Legend provides us with a weird being named P'an Ku, who came into existence, no one can quite say how, endowed with perfect knowledge, his function being to set the gradually developing universe in order.

He is often represented pictorially with a huge adze in his hand, and engaged in constructing the world out of the matter which has just begun to take shape.

With his death the detailed part of creation appeared.

His breath became the wind; his voice, the thunder; his left eye, the sun; his right eye, the moon; his blood yielded rivers; his hair grew into trees and plants; his flesh became the soil; his sweat descended as rain; and the parasites which infested his body were the forerunners of the human race.

This sort of stuff, however, could only appeal to the illiterate; for intellectual and educated persons something more was required.