In early times, the earth was full of malign creaturesfashioned by the evil Ahriman. The angel Tistar (the starSirius) descended three times, in the form of man, horse,and bull respectively, causing ten days and nights of raineach time. Each rain drop became as big as a bowl, and thewater rose the height of a man over the whole earth. Thefirst flood drowned the creatures, but the dead noxiouscreatures went into holes in the earth. Before returning tocause the second flood, Tistar, in the form of a whitehorse, battled the demon Apaosha, who took the form of ablack horse. Ormuzd blasted the demon with lightning,making the demon give a cry which can still be heard inthunderstorms, and Tistar prevailed and caused rivers toflow. The poison washed from the land by the second floodmade the seas salty. The waters were driven to the ends ofthe earth by a great wind and became the sea Vourukasha("Wide-Gulfed"). [Carnoy, p. 270; Vitaliano, pp. 161-162; H. Miller, p. 288]
Myths Of Orion: Light From The North full crack [Torrent]
Grandpa Xiang and his wife Ya lived at the food of Sunmountain, barely getting by. One day, there was a beautifulrainbow after a downpour, and Xiang followed it as hepicked bamboo shoots. He saw an eagle clutch a tiny redsnake. In pity for the snake, Xiang yelled and threw hisbasket at the eagle, which dropped the snake and flew away.Xiang saw the snake disappear in a flash of light, and acolumn of smoke drifted up the mountain. That night hedreamed that a golden dragon thanked him for saving thelife of the dragon's daughter and told him to visit.Grandma Ya had the same dream, so they set out, with theirgrandchildren, across three mountain passes and up a longslope, as the dream had directed. A beautiful girl came andtold them that she had gone out earlier, entranced by therainbow, and Xiang had rescued her. She led them to anidyllic pond and invited them to settle there. They did,and they grew younger and stronger from eating the fish ofthe pool. After a year, Xiang went back to his village andinvited the people to live up on Sun Mountain with him.They did so and lived happily for some time. But an evilman wasted fish, polluted the pond, and finally poisonedall the fish. One dying fish told Xiang to make it acorn-flour body, feed it for 81 days on dew, and make awooden house for himself. He did so, and all the peopleexcept the evil man made wooden houses. After 81 days, afierce gale came, while the sky darkened and lightningflashed. The fish shook itself and turned into a girl andthen into the red snake, which flew off to join the goldendragon Xiang had seen in his dreams. It told him to takehis things into his wooden house and stay there. Peltingrain then fell from the sky, and soon there was a vastflood. The evil man was helpless in his stone house, butthe wooden houses of the others floated. The golden dragonshook his body, and the upper half of Sun Mountain eruptedinto the sky. The body of the evil man was buried by thefalling stones. The others floated peacefully down themountain and carved a giant stone fish where they settled.This statue and the lower part of Sun Mountain can be seennear the town of Shuilong. [L.Miller, pp. 107-112]
Long ago, the middle world, of many worlds beneath thesky, had no race of kings (the Shan). Animals emerged frombamboos which cracked open and went to live in deepforests. Hpi-pok and Hpi-mot came from heaven toMöng-hi on the Cambodia river and became the ancestorsof the Shan. But a time came when they offered nosacrifices to their gods. Ling-lawn, the storm god, sentlarge cranes to devour the people, but there were too manypeople to eat all of them. He sent lions, but they couldnot eat all of the people either. He send snakes, but thepeople attacked and killed them. A great drought came forthe first four months of the new year, and many people diedof thirst and famine. But the storm-god had not finishedhis battle. Sitting in his palace beneath a beautifulumbrella, he called his counsellors. Kaw-hpa, Hseng-kio,old Lao-hki, Tai-long, Bak-long, the smooth-talkerYa-hseng-hpa, and others came and bowed down to worship.Speaking in the language of men (Shan), they decided todestroy the human race. They sent for Hkang-hkak, god ofstreams and ponds, of alligators and water animals, andbade him descend with the clouds and report to thedistinguished sage Lip-long. Lip-long had seen ill omenswhile auguring with chicken bones and knew a calamity wascoming, so he was not surprised to hear the water-god tellhim that Ling-lawn, the storm god, would soon flood theearth and destroy everything on it. Hkang-hkak told thesage to build a strong raft and take a cow on it, but notto warn anyone else, not even his wife or children.Lip-long sorrowfully bent to his task while even his familymocked his seemingly futile work. Fearing the gods, heheeded the order not to warn anyone. A few days after hefinished the raft, the flood came, rushing violently. OnlyLip-long and the cow survived on the waters. He grieved tosee the bodies of his family. Thus the race of Shansperished. Their spirits went to the mansions of heaven,were refreshed by a meal of cold crab, and found the spiritland a festive and charming place. Meanwhile, the stench ofcorpses filled the earth. Ling-lawn sent serpents to devourthem, but there were too many to eat. In anger he wanted todestroy the snakes, but they escaped into a cave. He sent999,000 tigers, but they couldn't eat all the corpses,either. More angry now, he hurled thunderbolts at thetigers, but they too escaped into caves. Then he sentHsen-htam and Hpa-hpai, the gods of fire, who descended ontheir horses to one of only three elevations of land. Theysent a great conflagration of fire over the entire earth.When he saw the fire coming, Lip-long killed the cow with astick, cut it open with his sword, and crawled in itsbelly. There he found a gourd seed. The fire swept over thecow, and Lip-long came out. He asked Hkang-hkak what to do,and the water god told him to plant the gourd seed on alevel plot of ground. He did so. One gourd vine grew up amountain and was scorched by the sun. One vine ran downwardand rotted and died from soaking in the water from theflood. A third vine twined around bushes and trees.Ling-lawn sent his gardener to care for it, and it boregreat fruit. Then Ling-lawn sent Sao-pang, god of the clearsky, to prepare the earth for humans. Sao-pang dried whatremained of the flood with waves of heat. Ling-lawn brokeopen a gourd with a thunderbolt, and people emerged from itto till the land. Another bolt broke open a gourd. TheShans therein asked god what to do, and he told them to goand rule many lands. Other gourds were broken open torelease all kinds of animals, rivers, and plants. [Frazer, pp. 199-203]
Menaboshu regarded all animals as his kin. Once, whentimes were bad, he asked the wolves for some food. The foodwas so good that he asked to hunt with them, which theyallowed. After ten days of hunting, they reached acrossroads; the wolves determined to go one way, andMenaboshu went another, taking with him a little wolf whomhe loved dearly as a brother. They then hunted sometimestogether and sometimes alone. Menaboshu warned the wolf tostay away from a certain lake, knowing that his worst enemythe serpent-king lived there. But this warning just madethe wolf curious, and three days later he ventured out onthe ice of the lake. The ice broke under him, and he wasdrowned. Menaboshu waited five days for the wolf's return;then he began wailing, knowing that the serpent-king hadgot him. Menaboshu could not get the serpent-king in thewinter, so he came to the lake in the spring. He set uploud lamentations when he saw the footprints of his lostbrother there. This attracted the attention of theserpent-king, and when Menaboshu saw it stick up its head,he immediately turned himself into a tree stump. Theserpent-king and other serpents saw nothing unusual but thenew tree stump. Suspicious of it, the serpent-king sent onelarge snake to it. This snake squeezed hard enough to crackMenaboshu's bones, but he bore the pain stoically. Thesnakes then went to sleep on the beach. Menaboshu emergedfrom his disguise, grabbed his bow and arrows, and shotdead the serpent-king and three of its sons. The othersnakes escaped into the water, making much noise andlashing with their tails. Some snakes scattered thecontents of their medicine bags; the waters began to swell,and torrents of rain fell from the newly gathered clouds.In short time, the whole earth was flooded. Menaboshu fled,hopping from mountain to mountain, but the waves followedhim. He climbed to the top boughs of a fir tree on the topof one tall mountain, and the waters stopped rising just asthey reached his mouth. Menaboshu stayed there five daysand nights. Finally, he saw a loon swim by, and he asked itdo dive for some earth. The loon did so repeatedly, butwithout success. Then Menaboshu saw the body of a drownedmuskrat. He breathed on it to restore it to life and askedit to dive. The muskrat dived and, though it came up dead,it had a few grains of earth. Menaboshu dried these andblew them over the water. Where they landed, they grew intoislands, and these grew together, with Menaboshu'sguidance, into continents. Menaboshu then wandered aroundbreathing on the corpses of animals to bring them back tolife and otherwise restoring nature and land to its formerbeauty. [Frazer, pp. 301-304]
In the world before this one, the people didn't know howto behave or how to act human, and the creating power wasdispleased. He placed three dry buffalo chips under asacred pipe rack and saved a fourth for lighting the pipe.He sang three songs to bring rain, which caused the riversto overflow; then he sang a fourth song and stamped on theearth. The earth split open, and water flowed from thecracks and covered everything. The Creating Power floatedon the sacred pipe and his huge pipe bag. All people andanimals were destroyed except Kangi, the crow. It was verytired and three times asked the Creating Power to make aplace for it to rest. The Creating Power opened his pipebag, which contained all manner of animals and birds, andselected four known for their diving abilities. He sang asong and commanded the loon to dive and bring up mud, butthe loon failed. Likewise, the water was too deep for otterand beaver. But the turtle succeeded in bringing up alittle mud. The Creating Power took the mud and, singing,spread it out on the water. After the fourth song, therewas enough land for himself and the crow. He waved two longeagle feathers over the ground, and it spread until itreplaced the water. He named it the Turtle Continent. TheCreating Power thought, "Land without water is not good,"and wept for the earth and the creatures he would put uponit. His tears became oceans, streams, and lakes. Hescattered the animals across the land; they came to lifewhen he stamped on the ground. He created four colors ofpeople from red, white, black, and yellow earth. He createdthe rainbow as a sign that there would be no more greatflood, but warned that he had destroyed the first world byfire because it was bad, and the second world by flood, andhe would destroy this world too if people make it bad andugly. [Erdoes & Ortiz, pp.496-499]
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