The devil in Chinese literature was a woman in the Fen Shen Yan Yi who craved for power and violence in order to fulfill her role of destroying the Shang ruler.
The devil in Chinese literature was a woman in the Fen Shen Yan Yi who craved for power and violence in order to fulfill her role of destroying the Shang ruler. The deception, the sorcery and the supernatural power to raise the dead have been adopted by later versions of this Chinese devil. Furthermore, as the novel turned into films and games, there have been more and more versions of the same thing.
The Chinese Devil in Fen Shen Yan Yi. In the Fen Shen Yan Yi, the Shang Emperor is so much in love with his girlfriend that he gives her whatever she wants. However, Daji is an evil demon. In the book The Investiture of the Gods, or The Creation of the Gods, which can be translated into Fengshen Yanyi, or Fen Shen Yan Yi, 100 chapters have been devoted to battles between good and evil and among demons. Although written in the Ming Dynasty, the setting was the Shang Dynasty, 900 years earlier. The author was Zhonglin (“Fengshen Yanyi”). In this novel, the main devil was Daji.
Daji was considered “the most wicked fox spirit” in the Fen Shen Yan Yi. As the favorite consort of the Shang King, King Zhou, Daji had already been killed by a vixen spirit that was 1,000 years old. That spirit had possessed her body even before she became King Zhou’s concubine. King Zhou was tempted by the evil Daji in such a way that the king had already neglected the affairs of the state in her favor. One of the things that King Zhou did for Daji was to build her a zoological Xanadu that contained many rare species of animals and birds. King Zhou also ordered musicians to compose lewd music as well as bawdy dances in order to satisfy Daji’s weird musical tastes. Moreover, the king also gathered 3000 guests in one party in order to play a cat and mouse game in the forest without their clothes on in order to amuse Daji (“Demons, Monsters and Ghosts”).
Daji has committed many violent and gruesome acts. A protest from another concubine made King Zhou decide to have this concubine executed, while her father’s flesh was ground and fed to the vassals. Daji rejoiced whenever she heard cries of physical torment. In fact, when one day she saw a farmer walking barefoot on icy land, she order his feet cut off in order that she could investigate how it could withstand low temperatures. She also had the belly of one pregnant woman cut open in order to satisfy her curiosity about its contents. Daji also had the heart of King Zhou’s uncle, the minister Bi Gan, opened in order to check whether it was true that “a good man’s heart has seven apertures” (“Demons, Monsters and Ghosts”). Moreover, Daji’s Paolao, which is a specialized method of torture, involves forcing someone to walk on top of a cylinder that is slowly heating up until the victim is forced to shift his feet while the oily surface makes it difficult for the victim to maintain his balance. Thus, in order not to fall to the charcoal below, the victim is forced to dance and scream in agony before his death while Daji and King Zhou would laugh their hearts out (“Demons, Monsters and Ghosts”). Aside from these, Daji made the maids wrestle with the eunuchs, and the losers would go to the forest where Daji in vixen form would kill them and eat them up. In addition, she also had a snake pit made where anyone who opposed King Zhou would be thrown to his death (Yuan).
The origins of Daji were mythical. In fact, although she was already killed by a vixen, Daji was summoned by the celestial sovereign Nu Wa in order to make King Zhou corrupt in order that the people would decide to overthrow this king. When Daji was revived by Nu Wa, the latter promised that she would have an immortal status when her mission was accomplished (Yuan).
The reason why Daji was chosen by King Zhou as his concubine was that she was actually a beautiful woman who was a daughter of the noble Su family in the You Su state (Yuan).
The end of Daji was merely through execution as she was only a mortal women. The extreme brutality of King Zhou as a tyrant enraged the anger of the people and their commander Ji Fa seized the opportunity to let the Shang army turn against King Zhou himself. King Zhou committed suicide by burning himself while Daji was put to death by decapitation by Ji Fa, or King Wu of Zhou, after the Shang Dynasty fell (Yuan). In this case, Daji was also able to fulfill the prophecy of Nu Wa although not much was known in the novel about whether she achieved immortality after her death.
