Data & method

Sources

Huaxia source texts are public domain and retrieved from Wikisource across 32 classical works: Archaic Myth: Liezi, Records of the Grand Historian, Classic of Mountains and Seas, In Search of the Supernatural, Songs of Chu, Huainanzi, Tale of King Mu, Bamboo Annals; Shang–Zhou: Records of the Grand Historian, Investiture of the Gods, Bamboo Annals, Yi Zhou Shu; Eastern Zhou: Chronicles of the Eastern Zhou Kingdoms, Records of the Grand Historian, Discourses of the States, Strategies of the Warring States, Correct Meaning of the Zuo Tradition, Bamboo Annals; Han Dynasties: Records of the Grand Historian, Book of the Later Han, Book of Han; Three Kingdoms: Records of the Three Kingdoms, Romance of the Three Kingdoms; Sui–Tang: New Book of Tang, Old Book of Tang, Romance of Sui and Tang; Journey West: Journey to the West; Northern Song: History of Song, Generals of the Yang Family; Water Margin: History of Song, Water Margin; Southern Song: History of Song, The Story of Yue Fei; Immortals & Anomalies: Collected Biographies of Immortals, Records of Myriad Things, Extensive Records of the Taiping Era, Researches into Lost Records, Sequel to In Search of the Supernatural, Biographies of Divine Transcendents. The first European mythology slice uses public-domain translations from Project Gutenberg. No copyrighted modern editions were used.

These sources are not flattened into one kind of truth. Official histories, historical fiction, mythology, strange tales, philosophy and poetry retain their own type and textual context. Thesource constellationsshow what each work actually contributes.

Why one graph

Mythological figures do not stay in their own books. Nezha, Li Jing and Laozi live in both the Investiture of the Gods and Journey to the West, each with a separate story. Guan Yu is a general killed in the histories and a deified emperor in popular religion. Placing them on one network is what makes those migrations visible. The chapter filter narrows the view to a single era; the default shows all chapters.

How it was compiled

Figures and relationships were extracted chapter by chapter by a language model. Every record carries its source text and chapter; nothing enters the database without one. Names that vary across books (Jiang Ziya / Lü Shang / Taigong Wang) are merged through a hand-maintained alias table. Anyone recorded in both a history and a novel is marked dual-identity. Biographies were drafted by a model and then passed through a second, source-constrained pass that deletes any sentence not supported by the extracted material.

How figures are merged across books

Most merges have textual support: Nezha, Li Jing and Laozi are the same figures in both novels. A few follow long-standing popular tradition rather than any single text — the Investiture of the Gods' Cihang Daoren is commonly identified with Guanyin of Journey to the West. Those entries show both sets of records with their citations, so you can judge for yourself.

Images are not authentic likenesses

Figure pages prefer public-domain historical paintings, prints and open-access museum images with the date, collection, licence and original file page shown below each image. Most are later interpretations rather than portraits made from life, so they are labelled as such. Where no defensible image exists, the abstract seal remains; generated art is never presented as historical evidence.

Scope and corrections

This is a cultural reference, not an academic database. Mythological accounts vary between recensions; this site follows the editions listed above. History and fiction are presented side by side without treating one as evidence for the other. A validation pipeline checks the data, but AI-assisted compilation can still be wrong. Corrections are welcome at hello@godsmap.com— name the figure and the page.

The Huaxia graph currently covers 11 chapters and 4033 figures. European mythologies are kept in a separate, independently loaded graph.