Wangliang
[a] Interpretations of the wangliang include a wilderness spirit, similar to the kui, a water spirit akin to the Chinese dragon, a fever demon like the yu (魊; "a poisonous three-legged turtle"), a graveyard ghost also called wangxiang (罔象) or fangliang (方良), and a man-eating demon described as resembling a 3-year-old child with brown skin, red eyes, long ears, and beautiful hair.
In Warring States period (475–221 BC) usage, wangliang was also phonetically transcribed using the character pronunciations wang 罔 and liang 兩, and written as 蝄蜽 with the "animal radical" 虫 (used to write names of insects, dragons, etc.)
or wangliang (罔閬) using liang (閬; "dry moat") with the "gate radical" 門 (typically used in architectural terminology).
While liang (魎) only occurs as a bound morpheme in wangliang, wang appears in other expressions, such as wangmei (魍魅; "evil spirits").
[2] William G. Boltz[3] offers a more sophisticated interpretation: these were not merely confusions between similar, but independent, names, but actually all variants of one and the same underlying designation: an initial consonantal cluster **BLjang ~ **BZjang, meaning "see".
Ji Huanzi (季桓子), a grandee of the state of Lu, caused a well to be dug, when they fetched up something like an earthen pot with a goat in it.
(魯語下)[13] This mushi (木石) literally means "trees and rocks" and figuratively refers to "inanimate beings; emotionlessness; indifference."
Wei Zhao's commentary mentions that the wangxiang (罔象) supposedly eats humans and is also called the muzhong (木腫; "tree/wood swelling").
In this context, it describes how Yu the Great, the legendary founder of the Xia dynasty, ordered the casting of the Nine Tripod Cauldrons to familiarize people with all the dangerous demons and monsters found in China's Nine Provinces.
Thus, when people went to the rivers, lakes, mountains, and forests, they did not encounter these adverse beings nor did the Chimei-Hobgoblins in the hills and the Wangliang-Goblins in the waters accost them.
My fainting soul shrank back, oppressed; And as I lay, mouth full of water, deep below the surface, The light of the sun seemed dim and very far above me.
Two chapters of the Zhuangzi recount similar versions of a dialogue between Wangliang (罔兩), or Penumbra, and Jing (景; "bright; shadow").
In water there are nonimagoes [罔象]; on hills there are scrabblers [峷]; on mountains there are unipedes [夔]; in the wilds there are will-o'-the-wisps [彷徨]; and in marshes there are bendcrooks [委蛇].
(19)[19] Xiangwang is the name of an allegorical character who discovers the xuanzhu (玄珠; "dark/mysterious pearl; Daoist truth") lost by the legendary Yellow Emperor.
(12)[19] This allegory about the Yellow Emperor is part of the "knowledge story cycle" in which Zhuangzi illustrates the Daoist philosophy of anti-epistemology, emphasizing the value of not knowing.
It is incumbent on the Rescuer of the Country to cover himself with a bear's skin, to mask himself with four eyes of yellow metal, to put on a black coat and a red skirt, and thus, lance in hand and brandishing a shield, to perform, at the head of a hundred followers, a purification in every season of the year, which means the finding out of (haunted) dwellings and driving away contagious diseases.
At royal funerals he walks ahead of the coffin and, arriving at the grave, he leaps into the pit to beat the four corners with his lance, in order to drive away the fang-liang spectres.
"[23] The Huainanzi (139 BCE) uses wangliang (魍魎) to mean "mindless; zombielike" and wangxiang (罔象) to refer to "a water monster."
[26] Wang Chong's Lunheng (80 CE)[27] quotes the Liji (c. 2nd–1st century BCE), though not found in the received text, stating that one of the mythological emperor Zhuanxu's sons became a wangliang (魍魎).
the modern Luo rivers, in Henan and Shaanxi) was supposedly located in Yunnan, and associates wangliang (魍魎) with the mythological yu (魊; "a three-legged tortoise that causes malaria").
[29] Xu Shen's Shuowen Jiezi (121 CE) defines wangliang (魍魎):[30] "It is a spectral creature of mountains and rivers.
The King of Huainan says, 'The appearance of the wangliang is like that of a three-year-old child, with a red-black color, red eyes, long ears, and beautiful hair.'"
(18)[32] The Shuyiji (述異記) "Records of Strange Things," compiled by Ren Fang (任昉) (460–508), contains a story about finding a fangxiang (方相; "demon that eats the brains of the dead"), also called fushu (弗述; "not state") or ao (媪; "old woman").
It was recorded that Mr. Fei Zhangfang (費長房) once made medicinal pills of Li E (李娥) that contained the brain of Fangxiang as an ingredient.
