Tiangou, the Heavenly Dog That Wards Off Evil

What the Shan Hai Jing says

Tiangou means heavenly dog, but the oldest entry does not describe a dog at all. In the third book of the Western Mountains, on Mount Yin, the Shan Hai Jing describes a beast shaped like a li, a small wild cat, with a white head. Its cry sounds like "liu-liu", and it can ward off evil. That is the whole entry. There is no warning attached to it, no flood or war, which makes Tiangou one of the few beasts in this part of the book that people would be glad to meet. Mount Yin comes right after Mount Zhang'e, home of the one-horned Zheng and the fire bird Bifang, in a range that also includes Kunlun.

A guardian, not a threat

The phrase used for Tiangou, yu xiong, means to hold off misfortune. The Shan Hai Jing uses similar words for plants and animals that protect whoever eats or carries them, as if the book were a field guide to useful charms as well as dangers. Read on its own, the first Tiangou belongs to that useful group: a small, pale-headed animal that keeps bad things away from the people around it. This is the side of Tiangou we chose for Beasts of Shanhai, where it shields the ally next to it.

The heavenly dog in the sky

Other early texts use the same name for something far more alarming. The Treatise on the Heavenly Offices in the Shiji, the great history by Sima Qian, describes tiangou as a large shooting star that makes a sound and falls to earth looking like a dog, with fire blazing up where it lands. The Shan Hai Jing itself, in Great Wilderness: West, mentions a red dog called Tianquan, the heavenly hound, and says that wherever it comes down there is war. These sky dogs are signs of disaster, the opposite of the gentle beast on Mount Yin.

The dog that eats the moon

The best-known Tiangou today is the dog that swallows the sun or the moon. In later Chinese folk belief, an eclipse happened because the heavenly dog was eating the light, and people banged drums and gongs to frighten it into spitting it out. This idea does not come from the Shan Hai Jing. It grew up much later, and it shares only the name with the protective beast of the mountain books.

Sky Hound in Beasts of Shanhai

In our free browser game Beasts of Shanhai, Sky Hound is a Metal beast that costs 1 Gold. Its skill is Right Shield. At the start of a battle the ally to its right gets a Shield equal to 25% of that ally's max HP (at least 2). At two stars the Shield is 40%, and at three stars both neighbors get 60%.

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