Hundun (Chinese: 混沌; pinyin: Hùndùn; Wade–Giles: Hun4-tun4; lit. 'muddled confusion') is both a "legendary faceless being" in Chinese mythology and the "primordial and central chaos" in Chinese cosmogony, comparable with the world egg.
Etymology Hundun 混沌 was semantically extended from a mythic "primordial chaos; nebulous state of the universe before heaven and earth separated" to mean "unintelligible; chaotic; messy; mentally dense; innocent as a child". While hùndùn "primordial chaos" is usually written as 混沌 in contemporary vernacular, it is also written as 渾沌—as in the Daoist classic Zhuangzi—or 渾敦 —as in the Zuozhuan. Hùn "chaos; muddled; confused" is written either hùn (混; 'abundantly flowing', 'turbid water', 'torrent', 'mix up/in', 'confuse', 'thoughtless', 'senseless') or hún (渾; 'sound of running water', 'muddy', 'muddled', 'confused', 'dull', 'stupid'). These two are interchangeable graphic variants read as hún (混; 'muddy', 'dirty', 'filthy') ) and hùn (渾; 'nebulous', 'stupid') (渾沌; hùndùn). Dùn ("dull; confused") is written as either dùn (沌; 'dull', 'confused', 'stupid') or dūn (敦; 'thick', 'solid', 'generous', 'earnest', 'honest', 'sincere'). Isabelle Robinet outlines the etymological origins of hundun.
Semantically, the term hundun is related to several expressions, hardly translatable in Western languages, that indicate the void or a barren and primal immensity – for instance, hunlun (混淪), hundong (混洞), kongdong (空洞), menghong (蒙洪), or hongyuan (洪元). It is also akin to the expression "something confused and yet complete" (混成; huncheng) found in the Daode jing 25, which denotes the state prior to the formation of the world where nothing is perceptible, but which nevertheless contains a cosmic seed. Similarly, the state of hundun is likened to an egg; in this usage, the term alludes to a complete world round and closed in itself, which is a receptacle like a cavern (洞; dong) or a gourd (壺; hu or 壺盧; hulu).
Most Chinese characters are written using "radicals" or "semantic elements" and "phonetic elements". Hùndùn (混沌) is written with the "water radical" 水 or 氵 and phonetics of kūn (昆) and tún (屯). Hùndùn "primordial chaos" is cognate with Wonton (餛飩; húntun) "wonton; dumpling soup" written with the "eat radical" 飠. Note that the English loanword wonton is borrowed from the Cantonese pronunciation wan4tan1. Victor H. Mair suggests a fundamental connection between hundun and wonton: "The undifferentiated soup of primordial chaos. As it begins to differentiate, dumpling-blobs of matter coalesce. … With the evolution of human consciousness and reflectiveness, the soup was adopted as a suitable metaphor for chaos". This last assertion appears unsupported, however, since wonton soup is not attested in Chinese sources dating earlier than the Han dynasty, although the linguistic connection of the soup to the larger concept certainly appears real. Hundun 混沌 has a graphic variant 混淪; hunlun (using 淪; lún; 'ripples', 'eddying water', 'sink down' see the Liezi below), which etymologically connects to the mountain name Kunlun 崑崙 (differentiated with the "mountain radical" 山). Robinet says "Kunlun and hundun are the same closed center of the world." Girardot quotes the Chinese philologist Lo Mengci 羅夢冊, who says that reduplicated words like hundun "suggest cyclic movement and transformation", and speculates:
Ritually mumbling the sounds of hun-tun might, therefore, be said to have a kind on incantatory significance that both phonetically and morphologically invokes the mythological and ontological idea of the Tao as the creatio continua process of infinitely repeated moments of change and new creation. The Shuowen Jiezi does not contain dun (沌) (which apparently lacked a pre-Han Seal script). It defines hun (混) as fengliu (豐流; 'abundantly flow'), hun (渾) as the sound of hunliu (混流) "abundantly-flowing flow" or "seemingly impure", dun (敦) as "anger, rage; scolding" or "who", and lun (淪) as "ripples; eddies" or "sink into; disappear". English chaos is a better translation of hundun in the classical sense of Chaos or Khaos in Greek mythology meaning "gaping void; formless primordial space preceding creation of the universe" than in the common sense of "disorder; confusion". The latter meaning of hundun is synonymous with Chinese luàn (亂; 'chaos', 'revolt', 'indiscriminate', 'random', 'arbitrary'). The linguistic compound hùnluàn (混亂; 'chaos-chaos'; "chaos; disorder; confusion") exemplifies the "synonym compound" category in Chinese morphology.
Early textual usages In the Chinese written record, hundun first appears in classics dating from the Warring States period. The following summary divides them into Confucianist, Daoist, and other categories, and presents them in roughly chronological order, with the caveat that many early textual dates are uncertain.
Confucian texts Hundun only occurs in one Confucian classic, the Zuo Zhuan commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals. Most early Confucianist ancient texts (Lunyu, Book of Documents, I Ching, etc.) do not use hun, with four exceptions. One, the Mengzi, uses hun in its original meaning "sound of flowing water". Mencius explains why Confucius praised water, "There is a spring of water; how it gushes out!". The other three use hun as what Girardot calls "a term of opprobrium and condemnation related to the suppression of the "barbarians" or the "legendary rebels"." The Shijing (237) mentions Hunyi (混夷) "ancient Hunni tribe in Turan". When King Wen of Zhou opened up the roads, "The hordes of the Keun [sic] disappeared, Startled and panting". The Chunqiu mentions the Luhun 陸渾 tribe of the Rong 戎 people, "the Jung of Luh-hwăn" The Zuozhuan commentary to the Chunqiu notes they were originally from western Gansu and forced into northern Henan. Another Zuozhuan context refers to Hundun (渾敦) as a worthless son of the Yellow Emperor, one of the mythical Sixiong (四凶) "Four Perils" banished by Shun.
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