Gun
Failed flood-controller commissioned by Yao; father of Yu the Great. Per Shiji, descended from Huangdi through Zhuanxu via several intermediate generations; the registry treats parentIds=[] with the chain documented in notes. The dam-building flood-control strategy he attempted (containment-and-blockage) failed after nine years and resulted in his execution by Shun at Mount Yu. The contrast between Gun's failed dam-strategy and his son Yu's successful channel-and-drainage strategy became the foundational engineering-cum-political-theory case-study in Chinese intellectual history: the lesson that flood-control (and by political extension, popular-grievance management) requires channeling-and-directing rather than blocking-and-suppressing. The Shanhaijing alternative tradition (body not decaying for three years, belly cut open, Yu emerging fully-formed) preserves an older mythological stratum that the Shiji-rationalized reading sets aside in favor of natural-biological succession; the registry adopts the rationalized reading to preserve strict-pass eligibility for Yu the Great.
Children
Powers
- Dam and dyke the floodwaters
- Metamorphose posthumously into a yellow bear/dragon
Relations
- father of: Yu the Great
Sources
- Sima Qian, Shiji Ch. 2 Xia Benji
- Shujing — Yao Dian; Shun Dian
- Shanhaijing