Fuxi--- Creator of Trigrams Symbols

Fuxi, also Fu Hsi( 伏羲, 庖牺, 庖犧) is the legendary god in the mythology of ancient China. He is also called Taihao(太昊) or Taihao Fuxi. He was born in TianShui, GanSu province, and has a snake tails like his sister "Nv wa"



Legend says, by imitating the spider, he created a net to catch fish and animals. He invented the musical instrument, Se, a plucked instrument with 50 strings, and constituted the Eight Diagrams used in divination. He married his younger sister, Nv wa, and started the reproduction of offspring one generation after another. Thus they became the ancestors of the Chinese.






Fuxi and Nv wa (portrait found in old tomb in AShiNa XinJiang province)

It was say, one day, a dragon horse emerged from the Yellow River, Fuxi invented "He Tu"(means River Picture) according to marks on its back. Then Fuxi invented the arrangement of the Trigrams (八卦 bāgùa). Because "He Tu" and Trigrams was seemed as a very important core part of Chinese culture, so Fuxi was seemed as the beginner of Chinese culture.



Dragon Horse(loong ma 龙马)




River Picture(He Tu, 河图)



In the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. - 220), Fu xi and Nv wa were carved on stone as figures with both human heads and bodies of the snake. They are human-shaped from the waist up, but are snake-like below. The lower bodies are entangled together with each other.