ON CANG JIE'S STATUS IN CHINA'S LEGENDARY HISTORY
The study of the formation process and the perception of Chinese cultural heroes, many of whom are perceived in this capacity up till now, is a pressing problem in the field of Chinese studies. One of such characters is Сang Jie, the legendary inventor of Chinese writing. Although most modern scholars admit his mythological nature, in traditional China he was thought of as a historical character. To this day, he is often seen as an official of the legendary sovereign Huangdi, but in many traditional sources he himself appears as an ancient monarch. This provokes the question of the time of and reasons for the emergence of these conflicting views on Cang Jie's status in the legendary history of China. To solve this problem, the article undertakes a detailed analysis of fragments of the number of Early Chinese texts that were crucial for the formation of the image of Cang Jie: Xunzi, Han Feizi, Huainanzi, Lunheng, Hanshu, Showen jiezi, and so-called apocryphal texts (chenwei), as well as a number of testimonies of the III-XII centuries, recorded in Kong Yingda's (574- 648) commentary to Shangshu and in Lo Mi's (1131-1189) Lushi. Present study demonstrates that although the first mentions of Cang Jie in the transmitted sources date back to the 3rd c. BC, in the texts created over three centuries after that, there are no explicit mentions of his status. As shown in the article, the situation changed only by the 1st c. BC, when Cang Jie turns from a marginal character, mentioned along with other legendary inventors, into an independent figure. It was during this period that he receives the roles, in which he will be perceived hereafter: that of the official of Huang-di and of the ancient ruler. The simultaneous appearance of these two different points of view can serve as a reflection of the political confrontation between the emperor and the scholars.