Fengxi ( zh, c=封狶), also known as Hōki in Japanese, is a

boar The wild boar (''Sus scrofa''), also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a Suidae, suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The speci ...

-like monster in

Chinese mythology Chinese mythology () is mythology that has been passed down in oral form or recorded in literature throughout the area now known as Greater China. Chinese mythology encompasses a diverse array of myths derived from regional and cultural tradit ...

. He is said to have two heads and lives in Morus forests. Some accounts refer to it as the ancient rain deity.

Description

Fengxi is depicted as a two-head boar with great force. Other depictions have it with four long tusks. He is very brutal and always terrorises the countryside. According to

Huainanzi The ''Huainanzi'' is an ancient Chinese text made up of essays from scholarly debates held at the court of Liu An, Prince of Huainan, before 139 BCE. Compiled as a handbook for an enlightened sovereign and his court, the work attempts to defi ...

, Fengxi destroyed a lot of villages and their farming lands while killing many people, which angered the

Emperor Yao Emperor Yao (; traditionally c. 2356 – 2255 BCE) was a legendary China, Chinese ruler, according to various sources, one of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. Ancestry and early life Yao's ancestral name is Yi Qi () or Qi (), clan ...

who sent the great archer

Hou Yi Hou Yi () is a mythological Chinese archer. He was also known as Shen Yi and simply as Yi (). He is also typically given the title of "Lord Archer". He is sometimes portrayed as a god of archery or a ''xian'' descended from heaven to aid mankin ...

to get it hunted in a morus forest. According to

Jiaoshi Yilin ''Jiaoshi Yilin'' ( (or just "Mr. Jiao's Many Thoughts on the Book of Changes") is a Chinese book of divination composed during the Western Han dynasty. Modeled on the ''I Ching'', the work was attributed to Jiao Yanshou (焦延壽, see :zh:焦� ...

and

Lüshi Chunqiu The ''Lüshi Chunqiu'' (), also known in English as ''Master Lü's Spring and Autumn Annals'', is an encyclopedic Chinese classic text compiled around 239BC under the patronage of late pre-imperial Qin Chancellor Lü Buwei. In the evaluati ...

, Fengxi is the ancient Chinese rain deity. According to

Records of the Grand Historian The ''Shiji'', also known as ''Records of the Grand Historian'' or ''The Grand Scribe's Records'', is a Chinese historical text that is the first of the Twenty-Four Histories of imperial China. It was written during the late 2nd and early 1st ce ...

, when Fengxi appears, there will be rain soon. According to

I Ching The ''I Ching'' or ''Yijing'' ( ), usually translated ''Book of Changes'' or ''Classic of Changes'', is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. The ''I Ching'' was originally a divination manual in ...

, as raining () stands for mating in ancient China, Fengxi might also be the ancient fertility deity.

In popular culture

A member of the Five Elders in ''

One Piece ''One Piece'' (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda. It follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and his crew, the Straw Hat Pirates, as he explores the Grand Line in search of the myt ...

'', St. Topman Warcury, has the ability to turn into a ''yāoguài''-like form that resembles a Fengxi.

References

{{Reflist Mythological mammals Chinese mythology Rain deities Mythological pigs Mythical many-headed creatures