Pangu

Pangu (盤古 / 盘古) is the primordial cosmogonic giant and demiurge of Chinese mythological tradition, renowned for cleaving the primordial chaos (Hundun) into Heaven and Earth and fashioning the physical cosmos through the posthumous metamorphosis of his sacrificed body. Unlike northern pre-Qin civilizing deities such as Nüwa and Fuxi, whose written records date to the classical period, the Pangu narrative entered formal elite literature during the Three Kingdoms era (c. 3rd century CE) in the 'Sanwu Liji' ('Historical Records of the Three and Five Divinities') and 'Wuyun Linian Ji', authored by the scholar Xu Zheng. According to these foundational sources, the early cosmos was enclosed in an undifferentiated egg-like mass within which Pangu gestated for 18,000 years. When the egg fractured, the clear, light Yang energies ascended to form the celestial firmament, while the turbid, heavy Yin energies precipitated into the terrestrial bedrock. Standing between the two halves, Pangu kept them apart by expanding his stature by one zhang each day for another 18,000 years until the universe stabilized. Upon his death from total exhaustion, his anatomical remains transformed into the tangible features of the physical world: breath into winds and clouds, voice into thunder, eyes into the sun and moon, limbs into the cardinal poles and sacred mountains, and bodily organisms into human beings.

8 min read · Reviewed on September 29, 2026 · How we research

The cosmic egg, the axe, the horns and the growing giant

Primary sources

• Xu Zheng (徐整), Sanwu Liji (三五曆記 / Historical Records of the Three and Five Divinities). translation: Preserved in Taiping Yulan (scroll 2); translation in Anne Birrell, Chinese Mythology: An Introduction, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. read
• Xu Zheng (徐整, attributed), Wuyun Linian Ji (五運歷年記 / Chronicle of the Five Cycles of Time). translation: Preserved in Yiwen Leiju and Ma Su, Yishi (scroll 1), Siku Quanshu edition (Chinese Text Project). read
• Ren Fang (任昉), Shuyi Ji (述異記 / Records of Strange Things), Book 1. translation: Hanwei Congshu edition (Chinese Text Project). read
• Zhang Hua (張華), Bowu Zhi (博物志 / Records of Diverse Matters). translation: Zhonghua Shuju edition (Chinese Text Project). read
• Li Fang (李昉) et al., Taiping Yulan (太平御覽), Chapter 2 (Tianbu 2 / Celestial Division). translation: Zhonghua Shuju edition, Beijing, 1960 (Chinese Text Project). read

Studies

• Norman J. Girardot, . University of California Press, 1983. open
• Anne Birrell, . Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. open
• Derk Bodde, . Doubleday Anchor, 1961. open
• Mark Edward Lewis, . State University of New York Press, 2006. open
• Kwang-chih Chang, . Harvard University Press, 1983. open