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 Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 5:01 pm
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Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 5:03 pm
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Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:15 pm
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Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 1:13 am
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Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 3:22 pm
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Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 8:45 am
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 @jasonn>
Eh. I didn't thought it was an asian thing sweatdrop
Anyway, what I know was it was a japanese mythology. There's also one from the chinese beliefs, like what you've stated ^O^
Since there are some of us that are unaware of the myths, let me try relay to you guys as briefly as possible blaugh
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In the Japanese culture, there is a myth about the rabbit in the moon.
Around the 12th century, a collection of short stories based on Buddhism and morality was written. It was titled, Konjaku Monogatari, and it contained a story about why people see a rabbit when they look up at the moon. He is supposedly pounding mochi (Japanese rice cakes) up there.
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Once upon a time, there lived a fox, monkey and a rabbit who yearned to atone to their sins since they believed that they were once humans but born as animals due to their former sinned life.
Taishakuten, one of the deities heard them and scoffed. Saying something like how could they want to be like humans when humans are filthy creatures full of greed and other bad stuff. So Taishakuten decided to test them out by turning into a weak old man laying down the path where they usually trod on.
So the animals saw him and decided to help out. The fox and monkey brought food back to the old man successfully while the rabbit searched high and low but to no avail. He came back empty-handed much to the disgrace of his buddies. The rabbit said he was sorry since it was hard for him to search for food with hunters preying upon him and kiddies trying to bully him.
But he told his buddies to build a fire as he will continue his search for food. So his buddies were like what the hell? Here he was, bringing nothing back and now asking them to build a fire for him? But they built it anyway and later when the rabbit returned, he still was empty-handed.
The rabbit, feeling ashamed of himself, walked up to the old man and said that he had no capabilities like his buddies to search for food so he shall offer the old man his body. With that, he leapt into the fire.
Instantly, the old man turned back into Taishakuten and sent the rabbit to the moon where he will be remembered as people look upon a full moon.
Kinda like the deity was pretty much amazed at the sacrifice the rabbit made that he simply had to honour the rabbit. The moon to the ancients was a very honourable place. Especially when the moon is full. |
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Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 8:53 am
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As for the chinese one, I'm not very familiar with it. All I know is that in Chinese mythology, the moon goddess, Chang O (not sure xP), is believed to live on the moon with a white rabbit. The Chinese also believed that a female rabbit got pregnant by looking at the moon.
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Anyway, I tried looking up on Wiki and got this xP There are several versions though so I'll just take the first xP
Chang'e and Houyi the Archer (Version 1)
According to legend, Chang'e and her husband Houyi were immortals living in heaven. One day, the ten sons of the Jade Emperor transformed into ten suns, causing the earth to scorch. Having failed to order his sons to stop ruining the earth, the Jade Emperor summoned Houyi for help.
Houyi, using his legendary archery skills, shot down nine of the sons, but spared one son to be the sun. The Jade Emperor was obviously not pleased with Houyi's solution to save the earth: nine of his sons were dead. As punishment, the Jade Emperor banished Houyi and Chang’e to live as mere mortals on earth.
Seeing that Chang'e felt extremely miserable over her loss of immortality, Houyi decided to journey on a long, perilous quest to find the pill of immortality so that the couple could be immortals again. At the end of his quest he met the Queen Mother of the West who agreed to give him the pill, but warned him that each person would only need half the pill to become immortal.
Houyi brought the pill home and stored it in a case. He warned Chang'e not to open the case and then left home for a while. Like Pandora in Greek mythology, Chang'e became too curious: she opened up the case and found the pill just as Houyi was returning home.
Nervous that Houyi would catch her discovering the contents of the case, she accidentally swallowed the entire pill. She started to float into the sky because of the overdose. Although Houyi wanted to shoot her in order to prevent her from floating further, he could not bear to aim the arrow at her. Chang'e kept on floating until she landed on the moon.
While she became lonely on the moon without her husband, she did have company. A jade rabbit, who manufactured elixirs, also lived on the moon. The mythologies of Japan and Korea also feature references about rabbits living on the moon.
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Yeah well. Myths are sometimes weird so there's no use in debating the logic of the story blaugh |
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Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 4:10 pm
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Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:25 pm
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Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 9:51 pm
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Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 2:57 am
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Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 3:54 pm
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