Yi: The Bow That Saves

Emperor Jun bestowed upon Yi a vermilion bow and white-tipped arrows, so that he might aid the lands below. Yi then set out to relieve the hundred hardships of the lower world.

Yi receives his bow not for glory but for aid — the supreme god Emperor Jun gives him a vermilion weapon and sends him down to 'relieve the hundred hardships.' This is the earliest record of the figure later known as Houyi, the archer who shot down nine surplus suns.

Emperor Jun bestowed upon Yi a vermilion bow and white-tipped arrows, so that he might aid the lands below. Yi then set out to relieve the hundred hardships of the lower world. This entry comes from the Shan Hai Jing · 海内经, part of the Shan Hai Jing — the Classic of Mountains and Seas, China's oldest surviving compendium of mythological geography. The archer Yi (later known as Houyi) appears in the 'Classic of Regions Within the Seas' in a brief but pivotal passage: Emperor Jun, the supreme deity of the Shan Hai Jing pantheon, personally gives Yi a vermilion bow and white-tipped arrows and sends him to assist the suffering lands below. The language is compassionate — 'relieve the hundred hardships' — rather than martial. This is the earliest surviving literary record of the archer figure who would become central to Chinese mythology. Later versions added the shooting down of nine surplus suns, the slaying of monsters, and the tragic loss of immortality. The creature or figure described here belongs to a cosmological framework where every mountain, river, and being has a specific place and function. The text does not distinguish between what we would call natural and supernatural — both are simply part of the landscape. This being's powers, whether protective or dangerous, are intrinsic to its nature, not moral attributes. Later Chinese and East Asian traditions transformed many Shan Hai Jing figures into characters of fiction, drama, and popular religion. Yi receives his bow not for glory but for aid — the supreme god Emperor Jun gives him a vermilion weapon and sends him down to 'relieve the hundred hardships.' This is the earliest record of the figure later known as Houyi, the archer who shot down nine surplus suns. The original text, however, gives us something more raw: a being whose meaning depends on how you encounter it, not on what later stories made of it.