Eras

Before heaven and earth were parted there were no sun and moon, no mountains and rivers, no four quarters; the clear and the turbid lay mixed together, and no edge could be seen in the dark.

The common later account writes that chaos as the birthplace of three thousand gods. Different gods held the ways of strength, of time, of space and the rest, and Pangu too took shape among them.

When Pangu woke, the chaos still lay all round him. He took up his great axe and struck into the lightless place; where the blade passed, the single mass of vapour split, and the roar of it hung a long time in the void.

The lighter, clearer vapour rose from the tear and the heavier, turbid vapour sank. Several times the two surged back and made to close again, and Pangu stood between them and held the upper part on his shoulders and back.

The sky rose higher day by day and the earth thickened day by day, and Pangu’s body grew with them. By the time the clear and turbid held, there was room between the vault and the earth for wind and cloud to run.

Pangu’s strength gave out and he fell. The old myths say his breath became wind and cloud, his voice thunder, his two eyes the sun and moon, and his limbs and trunk the four poles and the high mountains.

His blood ran into the rivers, his sinews and bones laid out the roads and the veins of stone, his skin fell as farmland, and his hair and beard became the stars and the plants. So the world that had been empty took on the outline of mountains and rivers.

The common Honghuang account continues from there: Pangu’s primordial spirit divided into Taiqing, Yuqing and Shangqing, three streams of clear vapour that later engendered the Three Pure Ones; and twelve masses of his blood sank into the earth and engendered the Twelve Ancestral Witches.

What became of the sky-splitting axe also has a sequel in the later accounts: its parts became the Taiji Diagram, the Pangu Banner and the Chaos Bell, and scattered through the newborn world.