Juling Shen
deity
Juling Shen (simplified Chinese: 巨灵神; traditional Chinese: 巨靈神; pinyin: Jù Líng Shén; lit. 'god of giant spirit') is a gigantic river god in Chinese mythology. He is usually associated with the Yellow River.
Splitting Mount Hua
It is said that Juling Shen split Mount Hua into two halves with his hands and feet so that the Yellow River could flow to the east. One half became Mount Hua; the other became Mount Shouyang (Chinese: 首陽山) in the east. Legend says imprints of his palm can still be seen on Mount Hua.
This legend appears in Zhang Heng's "Rhapsody on the Western Capital" (Chinese: 西京賦). In Commentary on the Water Classic, Li Daoyuan cites a passage from the much earlier Guoyu describing the same story. However, this quote is not found in the extant version of Guoyu. It is possible that Li was actually citing another ancient text, Ancient Tales (Chinese: 古語).
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This entry incorporates text from “Juling Shen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.