Post 2a/?
Some weeks ago now, it was the Moon Festival of the Taiwanese and Chinese heathens, when those heathen traditionalists still given to making their own moon-cakes tend to generously share even these precious ones with their friends :yay: Wanted to summarise some things I was told, but didn't get round to it.
Taoists' Moon Goddess Chang-e (known also by her various other famous names and epithets in Taoism) is the centre of the ancient native, i.e. Taoist, Chinese Moon Festival, when the Chinese traditionalists would actively stare at and contemplate their sacred and auspicious moon. The Goddess - who is understandably said to be incredibly beautiful - is regarded as the Goddess of Immortality and viewed as dwelling on the Moon, with her companion the Jade Rabbit, besides the Moon also harbouring a divine old man. Popular artwork during the Moon Festival - also called Mid-Autumn Festival - also depict the Goddess descending to earth from the moon, bearing the mooncakes and at times petting the Jade Rabbit** which makes her immortality elixir (or cakes). The shape of a rabbit on the moon in the act of making edibles is also seen by Japanese and IIRC heathen Koreans. (The Japanese also have a tradition of making "mooncakes", due to contacts between Chinese tradition and Japan.)
** Apparently, jade is not necessarily green: I've been told the Jade Rabbit is white-jade, not green-jade.
Note that wikipedia presents only select tales about Chang-e, and only those stories where it looks like she started off as human and became immortal. The more ancient narratives about the Goddess Chang-e explain that she was a divinity and part of the population of Daoist Heaven, but show how she came to earth together with her divine husband who was sent to earth on a mission (he is therefore a hero in the original narratives) and how she then went to the moon (and her husband to the sun), and that this followed the plans of Daoist Heaven.
Now I'm going to have to go off on something tangentially related, but will hopefully remember to come back to the Taoist Moon Goddess of the Chinese.
Having mentioned the Jade Rabbit who lives on the moon, it must be said that western (and sadly some Indian) writers tend to dismiss the Jade Rabbit as Indian in origin and like to pass this off as "therefore" a Buddhist influence on Daoism.
But there are a few things to be said:
1. Even if - for the sake of argument - people were to tentatively suppose that the Chinese Jade Rabbit had Indian origins, then the "image of the Hare on the moon" and the moon-and-hare association is still originally *Hindu* not Buddhist. (Note crucially that Buddhist derivation of the notion from Hindu precursors is *known* and is hence NOT independent.) Buddhism merely used the pre-existing Hindu views - on the shape of a hare being discernable on the moon (hence Chandra's famous names Shashi and Shashanka, since the hare shape is his beauty-spot) and the hare association with the Moon - to develop Buddhism's own Jataka fables. But like much of Buddhist attempts to inveigle itself into pre-existing Hindu (or, elsewhere: other native) tradition, Hindu views on a hare on the moon remain uninfluenced by Buddhism.
MW dictionary entries on the 2 aforementioned names of Chandran makes the ancientry of Hindoos' views on the matter more apparent:
(The abbreviations highlighted are Shvetaashvatara Upanishad I think, Mahaabharatam, and "Ka1v" is the MW abbreviation for "Kaavya".
Note also how often even the variants on both these words are related back to the moon.)
So even the so-called "Monier-Williams" dictionary offers proof that these *Hindoo* names of the Hindoo God Chandran (Moon) pre-existed in Hindu religion, as Chandran was already known as Shashanka and Shashin for being "hare-marked" or "containing a hare" in the MBh and the Shvetaashvatara Upanishad; i.e. long before the Buddhists used this pre-existing Hindu notion - of (the mark of) a Hare on the Moon - in penning their origin story for how a hare came to be on the moon into the Buddhist Jatakas. (And I suspect neither the Upanishad nor the MBh pretended to invent the names of Shashanka and Shashi for Chandran: chances are high that these texts just referred to Chandran matter-of-factly with these names, as if Hindoo readers/listeners were by then already familiar with the oral traditions of these being his personal names.)
Buddhism in time had used the long pre-existing *Hindu* notion of the shape of a hare on the moon (and the Hindu association of a hare with the moon) to make fables around it. It is true that when Buddhism went to China, eventually, the Buddhist Jataka fable was *attached* (grafted) onto the Chinese Jade Rabbit - but among Chinese Buddhists and Bauddhified laity. The Taoists held to the original, non-Bauddhified - native, Chinese - perception of the Jade Rabbit, i.e. without the late Buddhist accretions. That is, the traditional Chinese view of the Jade Rabbit does NOT have the Buddhist additions. (Buddhism created Bauddhified/subversive variants for most narratives about Chinese Gods and divine characters and heroes. Not to mention Buddhism thereby backprojecting itself onto much earlier narratives on the Chinese Gods. These Bauddhified variants usually downgraded the native heathen Gods - or made them look like villains or else converts to Buddhism - while often playing up Buddhism's "compassion" and "superiority" etc. This is also noticeable in the Buddhist variant on the Moon Goddess' narrative.)
Therefore, *if* aliens and Indians are going to claim that the Chinese Jade Rabbit "must have had" Indian origins, the specific origins would be Hindu not Buddhist. Not to mention that without the original Hindu view, Buddhists would - as always - have had nothing to create their Bauddhified spin on. So that even the Buddhist grafts onto the Jade Rabbit in China are ultimately no more to Buddhism's credit than the "Bharatanatyam" taught in China by the leela samson school is to be accredited to christianism.
The Q, then: why does Buddhism always get the credit for non-Buddhisms? Especially when these things are used to encroach on non-Indian non-Buddhist cultures?
Having said all of that:
2. The Chinese Jade Rabbit is actually based on ancient Chinese perceiving the shape of a rabbit engaged in making an immortality potion on the moon (and thereby viewing the animal as residing on the moon).
There is actually no reason to assume that this Chinese view - of the Chinese also making out the form of a rabbit from the patches on the moon - "must be" Indian (i.e. Hindu) derived. Considering that if you were to take into account the following, it seems rather reasonable to conclude that the Chinese observation is independent of the Indian one:
- the moon orbits the earth in such a fashion that only one side of the moon ever faces planet Earth, even if that one side waxes and wanes in visibility depending on the phases of the moon. The other side of the moon - which always faces away from us (the "dark side of the moon") - was therefore not visible to earthlings in the past. See for example science.howstuffworks.com/dark-side-of-moon.htm
- humans** have a tendency to look for and make out (or imagine/mentally superimpose) faces and shapes of creatures onto inanimate objects and imagery that don't actually contain real faces or creature forms.
I'm not a psychologist, but I suspect that this tendency has something to do with our ancient ancestors needing to be constantly on the lookout for lurking camouflaged predators or even hiding camouflaged potential prey. If we can detect shapes or faces of animals we are familiar with (or even creatures we don't know, but which have features recognisable as a face or a form recognisable as that of a sentient entity), we're likely to be able to take advantage of such identification: it allows us to not be caught off guard by predators that plan to attack us, and to not miss out on food sources that can hop away from us, for instance. This ability has had the side-effect that we tend to auto-detect the familiar patterns of faces or characters even in random, abstract designs. Of course, it's not always the case that everyone detects the same forms in random shapes, but sometimes entire masses do.
** Arguably, this ability is not restricted to humans. E.g. an IMO otherwise dire sci-fi movie - which was sprinkled with factoids from science to make it seem more interesting - contained the following bit of info, mouthed by a character playing a physicist:
Note that the passing form of geese (and falcons) simulating flight - which was shown in the background of the monologue, to re-enact the experiment - were silhouettes. I.e. shapes, outlines. But this suffices for the hatchlings to discern something that they were wired to try and perceive/make sense of.
- in Taoism, the moon is very important and the practice of spending time to observe it is likewise a very important and even sacred activity. Plus the Taoist (i.e. Chinese) calendar is lunar-based, indicating that ancient Chinese would have to have done lots of moon-gazing.
It is therefore NOT unlikely that the Chinese could have looked up at the crater-marked surface of the moon and seen the outline of a rabbit on the sole side of the moon facing earthlings, just as Hindus did. In specific, the Chinese saw a shape of a rabbit in the action of making an immortality potion.
- Besides, historically, *many* populations have seen fit to identify the shape of a rabbit or hare on the moon just as Hindus did. Not just the Chinese, but - for example - some native American communities too, as can be seen recounted in folktales collated from around the world. I have not read about Europeans seeing such a shape on the moon - so not sure where they got the association from - but some Europeans also associated the hare or rabbit with the moon, at least in time. E.g. what's referred to as the "Hare moon" in English occurs during some month or other in the year.
It stands to reason then, that if native Americans can have recognised a rabbit shape on the moon's surface independent of "Indian" (i.e. Hindu) origins, then the Chinese could have equally independently come upon the same. (Taoists moreover know to sift the Buddhist tales that Buddhism merged with the Jade Rabbit, from the indigenous, original [i.e. Taoist] narratives concerning the Jade Rabbit, which signifies that Taoists are conscious of distinguishing between the non-native accretions and the original/independently-derived native narratives.)
This line at the following link seems to imply the moon is even known as a hare (in Hindoodom):
webonautics.com/mythology/soma_moon.html
The speeding hare ~ speeding moon association is IIRC also seen in native N American communities.
Some weeks ago now, it was the Moon Festival of the Taiwanese and Chinese heathens, when those heathen traditionalists still given to making their own moon-cakes tend to generously share even these precious ones with their friends :yay: Wanted to summarise some things I was told, but didn't get round to it.
Taoists' Moon Goddess Chang-e (known also by her various other famous names and epithets in Taoism) is the centre of the ancient native, i.e. Taoist, Chinese Moon Festival, when the Chinese traditionalists would actively stare at and contemplate their sacred and auspicious moon. The Goddess - who is understandably said to be incredibly beautiful - is regarded as the Goddess of Immortality and viewed as dwelling on the Moon, with her companion the Jade Rabbit, besides the Moon also harbouring a divine old man. Popular artwork during the Moon Festival - also called Mid-Autumn Festival - also depict the Goddess descending to earth from the moon, bearing the mooncakes and at times petting the Jade Rabbit** which makes her immortality elixir (or cakes). The shape of a rabbit on the moon in the act of making edibles is also seen by Japanese and IIRC heathen Koreans. (The Japanese also have a tradition of making "mooncakes", due to contacts between Chinese tradition and Japan.)
** Apparently, jade is not necessarily green: I've been told the Jade Rabbit is white-jade, not green-jade.
Note that wikipedia presents only select tales about Chang-e, and only those stories where it looks like she started off as human and became immortal. The more ancient narratives about the Goddess Chang-e explain that she was a divinity and part of the population of Daoist Heaven, but show how she came to earth together with her divine husband who was sent to earth on a mission (he is therefore a hero in the original narratives) and how she then went to the moon (and her husband to the sun), and that this followed the plans of Daoist Heaven.
Now I'm going to have to go off on something tangentially related, but will hopefully remember to come back to the Taoist Moon Goddess of the Chinese.
Having mentioned the Jade Rabbit who lives on the moon, it must be said that western (and sadly some Indian) writers tend to dismiss the Jade Rabbit as Indian in origin and like to pass this off as "therefore" a Buddhist influence on Daoism.
But there are a few things to be said:
1. Even if - for the sake of argument - people were to tentatively suppose that the Chinese Jade Rabbit had Indian origins, then the "image of the Hare on the moon" and the moon-and-hare association is still originally *Hindu* not Buddhist. (Note crucially that Buddhist derivation of the notion from Hindu precursors is *known* and is hence NOT independent.) Buddhism merely used the pre-existing Hindu views - on the shape of a hare being discernable on the moon (hence Chandra's famous names Shashi and Shashanka, since the hare shape is his beauty-spot) and the hare association with the Moon - to develop Buddhism's own Jataka fables. But like much of Buddhist attempts to inveigle itself into pre-existing Hindu (or, elsewhere: other native) tradition, Hindu views on a hare on the moon remain uninfluenced by Buddhism.
MW dictionary entries on the 2 aforementioned names of Chandran makes the ancientry of Hindoos' views on the matter more apparent:
Quote:zazin m. `" containing a hare "' , the moon S3vetUp. MBh. Ka1v. &c. ; N. of the number one VarBr2S. ; camphor Hcat. ; a kind of metre Col. ; N. of a man Katha1s. ; the emblem of a partic. Arhat or Jina W. ; (%{inI}) f. N. of the 8th Kala1 of the moon Cat.
Quote:zazAGka m. `" hare-marked "' , the moon MBh. Ka1v. &c. ; camphor L. ; N. of a king Hcar. Sch. ; %{-kAnta} mfn. lovely as the moon Jain. ; %{-kiraNa-prakhya} mfn. resembling a ray of the moon MBh. ; %{-kula} n. the lunar race Katha1s. ; %{ja} or %{-tanaya} m. `" the moon's son "' , the planet Mercury VarBr2S. ; %{-dhara} m. N. of a grammarian Cat. ; %{-pura} n. N. of a town (also %{-pUrvam@puram}) Katha1s. ; %{-bimba} n. n. the disk of the moon Jain. ; %{-bhAs} mfn. shining like the moon MW. ; %{-mukuTa} m. `" having the moon as diadem "'N. of S3iva Katha1s. ; %{-mUrti} m. `" having a hare-marked form "'N. of the moon MW. ; %{-lekhA} f. `" moon-streak "' , the lunar crescent S3ak. ; %{-vatI} f. N. of a princess (after whom the 12th Lambaka of the Katha1-sarit-sa1gara is called) Katha1s. ; %{-vadanA} f. a moon-faced woman Ka1vya7d. ; %{-zatru} m. `" moon's foe "'N. of Ra1hu VarYogay. ; %{-zRGga} n. a horn or point of the moon's crescent (?) MW. [1060,2] ; %{-zekhara} m. `" moon-crested "'N. of S3iva BhP. ; %{-suta} m. (= %{zazA7Gka-ja}) VarBr2. ; %{-kA7rdha} m. the half-moon ; %{-kA7rdha-mukha} mfn. having a head shaped like a half-moon (said of an arrow) Ragh. ; %{-kA7rdhazekhara} m. N. of S3iva Ra1jat. ; %{-ko7pala} m. a kind of precious stone (= %{candra-kAnta}) Sa1h.
(The abbreviations highlighted are Shvetaashvatara Upanishad I think, Mahaabharatam, and "Ka1v" is the MW abbreviation for "Kaavya".
Note also how often even the variants on both these words are related back to the moon.)
So even the so-called "Monier-Williams" dictionary offers proof that these *Hindoo* names of the Hindoo God Chandran (Moon) pre-existed in Hindu religion, as Chandran was already known as Shashanka and Shashin for being "hare-marked" or "containing a hare" in the MBh and the Shvetaashvatara Upanishad; i.e. long before the Buddhists used this pre-existing Hindu notion - of (the mark of) a Hare on the Moon - in penning their origin story for how a hare came to be on the moon into the Buddhist Jatakas. (And I suspect neither the Upanishad nor the MBh pretended to invent the names of Shashanka and Shashi for Chandran: chances are high that these texts just referred to Chandran matter-of-factly with these names, as if Hindoo readers/listeners were by then already familiar with the oral traditions of these being his personal names.)
Buddhism in time had used the long pre-existing *Hindu* notion of the shape of a hare on the moon (and the Hindu association of a hare with the moon) to make fables around it. It is true that when Buddhism went to China, eventually, the Buddhist Jataka fable was *attached* (grafted) onto the Chinese Jade Rabbit - but among Chinese Buddhists and Bauddhified laity. The Taoists held to the original, non-Bauddhified - native, Chinese - perception of the Jade Rabbit, i.e. without the late Buddhist accretions. That is, the traditional Chinese view of the Jade Rabbit does NOT have the Buddhist additions. (Buddhism created Bauddhified/subversive variants for most narratives about Chinese Gods and divine characters and heroes. Not to mention Buddhism thereby backprojecting itself onto much earlier narratives on the Chinese Gods. These Bauddhified variants usually downgraded the native heathen Gods - or made them look like villains or else converts to Buddhism - while often playing up Buddhism's "compassion" and "superiority" etc. This is also noticeable in the Buddhist variant on the Moon Goddess' narrative.)
Therefore, *if* aliens and Indians are going to claim that the Chinese Jade Rabbit "must have had" Indian origins, the specific origins would be Hindu not Buddhist. Not to mention that without the original Hindu view, Buddhists would - as always - have had nothing to create their Bauddhified spin on. So that even the Buddhist grafts onto the Jade Rabbit in China are ultimately no more to Buddhism's credit than the "Bharatanatyam" taught in China by the leela samson school is to be accredited to christianism.
The Q, then: why does Buddhism always get the credit for non-Buddhisms? Especially when these things are used to encroach on non-Indian non-Buddhist cultures?
Having said all of that:
2. The Chinese Jade Rabbit is actually based on ancient Chinese perceiving the shape of a rabbit engaged in making an immortality potion on the moon (and thereby viewing the animal as residing on the moon).
There is actually no reason to assume that this Chinese view - of the Chinese also making out the form of a rabbit from the patches on the moon - "must be" Indian (i.e. Hindu) derived. Considering that if you were to take into account the following, it seems rather reasonable to conclude that the Chinese observation is independent of the Indian one:
- the moon orbits the earth in such a fashion that only one side of the moon ever faces planet Earth, even if that one side waxes and wanes in visibility depending on the phases of the moon. The other side of the moon - which always faces away from us (the "dark side of the moon") - was therefore not visible to earthlings in the past. See for example science.howstuffworks.com/dark-side-of-moon.htm
- humans** have a tendency to look for and make out (or imagine/mentally superimpose) faces and shapes of creatures onto inanimate objects and imagery that don't actually contain real faces or creature forms.
I'm not a psychologist, but I suspect that this tendency has something to do with our ancient ancestors needing to be constantly on the lookout for lurking camouflaged predators or even hiding camouflaged potential prey. If we can detect shapes or faces of animals we are familiar with (or even creatures we don't know, but which have features recognisable as a face or a form recognisable as that of a sentient entity), we're likely to be able to take advantage of such identification: it allows us to not be caught off guard by predators that plan to attack us, and to not miss out on food sources that can hop away from us, for instance. This ability has had the side-effect that we tend to auto-detect the familiar patterns of faces or characters even in random, abstract designs. Of course, it's not always the case that everyone detects the same forms in random shapes, but sometimes entire masses do.
** Arguably, this ability is not restricted to humans. E.g. an IMO otherwise dire sci-fi movie - which was sprinkled with factoids from science to make it seem more interesting - contained the following bit of info, mouthed by a character playing a physicist:
Quote:To what extent are our fears innate? When we hatch goose eggs in an incubator and then, above the baby birds, pass a form simulating a goose in flight, the birds stretch their necks and call out.
But if we invert the direction of the silhouette, it conjures the shape of a falcon.
The response of the baby birds is immediate: they will crouch in fear, though they've never before seen a falcon.
Without any instruction, an innate fear helps them to survive.
But in humans, to what ancient dangers might our innate fears correspond?
(Ancient dangers -> fears? Don't know about humans specifically. But mammals - as a group* - seem to have an innate fear of their ancient arch-predator, the snake. * Certain individual mammal species may fear other animals including specific mammal species more.)
Note that the passing form of geese (and falcons) simulating flight - which was shown in the background of the monologue, to re-enact the experiment - were silhouettes. I.e. shapes, outlines. But this suffices for the hatchlings to discern something that they were wired to try and perceive/make sense of.
- in Taoism, the moon is very important and the practice of spending time to observe it is likewise a very important and even sacred activity. Plus the Taoist (i.e. Chinese) calendar is lunar-based, indicating that ancient Chinese would have to have done lots of moon-gazing.
It is therefore NOT unlikely that the Chinese could have looked up at the crater-marked surface of the moon and seen the outline of a rabbit on the sole side of the moon facing earthlings, just as Hindus did. In specific, the Chinese saw a shape of a rabbit in the action of making an immortality potion.
- Besides, historically, *many* populations have seen fit to identify the shape of a rabbit or hare on the moon just as Hindus did. Not just the Chinese, but - for example - some native American communities too, as can be seen recounted in folktales collated from around the world. I have not read about Europeans seeing such a shape on the moon - so not sure where they got the association from - but some Europeans also associated the hare or rabbit with the moon, at least in time. E.g. what's referred to as the "Hare moon" in English occurs during some month or other in the year.
It stands to reason then, that if native Americans can have recognised a rabbit shape on the moon's surface independent of "Indian" (i.e. Hindu) origins, then the Chinese could have equally independently come upon the same. (Taoists moreover know to sift the Buddhist tales that Buddhism merged with the Jade Rabbit, from the indigenous, original [i.e. Taoist] narratives concerning the Jade Rabbit, which signifies that Taoists are conscious of distinguishing between the non-native accretions and the original/independently-derived native narratives.)
This line at the following link seems to imply the moon is even known as a hare (in Hindoodom):
webonautics.com/mythology/soma_moon.html
Quote:The moon is known as a hare, or rabbit in Vedic lore, as he jumps faster than any of the other grahas.
The speeding hare ~ speeding moon association is IIRC also seen in native N American communities.