Legend of “Goddess of Silkworm Presenting Silk”

2 min read

Though it is now a common knowledge that silk comes from silk succus emitted by silkworms, but do you know how silkworms were discovered? Why are they able to produce silk? And how did people get the idea to weave dressing materials with silk?

There are many beautiful legends concerning these questions, of them the stories of Leizu and the Horse-head Goddess are the two most popular ones.

1) Leizu from Xiling Tribe

Leizu was a beautiful girl, who was the daughter of the chief of Xiling tribe living in today’s Sichuan area, where mulberry trees grew exuberantly. One day, sheaccidentally discovered that the filaments emitted from wild silkworms living on mulberry trees were thin and firm. Inspired by spider webs, she weaved these filaments into silk textiles. After her marriage with Huangdi(a legendary figure from Chinese history), she taught more people the knowledge of sericulture. As a result, the era during which people used leaves and animal skins as the main dressing material came to an end, and sericulture flourished in the Central Plains.

Later, to commemorate Leizu’s merit of rearing the heavenly silkworm and weaving clothes to benefit everyone on earth, people worship her as the “Goddess of Silkworm”. Today, even in South Korea, North Korea, and some other countries in Southeast Asia there are similar worship activities.

2) Story of Horse-head Goddess

The story of Horse-head Goddess(also known as Goddess of Silkworm Flowers) is another popular folktale concerning the silk origin. As the story goes, once upon a time, there was a young maiden who deeply missed her father who had traveled to adistant place. So one day she said to her white horse teasingly:”I will marry you if you could bring my father back.”Strangely enough, hearing this, the horse neighed, then threw off the rein, and galloped away.A few days later, it did bring the maiden’s father back. Since then, the horse would turn very excited whenever itsaw the girl. But how could a girl marry to an animal? When the father knew of the matter, he shot the horse dead, and insolated the horse skin in the yard. One day, when the girl walked close to the skin, recalling what had happened, she burst into tears. Suddenly,a fierce wind howled, the girl was wrapped up by the horse skin, and disappeared.A few days later, when she was found in a forest, her body already merged with the horse skin, all white in appearance. Her head turned into a horse head, and kept secreting filaments to wrap up herself. Since then, people have called this strange creature Can (a pun on Chan, wrapping), or silkworm, and calledthe tree on which the girl lost her life Sang (a pun on Sang, death), or mulberry.