Attributed to Liu Hsiang (77–6 B.C.E.)
T’ao An-kung held the post of Superintendent of the Foundry at Liu-an,1 where he kept many furnaces in full blast. From them one day flames shot forth and mounted upward to the sky in sheets of purple fire, whereupon T’ao An-kung cast himself prostrate upon the ground beside his smelting crucibles and begged for mercy. Hardly had he done so when the Scarlet Bird2 alighted upon a crucible and thus spake: “An-kung! An-kung! Thy flames have reached unto Heaven. On the seventh day of the seventh month I will send a red dragon to fetch thee.”
When the appointed day arrived, the red dragon came in a deluge of rain, and An-kung rode off on its back toward the southeast. Thousands of the inhabitants of Liu-an had collected on one of the city walls to make votive offerings for a propitious journey; and all bade T’ao An-kung farewell.
Translated by W. Perceval Yetts
The author was a Han polymath and statesman who was also a sort of magician. He was a distinguished bibliographer and ubiquitous editor-redactor of ancient texts, a compiler of anecdotal literature, and a poet and author in his own right, particularly of lamentations (see selection 200). The Biographies of Transcendents (Lieh hsien chuan) is the earliest extant Taoist hagiographical work and inspired many similar later collections. In all, it includes seventy brief accounts of Taoist adepts thought to have achieved immortality in one form or another.
Dragons are often depicted as aerial steeds of the transcendents. The short account above gives the legend connected with one such incident and also embodies several ancient religious beliefs.
1. In Anhwei.
2. One of the Four Supernatural Creatures that symbolize the four quadrants of heaven. It is also a group of constellations in the southern sky and a position in geomantic fields. As such, it stands for the south and, according to the notions of ancient Chinese philosophy, is associated with the element fire and with the number 7. It is to be noted that T’ao An-kung was carried off toward the southeast, which, together with the south, is that point of the compass where the element fire is located. Modern scholarship has attempted to identify the Scarlet Bird with the quail, but archaic representations show a crested bird with prominent tail feathers—a figure that might well be meant for a peacock or one of the pheasants and, indeed, is not unlike the traditional Chinese phoenix.