THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
On Mount Dongting live the two daughters of the supreme god, who range the deeps of the Yangtze. There, the classic says, the winds of the Li and Yuan rivers cross the pools of the Xiao and Xiang among the nine tributaries, and every passage of the goddesses raises whirlwind and storm. The mountain teems besides with strange gods, man-shaped, draped with snakes, gripping snakes in both hands.
Guo Pu took the pair as daughters of the celestial god who settled in the river and became its divinities. The 'Nine Songs' of the Chuci hymn them as the Xiang Princess and the Lady of the Xiang; the 'child of god descending on the northern isle' is one of the two.
A later tradition made them Ehuang and Nüying, daughters of Yao and wives of Shun. Liu Xiang's Biographies of Exemplary Women records that when Shun died at Cangwu on his southern tour, the two consorts died between the Jiang and the Xiang, and the people called them Xiangjun. Zhang Hua's Bowuzhi adds that their tears fell on the bamboo and speckled it for good, the origin of the mottled 'Xiang consorts bamboo.' Junshan, the island in Lake Dongting, keeps a tomb of the two consorts to this day.
