It is said the lunar image is still draped in the smoke that rose when the rabbit cast itself into the fire. Touched by the rabbit's virtue, he drew the likeness of the rabbit on the Moon for all to see. However, the rabbit was not burnt and the old man revealed that he was Śakra. Knowing only how to gather grass, the rabbit instead offered its own body by throwing itself into a fire the man had prepared. When an old man begged for food from them, the monkey gathered fruits from the trees and the otter collected fish, while the jackal found a lizard and a pot of milk-curd. In the Buddhist Jataka tales, Tale 316 relates that a monkey, an otter, a jackal, and a rabbit resolved to practice charity on the day of the full moon ( Uposatha), believing a demonstration of great virtue would earn a great reward. Asian folklore Sun Wukong fights the Moon Rabbit, a scene in the sixteenth century Chinese novel, Journey to the West, depicted in Yoshitoshi's One Hundred Aspects of the Moon A famous poet of Tang China, Li Bai, relates how "The rabbit in the moon pounds the medicine in vain" in his poem, "The Old Dust". Han Dynasty poets call the hare on the Moon the "Jade Hare" (玉兔) or the "Gold Hare" (金兔), and these phrases were used often, in place of the word for the Moon. As rabbits were not yet introduced to China during Western Han, the original image was not a rabbit but a hare. This notion is supported by later texts, including the Song-era Taiping Imperial Reader. History The Chinese mythological white hare making the elixir of immortality on the Moon embroidered onto an eighteenth-century Imperial Chinese robeĪn early Chinese source called the Chu Ci, a Western Han anthology of Chinese poems from the Warring States period, notes that along with a toad, there is a hare on the Moon who constantly pounds herbs for the immortals. Moon folklore from certain Amerindian cultures of North America also has rabbit themes and characters. In some Chinese versions, the rabbit pounds medicine for the mortals and some include making of mooncakes. In Chinese folklore, the rabbit is often portrayed as a companion of the Moon goddess Chang'e, constantly pounding the elixir of life for her and some show the making of cakes or rice cakes but in Japanese and Korean versions, the rabbit is pounding the ingredients for mochi or some other type of rice cakes in the Vietnamese version, the Moon rabbit often appears with Hằng Nga and Chú Cuội, and like the Chinese version, the Vietnamese Moon rabbit also pounding the elixir of immortality in the mortar. In East Asia, the rabbit is seen as pounding with a mortar and pestle, but the contents of the mortar differ among Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese folklore. The Moon rabbit or Moon hare is a mythical figure in East Asian and indigenous American folklore, based on pareidolic interpretations that identify the dark markings on the near side of the Moon as a rabbit or hare. The image of a rabbit and mortar delineated on the Moon's surface
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