Yayu
Mythological Narrative
Yayu's story lies scattered through the book, and assembles into a complete divine murder case. The Classic of Regions Within the Seas: West states it flatly: the god Erfu and his minister Wei killed Yayu, a deity with a snake's body and a human face. The Supreme God had the culprit shackled on Mount Shushu, his right foot fettered, his hands and hair bound behind him, tied to a tree on the mountainside. The same chapter shows the aftermath east of the Kaiming beast: six shamans, Wu Peng, Wu Di, Wu Yang, Wu Lü, Wu Fan, and Wu Xiang, flanking Yayu's corpse, each holding the drugs of deathlessness to hold decay at bay.
The revival went wrong. In the Classic of Regions Within the Seas: South, Yayu has become a dragon-headed thing living in the Weak River that eats men; the Classic of the Northern Mountains records under the same name an ox-like beast with red body, human face, and horse's hooves, whose cry sounds like an infant. The Huainanzi lists it among the scourges of Yao's reign, alongside Zaochi and the nine-headed Jiuying, all destroyed by the archer Yi. Guo Pu's commentary preserves a Han coda: when quarrymen under Emperor Xuan opened a stone chamber and found a figure bound hand and foot, only Liu Xiang could identify it, citing this very passage, and the court's astonishment set off a fashion for reading the Shanhaijing.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Yayu.
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