The ubumedori (姑獲鳥) or kūfūnyau (クウ・フウ・ニャウ)
―Wakan sansai zue, Japan, (encyclopedia completed 1712)

The Guhuoniao (姑獲鳥, "wench bird"[1]) is a legendary bird from Chinese folklore. It is described in Chinese texts such as Western Jin natural history book Xuan zhong ji (玄中記, "Records from Inside the Mysterious", 3-4th cent.),[2][1] and the Ming period pharmacopoeia Bencao Gangmu (16th cent.) which collates information from this and other sources.

Nomenclature

The guhuoniao (姑獲鳥, "wench bird")[5] has had several aliases, such as rumuniao (乳母鳥, "mother's milk bird", or in Japanese, ubadori "wetnurse bird), yexing younu (夜行遊女, "nighttime traveling girl"), tiandi shaonu (天帝少女, "celestial emperor's young girl"), wuguniao (無辜鳥, "innocent bird"), yinfei (隠飛, "hidden flying")[6] guiniao (鬼鳥, "demon bird"),[5] Yi xi (譩譆),[7] or Gou xing (鉤星/鈎星).[8]

General description

The wench bird, according to the Bencao Gangmu, is a kind of demon-spirit (guishen 鬼神) and takes human lives (i.e., extracts the human soul hun 魂 and po 魄[9]). It can transform into a bird using a feather garment, and transform into a woman by shedding the feathers. It is said to be the spirit of a woman who died giving birth to a child. Thus it has two breasts at the front of its chest (even while in bird form[10]).[3]

It has the habit of kidnapping infants to raise it as its own. It flies by night and marks the child with a drop of its blood. This will cause the child to fall ill, with convulsions and an illness condition called "innocent's gan" (wugugan, 無辜疳 lit. roughly "innocent's malnutrition" or "wasting-away" illness[11][12][a]). This infant casualty was purportedly frequent in Jingzhou, China.[3]

The wench bird shares similarities with the “yuyinu”(羽衣女, feather-clad woman) in the Eastern Jin novel In Search of the Supernatural in the aspect of becoming a bird when she wears hair and a woman when she takes off her hair, and to the nuqi (女岐) of the Chu Ci in the aspect of stealing other people's children, so it is believed that the guhaoniao is a fusion of several Chinese legends.[13] The Tang era Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang notes that the guhaoniao is a pregnant woman who died in childbirth and turned into a bird,[13] as also given in the Bencao Gangmu.[3]

Relation to Japanese folklore

Main article: ubume

The bird is also explained in the Edo Period Japan encyclopedia Wakan Sansai Zue, with a regurgitation of the Bencao gangmu account followed by commentary on the Japanese equivalent ubume dori. The encyclopedist's opinion is this is no woman turned bird, but a bird species formed from the concentration of yin poison. In Japan, this ubume dori is supposedly a gull-like bird, with a similar bird-call, which frequents beaches in the West, and appears suddenly in lightly raining dark night, and a strange phosphorescent fire will accompany wherever it shows, according to the residents of Kyūshū. It is said to transform into a woman with child, and ask humans it meets to carry its child, but the timid who flee may incur its hatred and come down with chills and high fever that are sometimes lethal. However a stalwart person who accepts the request to carry the child comes to no harm.[14][15][16]

In Japan, there is also a similar legend in Ibaraki Prefecture, where it is said that when a child's clothes is hung up to dry at night, a yokai called ubametori (ウバメトリ, or 姑獲鳥[17]) would consider it to be the yokai's own child's clothes and mark those clothes with milk from the yokai's breasts, which said to be poisonous.[18][19]

As for the borrowing of Chinese name guhaoniao for the equivalent Japanese lore of ubame or ubume,[17][20] one commentary is Chinese yaoguai and the Japanese yōkai got conflated in the early Edo period (17th century),[13] while another commentator thinks the syncretism with Chinese lore was probably done deliberately by some intellectual bringing over information about the Chinese guhaoniao.[21]

See also

Explanatory notes

  1. ^ Note that Japanese dictionaries gloss 疳 (read "kan") as "convulsion", and thus Japanese commentators interpret "innocent's gan" to be convulsion as well, which is of course redundant with xian (癇, "convulsion" already being mentioned. Thus for example the Tsūzoku bukkyō hyakkajiten (1892) states: Due to the ubumechō (姑獲鳥) the child develops kyōkan (驚癇, 'convulsion') which is called bukokan (無辜疳, 'innocent's kan').[10]

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b Guo Pu (2006). "Xuán zhōng jì" 玄中記. In Takeda, Akira [in Japanese]; Kuroda, Mamiko (eds.). Chūgoku koten shōsetsushū 中国古典小説選 [Selected Chinese Classical Novels]. Vol. 2. Meiji shoin. pp. 301–303. ISBN 978-4-625-66343-7.
  2. ^ Guo Pu. Xuán zhōng jì 玄中記 – via Wikisource.
  3. ^ a b c d e Li Shizhen (2021b). "49-28 Gu　huo niao wench bird" 姑獲鳥. Ben Cao Gang Mu, Volume IX: Fowls, Domestic and Wild Animals, Human Substances. Translated by Paul U. Unschuld. Univ of California Press. pp. 340–341. ISBN 9780520976993.
  4. ^ a b Li Shizhen (1931). "Birds Chapter 49 §Ubumedori" 姑獲鳥. Tōchū kokuyaku Honzō kōmoku 頭註国訳本草綱目. Vol. 11. Translated by Suzuki, Shinkai. Shunyōdō. pp. 396–397.
  5. ^ a b Shi Yi Ji apud Bencao Gangmu[3][4]
  6. ^ Xuan zhong ji apud Bencao Gangmu[3][4]
  7. ^ Du Yu's commentary to Zuo zhuan, apud Bencao Gangmu.
  8. ^ Jingchu Suishiji apud Bencao Gangmu.
  9. ^ Chen Cangqi 陳蔵器 apud Bencao gangmu
  10. ^ a b c "83. Akkijin no koto" 第83 悪鬼神の事 [83. About evil demon-spirits]. Tsūzoku bukkyō hyakka zensho 通俗仏教百科全書 (in Japanese). Vol. 1. Bukkyo shoin. 1892. p. 154.
  11. ^ Wiseman, Nigel; Brand, Eric (2022). "Gan accumulation". A Chinese Medical Reference: Symptoms, Pattern, Diseases, Acupoints, Medicinals, and Formulas. Paradigm Publications. ISBN 9780912111179.
  12. ^ Cf. Umschuld tr., p. 341, n348 on gan 疳: "sweet-illness" which "involves several complaints.. [and difficult to categorize] into a known disease category". Further description in BCGM Dictionary 1: 180–188
  13. ^ a b c Tada, Katsumi [in Japanese] (2006). Hyakki kaidoku 百鬼解読 [Explaining 100 Oni]. Kodansha Bunko (in Japanese). Kodansha. pp. 29–40. ISBN 978-4-06-275484-2.
  14. ^ Terashima Ryōan [in Japanese] (1987). Wakan Sansai Zue. Toyo bunko 6. Heibonsha. pp. 342–343. ISBN 978-4-582-80466-9. Woodblock print: 巻44 山禽類 姑獲鳥 1906 edition: 巻44 山禽類 姑獲鳥, p. 503.
  15. ^ Terashima Ryōan [in Japanese] (1985) [1712], Wakan Sansai zue 和漢三才図会, vol. 6, Translated with notes by Shimada, Isao; Takeshima, Atsuo Higuchi, Motomi, Heibonsha, p. 342, ISBN 9784582804478
  16. ^ Minakata, Kumagusu (1971) [1926]. "Minakat zuihitsu: Kisha, shōni wo gaisuru koto" 南方随筆:鬼車、小児を害すること [About the demon-wagon harming a child]. Minakata Kumagusu zenshū: Minakata kanwa, Minakata zuihitsu, Zoku Minakta zuihitsu 南方熊楠全集: 南方閑話. 南方随筆. 続南方随筆. Heibonsha. p. 113. ({{URL|1=https://kiebine2007.amearare.com/minakata2.htm |2=html)
  17. ^ a b Aramata, Hiroshi; Ōya, Yasunori (2021). "Ubume, ubume [reijin], ubametori" うぶめ、産女[霊神]、姑獲鳥. Aramata Hiroshi no Nihon zenkoku yōkai mappu アラマタヒロシの日本全国妖怪マップ (in Japanese). Shuwa System. p. 48. ISBN 9784798065076.
  18. ^ Institute of Folklore (1955). Yanagita, Kunio (ed.). Sōgō nihon minzoku goi 綜合日本民俗語彙 [A Comprehensive Japanese Folk Lexicon]. Vol. 1. Heibonsha. pp. 136–137. ncidBN05729787.
  19. ^ Akagi, Takehiko, ed. (1991). Ibaraki hōgen minzokugo jiten 茨城方言民俗語辞典 [Ibaraki dialect folklore term dictionary]. Tokyodo shuppan. p. 103. ISBN 9784490102963.
  20. ^ Conversely the Chinese version has been read as ubumechō (姑獲鳥)[10]
  21. ^ Murakami, Kenji, ed. (2005). Nihon yōkai daijiten 日本妖怪大事典 [Encyclopedia of Japanese Yokai]. Kwai books. Kadokawa shoten. p. 46. ISBN 978-4-04-883926-6.
Allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guhuoniao
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