When the long war between the falling Shang and the rising Chou turns against him, a Taoist sage does not retreat — he multiplies. Caught up by a luminous bow and wrapped in flame, Chun T'i reappears from a "cloud of fire he appeared with eighteen arms and twenty-four heads," "holding in each hand a powerful talisman." He is "a Taoist of the Western Paradise", and his weapons are strangely gentle: from a raised "Seven-precious Branch" pour "thousands of lotus-flowers" that make "an impenetrable covering" against a descending sword, and at a wave of his "Wand of the Seven Treasures" an enemy's "magic sword was broken to bits", the handle alone left in his fist.

The account is drawn from the romance the record names, the Fêng shên yen i, which tells of the wars before "the accession of the Chou dynasty in 1122 B.C."; the served witness is Myths & Legends of China (published 1922). It closes on the very image the shelf files here. Chun T'i's festival falls "on the sixth day of the third moon", and the god is "generally shown with eight hands and three faces, one of the latter being that of a pig". A warrior of paradise, a "saviour" even of his enemies, carries among his three divine faces the face of a hog.

The shelf is thin under this address: apart from a note in a European study of the god Balor, the only witness carrying served text is this single Chinese compilation, and no second tradition stands beside it to say whether a three-faced, pig-faced god is a wide inheritance or a local one.

Why should a face of mercy be given the face of a pig — and which of the three does a worshipper meet first?