Choose one (1) creation myth from pages 17-39 of the textbook (excluding all Greek and Roman myths) and write a one (1) page reflection in which you answer the following questions: Which type of creation myth (from the five types listed in your textbook) is it? What parts/items in the myth reflect this type? Who are the key figures? How are they represented (what do they look or sound like)P What | are their roles? Are natural elements (earth, water, fire, air, ether) present in the mnyth? How do they appear? Is there any conflict/violence in the myth? Overall, how does this myth portray the creation? What does it tell you about the culture it is from and how the world is viewed by this culture? Reflection Assignments should be written in paragraph form, double-spaced, and formatted in APA or MLA Style. Submit the assignment in the Assignment Dropbox on SLATE. For evaluation criteria, please see the Reflection Assignment Rubric posted on SLATE. COSMIC MYTHS when he retlected on his aloneness, he realized there was nothing to fear. Still, he wished noe to be alone and so broke into two parts, becoming at once husband and wife. Bat after the couple produced humankind, the woman became con- cerned. "How," she wondered, "can he engender me from himself, and how can we then engender others together?" Full of shame, the woman turned herself into cow. But the man became a bull and found his other half, and cattle resuted Still ashamed, the woman became a mare and later a she-goat and even a shean but the man mated with her as a stallion, a billy goat, and even an ant. So it was that the creatures of the world were formed. One Rig Veda hymn sings of the necessity of opposites: Being requires Non- Being, The wise, says the Veda, say that Being and Non-Being became one in the beginning and that the order of creation emerged from the original chaos. Bat finally, the Vedic poet asks, who really knows how creation came about? Maybe the creator himself does not know. IRAN (PERSIA): Aryan and Zoroastrian The Indo-European (Aryan) invaders who, according to one theory, moved into Iran and India in the third millennium ICE shared a great many mythological traditions. An early Persian creation story, similar to several Vedic ones from India, tells how the world was created when the fertility or solar god Yima, a Purusha-like primal figure, used a golden arrow to make his sister Earth pregnant. Because he married his sister, he was punished by the other gods. The old Aryan traditions were absorbed and changed with the development of Zoroastrianism in Iran (Persia), a religion founded by Zoroaster (Zarathustna), who was born in the sixth century BCE. The holy book of Zoroastrianism, the Avesta, emphasizes the importance of joining with the high creator god Ahura Mazda against his nemesis, the evil Angra Mainyu. The following creation myth is a retelling from a twelfth-century text, the Bundabishn. The creation story here is reminiscent more of the Jewish and Christian concept of creation than of the old Indo-Iranian or Aryan-Vedic traditions. When Zoroaster reformed the old Aryan and Mandian religion, he moved away from an emphasis on the old gods and instead empha sized the duality of nature and the moral choice facing humans. In the beginning there was only the essential duality. Ahura Mazda (Ohrmazd) was the good; Angra Mainyu (Ahriman) was the evil. In order to combat his evil opposite, Ahura Mazda created a spiritual rather than a physical world, waiting for S000 years before creating a perfect tangible world at the center of which was a per fect human, Gayomart. But Angra Mainyu hated this perfection and burst through that contained the world and the primal sea. This brea through caused such a disturbance that the sun began to rotate rather than stathiing the great cosmic egg + The Creation 27 Thus day and night began and mountains and valleys were formed. The inter- ference of evil in the perfect world led to death, work, and pain for humankind. In short, as in Genesis, a perfect world created for humans was polluted, in this case b Angra Mainyu, and Ahura Mazda had to place his opposite in Hell, CHINA: Cosmic Egg and Yin and Yang There are many early Chinese creation myths. Most can be found in popalar Jegrnd and in the third-century text the San-ww li-chi. The first myth told here a creation from chaos, cosmic egg, and world parent narrative involving the nrimal being, a Chinese Purusha called Phan Ku (Pangu), and the concept of vin and yang. The second myth is somewhat more philosophical and is also focused on yin and yang. In the beginning was a huge egg containing chaos, a mixture of yin-yang-female-male, passive-active, cold-heat, dark-light, and wet-dry. Within this yin-yang was Phan Ku, that which was not yet anything but which broke forth from the egg as the giant who sepa- rated chaos into the many opposites, including carth and sky. Each day for 18,000 years Phan Ku grew ten feet between the sky, which was raised ten feet, and the carth, which grew by ten feet. So it is that heaven and carth are now separated by 90,000 li or 30,000 miles. Phan Ku was covered with hair; horns sprang from his head and tusks from his mouth. With a great chisel and a huge mallet, he carved out the mountains, valleys, rivers, and oceans. During his 18,000 years he also made the sun, moon, and stars, He taught the people what they know. All was suffused by the great primal prin- ciples of the original chaos, yin and yang. When Phan Ku finally died, his skull became the top of the sky, his breath the wind, his voice thunder, his legs and arms the four directions, his flesh the soil, his blood the rivers, and so forth. The people say that the fleas in his hair became human beings. Everything that is is Phan Ku, and everything that Phan Ku is is yin-yang. With Phan Ku's death a vacuum was created, and within this vacuum pain and sin were able to flourish. In the beginning was chaos, from which light became the sky and darkness formed the earth, Yang and vin are contained in light and darkness, and everything is made of these principles. When yang rated, humankind was born. As the first man watched the parterns and yin became one and the five elements were sepa-