Nine-Tailed, Four-Eared Goat-Beast with Eyes on Its Back
Mount Ji, jade-bearing on its southern slope and covered in strange trees to the north, is home to the boshi. The Classic of the Southern Mountains describes a beast shaped like a goat but with nine tails and four ears, its eyes set upon its back. Every organ is either doubled or displaced: the face is blind, while the spine keeps watch.
Its reason for being lies in the closing formula, 'wear it and you will not fear'. In the book's economy of virtues — where the xuangui turtle guards hearing, the guanguan bird dispels confusion, and the lushu blesses descendants — the boshi holds the portfolio of courage. The magical logic is plain enough: a creature bristling with extra ears and back-mounted eyes is alertness incarnate, and whoever carries its hide borrows that vigilance, no longer fearing what stands behind him. Ming and Qing illustrated editions tend to draw it as a placid, shaggy goat with a pair of round eyes staring up from its back, one of the most quietly unsettling figures in the picture scrolls.
