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Kong Xuan

Investiture of the Gods character

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ6429154
Source-derived summary

Kong Xuan (Chinese: 孔宣; pinyin: Kǒng Xuān) is a character in the Chinese novel Fengshen Yanyi. He is a peacock spirit who serves as a military commander of King Zhou and becomes one of the principal opponents of the forces of King Wu of Zhou. Chinese scholars have associated the character with the Buddhist Peacock Wisdom King (孔雀明王), identified with Mahamayuri.

Kong Xuan is known for his five-colored divine light (五色神光), which he uses to capture opponents and magical weapons. He is eventually defeated and subdued by Zhunti Daoren (准提道人), who takes him to the West.

In Fengshen Yanyi

Kong Xuan first appears as a commander at Sanshan Pass. After the defeat of the other Shang forces, King Zhou sends him to stop the Zhou army at Jinji Ridge. Kong Xuan establishes his camp on the ridge and prevents the Zhou army from advancing.

At Jinji Ridge, Kong Xuan commands several officers, including Chen Geng, Sun He and Gao Jieneng. After several of his officers are defeated, he personally enters the fighting.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Kong Xuan” is investiture of the Gods character. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Kong, Xuan and Investiture, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current 172-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Kong, Xuan and Investiture is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “investiture of the Gods character” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6429154. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Kong Xuan”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Kong Xuan primary sources, Kong Xuan archive and Kong research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Kong Xuan”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Kong Xuan” 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.