{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5470", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 5470, "subject": "Peace: China in the cave", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2009-07-22T16:07:50+00:00", "last": "2009-07-22T21:42:39+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Stephen Hoy", "address": "stephenhoy at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2009-07-22T16:07:50+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Peace: China in the cave", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Suddenly (it was something I was still unused to) she whistled\npiercingly, and Ming-Sno and Sun-Sun cam bounding, panting with pleasure,\ntheir deformed mouth opening almost split by their wide \"kylin\" mouths.\n \"Are you going to take both of them?\"\n \"Why not? I'll hold Ming-Sno, and Den can hold Sun-Sun. You hold the\nbasket, Robert.\"\n- Peace, ch 1.\n\nWhile pursuing the yang/yin of Olivia's Shih-Tsu dogs, I was unsurprised to\ndiscover that Ming signifies shining while Sun signifies diminishing. In\ngeneral, would other readers agree that Olivia is the shining light of\nPeace, while Den is its encroaching darkness?\n\nMoving further into the Cave incident, recall that Aunt Olivia left there a\nporcelain platter covered with a milk-glass hen. There was a human skull in\nthe cave, but we have few hints to its significance, other than Olivia's\nwords to Den reminding him that the bottom is china. Searching for an\nexplanation in Chinese mythology, I found an intriguing chapter in Myths of\nthe Dog-Man,\nhttp://books.google.com/books?id=glmjo9UrP2YC&lpg=PA279&ots=_Oa8b7FTDw&dq=P'\nan%20Hu&pg=PA140, which I condense, re-combine, and re-tell with an\nunmalicious liberality. [Any errors or mis-interpretations are my own--I\nrefer anyone with an interest to the original sources.]\n\nAn old woman noticed a swelling in her ear, and worried at it until she drew\nout a large white blob, not too much different from the blob you might find\nin egg drop soup. For some reason, she felt compelled to place this\namorphous mass into a gourd [hu] which she covered with a platter [p'an].\nThe blob grew and grew until the platter separated from the gourd. Emerging\nfrom the \"shell\" was a dog with parti-colored hair, each brocade of color\nrepresenting one of the five primal forces of Chinese myth. [One variant\ngoes on to say that the dog, armed with an axe, carved the heavens from the\nsurface of the platter, and transformed the gourd into the earth.] The dog\nbecame the honored pet of a ruler who was greatly bothered by invading\nbarbarians. The dog made his way into the enemy camp, bit off the head of\nthe barbarian leader, and carried it back to the ruler. As bounty, the dog\nwas given the hand of the ruler's daughter. The ruler wasn't exactly\nthrilled to have a dog for a son-in-law, so the couple left the kingdom to\ndwell in a shallow cave which no one else could find. The dog sired six sons\nand daughters before he died. The children emerged from the cave to live in\nthe land. In honor of their ancestor, the tribe adopted a style of dress\nthat includes hair braided like a dog's tail, and gowns with dog-like tails.\n\nThis is the Yao variant of a creation story in which the hairy dog P'an Hu\nsubstitutes for the more common mythical creator of the universe, the coiled\ndragon Pan Gu.\n\n[Thurlough:] \"Have you ever been in a cave, Mr. Weer?\"\n[Weer:] \"Only a very small one when I was a boy.\"\n- Peace, ch 5." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "David Duffy", "address": "david.duffy at qimr.edu.au" }, "date": "2009-07-22T21:42:39+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Peace: J Alden Weir", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I forget if this has been mentioned before, but there was a US painter \nJ. Alden Weir (1857-19--), one of whose impressionist paintings of the \nHudson I was looking at over the weekend. J is Julian.\n\nCheers, David Duffy." } ] } ] }