| Sumario: | The dog was an object of popular worship in the Han dynasty. Dogs played instrumental roles, primarily consisting of hunting, guarding the home, and consumption as food; as riding on horseback and leading dogs were pastimes of the wealthy, dogs became a symbol of prosperity. In Han dynasty pictorial carvings, like the phoenix, the dragon-dog Panhu (槃瓠) appears at the side of the Queen Mother of the West, indicating that a tribe with the dog as its symbol had provided male partners in a "walking marriage" (走婚, zouhun) to marry into the matriarchal clan. The Panhu myth was in fact a revival of the primitive system of in-clan marriage: a member of the Gaoxin clan of the Central Plains disguised himself with a dog's head mask to carry off a daughter of the same clan in an incestuous elopement. The people of the Han dynasty treated the dog as a tool for understanding the world: for instance, solar eclipses were interpreted as the Heavenly Hound (天狗, tiangou) swallowing the sun, while Duke Ling of Jin (晉靈公, d. 607 BCE) was mocked for conducting himself in a manner unbecoming of a ruler by setting a dog to bite Zhao Dun (趙盾, d. 601 BCE).
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