He Bo- Chinese GodDeity"Count of the River"

The Drowned God

He Bo was once a mortal named Bingyi who crossed the Yellow River and never returned. Through drowning, he became the river's divine lord, a transformation recorded in the Zhuangzi. From his palace beneath the surface, He Bo governs the currents and floods of the Yellow River. In the Chuci anthology's "Nine Songs," Qu Yuan envisions him riding a chariot drawn by water dragons, attended by fish, with drums sounding across the river.

The Bride of He Bo

The most infamous tradition connected to He Bo is the practice of offering human brides to the river god, attested in Warring States records. In the town of Ye, in the state of Wei, local shamans selected young women each year to be cast into the Yellow River as He Bo's consort. The magistrate Ximen Bao, appointed around the mid-fourth century BCE, exposed the practice. When the shamans presented the next chosen bride, Ximen Bao declared her insufficiently beautiful and ordered the chief shaman thrown into the river to inform He Bo that a better bride would follow. When the shaman failed to resurface, he sent another. The officials quickly conceded that He Bo needed no more brides. Sima Qian recorded the episode in the Shiji.

The White Dragon and the Ocean

According to the Chuci and later commentaries, He Bo once took the form of a white dragon and roamed the riverbanks beyond his proper domain. The archer Houyi encountered the dragon and shot it, striking out He Bo's left eye. He Bo appealed to the supreme deity Di Jun for justice, but Di Jun sided with Houyi: He Bo had invited the attack by wandering in disguise where he did not belong.

The Zhuangzi's "Autumn Floods" chapter tells a different story. When the autumn rains swell the Yellow River until its banks cannot be seen from shore to shore, He Bo rejoices, believing himself the greatest body of water in the world. Then he flows east and reaches the North Sea, where the sea god Ruo's vastness stretches beyond the horizon. He Bo realizes with shame that he has been like a frog in a well, mistaking a small world for the whole of existence.