NO. I 



CH UAN MIAO SONGS AND STORIES — GRAHAM 



27 



greatly lest his great sea would be divided, 

 and he began to weep. 



The dragon king had a younger daughter 

 who said to him, "Why do you weep? I have 

 a way to keep him from blocking it." On 

 the day he heard these words he met Ch'in 

 Shih-huang as he went on the mountains to 

 hunt. That night, when it became dark, they 

 stayed below a cliff. The daughter then 



changed into a wind and stole that whip. 

 Next morning when Ch'in Shih-huang arose 

 he realized that he was in a small village in 

 the wilderness and the whip made of the red 

 cord was missing. From that time he did not 

 dare with a deceiving heart to plan to divide 

 the sea, and the dragon king was also con- 

 tented. This girl truly had a heart to rescue 

 people. 



MlAO 



The Beginning of the Miao Race (678) 



The two earliest Miao were a sister and her 

 brother. The girl's name was Ngeo^ Goh^ and 

 her brother's name was Nong' Loh°. They 

 had no home to live in, so they lived in the 

 forests and the mountains. They burnt the 

 trees on the mountains to clear the land and 

 planted small rice and Mao bai. These grew 

 very well, and the brother and his sister ate 

 them. 



They married each other, children were 

 born, and their children married and had chil- 

 dren. These cut down the forest for agricul- 



ture, and more and more land came under 

 cultivation. 



An Ancestor of the Miao (752) 



In ancient times a young unmarried woman 

 was bathing in a pool. The pool was deep, 

 and of course she was naked. Suddenly she 

 felt something hard enter her vagina. The 

 water was not very clear, and she saw nothing 

 and supposed that she had accidentally run 

 into a wooden snag in the water. She became 

 pregnant and later gave birth to a son who, 

 the son of the Dragon King, was an ancestor 

 of the Miao.'*'' 



Chinese and Miao 



The Ancient Miao and the Chinese Were 

 Brothers, or In Ancient Times the Miao 

 and the Chinese Were One Family (670) 



In the earliest times the Chinese and the 

 Miao were one family. The Miao was the 

 older, the more powerful, and the more 

 respected brother, and the Chinese was the 

 younger. 



The parents died and were buried. The 

 brothers separated and lost all traces of each 

 other. They both commemorated their an- 

 cestors at the same grave, but at different 

 times so that they did not meet. The younger 

 brother, the Chinese, worshiped later in the 

 year, but finally the older brother noticed 

 that somebody was worshiping at the grave 

 of his parents. "Who is doing this, and for 

 what reason?" he asked. Then he began to 

 watch, and caught the younger brother. A 

 quarrel ensued. They did not recognize each 

 other, so each blamed the other for worship- 

 ing at his ancestral grave. 



Instead of fighting they went to law about 

 it. The official asked the Miao, "What evi- 

 dence have you that diis is your ancestral 



*^ This story was told to the writer about 1 5 

 years ago by a Ch'uan Miao. It was not written 

 down and is now reproduced as nearly as possible 

 from memory. 



grave?" He replied, "I have buried a mill- 

 stone a certain distance to the right of the 

 grave." He asked the younger brother the 

 same question. He answered, "I have buried 

 a brass gong a certain distance to the left 

 of the grave." 



The official sent men to dig, and they found 

 both the millstone and the gong. Then it 

 became known that the two were brothers. 

 But in the centuries that followed die descend- 

 ants of the two brothers grew apart and for- 

 got their common ancestry, and so the Chinese 

 have forgotten it altogether. Moreover, the 

 Chinese descendants have grown more and 

 more powerful and numerous, so that the 

 Miao are now the younger and weaker broth- 

 ers, and the Chinese are the older and 

 stronger brothers.^* 



^* A variation of this story states that when the 

 two brothers first separated they took a brass gong 

 and broke it in two, each brother burying his 

 piece near the grave. Later, at the official investi- 

 gation, the two parts fitted togedier, proving 

 their common ancestry. 



This is the first story obtained by tlie writer 

 from the Ch'uan Miao. It was secured at Chou- 

 Chia-Keo, south of Ch'ang Ning Hsien, from Yang 

 Feng Tsang, a Ch'uan Miao, now deceased, with 

 whom the writer was very intimate for about 

 15 years. 



