meet with the violent death of the
latter, the results as regards the origin of the universe seem to
have been pretty much the same. [6]

P'an Ku a Late Creation

But though the Chinese creation myth deals with primeval things it
does not itself belong to a primitive time. According to some writers
whose views are entitled to respect, it was invented during the fourth
century A.D. by the Taoist recluse, Magistrate Ko Hung, author of the
_Shen hsien chuan_ (_Biographies of the Gods_). The picturesque person
of P'an Ku is said to have been a concession to the popular dislike
of, or inability to comprehend, the abstract. He was conceived, some
Chinese writers say, because the philosophical explanations of the
Cosmos were too recondite for the ordinary mind to grasp. That he
did fulfil the purpose of furnishing the ordinary mind with a fairly
easily comprehensible picture of the creation may be admitted; but,
as will presently be seen, it is over-stating the case to say that he
was conceived with the set purpose of furnishing the ordinary mind with
a concrete solution or illustration of this great problem. There is
no evidence that P'an Ku had existed as a tradition before the time
when we meet with the written account of him; and, what is more,
there is no evidence that there existed any demand on the part of
the popular mind for any such solution or illustration. The ordinary
mind would seem to have been either indifferent to or satisfied
with the abstruse cosmogonical and cosmological theories of the
early sages for at least a thousand years. The cosmogonies of the _I
ching_, of Lao Tzu, Confucius (such as it was), Kuan Tzu, Mencius,
Chuang Tzu, were impersonal. P'an Ku and his myth must be regarded
rather as an accident than as a creation resulting from any sudden
flow of psychological forces or wind of discontent ruffling the
placid Chinese mind. If the Chinese brought with them from Babylon
or anywhere else the elements of a cosmogony, whether of a more or
less abstruse scientific nature or a personal mythological narrative,
it must have been subsequently forgotten or at least has not survived
in China. But for Ko Hung's eccentricity and his wish to experiment
with cinnabar from Cochin-China in order to find the elixir of life,
P'an Ku would probably never have been invented, and the Chinese mind
would have been content to go on ignoring the problem or would have
quietly acquiesced in the abstract philosophical e