Within Guo Pu’s extant literary corpus, the Shanhaijing Tuzan 山海經圖讚 and the Erya Tuzan 爾雅圖讚 constitute a substantial portion, yet scholarship on these works remains underdeveloped. In light of this gap, the present study examines Guo Pu’s conception of Kunlun as manifested in the eulogy on “Kunlun” ― namely ‘Kunlun Hill’ in the Shanhaijing Tuzan, a piece that occupies a central position within the world of the Shanhaijing. It is particularly noteworthy that Guo Pu designates this mountain as the “numinous repository of water,” a term that finds no precedent in earlier writings concerning Kunlun. * In Guo Pu’s oeuvre, the term lingfu (“numinous repository”) denotes that which governs the most vital parts of the body. Chinese medicine regards the stagnation of qi and blood as deeply harmful; ensuring the unimpeded circulation of the earth’s vital fluids―and thereby maintaining its health―corresponds to the proper governance of the realm. Kunlun, as the “numinous repository of water,” thus stands as the locus from which the management of waterways ensures the vitality of the world. How, then, is “water” conceived within Guo Pu’s cosmological imagination? Guo Pu composed numerous eulogies devoted to water. For him, water does not merely flow across the earth’s surface as rivers; it also circulates beneath the ground through “earth-veins,” thereby linking all bodies of water that appear separated on the surface―oceans, lakes, springs, wells, and rivers―into a single interconnected system. Moreover, heaven and earth themselves float upon a vast expanse of water. Kunlun, rising at the very center of the world and penetrating the realms of heaven and earth, enables an unbroken circulation between the waters within the cosmos and the waters upon which heaven and earth float. Thus, it preserves the tranquility of this aquatic cosmos.
Login Bulletin of the Department of Chinese Literature
