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We're talking about the griffin / griffon / gryphon (Ancient Greek: γρύψ, romanized: grýps; Classical Latin: grȳps or grȳpus; Late and Medieval Latin: gryphes, grypho etc.; Old French: griffon), "a legendary creature with the body, tail, and back legs of a lion, and the head and wings of an eagle with its talons on the front legs".  (source)

Wolfgang Behr called my attention to an interesting paper by Olga Gorodetskaya (Guō Jìngyún 郭静云) and Lixin Guo 郭立新, who teach at National Chung-cheng University in Chiayi, Taiwan and at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, which hints at early West-East (Mesopotamia-East Asia) contact, an ongoing concern of ours here at Language Log:

Liǎng hé liúyù ānzǔ shényīng zài dìguó shíqí de yǎnbiàn jì yīngshī yìshòu xíngxiàng de xíngchéng

两河流域安祖神鹰在帝国时期的演变暨鹰狮翼兽形象的形成

"The evolution of the Anzu condor in Mesopotamia during the imperial period and the formation of the image of the griffin-winged beast

The paper is available from Academia here.  Although the text is in Chinese (11 pages of small print in three columns), it is replete with scores of illustrations (mostly drawings of seals and seal impressions), and has a lengthy bibliography consisting of dozens of publications, mostly in European languages and again mostly about seals and their impressions.

Abstract

From the Akkadian Empire to the Neo-Assyrian Empire, new ethnic groups continued to enter and gain control over Mesopotamia. Political changes brought about shifts in the religious system, causing the decline of the belief in Anzu, the lion-headed eagle in Sumerian civilization. The image of Anzu underwent a transformation from a flying gryphon to a gryphon with the characteristics of eagle wings and talons. Its religious connotation also developed in a negative direction, becoming a monster that causes a great flood or steals the book of life, requiring gods or heroes to overcome, control, shoot. or subdue it.  In the context of this era of changing beliefs, ancient sacred beasts are seen as pseudo-beliefs that need to be overcome.

[Key words] Anzusia, ancient beliefs, eagle worship, lion worship, personal god

(GT translation with modifications)

During the first millennia BC and AD, we find parallel beliefs and images all the way across Eurasia.  One of the most conspicuous is the píxiū 貔貅 (Old Sinitic [Zhengzhang)] /*bi  qʰu/).  Not only do these hybrid creatures have an alien appearance, their binomial name sounds non-Sinitic.  Píxiū 貔貅 are important as architectural ornaments and stone sculpture (often monumental) already from the Han period (202 BC–9 AD; 25–220 AD) for their supposed apotropaic properties.

See also bìxié 辟邪 ("a chimaera-like figure common in Chinese and Persian art") and its homophone bìxié 避邪 ("ward off evil spirits").

Olga Gorodetskaya is said to be a controversial figure in the PRC.  Judging from the article surveyed above, it is not too hard to guess why.  Below, let us take a look at a review of a major book of hers that reveals more aspects of her archeohistorical stance that might prove problematic for nationalistic investigators.

Jiāng Guǎnghuī 姜广辉, "Zhōngguó wénmíng de yuántóu shì běifāng háishì nánfāng 中国文明的源头是北方还是南方" ("Is the origin of Chinese civilization in the north or the south?"), Zhōnghuá dúshū bào 《 中华读书报 》(12/4/13), 10:

The content of the 500,000-word book, Xia, Shang and Zhou: From Myth to Historical Fact, before me is not as romantic as the title. The whole book is almost a collection of archaeological briefings in recent decades, but the system of the book, the views and conclusions, are extremely explosive and shocking. I cannot specifically predict how many scholars will oppose or support its main points after the book is published, but it will undoubtedly cause huge repercussions and shocks in the academic world. Did ancient Chinese civilization first originate in the Jianghan-Huaihe River Basin and then spread from south to north; or did it first originate in the Yellow River Basin and then spread from north to south? The view of this book is that it is the former, which is very different from the traditional view, but it is true. It is reasonable and well-founded. Scholarship prior to the Qing Dynasty's research on China's ancient history before the Western Zhou Dynasty was basically based on a few handed-down documents such as Sima Qian's Historical Records of the Han Dynasty. Historical Records begins with "Basic Annals of the Five Emperors". The five emperors are Huangdi (Yellow Emperor), Zhuanxu, Emperor Ku, Yao, and Shun; the second is "Benji of Xia", which first talks about Dayu; the third is "Benji of Yin". The centers of political activities of Yao, Shun, Xia, and Shang are generally considered to be in today's Shanxi and Henan. Thanks to the discovery and research of oracle bone inscriptions over the past hundred years, the academic community has gained a reliable understanding of the history of the Yin/Shang Dynasty. However, as for the history of the Xia Dynasty, the academic community is still at a loss due to the lack of written evidence of the corresponding era.

When the Erlitou site in Yanshi, Henan was excavated in the middle of the last century, academic circles defined it as an urban site from the Xia Dynasty to the early Shang Dynasty. Such an ancient history research background makes scholars take it for granted that the spread path of China's ancient civilization was from the north to the south. Later discovered sites in the Yangtze River basin similar to the Erlitou culture were interpreted by scholars as the spread of Xia and Shang culture to the south. This book quotes [archeology official] Qiao Yu's opinions and puts forward a different view: research on the population and land utilization around Erlitou shows that the population and settlement density there have always been very thin, and the land utilization is also very low. Erlitou belongs to a farming culture. With enough farmland and residential areas, the agricultural society lacked the motivation to expand outwards; there were not many weapons at the Erlitou site, and there were no ethnic groups that made a living by war. How did they expand their influence outwards?

After the discovery of ancient city sites such as Qujialing and Shijiahe in Hubei, the prototype of an ancient united city-state in the Han River Basin has emerged. In other words, the Jianghan Plain had formed a complete national civilization before the Bronze Age. The so-called "Erlitou Culture" is actually the cultural aspect produced by the Hanshui Civilization in the Bronze Age and affected the Zhengluo area, mainly originating from the south. Archeology has proven that civilization in ancient China did not spread from north to south, but from south to north.

The legendary holy kings and heroes such as Yao, Shun, and Yu are the result of the merger of myths from different traditional sources. Shun and Yu were not originally heroes born in the north. For example, Shun was called "Lord of the Xiang" in The Songs of Chu, and his two wives were called "Lady Xiang". They were all regarded as the gods of the Xiang River, and the Xiang River was the the southern part of the Qujialing cultural range. Thr Historical Records says that the ancestor of Chu came from Zhuanxu, while the Bamboo Chronicles records the genealogy of the holy king and says: "Zhuanxu gave birth to Bo Gun." Gun is the father of Dayu. In this way, Dayu was originally the ancestor and hero of the Chu people. . Huainanzi "Benjing" says: "At the time of Shun, Gonggong raised the flood…Shun then asked Yu to dredge the three rivers and five lakes, open up Yique, guide the Xianjian, level the land, and so that the waters could flow into the Eastern Sea." "Three rivers" and "Five Lakes" are not northern scenery. In contrast, in the north, the risk of floods in the Wei and Fen river basins was very low. The climate in the middle reaches of the Yellow River is quite dry, and there was an obvious tendency toward aridity in the north during the Xia era. Therefore, it is difficult for Weifen or Zhengluo areas to create the myth of water control. The author believes that the center of political activities of the Xia Dynasty should be in the south. Specifically, it is most likely to be in the Xia River in Hubei (see Shui Jing Zhu (Annotations on the Classic of Waters), now named Changxia River. According to Shui Jing Zhu, the lower reaches of the Han River were all known as "Xia River"), and it was located in the Jianghan Plain. Many ancient cities in Qujialing and Shijiahe stood near the Xia River. In ancient times, due to the topography, there were frequent floods here. Water control was in great need, and the ancestors of Qujialing indeed had already devised the engineering system for water control was. In this case, why don’t we regard the city sites such as Dengjiawan or Jingnan Temple as the Xia Kingdom where Dayu controlled water?

The author also proposes that among the civilizations before the Yin-Shang Dynasty, there existed a pre-Chu civilization. Its scale, tradition and degree of nationalization were probably the highest and most glorious among all ancient civilization groups at that time. This means that the cultural tradition of Chu should be older than that of other countries, especially earlier than the tradition of Shang and Zhou rulers who came from the north to the south. So, why is the history we see today not like this? And the original history is missing? The author believes that the history handed down to the world is often written by the victors, which is bound to be mixed with the ideas based on the victors. The ideology of viewpoints even obscures the truth of the original history. The era when these handed down documents were written began in the Zhou Dynasty, and they were recorded using the characters of the Yin and Zhou civilizations, so they must represent the position of the northern ethnic group from which the nobles of the Yin and Zhou Dynasties came. Judging from the development process of various cultures in China, the northern ethnic groups developed later and their history is relatively young. From the Yin and Zhou dynasties, they gradually promoted the vast city-states into a unified political power and became the so-called "winners" of history. Therefore, they also have the right to express history and can write a history that promotes their own power and "virtue" and pass it down to the world. They borrowed the ancient myths of the southern ethnic groups and regarded Shun and Yu as the holy kings of their own ethnic group. But even so, in the orthodox history centered on the north, there are still clues that allow us to discover that the ancient south was actually civilized earlier than the north. In other words, although the mythology we generally recognize today seems to be a unified history at first glance, in fact, the original source of each mythical story and sacred hero in it is probably the result of the intersection and merging of the sacred histories of many different ethnic groups.

The above is the main line and theme of this book. Although these views are bold and shocking, they are not whimsical arguments, but are put forward by what I think is a serious and rigorous academic work. After this book is published, it will inevitably be criticized or criticized, and it may even be "beaten black and blue", but I believe that this book will become an immortal historical masterpiece. In the past hundred years of Chinese historical research, our academic community has been lacking this kind of historical research works that combine dense data with big thinking methods. Its significance is not mainly whether the conclusions in the book are completely consistent with historical reality, but that in the face of those cultural relics without written records, we cannot only use the limited handed down documents as the frame of reference for interpreting them, but should rely on the hard work of the historian to interpret them. The hard work of the author has created a new frame of reference that is helpful for analyzing possibilities.

We should not only use the limited number of handed down documents as a frame of reference for interpreting [the archeologically recovered cultural relics], but should rely on the hard work of historians to create a new frame of reference for them that is conducive to the analysis of possibilities.

(GT translation with modifications)

(citation courtesy of Petya Andreeva)

Both the dispersal of the winged lion across Eurasia and the radical reenvisioning of the development of Chinese history as having much more to do with the south than traditional accounts would have it possess important implications for future research on East Asian civilization and language.  It will take many years to reassess these new insights.  Meanwhile, they have already helped me understand better problems that have puzzled me for decades, such as why the first poet in Chinese history known by name (Qu Yuan [339-278 BC]) came from the south, why the vast majority of archeologically recovered classical period manuscripts have been recovered in the south (esp. Chu), why the founder of the epochal Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), Liu Bang (256-195 BC), and his closest competitor, Xiang Yu (232-202 BC), in defeating the brief (221-207 BC) eponymous (for "China") far (over 1,000 km) northwestern, semi-barbarian Qin dynasty ʣəɲ 秦 (Old Sinitic Minimal [OSM] reconstructed pronunciation) were both from the same southern state of Chu where the first Sinitic / Hannic poet came from.

Perhaps we should henceforth refer to "China" (< Qin) as "Tshraq" (OSM of "Chu").  The Sinoglyph for Tshraq / Chu is 楚.  

oracle bone form

Western Zhou bronze inscriptional form

The word is of Mon-Khmer derivation and had the meaning "thorn".

Source:  Axel Schuessler 2007, 2009

And we should look more intensively and extensively at words like píxiū 貔貅 ("winged lion-like chimera"), bìxié 辟邪 ("a chimaera-like figure common in Chinese and Persian art"), and its homophone bìxié 避邪 ("ward off evil spirits"), to go beyond the pathbreaking work of Jerry Norman and Tsu-Lin Mei in demonstrating Sinitic borrowing from Austro-Asiatic.

 

Selected readings

• "Revelation: Scythians and Shang" (6/4/23)
• "Horses, soma, riddles, magi, and animal style art in southern China" (11/11/19)
• "China Babel" (3/26/24) — Southwest Bronze Road; Shimao and long distance cultural transmission; Scythian linkage of Eurasian nomadic societies
• Victor H. Mair, with contributions by E. Bruce Brooks, "Was There a Xià Dynasty?", Sino-Platonic Papers, 239 (May, 2013), 39 pages.
• Andrew Chittick, "Vernacular Languages in the Medieval Jiankang Empire", 250 (July, 2014), 25 pages.
• Norman, Jerry; Mei, Tsu-lin (1976). "The Austroasiatics in Ancient South China: Some Lexical Evidence" (PDF). Monumenta Serica. 32: 274–301. JSTOR 40726203.
• "What is the difference between a dragon and a /lʊŋ³⁵/?" (2/10/24)
• "The foreign origins of the lion dance and words for 'lion' in Sinitic" (1/14/22) — "Nearly every government building in China is guarded by a pair of lions flanking the front door.  The same is true of major banks and other public buildings and even private houses in many other countries around the world.  This is a custom that may be traced back to Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite empire (c. 1650 BC-c. 1178 BC), where an imposing pair of lions guards the gateway leading to the palace.  Bear in mind that Hittite is the oldest attestable Indo-European language, older yet than Tocharian and Sanskrit."
• Mayor, Adrienne (2011) [2000]. The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691150130.
• Mayor, Adrienne (2022). Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691211183.
• Mayor, Adrienne; Heaney, Michael (1993). "Griffins and Arimaspeans". Folklore. 104 (1–2): 40–66. doi:10.1080/0015587X.1993.9715853. JSTOR 1260795.

May 4, 2024 @ 6:45 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing, Epigraphy, Language and archeology, Language and culture, Language and history, Language contact

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