One day a sage went on a long journey to the west. He walked for a very long time through the desert. And finally he found himself in a place where neither the rays of the sun nor the light of the moon reached. And this happened because an unusually large sumu tree spread its thick crown over the entire country. Therefore, the country that fit under the tree was called Suimin. The sage was tired after a long journey and settled down to rest in the darkness and coolness. You didn’t even have to close your eyes—it was still dark all around. But after the sage had rested and his eyes had become accustomed to the eternal night, he thought with great surprise: “How mistaken I was in thinking that complete darkness reigns here!”
Indeed, in the crooked branches of the huge crown, beautiful lights were constantly lit, as if shining pearls and precious stones were sparkling. The inhabitants of the Suiming country all year round, without seeing the sun and moon, worked and rested, ate and slept in the light of these beautiful lights, without thinking where they came from.
The sage wanted to know the reason for the appearance of the lights. It turned out that beautiful birds with a white belly and a black back were flying among the branches. They continually sat on the branches and hit them with their hard beaks. The bird hits the branch with its beak and a light flashes. The sage came up with a wonderful idea: “In this way, people can make fire!”
And he remembered people because in all of China no one had yet been able to make fire. Everyone ate raw food. That’s why people often had stomach pains, and this prevented them from working well and resting happily.
He broke off several branches from the suima tree and began to use one branch to hammer another. The light flashed, but immediately went out, without even producing smoke. Then he began, as it were, to drill one branch into another. The sage was very hardworking, and finally, from the rotation of the branch, smoke first appeared, and then a flame flared up, the branch caught fire.
The sage hurried to his country and taught people the method of making fire by friction. Now they could get fire when they needed it, instead of waiting for thunderstorms and lightning. From now on, there was no need to guard the fire all year round for fear that it would go out. Everyone began to prepare hot food. From now on, stomach pain in adults and children was much less common. It became easier to work and more pleasant to relax.
People called the sage who discovered the method of making fire Suizhen, i.e. “making fire by friction,” and put him in charge of the Celestial Empire. He was one of the three wisest sovereigns.
And besides Suizhen, these three include the ancestor of Fuxi and the patron of agriculture, Shennong.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru