A vertical eye on the forehead is the familiar characteristic of the Hindu god Siva, which has a Chinese version Yang Jian 杨戬, also known as Second Son God 二郎神，presumably because he is the younger brother of some more important divine. Like Siva, Yang Kan is skilled in wielding his weapon

 Yang Jian appears to be a foreign import that came with Buddhism, as folk tales relating to him were all fairly recent and all have some buddhist connection.

However, the vertical eye does make some appearances in ancient tales: the Candle Dragon 烛龙 was said reside in a cave in Zhong Hills 钟山 and had only one eye on the forehead, and its closing/opening produces night and day. The people of Sichuan speak of a Silkworm Vertical god who taught their ancesters silk production, signifying a new level of culture. A number of southern chinese minority tribes have legends about different tribal eras, with an earlier era in which humans were primitive and barbaric and had an vertical eye on the forehead, followed by more sophisticated times when they had two horizontal eyes. Zhuanzi mentions one sage saying to another "dont you care about the horizontal eyed people", referring to ancient chinese people. But the most significant appearance of the vertical eye is in the Chinese ideogram Xia 夏, the name of the pre-historic tribe that ruled China, for which firm archaeological evidence is till elusive.

Below is a number of Xia ideograms use in the Shang, Zhou and early Han periods

a human figure with legs below and some kind of hair ornament on top (probably a bun fixed by a pin), but all featuring the vertical eye. To have this used so prominently in the name of the tribe, the tribesmen must have used it as their characteristic symbol, and the most likely place for this symbol would have been their forehead.

The ideogram for the abbreviated name for Sichuan, Shu 蜀, is also interesting

Now the Sichuan people had the horizontal, not vertical, eye, but a crawly thing appears as part of their name, presumably representing the silkworm brought to them by the vertical eye people, whose importance is further confirmed by recent archaeological discoveries at Sanxingdui 三星堆

when archaeologists first saw the eyes sticking out of the sockets, they assumed 纵目meant pop eyes. However, what is the hole on the forehead for? Another mask provided the answer

We see that the hole is for the purpose of attaching a forehead decoration, the location of the vertical eye, though so elaborately made up one could hardly recognize it

Sanxingdui dates from the late Shang era; Shang oracle bones show that the silkworm god was prominently worshiped but otherwise there is no information. Folk tales from the Han era show that the silkworm god was female and nicknamed horse head woman马头娘 because the head of the silkworm looks a bit like the head of a horse. Later the idol became male马明王 and became the horse god in addition; below is a statue

with of course the vertical eye. Another idol with the vertical eye is some kind of thunder god

So once there was a dominant Chinese tribe skilled in producing silk and used the vertical eye on the forehead as its emblem;. did an equally important vertical eye tribe exist in India. The following hints that it did

but the eye has been simplified to just a red dot.

《海内经》:"黄帝生骆明，骆明生白马，白马是为鲧." "鲧是夏人始祖，夏族的起源是来自中亚的白马羌，同今天还可以找到的白马氐和白马藏同一来源。

从“夏”的字形可以看到夏人两个特征，一是头顶一横，是束发后用一条发针穿过固定，一是竖目，就是额头上刺青刻了第三只眼。今天的白马族还保留着三眼神曹盖的传说和代表他的面具。这个传说在中国各地散布衍生出各种不同故事，如杨戬，马明王，雷神等等各种不同的神明，在印度则成为湿婆，又渗入佛教产生大黑天神等；

山海经中多次提起开题国，雕题族，题是额头（页是头的古字）“题目“；“开题“即是上面开眼--额头上刻多一只天眼；夏族周族都自称是黄帝子孙，一股从甘肃陕北转移到山西，即是高辛氏实沈封的大夏，那时夏族已经南下到河南涂山（即蜀山）同分布中原各地的古老玄女族的一支融合；另一股夏人丛陕北南下定居在华山一带，始有“华夏”之称，不过后来经过商族长期统治，再经过务实的周人把社会系统化（周礼）很多古俗已经消失

夏族有禹的妻子化石，裂开生子的传说，又有治水时把一长毛怪物用铁练锁住压在山下的故事，这里可以隐约看到孙悟空从石头中出世和被佛祖压在五指山故事的影子，不过已经经过几千年的流传，面目全非了

                                                              三眼神曹盖面===〉