WANTED for the Blaze's Compendium: Haoxian, elusive (supposedely) Legendary Chinese Dragon. You can help!
This is not a Compendium entry, it's just about a interesting story i came across while researching, and i decided to take the request to help.
While i was working in my research about the Chinese Demon Zhu Tun She, i ended up crossing paths with another person looking into the Chinese Mythology. Specifically, into the Legend of the 9 Dragons. They requested some help, so i dig up the rabbit hole of chinese Dragons.
Also known as the 9 Dragon Children, this creatures have their own personality traits and were associated to those. Their order and names can vary, and there's a lot of variations in their names. But, an user by the name of DennysFFD caught my attention with his research.
Their oldest records go from the 13th century to the 15th century. There's a scroll painting with lots of details from that time, as well written records. As we noted together, Chinese legendary beast groups comes with a deep rabbit hole, and this one is no different. I suggest you to read more about them if you get interested!
The most accepted list of the 9 Dragons is the follow and it comes from Xie Zhaozhe's (謝肇淛, 1567–1624) in his work Wuzazu
(五雜俎, c. 1592). I am quoting direct from translations in western sources, as well from the U.S Wikipedia article, all of them comes from this book here. Someone was kind enough to translate it, but this list is also recognized by the Chinese government, being published by the Beijing government, and also present in a coin collection from the last Year of the Dragon. Sure there are some differences, but its mainly on how you spell the names.
The qiúniú 囚牛, (Form of dragon) a creature that likes music, are used to adorn musical instruments.
The yázì 睚眦, (Hybrid of wolf and dragon) a creature that likes to fight, is aggressive and is normally found on cross-guards on sword as ornaments.
The cháofēng 嘲風, (Resemble a Phoenix and dragon) a creature that likes to adventure. They are typically placed on the four corners of roofs.
The púláo 蒲牢, (Four leg small form dragon class) a creature that likes to scream, and are represented on the tops of bells, used as handles.
The suānní 狻猊, (Hybrid of lion and dragon) a creature that likes to sit down, are represented upon the bases of Buddhist idols (under the Buddhas' or Bodhisattvas' feet).
The bìxì 贔屭, also known as bàxià 霸下 (Hybrid of turtle and dragon) a creature with a large shell able to carry heavy objects, and are normally found on under grave-monuments.
The bì'àn 狴犴, (Hybrid of tiger and dragon) a creature that likes litigation, are placed over prison gates (in order to keep guard).
The bāxià 霸下, (Hybrid of reptilia animal and dragon) a creature that likes to drink water, and is typically used on bridge structures.
The chīwěn 蚩吻, (Hybrid of fish and dragon) a creature that likes swallowing, are placed on both ends of the ridgepoles of roofs (to swallow all evil influences).
The thing is that, this user was looking for one of the Dragons that is supposedly called Haoxian. The problem is... This dragon is not in the original 9 Dragons myth... But there are some sources claiming the contrary, with few mentions of it in the western web, and we have no access to its Hanzi to properly in the Chinese web.
It's worth to note, there's a hot clue here: According to some sources which include the book cited in the wikipedia article, it seems the author of the Wuzazu also described 9 more dragons from yes another group, not only the 9 Dragon Children. It is possible the elusive so called Haoxian is among them, but... I can't speak Chinese, so i can't find it in the digital version of the work. If you can, let us know!
First and foremost, the user theorized that Haoxian is just a misread of the dragon Yazi. They both shared similarities in personality, both likes to fight, for instance. But without the Haoxian Hanzi, we can't be sure.
Yazi and Haoxian share so much similarities indeed that, in most sources where Haoxian is cited (note that we only could identify English ones) usually replace Yazi by Haoxian, according to the user's research. So that pretty much busts Haoxian as just a misread of Yazi. But there's more...
One of the few sites that sources Haoxian info is this one:
-https://www.blackdrago.com/fame/beishe.htm
Note how the URL writes the Dragon's name as Beishe... Which is also a way to read one of the 9 Dragon's name: Baxia. I can totally see Baxia turning into (I mean, someone reading it as) Haoxian, but Baxia has a totally different personality from what the sources describes Haoxian's. So... How could Haoxian be a misread of Baxia, when it borrows Yazi's personality? Weird.
Now, even if there are many ways to read the Dragon's names, many modern interpretations of the myth, and variations. But all of them, or most of them, are properly sourced and archived. But not Haoxian, it does not appear in any credible sources of the western internet. We can't also research about it in Chinese because it even lacks the proper Hanzi characters to its name.
So... Now, if you put this puzzle together you can pretty much tell that either Haoxian was a western misread, or a regional variation of one of the Dragons, or confused text that borrows misread names and personalities from some Dragons. We are almost sure some of this is true, if not a bit of all of those options above. We just want to know where did it came from?
TLDR: We are sure Haoxian does not exist in official sources, we just want to know where it came from.
We are looking for:
-Haoxian Chinese sources
-Haoxian proper Hanzi characters if it does exist
-Oldest account of Haoxian in the western web (Ours go as far as the 2000s)
If you have anything about this Dragon, more than i could find on my own, this would help a lot our fellow's research!
You can always message me via Asks here!
And that was it for our first ''request'' Let us see if we can find more about this creature.
Lo bueno de que el dolor de muela no me deje dormir es que ya terminé mi primer libro del año ♡ súper recomendable #lectura #libros #9dragones #9dragons #michaelconnelly
