The Legendary Emperor Fu Xi and His Wife Nu Kua
The picture on the left was found in a royal tomb dating back to the second century B.C. It was found in the western region of China (Trupan) near China's border to the Middle East. The picture depicts Fu Xi, the emperor who governed the eastern part of China 5,000 years ago. He is thought to be the first person and the one who created the trigrams of the I Ching. The picture also depicts his wife Nu Kua whom, according to legend, created people by blowing air into clay formed into the shape of human beings.
According to legend and the depiction on the cloth, both Fu Xi and Nu Kua had upper bodies that were in the form of humans and lower bodies in the form of snakes. Fu Xi was regarded as the first male and in the picture holds a square, thought to be needed for the creation of all things, while Nu Kua, the first female, holds a protractor. The lower bodies of the couple are intertwined. Surrounding them are many stars, while on the upper and lower centers are two wheels. Many similar drawings, either on cloth or stone, have been excavated in China over the past 50 years.
Though this drawing does not have a single word, it suggests many things. Fu Xi symbolizes Yang while Nu Kua symbolizes Yin. The intertwined lower bodies symbolize the union of Yin and Yang or Tai Chi. The surrounding stars, the square (Yang), and the protractor (Yin) imply that they have created all things in the universe in accordance to the principles of Tai Chi and Yin-Yang. Though the meaning of the wheels is not clear, it is possible that they are representative of the sun and moon and their orbits, or the circular arrangement of the I Ching's hexagrams.
From this picture, it seems as though Fu Xi, who created the trigrams and hexagrams as the code of all things in creation, was aware of the genetic code. The intertwined bodies of Fu Xi and Nu Kua effectively illustrate how a single strand of DNA from a father and a single strand of DNA from a mother are intertwined in a zygote. The upper bodies of Fu Xi and Nu