Hou Tu 后土
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone!
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
or card
Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
Hou Tu 后土 "Lord of the Earth" (or "Goddess of the Earth") was a natural deity venerated in the state offerings until the end of imperial China. This deity was also called Dizhi 地祗 and was the analogon of the Great Unity (taiyi 太一) representing Heaven. The offerings to the Earth took place in summer. During the later Former Han period 前漢 (206 BCE-8 CE) the altar of the earth was erected in the environment of the capital, mainly in the south. In Daoist thought Hou Tu was an assistant deity to the Yellow Emperor 黃帝, god of the Celestial centre, and is one of the Four Guides 四御. As an assistant, Hou Tu was equipped with a rope used to survey the earth.
According to the Confucian Classic Liji 禮記 (chapter Jifa 祭法) Hou Tu was a son of Gong Gong 共工 who reigned over the nine provinces. Hou Tu's function was to equalize (ping 平) all regions of the empire, so that he was venerated as the deity of the soil. It is also said in the chapter Yueling 月令 that the centre of the world was governed by the Yellow Emperor as the "emperor" or "sovereign" (di 帝) and Hou Tu as its spirit (shen 神).
In a fragment of an apocryphal text, the Xiaojing wei 孝經緯, it is explained that the world is too vast to be venerated in one single deity, so that local shrines (she 社) are erected in which the soil or earth is offered sacrifices in each single community in the shape of deities of the local community (sheshen 社神). The collection Chuci 楚辭 "Poetry of the South” explains that Hou Tu governs the dark realm (youdu 幽都) below the surface of the earth. In a wider sense, Hou Tu is sometimes used as a title for officials of the local government administering soil and estates (tu zheng 土正 "rectifier of the soil").
Sources:
- Cihai 辭海, p. 854. Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe 上海辭書出版社, 1999.
- Jiang Zihua 蔣梓驊, Fan Maozhen 范茂震, Yang Deling 楊德玲 (ed. 1992). Guishenxue cidian 鬼神學詞典, p. 32. Xi'an: Shaanxi renmin chubanshe.
- Li Jianping 李劍平 (ed. 1998). Zhongguo shenhua renwu cidian 中國神話人物辞典, p. 482. Xi'an : Shanxi ren min chu ban she.
- Lü Zongli 呂宗力 (ed. 1994). Zhongguo lidai guanzhi da cidian 中國歷代官制大辭典, p. 374. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe.
- Xiong Tieji 熊鐵基, Yang Youli 楊有禮 (ed. 1994). Zhongguo diwang zaixiang cidian 中國帝王宰相辭典, p. 359. Wuhan: Hubei jiaoyu chubanshe.
- Zhang Zhenglang 張政烺 (ed.1990). Zhongguo gudai guanzhi da cidian 中國古代職官大辭典, p. 482. Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe.