picture recalled some unforgettable, incomprehensible phenomenon in the sky.
Jade discs with a diameter of 2 3/4 to 6 1/2 inches. They have holes in the middle like phonograph records. They are held upright against 7 3/4-inch-high obelisks by pegs. Once again I do not believe the archaeologists when they say that these ceremonial discs were divine symbols of power and strength, and the obelisks phallic symbols. I was fascinated by the jade discs, many of which had neatly milled sharp angles like those on toothed wheels round their circumference. Is there some connection between these so-called ceremonial discs and the stone plates from Baian Kara Ula? If we accept that the plates from the Sino-Tibetan border region were models for the ceremonial discs, the veil enshrouding the mystery would be lifted. After a visit to the Baian Kara Ula region by the astronauts who made the plates, presumably for transmitting information, reverent priests imagined that they would be doing work pleasing to God or even acquire some of the qualities of the brilliantly clever beings who had vanished simply by making discs like those that the strangers had used. That would square with the current archaeological explanation of the discs, for by this roundabout route they actually could have become religious trappings.
Dr. Vyacheslav Saizev, who published important data about the stone plates, found a rock painting near Fergana, in Uzbekistan, not far from the Chinese frontier. Not only does the figure wear an astronaut’s helmet, not only can we identify breathing apparatus, but in his hands, isolated by the spaceman’s suit, he holds a plate of the kind found by the hundreds at Baian Kara Ula!
ONE day I picked up the Dictionary of Chinese Mythology and read the legend of Yuan Shih Tien Wang, which I reproduce here in abbreviated form:
“In a long past age the ancient sage Yuan Shih Tien Wang lived in the mountain on the edge of the eternal ice. He told stories about olden times in such picturesque language that those who heard him believed that Yuan Shih himself had been present at all the wonderful events. One of his listeners, Chin Hung, asked the sage where he had lived before he had come to the mountain. Without a word, Yuan Shih raised both arms until they pointed to the stars. Then Chin Hung wanted to know how he could find his way in the infinite void of the heavens. Yuan Shih kept silent, but two gods in shining armor appeared and Chin Hung, who was present, told his people that one god had said: ‘Come, Yuan Shih, we must go. We shall wander through the darkness of the universe and travel past distant stars to our home.’”
Taipeh, the capital of Formosa (or Taiwan) and Nationalist China, has nearly two million inhabitants, universities, high schools and exceptionally well-run museums. From its main port of Keelung products such as sugar, tea, rice, bananas, pineapples (which flourish in the tropical monsoon climate), wood, camphor and fish are exported. Since Taiwan, with a population of 13,000,000, became an independent country in 1949, its industry has grown at a fantastic rate, so that today textiles, all kinds of engines, agricultural machinery, electrical goods, etc., with “Made in Taiwan” stamped on them, are loaded on to ships for customers all over the world. The government encourages the mining of gold, silver, copper and coal, which brings in foreign exchange.
Once again it is not clear whence and when the original Mongolian inhabitants, the Paiwan, came to the island. Today a quarter of a million of them live in seven different tribes in the most inaccessible part of the mountain range, where they were driven by successive waves of Chinese invaders. Only a generation ago, Paiwan warriors showed their bravery by head-hunting; today they hunt game in their mountain fastness. The tribes have survived in a remarkably pure state; they live according to the unchanging laws of nature. Their way of reckoning time is as simple as their way of life. The day begins at cockcrow; its passage is measured by the length of the shadows. The new year is recognized when the mountain plants start to blossom, its high point when the fruit ripens, its end with the first snow which cuts the tribes off from the world completely. From very early times, the Paiwans have practiced monogamy, so it is unimportant whether a suitor buys or abducts his bride, or woos her bashfully; the only thing that matters is that he keeps her for life. The Paiwan’s favorite stimulant is betel, which he manufactures in his own homemade “laboratory” from the nutmeg-like fruits of the betel palm, with the addition of burnt lime and a good pinch of betel pepper. Betel tastes as bitter as gall, but is supposed to be refreshing. As betel turns spittle red and teeth blue-black, the friendly grin of a Paiwan warrior is frightening rather than reassuring. If I had not been reliably assured that they no longer practice head-hunting, I would have beaten a hasty retreat, because I need my head a little longer.
The Museum of the Province of Taipeh possesses a unique collection of Paiwan wood carvings. Their wood sculptures are considered to be the last examples of a dying folk art. They preserve primeval motifs from sagas and legends that have been handed down for many, many generations.
