The hounds of the god of thunder (once again about the meaning of stone dogs’ sculptures in Leizhou, China)

The article presents a brief description of the new data on unique cultural phenomenon of Southern China - namely, the sculptures of stone dogs concentrated mostly in Leizhou Peninsula (Guangdong Province, China). At the present time about ten thousand sculptures have been found there and some more - at the regions nearby (Guangxi-Zhuang Autonomous region, Hainan Province and northern part of Vietnam). All of them were carved from local basalt. They demonstrates steady interconnection between these images and totemic myths of some non-Chinese (mostly Austro-Asiatic) peoples, such as Yao, She, Hmong (Miao), Zhuang, Li etc. These are an image of five-colored dog Panhu, at one side, and an image of Thunder’s God Lei-gong, at another side. In ancient times these images both were very likely united into a single mythological system. The Dog was supposed to be the nearest helper (if not the allomorph) of Thunder’s God, and because of that the Dog had responsibility for weather control. Due to this mythical reason, the stone dogs’ images were used in ritual for rain evocation. As a totemic ancestor, the Dog was also responsible for numerous posterity, especially for the birth of male children (who must become clan’s continuers in the future). From the end of Eastern Han and Five Dynasties period the migration of Chinese (Han) population from the northern part of country began to develop. Leizhou became an important commercial harbor and cultural center of the whole country. Thus, a specific heterogeneous culture, that united autochthonous and adopted components, was formed in that territory. Many features of this culture were preserved by local population which practices some ancient rituals in now-days situations. In conclusion, the authors determine the ways for further investigations and underline the necessity of using of multi-disciplinary approach (including methods of zoology, archaeology, ethnography, mythology, art studies) for exploration of such a complicated object as stone dogs of Leizhou. As if the most part of dogs’ sculptures are situated along (or very close to) sea-shore, so in the previous time their distribution and application were connected with Maritime Silk Road. Now the working on this problem (as an important part of One Belt, One Road Initiative) has become one of the main research and information project in the People’s Republic of China.