Hsi wang mu holds a unique place in the world of ancient Chinese mythology and legend. She seems to make her first appearence in the inscriptions made on bones and shells where Mother in the West is mentioned as the counterpart of Mother in the East. The former may be none other than Hsi wang mu (Queen-Mother in the West) of later periods Both Mothers are associated with the national cult of the Shang-Yin period Hsi wang mu in Shan-hai-chmg is a dreadful mountain goddess, a cave dweller who has the tail of a panther and the teeth of a tiger. Next, Huai-nan-tzu tells a story of I, a Chinese hero, who went on an expedition in order to obtain the nectar of immortality from Hsi wang mu. She is depicted here almost as a witch In Chu-shu chi-nien and Mu T'ien-tzu chuan, on the other hand, she is a legendary queen who lives in the western most land of China The descriptions of Hsi wang mu are thus neither coherent nor consistent Her features and characteristics in the various texts are sometimes even contradictory, at first sight There would appear to be many Hsi wang mus who have separate roles I suggest, however, that there was a single multifaceted and multiform goddess who was called Hsi wang mu, or the Mother in the West She had a variety of functions like mother goddesses in other areas In this paper, an attempt is made to understand her origins and her various characteristics, making reference to the fundamental nature of the mother goddess. Near Eastern sources relating to the cult of great mother goddesses (Cybele, Anat and Inanna) are employed for comparative purposes. Such a comparative method in the study of mythology is useful in order to identify mother goddess in China and other regions of the world. In other words, it leads to the phenomenology of mother goddesses. This particular method is needed for the study of Chinese mother goddesses because matriarchal society in China was corrupsed very early, perhaps even before the Shang-Yin period, and after that the idea of the mother goddess was lost The method that is used here aims to revive the original image of this powerful mother goddess of ancient China.
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