Hong (rainbow dragon)

Chinese "rainbow" names

Chinese has three "rainbow" words, regular hong 虹, literary didong 蝃蝀, and ni 蜺 "secondary rainbow".

Note that all these Chinese characters share a graphic element of hui 虫 "insect; worm; reptile; etc." (cf. tripled chong 蟲), known in Chinese as Kangxi radical number 142 and loosely translated in English as the "insect radical". In traditional Chinese character classification, "radical-phonetic" or "phono-semantic" characters are statistically the most common category, and they combine a "radical" or determinative that suggests semantic field with a "phonetic" element that roughly indicates pronunciation. Words written with this 虫 radical typically name not only insects, but also reptiles, and other miscellaneous creatures, including some dragons such as shen 蜃 "aquatic dragon" and jiao 蛟 "flood dragon". Linguistic anthropologists studying folk taxonomy discovered many languages have zoological categories similar to hui 虫, and Brown (1979) coined the portmanteau word wug (from worm + bug) meaning the class of "insects, worms, spiders, and smaller reptiles". Following Carr (1990:87), "wug" is used as the English translation of the Chinese logographic radical 虫.

Hong

The regular script Chinese character 虹 for hong or jiang "rainbow" combines the "wug radical" with a gong 工 "work" phonetic. Both Qin dynasty seal script and Zhou dynasty bronze script elaborated this same radical-phonetic combination. However, the oldest characters for "rainbow" in Shang dynasty oracle bone script were pictographs of an arched dragon or serpent with open-mouthed heads at both ends. Wolfram Eberhard (1968:246) notes, "In early reliefs, the rainbow is shown as a snake or a dragon with two heads. In West China they give it the head of a donkey, and it rates as a lucky symbol."

The (121 CE) Shuowen Jiezi dictionary, the first Chinese character dictionary, described the seal character for hong 虹 "rainbow" as 狀似蟲 "shaped like a wug". Over 18 centuries later, Hopkins described the recently discovered oracle character for 虹.

What should we see in this simple but striking image? We should, I now feel sure, discern a Rainbow terminating in two animal heads. But of what animal? Certainly of the Dragon, must be the answer. For the design of the character is, in the main, naturalistic, in so far as it is clearly modeled on the semi-circular Bow in the sky, but symbolistic through the addition of two heads, for where the Rainbow ends, there the Dragon begins! (1931:604-5)

Hopkins elucidated.

It is the belief of the Chinese that the appearance of the Rainbow is at once the herald and the cause of the cessation of rain and the return of clear skies. … Now, if by his own volition, when mounting to the upper air, the Dragon could beget the rolling thunder and the drenching rain-storm, how should he not be able also, in descending, the cause the rain to cease, and the face of the blue sky to clear? And that is why I conjecture and suggest that the early Chinese must have seen in the Rainbow one avatar of the wonder-working Dragon as conceived by their animistic mentality. That would likewise explain why to the arching bow seen with their bodily eyes they added the Dragon heads beheld only by the eye of faith. (1931:606)

Jiang is an uncommon pronunciation of 虹, limited to colloquial or dialectal usage, and unlike hong not normally found in compounds. For instance, caihong 彩虹 (with "color") "rainbow", hongcai 虹彩 "rainbow colors; iridescence; the iris; banners", hongqiao 虹橋 (with "bridge") "arch bridge", and hongxi 虹吸 (with "absorb; suck up") "siphon".

Didong

Didong 蝃蝀 or 螮蝀 is a Classical Chinese word for "rainbow", now usually restricted to literary or historical usage. These three characters combine the "wug radical" with phonetics of zhuo 叕 "connect" or dai 帶 "girdle; sash" in di 蝃 or 螮 and dong 東 "east" in dong 蝀.

Ni

Ni 蜺 or 霓 means "secondary rainbow" or "supernumerary rainbow", which results from double reflection of sunlight, with colors inverted from a primary rainbow (see Alexander's band). These characters combine a phonetic of er 兒 "child" with either the "wug radical" 虫 or the "rain radical" 雨. Ni 蜺 can also mean hanchan 寒蟬 "winter cicada", which is a "silent, mute" metaphor.

While hongni 虹霓 means "primary and secondary rainbows; rainbows", nihong 霓虹 is a loanword from English neon in expressions like nihongdeng 霓虹燈 "neon light", compare the chemical loanword nai 氖 "neon; Ne". Fuhong 副虹 (with "second; subsidiary") means "secondary rainbow" in Chinese meteorological terminology.

Etymologies

The ca. 200 CE Shiming dictionary (1, Shitian 釋天 "Explaining Heaven"), which defines words through phono-semantic glosses, gave the oldest Chinese "etymologies" for rainbows.

Using "etymology" in the usual Western sense of historical linguistics, Joseph Edkins (1871:117-8) first proposed Chinese hong 虹 "rainbow" was "doubtless a variant" of gung 弓 "bow" and compared it with "Siamese" lung "rainbow".

Carr (1990:105) compares Proto-Sino-Tibetan and Proto-Austro-Tai etymological proposals for hong and didong. Peter A. Boodberg (1935, 1979:167) thought *g'ung < *glung 虹 "rainbow (dragon)" and *lyung-t'lia 龍魑 "dragon" descended from a Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-brong "wug" root. Paul K. Benedict first (1967:291) thought *lyung 龍 and *g'ung 虹 were early Chinese borrowings from Proto-Austro-Tai *ruŋ "dragon; rainbow"; but later (1986:58) saw *g'ung < *g'[l]uŋ or *k[l]ung 虹 "rainbow" and *tiadtung < *tiad-[skl]ung 蝃蝀 "rainbow" (with a *tung 東 "east" phonetic signifying "red part of the sky") as semantically related with *g'ung < *g[l]ung 紅 "red".

For hong 虹 "rainbow", Schuessler (2007:278) reconstructs Old Chinese *gôŋ < *gloŋ and compares "very irregular" dialect forms such as Proto-Min ghioŋ^B and Gan Shanggao dialect lɑn^B-luŋ^H. He lists etymological proposals of hong 虹 from Proto-Miao–Yao *kluŋ^A (Haudricourt 1950:559) or Chinese long 龍 "dragon" and hong 紅 "red" (Benedict, Carr). For jiang 虹 "rainbow", Schuessler reconstructs *krôŋh and notes the survival in Gan Wuning dialect kɔŋ^C1. He concludes the "wide range of forms" including didong 蝃蝀 < *tê(t)s-tôŋ < *tê(t)s-tlôŋ suggests a non-Sino-Tibetan "source for this etymon", possibly include Kam–Tai and Zhuang words like tu²-tuŋ² or Proto-Tai *Druŋ (cf. Thai ruŋ^C2 "rainbow".

Mythological parallels

"Hong < *g'ung 虹 'rainbow' has always represented a dragon to the Chinese," says Carr (1990:103), "from Shang oracle pictographs of dicephalous sky-serpents to the modern 虹 graph with the 'wug' radical." The mythic Chinese hong "rainbow" dragon has a few parallels in the natural world (two-headed snake, Rainbow Snake Farancia erytrogramma, and Rainbow Boa Epicrates cenchria) and many in comparative mythology (see rainbows in mythology and snakes in mythology).

Loewenstein (1961) compares rainbow-serpent legends throughout Southeast Asia, the Pacific, Australia, Africa, and South America; and concludes:

Myths of a giant rainbow-serpent are common among primitive tribes inhabiting the tropics. Outside the tropical belt the rainbow-serpent concept is hardly to be found. This points to the fact that the myth must be intimately connected with the occurrence and geographic distribution of a particular family of snakes, the Boidae, which includes the largest specimens in existence, namely the Pythons and the Boas. (1961:37)

The well-known Rainbow Serpent is central to creation myths of the Indigenous Australians (translated as Chinese hongshe and Japanese nijihebi 虹蛇 "rainbow snake"). Some other examples include:

Lastly, another Chinese rainbow myth involves the creator Nüwa 女媧 repairing a crack in the sky caused by the water deity Gong Gong 共工 (cf. 虹). She supposedly created the first rainbow by melting stones of 5 or 7 different colors to patch the sky. Nüwa and her brother-consort Fuxi are represented as having the upper body of a human and the tail of a dragon or serpent. They are associated with yin and yang, like secondary and primary rainbows.