Week 6 Session: The 神 and the 獸
陆吾 and 开明兽 guard one mountain with nearly one body and are filed in different kingdoms. The difference between them in the record is a job rather than a limb, and several records name no kind at all.
29 March 2027 · Phase 2, Push it until it strains
The rule this week states
The text's own words 神, 獸, 鳥 and 人 do not sort by body: 陆吾 and 开明兽 guard one mountain with nearly one body and are filed apart, and several records name no kind at all.
What this week does#
Week 5 withdrew the omen and the use from the character set. This week the system gains a column instead of losing one, and it does not have to invent it: 神, 獸, 鳥 and 人 are printed in the records themselves. Borrowing them is the cheapest move available and the least examined, because a borrowed rank carries whatever the lender was sorting by.
Three sections, testing the assumption that what it was sorting by is the body:
- Two guards on one mountain, filed in different kingdoms — 陆吾 and 开明兽.
- What the three 神 have in common, which is nothing — 烛阴 and 帝江.
- The records that name no kind at all — 精卫, whose record names one and then adds something the entry form has no slot for.
One mountain, two files#
昆侖 has two guards. Week 3 took both bodies apart and found the whole anatomical difference was one number moving from 尾 to 首.
Specimen
陆吾
Luwu novemcaudatum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 神, the word the record uses
- Form
- tiger's body with nine tails, human face, tiger's claws
- Habitat
- 昆侖之丘, the god's lower capital
- Record
西山經 · 西次三經 · 昆侖之丘Western Mountains · third western section · the Hill of Kunlun
神陸吾司之。其神狀虎身而九尾，人面而虎爪；是神也，司天之九部及帝之囿時。
The god 陸吾 administers it. This god is shaped with a tiger's body and nine tails, a human face and a tiger's claws. This god administers the nine regions of heaven and the seasons of the god's park.
Filed by office rather than by body: it is what it administers. 開明獸 stands on the same mountain with nearly the same body and is filed as a beast.
Quoted from 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. Interlinear notes removed; the base text is otherwise unaltered.
Specimen
开明兽
Kaiming vigilans binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- the record never says
- Form
- body largely a tiger's, with nine heads, every one of them human-faced
- Habitat
- standing east-facing on 昆侖, in the inner west
- Record
海內西經Within the Seas, West
開明獸身大類虎而九首，皆人面，東嚮立昆侖上。
開明獸's body is largely a tiger's, with nine heads, every one of them human-faced. It stands facing east on top of 昆侖.
Shares a mountain and most of a body with 陸吾, and is a 獸 by its own name where 陸吾 is a 神. The difference is the job, not the anatomy.
Quoted from 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. Interlinear notes removed; the base text is otherwise unaltered.
Both are nine-fold. Both are tiger below and human above. A taxonomy sorting by body puts them in adjacent cells, and week 3’s did.
The text puts them in different kingdoms. Read the first line for its verb: 司之, it administers, and what follows is a jurisdiction — the nine regions of heaven and the seasons of the god’s park. The body is the middle clause. 开明兽 is given a direction to face and a mountain to stand on, and no jurisdiction at all.
So the kind-word is tracking the job. That is a coherent thing to sort by. It is not what our parts inventory sorts by, and the two produce different files from the same two records.
What the three 神 have in common#
烛阴 (zhúyīn) is the same shape of claim made larger.
Specimen
烛阴
Zhuyin diurnale binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 神, the word the record uses
- Form
- human-faced, snake-bodied, red, a thousand 里 long; its eyes open are day and closed are night, its 吹 is winter and its 呼 is summer
- Habitat
- below 鍾山, in the outer north
- Record
海外北經Beyond the Seas, North
鍾山之神名曰燭陰，視為晝，瞑為夜，吹為冬，呼為夏，不飲，不食，不息，息為風，身長千里。
The god of 鍾山 is called 燭陰. When it looks, it is day; when it closes its eyes, it is night; when it blows, it is winter; when it breathes, it is summer. It does not drink, does not eat, does not breathe, for its breath would be wind. Its body is a thousand 里 long.
Its form field would have to hold the seasons. Nothing in the record is a measurement, and it is still the most precisely specified creature in the book.
Quoted from 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. Interlinear notes removed; the base text is otherwise unaltered.
Its record supplies exactly one fact about the body, which is that it is a thousand 里 long. Everything else specifies what the creature’s states do to the world: eyes open are day, eyes closed are night, 吹 — blowing — is winter and 呼 — breathing out — is summer. It does not drink, eat or rest, and its resting would be wind. The most precisely specified creature in the chapter, and almost none of the specification is about it.
Specimen
帝江
Dijiang anommatum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 神, the word the record uses
- Form
- like a yellow sack, red as cinnabar fire, six feet and four wings, a blur with no face
- Habitat
- 天山, on the third western route
- Record
西山經 · 西次三經 · 天山Western Mountains · third western section · the Heaven Mountain
有神焉，其狀如黃囊，赤如丹火，六足四翼，渾敦無面目，是識歌舞，實為帝江也。
There is a god there, shaped like a yellow sack, red as cinnabar fire, with six feet and four wings, a shapeless blur with no face. It knows song and dance. This is 帝江.
The limit case for a grammar of parts. Every other composite is built from recognisable animals; this one is built from none, and it still knows how to dance.
Quoted from 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. Interlinear notes removed; the base text is otherwise unaltered.
帝江 (dìjiāng) is filed as a 神 too and holds no office whatsoever. It is a sack the colour of cinnabar fire, six feet, four wings, no face, and the only thing the record says it does is know song and dance.
Three 神, three unrelated grounds for the word. 陆吾 has a jurisdiction, 烛阴 has a consequence, and 帝江 has neither. The word is not a rank. It is the set of records the text declined to call animals.
Not a rank is not the same as not useful
神 is doing real work in the text. It marks a record whose point is function rather than encounter, and that is a distinction worth having.
What it will not do is sit above 獸 in a hierarchy and inherit characters downward, which is what a rank is for. Take the word and you have taken a label. Take it as a rank and you have claimed something the text never claims.
The records that name no kind#
精卫 (jīngwèi) is given as a 鳥 and diagnosed properly — crow-shaped, patterned head, white bill, red feet, calling its own name.
Specimen
精卫
Jingwei lithophorum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 鳥, the word the record uses
- Form
- like a crow, patterned head, white bill, red feet
- Habitat
- 發鳩之山, on the third northern route
- Record
北山經 · 北次三經 · 發鳩之山Northern Mountains · third northern section · Mount Fajiu
有鳥焉，其狀如烏，文首、白喙、赤足，名曰精衛，其鳴自詨。是炎帝之少女，名曰女娃，女娃游于東海，溺而不返，故為精衛，常銜西山之木石，以堙于東海。
There is a bird there, shaped like a crow, with a patterned head, a white bill and red feet. It is called 精衛, and it calls its own name. It is the youngest daughter of 炎帝, named 女娃. 女娃 went swimming in the eastern sea, drowned and did not return, and so became 精衛. It carries wood and stones from the western mountains in its bill, to fill in the eastern sea.
Described as a bird and explained as a drowned girl. The record holds a diagnosis and a biography, and the entry form has a slot for only one of them.
Quoted from 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. Interlinear notes removed; the base text is otherwise unaltered.
Then the same record continues into the daughter of 炎帝 who drowned in the eastern sea and became the bird, and who carries wood and stones from the western mountains to fill it in. One record holding a diagnosis and a biography. The entry form has a slot for one of those.
Other records name nothing at all. Neither of the two passages behind
窫窳 (yàyǔ) says what kind of thing it is, and the
bestiary’s kind field is optional for that reason rather than by
oversight. Every proposal has a kind field, so every proposal has to say what
that field does when the source is silent: leave it empty, infer it from the
body, or refuse the entry until somebody argues for one. Those three answers are
three different systems.
What you leave with#
A ruling you have defended out loud, and a note of the objection you could not answer. One side of the room argues that 开明兽 is a misfiled 神 and the other that 陆吾 is a 獸 with a job. Later commentary is not admissible in that argument. Lines are.
Part 1 of the classification design is due at the end of week 7, and it is marked on whether its rules are stated tightly enough to be broken, which is what weeks 8 to 12 do to them. The question it is read for first is what your kind field does with 开明兽.
The spec
What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.
- you can say which part of the body differs between 陆吾 and 开明兽, and which does not
- your classification design names what its kind field does when the record supplies no kind-word
- you can cite one record that is called a 神 without being given an office
Teaching team
- Idris Fenn — tutor