Antique Shen Nong, Founder of Natural Medicine, China (16530BCEM)

Description

This fine and rare kneeling image is Shen Nong (Shennong (神農), “Divine Farmer” or “Divine Husbandman”), one of most revered cultural heroes in Chinese mythology. Born in the 28th century BCE, he is the Founder of Natural Medicine, the 2nd of the Three Emperors of the Celestial Ministry of Health. A syncretic deity in both Taoism and Poplar Folk Religion, he was deified during  the Han Dynasty as the Father of Agriculture and an Earth God. He is said to have invented farming implements and introduced planting, cultivation, crop rotation and methods of raising domestic animals. The author of the earliest known Chinese medical classic covering medical physiology, anatomy and acupuncture – the Canon of Internal Medicine – as well as the Divine Husbandman’s Materia Medica, the earliest Chinese work on the medicines derived from minerals, plants and animals. He is alleged to have discovered tea almost 5000 years ago and was the first to analyze beneficial and harmful properties of herbs and determined their efficacy by testing them on himself. Believed to be an immortal who assumed human form, he came to Earth to benefit humanity. When rarely portrayed, he sits on a rock or a seat of clouds which here is includes the face of a mythical animal covered by clouds on the rear of the image. He is usually dressed in leaves and grass around his neck, waist and calves or wears a skirt of leaves (Stevens, p.37) as he was viewed as a primitive God who lived on earth before clothes were invented. The closed bung on the rear indicates this carving was consecrated. It is a perfectly fitting and unique carving for a professional in the health care, pharmaceutical agricultural professions.

Sources:

Stevens, Keith: Chinese Gods, The Unseen World of Spirits and Demons, Collins and Brown Limited, London, 1997

National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division online Exhibit of the Classics of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Bethesda, MD, Oct 1999-May 2000.