Peng (mythology)


Peng or Dapeng is a giant bird that transforms from a Kun giant fish in Chinese mythology. In comparative mythology of giant creatures, Peng is likened to the Roc or Garuda and Kun to the Leviathan.

Names

The Chinese logograms for peng and kun exemplify common radical-phonetic characters. Peng combines the "bird radical" with a peng phonetic, and kun combines the "fish radical" with a kun phonetic.
Both the mythic Chinese Peng and Kun names involve word play. Peng was anciently a variant Chinese character for feng in fenghuang ; Kun originally meant "fish roe; fry; spawn".
Synonyms of Peng include Dapeng and Dapengniao, both used to translate foreign "Roc" and "Garuda". Dapeng is also a place name for a few places in greater China, most notably in Shenzhen and Taiwan.
After recent fossil discoveries in northeast China, Chinese paleontologists used Peng to name the enantiornithine bird Pengornis and the wukongopterid pterosaur Kunpengopterus.

Literature

In Chinese literature, the Daoist classic Zhuangzi has the oldest record of the Peng and Kun myth. The first chapter begins with three versions of this parable; the lead paragraph, a quote from the Qixie, and a quote from the Tang zhi wen Ji. The first account contrasts the giant Peng bird with a small tiao and jiu and the third with a yan. The Peng fish-bird transformation is not only the beginning myth in Zhuangzi, but Robert Allinson claims, "the central myth".
Many Zhuangzi scholars, both Chinese and foreign, have debated over the Peng story. Lian Xinda calls it "arguably the most controversial image in the text, which has been inviting conflicting interpretations for the past seventeen centuries."
In traditional Chinese scholarship, the standard Peng interpretation was the "equality theory" of Guo Xiang, who redacted and annotated the received Zhuangzi text. Guo's commentary said,
Some Chinese scholars gave alternate interpretations. The Buddhist monk Zhi Dun associated the Peng's flight with the highest satisfaction achieved by the zhiren.
The Chan Buddhist master Hanshan Deqing also declares the Peng is the image of the Daoist sage, and suggests the bird's flight does not result from the piling up of wind but from the deep piling up of de "virtue; power".
In modern Chinese and western scholarship, most scholars reject Guo's "equality theory" construal. Lian differentiates contemporary interpretations between whether Zhuangzi was a radical skeptic and/or a relativist.
Julian Pas concurs that "the true sage is compared to the enormous bird." Angus Charles Graham sees the Peng as "soaring above the restricted viewpoints of the worldly." Allinson finds it "very clear and very explicit that the standpoint of the big bird and the standpoint of the cicada and the dove are not seen as possessing equal value." Karen Carr and Philip J. Ivanhoe find "positive ideals" in the Peng symbolizing the "mythical creature that rises above the more mundane concerns of the word. Brian Lundberg says Zhuangzi uses the image to urge us to "go beyond restricted small points of views." Eric Schwitzgebel interprets, "Being small creatures, we cannot understand great things like the Peng." Steve Coutinho describes the Peng as a "recluse who wanders beyond the realm of the recognizable", in contrast the tiny birds that "cannot begin to understand what lies so utterly beyond the confines of their mundane experience." Scott Cook writes, "We are, at first, led by Zhuangzi almost imperceptibly into an unreflective infatuation with the bird." Lian concludes the Peng is "An inspiring example of soaring up and going beyond, the image is used to broaden the outlook of the small mind; its function is thus more therapeutic than instructional." Bryan W. Van Norden suggests, "The likely effect of this passage on the reader is a combination of awe and disorientation."
Zhuangzi's Peng bird became a famous literary metaphor. Two early examples were the Shen yi jing by Dongfang Shuo and the Commentary on the Water Classic by Li Daoyuan. Li Bai's fu "prose-poem" Dapengniao fu personalizes the Peng "into a symbol of the self-assured Li Bo himself."

Notable people named Peng (鵬/鹏)

Peng linguistically symbolizes "greatness; great promise; great accomplishments"; for instance, the idiom péng chéng wàn lǐ means "have a bright/unlimited future". This character is commonly used in Chinese given names and several important mainland Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese politicians have Peng in their given names. In contrast, the character Kun is seldom used.
The Chinese character peng is pronounced hō in Japanese, as seen in the sumo ring names Taihō Kōki, Hakuhō Shō, Enhō Akira, Daishōhō Kiyohiro, Tokushinhō Motohisa, Wakanohō Toshinori, Kyokutenhō Masaru and so on. It is also used in company names, such as Taiho Pharmaceutical.
The Chinese character peng is pronounced poong in Korean. Notable people include South Korean politician Lee Ki-poong.