Chinese PantheonUnderworld
Diyu (Chinese Underworld)
The realm of the dead where souls are judged by Yan Wang (King Yama) and punished or rewarded based on their earthly deeds. It contains multiple courts and hells, after which souls drink from the River of Oblivion before reincarnation.
About Diyu (Chinese Underworld)
Courts of Yanluo
Diyu is the Chinese underworld of numbered courts, King Yama (Yanluo), punishment mirrors, and the Mengpo soup of forgetfulness before rebirth. It is a Buddhist-Daoist synthesis; the Jade Record (Yuli) and popular baojuan spell it out. Journey to the West sends Wukong to strike his name from the register. It is not the Zhou Yellow Springs. Admit the layering: older hun/po ideas, then imported Indic hells, then a bureaucratic afterlife with offices.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Wu Cheng'en, Journey to the West, ch. 3
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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