Week 7 Session: Drift
The 青丘之山 record names no beast. 九尾狐 is a handle attached later, so everything the name now carries was added after the record closed — and the same process runs inside the edition, on 狌狌 and on 讙头.
19 April 2027 · Phase 2, Push it until it strains
The rule this week states
A name outlives its record: 九尾狐 is never named in the text, so everything the name now carries was added after the record closed.
What this week does#
Week 6 found that the text’s kind-words track a job rather than a body. This week goes after the field above them, the one nothing has questioned since week 2: the name. A name is the handle a record is filed under, and a handle can outlive the record and keep collecting.
Four sections:
- The record with no name in it — 九尾狐, whose line names a mountain and no beast.
- What the name collected afterwards, and why the record is too short to stop it.
- The same process inside the edition — 狌狌 under two graphs and three bodies, and 讙头 drifting the other way.
- The counter-case — 精卫, where what the name grew was already in the line.
The record that names no beast#
Specimen
九尾狐
Jiuweihu anthropophagum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 獸, the word the record uses
- Form
- like a fox with nine tails, its voice an infant's
- Habitat
- 青丘之山, on the first route
- Use
- 食者不蠱 — eat it and you cannot be bewitched. It also eats people
- Record
南山經 · 南山經之首 · 青丘之山Southern Mountains · first southern section · the Green Hill
有獸焉，其狀如狐而九尾，其音如嬰兒，能食人；食者不蠱。
There is a beast there, shaped like a fox but with nine tails, and its cry is like an infant's. It can eat people. Eat it and you will not be harmed by 蠱, poisoning by witchcraft.
The edition describes this creature but never gives it this name.
The edition never calls it 九尾狐. It is an unnamed beast, fox-shaped and nine-tailed, and everything the name now carries was attached to it later.
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.
Count the names in that line. There is one, and it is 青丘之山, the mountain. The beast has none. It is a beast shaped like a fox, with nine tails, an infant’s voice, an appetite for people, and a use.
九尾狐 (jiǔwěihú) is not in the edition. The
bestiary prints the name because a reader needs a handle and the entry declares
that it is doing so, with unnamedInSource set. This is the single
most consequential fact in the course and it costs one line of reading to
confirm, which is why the first spec point asks you to confirm it rather than
believe it.
Note what the last clause does. 食者不蠱 — eat it and you cannot be bewitched. The creature is the cure for bewitchment. It is not the cause of it.
What the name collected afterwards#
The fox that takes human form, the fox that seduces, the fox whose tail count is a count of centuries: none of that is in 南山經. None of it contradicts 南山經 either, and that is the mechanism. Three clauses are too short to be inconsistent with anything. An absence does not push back.
So the drift is not a sequence of errors. Each addition was made to a name that had room for it, and the room was there because the record stopped early.
Named here, not cited
Those three properties are named and not quoted, because this course has no apparatus for the texts that carry them. The citation rule applies to the course exactly as it applies to your entry: an unfound line claims nothing.
So treat the list as a description of what the name carries today, which you can check against your own prior belief, and not as evidence about any particular later text. The evidence in this session is the three records below, all of which are in the edition.
The same drift inside the edition#
狌狌 (xīngxīng) makes the point without leaving the book.
Specimen
狌狌
Xingxing albiauritum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 獸, the word the record uses
- Form
- like a 禺 with white ears, going on all fours and running upright; and, in a second record, like a pig with a human face
- Habitat
- 招搖之山, the first mountain of the first route; and west of 舜's burial
- Use
- 食之善走 — eat it and you run well
- Records
南山經 · 南山經之首 · 招搖之山Southern Mountains · first southern section · Mount Zhaoyao
有獸焉，其狀如禺而白耳，伏行人走，其名曰狌狌，食之善走。
There is a beast there, shaped like an ape but with white ears. It goes on all fours and it runs like a person. It is called 狌狌. Eat it and you will run well.
海內南經Within the Seas, South
狌狌知人名，其為獸如豕而人面，在舜葬西。
狌狌 knows people's names. As a beast it is like a pig with a human face. It lives west of Shun's burial place.
海內經Within the Seas
有青獸，人面，名曰猩猩。
There is a green beast with a human face, called 猩猩.
Three records, three bodies, two spellings. The first beast in the book is also the first proof that a name does not fix a creature.
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.
Three records. In 南山經之首 it is 禺-like with white ears, going on all fours and running like a person. In 海內南經 it knows people’s names and is shaped like a pig with a human face. In 海內經 it is a green beast with a human face and the name is written 猩猩. One name, two graphs, three bodies, and the surviving modern word means an ape in a zoo.
Specimen
讙头
Huantou rostratum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- the record never says
- Form
- human-faced, winged and beaked; it fishes, and it walks leaning on its wings
- Habitat
- 讙頭國 in the outer south; and the great wilds of the south, spelled 驩頭
- Records
海外南經Beyond the Seas, South
讙頭國在其南，其為人人面有翼，鳥喙，方捕魚。
讙頭國 is to the south of it. Its people have human faces, wings and birds' bills, and they are catching fish.
大荒南經Great Wilds, South
驩頭人面鳥喙，有翼，食海中魚，杖翼而行。
驩頭 has a human face and a bird's bill, and it has wings. It eats fish from the sea, and it walks propped on its wings.
A country in one record and a creature in the other, under two spellings of one name. No field in the entry can hold a thing which is also a people.
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.
讙头 (huāntóu) drifts in the opposite direction. In 海外南經 the entry is a country, 讙頭國, whose people have human faces, wings and bird bills. In 大荒南經 the country is gone, the spelling is 驩頭, and what remains is a creature that eats fish from the sea and walks propped on its wings. A polity became an animal, or an animal was mistaken for a polity, and the entry form cannot record which.
The counter-case#
精卫 (jīngwèi) is why this week is not a complaint.
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.
Its record already contains the story. The drowned daughter of 炎帝, the stones carried from the western mountains to the eastern sea: that is in the line, not attached to it later. What drifted was which part later readers carried. The bird became a figure for persistence, and the diagnosis — crow-shaped, patterned head, white bill, red feet — stopped being the part anyone repeated.
Drift is therefore not the same as invention. Sometimes a name grows what the record never held, and sometimes it grows one clause of what the record did hold, at the expense of the rest. A system that records only the surviving version cannot tell those two cases apart.
What you leave with#
A specimen card carrying a field the earlier cards did not: the name’s source. Where the edition names the creature, cite the line. Where it does not, say who did, and if the answer is this course, say that.
Before Part 1 of the classification design closes at the end of this week, go through it for every species name the edition does not print, and mark them. A system whose species are named by later readers has imported later readers’ conclusions and filed them as data. Week 8 is where the name field fails outright.
The spec
What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.
- you have found the 青丘之山 passage yourself and confirmed the name is not in it
- you can list three properties 九尾狐 now has that no record in the edition supplies
- you can name the two spellings under which 狌狌 appears, and where each one stands
Teaching team
- Idris Fenn — tutor