Hanvueng, the Goose King

Hanvueng, the Goose King (Hanqvuengz), is the elder of two royal step-brothers in the Zhuang epic that bears his name, edited and translated from a traditional Zhuang manuscript by David Holm and Meng Yuanyao. The designation is a title rather than a personal name: the son who does not inherit the chiefly domain. Wronged by his younger brother, the Goose King relinquishes the earthly kingdom and ascends to rule in the sky, the Zhuang associating his high-flying, migratory character with the wild goose; thereafter he must be paid yearly offerings from below. The Hanvueng scripture is chanted by mogong (bumo) priests to heal feuds between brothers and to address deaths by violence, smallpox and similar calamities.

Domains

• reconciliation of feuding kin

Powers

• to be invoked for the settling of deadly quarrels between brothers

Epithets

• HanqvuengzHolm, David, and Meng Yuanyao. Hanvueng: The Goose King and the Ancestral King — An Epic from Guangxi in Southern China. Zhuang Traditional Texts 1. Leiden: Brill, 2015. (secondary)

Relations

• half sibling: Cojvuengz, the Ancestral KingThe two are royal step-brothers; their murderous enmity is the subject of the Hanvueng epic, recited to heal fraternal feuds.Holm, David, and Meng Yuanyao. Hanvueng: The Goose King and the Ancestral King — An Epic from Guangxi in Southern China. Zhuang Traditional Texts 1. Leiden: Brill, 2015. (secondary)

Sources

• Hanvueng, the Goose King, is the elder step-brother of the Hanvueng epic, a Zhuang ritual ancestral figure who departs the earth to rule in the sky and is invoked by mogong to resolve fatal quarrels between kin.: Holm, David, and Meng Yuanyao. Hanvueng: The Goose King and the Ancestral King — An Epic from Guangxi in Southern China. Zhuang Traditional Texts 1. Leiden: Brill, 2015. (secondary); Jonsson, Hjorleifur. Review of 'Hanvueng: The Goose King and the Ancestral King', by David Holm and Meng Yuanyao. Religious Studies Review 43, no. 1 (2017). (secondary)