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Yellow Emperor

October 02, 2023

For Huangdi (Emperor of China), see Emperor of China.

The Yellow Emperor, also known as the Yellow Thearch or by his Chinese name Huangdi (/ˈhwɑːŋ ˈdiː/),[3] is either an individual deity (shen) in Chinese religion, one of the legendary Chinese sovereigns and cultural heroes included among the mytho-historical Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, or a part of the Five Regions' Highest Deities[4] (Chinese: 五方上帝; pinyin: Wǔfāng Shàngdì).[5] Calculated by Jesuit missionaries, who based their work on various Chinese chronicles, and later accepted by the twentieth-century promoters of a universal calendar starting with the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi's traditional reign dates are 2697–2597 or 2698–2598 BC.

Yellow Emperor
黃帝
One of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors
The Yellow Emperor as depicted in a tomb from the mid second century AD. The inscription reads: "The Yellow Emperor created and changed a great many things; he invented weapons and the well-field system; he devised upper and lower garments, and established palaces and houses."[1]
PredecessorFuxi
SuccessorShaohao (disputed)/ Zhuanxu
BornGongsun Xuanyuan
Spouse
Issue
Names
FatherShaodian
MotherFubao
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese黃帝
Simplified Chinese黄帝
Literal meaning
  • "Yellow Emperor"
  • "Yellow Thearch"
Yellow Emperor
Member of Wufang Shangdi
Major cult centreMount Song
PredecessorChidi (Wuxing cycle, also political with the Flame Emperor)
SuccessorBaidi (Wuxing cycle, also political with Shaohao)
PlanetSaturn
As depicted by Gan Bozong, woodcut print, Tang dynasty (618-907)

Huangdi's cult became prominent in the late Warring States and early Han dynasty, when he was portrayed as the originator of the centralized state, as a cosmic ruler, and as a patron of esoteric arts. A large number of texts – such as the Huangdi Neijing, a medical classic, and the Huangdi Sijing, a group of political treatises – were thus attributed to him. Having waned in influence during most of the imperial period, in the early twentieth century Huangdi became a rallying figure for Han Chinese attempts to overthrow the rule of the Qing dynasty, which they considered foreign because its emperors were Manchu people.[citation needed] To this day the Yellow Emperor remains a powerful symbol within Chinese nationalism.[6] Traditionally credited with numerous inventions and innovations – ranging from the lunar calendar (Chinese calendar), Taoism,[7] wooden houses, boats, carts,[8] "the compass needle",[9] "the earliest forms of writing",[10] civilization and its benefits,[11] and/or an early form of football – the Yellow Emperor is now regarded as the initiator of Han culture (later Chinese culture).[12]

Names Edit

 
Temple of Huangdi in Xinzheng, Zhengzhou, Henan

"Huangdi": Yellow Emperor, Yellow Thearch Edit

Until 221 BC when Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty coined the title huangdi (皇帝) – conventionally translated as "emperor" – to refer to himself, the character di 帝 did not refer to earthly rulers but to the highest god of the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC) pantheon.[13] In the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BC), the term di on its own could also refer to the deities associated with the five Sacred Mountains of China and colors. Huangdi (黃帝), the "yellow di", was one of the latter. To emphasize the religious meaning of di in pre-imperial times, historians of early China commonly translate the god's name as "Yellow Thearch" and the first emperor's title as "August Thearch", in which "thearch" refers to a godly ruler.[14]

In the late Warring States period, the Yellow Emperor was integrated into the cosmological scheme of the Five Phases, in which the color yellow represents the earth phase, the Yellow Dragon, and the center.[15] The correlation of the colors in association with different dynasties was mentioned in the Lüshi Chunqiu (late 3rd century BC), where the Yellow Emperor's reign was seen to be governed by earth.[16] The character huang 黃 ("yellow") was often used in place of the homophonous huang 皇, which means "august" (in the sense of 'distinguished') or "radiant", giving Huangdi attributes close to those of Shangdi, the Shang supreme god.[17]

Xuanyuan and Youxiong Edit

The Records of the Grand Historian, compiled by Sima Qian in the first century BC, gives the Yellow Emperor's name as "Xuan Yuan" (traditional Chinese: 軒轅; simplified Chinese: 轩辕; pinyin: Xuān Yuán < Old Chinese (B-S) *qʰa[r]-[ɢ]ʷa[n], lit. "Chariot Shaft"[18]). Third-century scholar Huangfu Mi, who wrote a work on the sovereigns of antiquity, commented that Xuanyuan was the name of a hill where Huangdi had lived and that he later took as a name.[19] The Classic of Mountains and Seas mentions a Xuanyuan nation whose inhabitants have human faces, snake bodies, and tails twisting above their heads;[20] Yuan Ke, a contemporary scholar of early Chinese mythology, "noted that the appearance of these people is characteristic of gods and suggested that they may reflect the form of the Yellow Thearch himself".[21] The Qing dynasty scholar Liang Yusheng (梁玉繩, 1745–1819) argued instead that the hill was named after the Yellow Emperor.[19] Xuanyuan is also the name of the star Regulus in Chinese, the star being associated with Huangdi in traditional astronomy.[22] He is also associated to the broader constellations Leo and Lynx, of which the latter is said to represent the body of the Yellow Dragon (黃龍 Huánglóng), Huangdi's animal form.[23]

Huangdi was also referred to as "Youxiong" (有熊; Yǒuxióng). This name has been interpreted as either a place name or a clan name. According to British sinologist Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935), that name was "taken from that of [Huangdi's] hereditary principality".[24] William Nienhauser, a modern translator of the Records of the Grand Historian, states that Huangdi was originally the head of the Youxiong clan, which lived near what is now Xinzheng in Henan.[25] Rémi Mathieu, a French historian of Chinese myths and religion, translates "Youxiong" as "possessor of bears" and links Huangdi to the broader theme of the bear in world mythology.[26] Ye Shuxian has also associated the Yellow Emperor with bear legends common across northeast Asia people as well as the Dangun legend.[27][page needed]

Other names Edit

 
The eagle-faced Thunder God (雷神 Léishén) in a 1923 drawing, punisher of those who go against the order of Heaven

Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian describes the Yellow Emperor's ancestral name as Gongsun (公孫).[2]

In Han dynasty texts, the Yellow Emperor is also called upon as the "Yellow God" (黃神 Huángshén).[28] Certain accounts interpret him as the incarnation of the "Yellow God of the Northern Dipper" (黄神北斗 Huángshén Běidǒu),[note 1] another name of the universal god (Shangdi 上帝 or Tiandi 天帝).[29] According to a definition in apocryphal texts related to the Hétú 河圖, the Yellow Emperor "proceeds from the essence of the Yellow God".[30]

As a cosmological deity, the Yellow Emperor is known as the "Great Emperor of the Central Peak" (中岳大帝 Zhōngyuè Dàdì),[5] and in the Shizi as the "Yellow Emperor with Four Faces" (黃帝四面 Huángdì Sìmiàn).[31] In old accounts the Yellow Emperor is identified as a deity of light (and his name is explained in the Shuowen jiezi to derive from guāng 光, "light") and thunder, and as one and the same with the "Thunder God" (雷神 Léishén),[32][33] who in turn, as a later mythological character, is distinguished as the Yellow Emperor's foremost pupil, such as in the Huangdi Neijing.

History Edit

 
Map of tribes and tribal unions in Ancient China, including tribes of Huang Di (Yellow Emperor), Yan Di (Flame Emperor) and Chiyou

The Chinese historian Sima Qian – and much Chinese historiography following him – considered the Yellow Emperor to be a more historical figure than earlier legendary figures such as Fu Xi, Nüwa, and Shennong. Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian begins with the Yellow Emperor, while passing over the others.[2][34]

Throughout most of Chinese history, the Yellow Emperor and the other ancient sages were considered to be historical figures.[12] Their historicity started to be questioned in the 1920s by historians such as Gu Jiegang, one of the founders of the Doubting Antiquity School in China.[12] In their attempts to prove that the earliest figures of Chinese history were mythological, Gu and his followers argued that these ancient sages were originally gods who were later depicted as humans by the rationalist intellectuals of the Warring States period.[35] Yang Kuan, a member of the same current of historiography, noted that only in the Warring States period had the Yellow Emperor started to be described as the first ruler of China.[36] Yang thus argued that Huangdi was a later transformation of Shangdi, the supreme god of the Shang dynasty's pantheon.[15]

Also in the 1920s, French scholars Henri Maspero and Marcel Granet published critical studies of China's accounts of high antiquity.[37] In his Danses et légendes de la Chine ancienne ["Dances and legends of ancient China"], for example, Granet argued that these tales were "historicized legends" that said more about the time when they were written than about the time they purported to describe.[38]

In the "middle of the [20th] century, a group of" Chinese "historians proposed the theory that [the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors]" were originally Chinese gods who became thought of as human during the later period of the Zhou dynasty.[39] Most scholars now agree that the Yellow Emperor originated as a god who was later represented as a historical person.[40] K.C. Chang sees Huangdi and other cultural heroes as "ancient religious figures" who were "euhemerized" in the late Warring States and Han periods.[12] Historian of ancient China Mark Edward Lewis speaks of the Yellow Emperor's "earlier nature as a god", whereas Roel Sterckx, a professor at University of Cambridge, calls Huangdi a "legendary cultural hero".[41]

Origin of the myth Edit

 
Twentieth-century statue of the Yellow Emperor, carved by Ju Ming on display at the National Palace Museum in Taipei

The origin of Huangdi's mythology is unclear, but historians have formulated several hypotheses about it. Yang Kuan, a member of the Doubting Antiquity School (1920s–40s), argued that the Yellow Emperor was derived from Shangdi, the highest god of the Shang dynasty.[42][43][44] Yang reconstructs the etymology as follows: Shangdi 上帝 → Huang Shangdi 皇上帝 → Huangdi 皇帝 → Huangdi 黄帝, in which he claims that huang 黃 ("yellow") either was a variant Chinese character for huang 皇 ("august") or was used as a way to avoid the naming taboo for the latter.[45] Yang's view has been criticized by Mitarai Masaru[46] and by Michael Puett.[47]

Historian Mark Edward Lewis agrees that huang 黄 and huang 皇 were often interchangeable, but disagreeing with Yang, he claims that huang meaning "yellow" appeared first.[42] Based on what he admits is a "novel etymology" likening huang 黄 to the phonetically close wang 尪 (the "burned shaman" in Shang rainmaking rituals), Lewis suggests that "Huang" in "Huangdi" might originally have meant "rainmaking shaman" or "rainmaking ritual."[48] Citing late Warring States and early Han versions of Huangdi's myth, he further argues that the figure of the Yellow Emperor originated in ancient rain-making rituals in which Huangdi represented the power of rain and clouds, whereas his mythical rival Chiyou (or the Yan Emperor) stood for fire and drought.[49]

Also disagreeing with Yang Kuan's hypothesis, Sarah Allan finds it unlikely that such a popular myth as the Yellow Emperor's could have come from a taboo character.[43] She argues instead that pre-Shang "'history'," including the story of the Yellow Emperor, "can all be understood as a later transformation and systematization of Shang mythology."[50] In her view, Huangdi was originally an unnamed "lord of the underworld" (or the "Yellow Springs"), the mythological counterpart of the Shang sky deity Shangdi.[43] At the time, Shang rulers claimed that their mythical ancestors, identified with "the [ten] suns, birds, east, life, [and] the Lord on High" (i.e., Shangdi), had defeated an earlier people associated with "the underworld, dragons, west."[51] After the Zhou dynasty overthrew the Shang dynasty in the eleventh century BC, Zhou leaders reinterpreted Shang myths as meaning that the Shang had vanquished a real political dynasty, which was eventually named the Xia dynasty.[51] By Han times – as seen in Sima Qian's account in the Shiji – the Yellow Emperor, who as lord of the underworld had been symbolically linked to the Xia, had become a historical ruler whose descendants were thought to have founded the Xia.[52]

Given that the earliest extant mention of the Yellow Emperor was on a fourth-century BC Chinese bronze inscription claiming that he was the ancestor of the royal house of the state of Qi, Lothar von Falkenhausen speculates that Huangdi was invented as an ancestral figure as part of a strategy to claim that all ruling clans in the "Zhou dynasty culture sphere" shared common ancestry.[53]

History of Huangdi Edit

 
A section of the poem from the Tung Shing

Earliest mention Edit

Explicit accounts of the Yellow Emperor started to appear in Chinese texts during the Warring States period. "The most ancient extant reference" to Huangdi is an inscription on a bronze vessel made during the first half of the fourth century BC by the royal family (surnamed Tian 田) of the state of Qi, a powerful eastern state.[54]

Harvard University historian Michael Puett writes that the Qi bronze inscription was one of several references to the Yellow Emperor in the fourth and third centuries BC within accounts of the creation of the state.[55] Noting that many of the thinkers who were later identified as precursors of the Huang–Lao – "Huangdi and Laozi" – tradition came from the state of Qi, Robin D. S. Yates hypothesizes that Huang–Lao originated in that region.[56]

Warring States period Edit

The cult of Huangdi became very popular during the Warring States period (5th century–221 BC), a period of intense competition between rival states which ended with the unification of the realm by the state of Qin.[57] In addition to his role as ancestor, he became associated with "centralized statecraft" and emerged as a figure paradigmatic of emperorship.[58]

The state of Qin Edit

Further information: Qin (state)

In his Shiji, Sima Qian claims that the state of Qin started worshipping the Yellow Emperor in the fifth century BC, along with Yandi, the Fiery Emperor.[59] The altars were established at Yong 雍 (near modern Fengxiang County in Shaanxi province), which was the capital of Qin from 677 to 383 BC.[60] By the time of King Zheng, who became king of Qin in 247 BC and First Emperor of a unified China in 221 BC, Huangdi had become by far the most important of the four "thearchs" (di 帝) who were then worshiped at Yong.[61]

The Shiji version Edit

The figure of Huangdi had appeared sporadically in Warring States texts. Sima Qian's Shiji (or Records of the Grand Historian, completed around 94 BC) was the first work to turn these fragments of myths into a systematic and consistent narrative of the Yellow Emperor's "career".[62] The Shiji's account was extremely influential in shaping how the Chinese viewed the origin of their history.[63]

The Shiji begins its chronological account of Chinese history with the life of Huangdi, whom it presents as a sage sovereign from antiquity.[64] It recounts that Huangdi's father was Shaodian[2] and his mother was Fubao(附寶).[65] The Yellow Emperor had four wives. His first wife Leizu of Xiling bore him two sons.[2] His other three wives were his second wife Fenglei (封嫘), third wife Tongyu (彤魚) and fourth wife Momu (嫫母).[65][66] The emperor had a total of 25 sons,[67] 14 of whom began their own surnames and clans.[2] The oldest was Shaohao or Xuan Xiao, who lived in Qingyang by the Yangtze River.[2] Changyi, the second son, lived by the Ruo River. When the Yellow Emperor died, he was succeeded by Changyi's son, Zhuan Xu.[2]

The chronological tables found in chapters 13 of the Shiji represent all past rulers – legendary ones such as Yao and Shun, the first ancestors of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, as well as the founders of the main ruling houses in the Zhou sphere – as descendants of Huangdi, giving the impression that Chinese history was the history of one large family.[68]

Imperial era Edit

 
Inquiring of the Dao at the Cave of Paradise, hanging scroll, color on silk, 210.5 x 83 cm by Dai Jin (1388–1462). This painting is based on the story, first recounted in the Zhuangzi, that the Yellow Emperor traveled to the Kongtong Mountains to inquire about the Dao with the Daoist sage Guangchengzi.

The Yellow Emperor was credited with an enormous number of cultural legacies and esoteric teachings. While Taoism is often regarded in the West as arising from Laozi, many Chinese Taoists claim the Yellow Emperor formulated many of their precepts.[7] The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon (黃帝內經 Huángdì Nèijīng), which presents the doctrinal basis of traditional Chinese medicine, was named after him.[69] He was also credited with composing the Four Books of the Yellow Emperor (黃帝四經 Huángdì Sìjīng), the Yellow Emperor's Book of the Hidden Symbol (黃帝陰符經 Huángdì Yīnfújīng), and the "Yellow Emperor's Four Seasons Poem" included in the Tung Shing fortune-telling almanac.[7]

"Xuanyuan (+ number)" is also the Chinese name for Regulus and other stars of the constellations Leo and Lynx, of which the latter is said to represent the body of the Yellow Dragon.[23] In the Hall of Supreme Harmony in Beijing's Forbidden City, there is also a mirror called the "Xuanyuan Mirror".[70][71]

In Taoism Edit

In the second century AD, Huangdi's role as a deity was diminished because of the rise of a deified Laozi.[72] A state sacrifice offered to "Huang-Lao jun" was not offered to Huangdi and Laozi, as the term Huang-Lao would have meant a few centuries earlier, "yellow Laozi".[73] Nonetheless, Huangdi kept being considered as an immortal: he was seen as a master of longevity techniques and as a god who could reveal new teachings – in the form of texts such as the sixth-century Huangdi Yinfujing – to his earthly followers.[74]

Twentieth century Edit

The Yellow Emperor became a powerful national symbol in the last decade of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) and remained dominant in Chinese nationalist discourse throughout the Republican period (1911–49).[75] The early twentieth century is also when the Yellow Emperor was first referred to as the ancestor of all Chinese people.[76]

Late Qing Edit

Starting in 1903, radical publications started using the projected date of his birth as the first year of the Chinese calendar.[77] Intellectuals such as Liu Shipei (1884–1919) found this practice necessary in order to "preserve the [Han] race" (baozhong 保種) from both dominance by Manchu people and foreign encroachment.[77] Revolutionaries motivated by Anti-Manchuism such as Chen Tianhua (1875–1905), Zou Rong (1885–1905), and Zhang Binglin (1868–1936) tried to foster the racial consciousness they thought was missing from their compatriots, and thus depicted the Manchus as racially inferior barbarians who were unfit to rule over Han Chinese.[78] Chen's widely circulated pamphlets claimed that the "Han race" formed one big family descended from the Yellow Emperor.[79] The first issue (Nov. 1905) of the Minbao 民報 ("People's Journal"[80]), which was founded in Tokyo by revolutionaries of the Tongmenghui, featured the Yellow Emperor on its cover and called Huangdi "the first great nationalist of the world."[81] It was one of several nationalist magazines that featured the Yellow Emperor on their cover in the early twentieth century.[82] The fact that Huangdi meant "yellow" emperor also served to buttress the theory that he was the originator of the "yellow race".[83]

Many historians interpret this sudden popularity of the Yellow Emperor as a reaction to the theories of French scholar Albert Terrien de Lacouperie (1845–94), who in a book called The Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilization, from 2300 B.C. to 200 A.D. (1892) had claimed that Chinese civilization was founded around 2300 BCE by Babylonian immigrants.[84] Lacouperie's "Sino-Babylonianism" posited that Huangdi was a Mesopotamian tribal leader who had led a massive migration of his people into China around 2300 BC and founded what later became Chinese civilization.[85] European sinologists quickly rejected these theories, but in 1900 two Japanese historians, Shirakawa Jirō and Kokubu Tanenori, omitted these criticisms and published a long summary that presented Lacouperie's views as the most advanced Western scholarship on China.[86] Chinese scholars were quickly attracted by "the historicization of Chinese mythology" that the two Japanese authors advocated.[87]

Anti-Manchu intellectuals and activists who searched for China's "national essence" (guocui 國粹) adapted Sino-Babylonianism to their needs.[88] Zhang Binglin explained Huangdi's battle with Chi You as a conflict opposing the newly arrived civilized Mesopotamians to backward local tribes, a battle that transformed China into one of the most civilized places in the world.[89] Zhang's reinterpretation of Sima Qian's account "underscored the need to recover the glory of early China."[90] Liu Shipei also presented these early times as the golden age of Chinese civilization.[91] In addition to tying the Chinese to an ancient center of human civilization in Mesopotamia, Lacouperie's theories suggested that China should be ruled by the descendants of Huangdi. In a controversial essay called History of the Yellow Race (Huangshi 黃史), which was published serially from 1905 to 1908, Huang Jie (黃節; 1873–1935) claimed that the "Han race" was the true master of China because it was descended from the Yellow Emperor.[92] Reinforced by the values of filial piety and the Chinese patrilineal clan,[93] the racial vision defended by Huang and others turned vengeance against the Manchus into a duty owed to one's ancestors.[94]

Republican period Edit

 
 
Top image: A five-yuan banknote carrying the effigy of the Yellow Emperor, issued in 1912 by the government of the newly established Republic of China
Bottom image: A 100-yuan banknote displaying the Yellow Emperor, issued in 1938 by the Federal Reserve Bank of China of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China (1937–40), a Japanese puppet regime in North China

The Yellow Emperor continued to be revered after the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which overthrew the Qing dynasty. In 1912, for instance, banknotes carrying Huangdi's effigy were issued by the new Republican government.[95] After 1911, however, the Yellow Emperor as national symbol changed from first progenitor of the Han race to ancestor of China's entire multi-ethnic population.[96] Under the ideology of the Five Races Under One Union, Huangdi became the common ancestor of the Han Chinese, the Manchu people, the Mongols, the Tibetans, and the Hui people, who were said to form the Zhonghua minzu, a broadly understood Chinese nation.[96] Sixteen state ceremonies were held between 1911 and 1949 to Huangdi as the "founding ancestor of the Chinese nation" (中華民族始祖) and even "the founding ancestor of human civilization" (人文始祖).[95]

Modern significance Edit

 
Xuanyuan Temple, dedicated to the worship of Huangdi, in Huangling, Yan'an, Shaanxi

The cult of the Yellow Emperor was forbidden in the People's Republic of China until the end of the Cultural Revolution.[97] The prohibition was halted during the 1980s when the government reversed itself and resurrected the "Yellow Emperor cult".[98] Starting in the 1980s, the cult was revived and phrases relating to the "Descendants of Yan and Huang" were sometimes used by the Chinese state when referring to people of Chinese descent.[99] In 1984, for example, Deng Xiaoping argued for Chinese unification saying "Taiwan is rooted in the hearts of the descendants of the Yellow Emperor," whereas in 1986 the PRC acclaimed the Chinese-American astronaut Taylor Wang as the first of the Yellow Emperor's descendants to travel in space.[100] In the first half of the 1980s, the Party had internally debated whether this usage would make ethnic minorities feel excluded. After consulting experts from Beijing University, the Chinese Academy of Social Science, and the Central Nationalities Institute, the Central Propaganda Department recommended on March 27, 1985, that the Party speak of the Zhonghua Minzu – the "Chinese nation" broadly defined – in official statements, but that the phrase "sons and grand-sons of Yandi and the Yellow Emperor" could be used in informal statements by party leaders and in "relations with Hong Kong and Taiwanese compatriots and overseas Chinese compatriots".[101]

After retreating to Taiwan in late 1949 at the end of the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang (KMT) ruled that the Republic of China (ROC) would keep paying homage to the Yellow Emperor on April 4, the National Tomb Sweeping Day, but neither he nor the three presidents that succeeded him ever paid homage in person.[102] In 1955, the KMT, which was led by Mandarin speakers and still poised on retaking the mainland from the Communists, sponsored the production of the movie Children of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi zisun 黃帝子孫), which was filmed mostly in Taiwanese Hokkien and showed extensive passages of Taiwanese folk opera. Directed by Bai Ke (1914–1964), a former assistant of Yuan Muzhi, it was a propaganda effort to convince speakers of Taiyu that they were linked to mainland people by common blood.[103] In 2009 Ma Ying-jeou was the first ROC president to celebrate the Tomb Sweeping Day rituals for Huangdi in person, on which occasion he proclaimed that both Chinese culture and common descent from the Yellow Emperor united people from Taiwan and the mainland.[102][104] Later the same year, Lien Chan – a former Vice President of the Republic of China who is now Honorary Chairman of the Kuomintang – and his wife Lien Fang Yu paid homage at the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor in Huangling, Yan'an, in mainland China.[102][105]

Gay studies researcher Louis Crompton[106][107][108] has cited Ji Yun's report in his popular Notes from the Yuewei Hermitage (1800), that some claimed the Yellow Emperor was the first Chinese to take male bedmates, a claim that Ji Yun dismissed.[109] Ji Yun argued that this was probably a false attribution.[110]

Today, Xuanyuanjiao based on Taiwan represents an organised form of Yellow Emperor worship married to Confucian orthodoxy.

Elements of Huangdi's myth Edit

 
One of the two turtle-based steles at Shou Qiu, Qufu, Shandong, the legendary birthplace of the Yellow Emperor

As with any myth, there are numerous versions of Huangdi's story, emphasizing different themes and interpreting the main character's significance in different ways.

Birth Edit

According to Huangfu Mi (215–282), the Yellow Emperor was born in Shou Qiu ("Longevity Hill"),[111] which is today on the outskirts of the city of Qufu in Shandong. Early on, he lived with his tribe near the Ji River – Edwin Pulleyblank states that "there seems to be no record of a Ji River outside the myth"[112] – and later migrated to Zhuolu in modern-day Hebei. He then became a farmer and tamed six different special beasts: the bear (熊), the brown bear (罴; 羆), the pí (貔) and xiū (貅) (which later combined to form the mythical Pixiu), the ferocious chū (貙), and the tiger (虎).

Huangdi is sometimes said to have been the fruit of extraordinary birth, as his mother Fubao conceived him as she was aroused, while walking in the country, by a lightning bolt from the Big Dipper. She delivered her son on the mount of Shou (Longevity) or mount Xuanyuan, after which he was named.[113]

Another story states that "Huang Di came into being when the energies that instigated the beginning of the world merged with one another, and created human beings by placing earthen statues at the cardinal points of the world and leaving them exposed for 300 years. During that time, the statues became filled with the breath of creation and eventually began to move [after the 300 years]. Huang Di...received his magic powers when he was 100 years old. He [became a xian] and, riding a dragon, rose to heaven where he became one of the five [Wufang Shangdi]. Huang Di himself rules over the fifth cardinal point, the centre."[4]

Achievements Edit

In traditional Chinese accounts, the Yellow Emperor is credited with improving the livelihood of the nomadic hunters of his tribe. He teaches them how to build shelters, tame wild animals, and grow the Five Grains, although other accounts credit Shennong with the last. He invents carts, boats, and clothing.

Other inventions credited to the emperor include the Chinese diadem (冠冕), throne rooms (宮室), the bow sling,[8] early Chinese astronomy, the Chinese calendar, math calculations, code of sound laws (音律),[114] coins and the concept of money,[8] and cuju, an early Chinese version of football.[115] He is also sometimes said to have been partially responsible for the invention of the guqin zither,[116] although others credit the Yan Emperor with inventing instruments for Ling Lun's compositions.[117]

There are other major traditions where Fuxi was the one who invented the calendar and the Yellow Emperor merely reformed and intercalated it.[118]

In traditional accounts, he also goads the historian Cangjie into creating the first Chinese character writing system, the Oracle bone script, and his principal wife Leizu invents sericulture and teaches his people how to weave silk and dye clothes.

At one point in his reign the Yellow Emperor allegedly visited the mythical East sea and met a talking beast called the Bai Ze who taught him the knowledge of all supernatural creatures.[119][120] This beast explained to him there were 11,522 (or 1,522) kinds of supernatural creatures.[119][120]

 
Chi You, the mythical opponent of the Yellow Emperor at the Battle of Zhuolu, here depicted in a Han-dynasty tomb relief

Battles Edit

Main articles: Battle of Zhuolu and Battle of Banquan

The Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor were both leaders of a tribe or a combination of two tribes near the Yellow River. The Yan Emperor hailed from a different area around the Jiang River, which a geographical work called the Shuijingzhu identified as a stream near Qishan in what was the Zhou homeland before they defeated the Shang.[112] Both emperors lived in a time of warfare.[121][8] The Yan Emperor proving unable to control the disorder within his realm, the Yellow Emperor took up arms to establish his domination over various warring factions.[121]

According to traditional accounts, the Yan Emperor meets the force of the "Nine Li" (九黎) under their bronze-headed leader, Chi You, and his 81 horned and four-eyed brothers[122] and suffers a decisive defeat. He flees to Zhuolu and begs the Yellow Emperor for help. During the ensuing Battle of Zhuolu the Yellow Emperor employs his tamed animals and Chi You darkens the sky by breathing out a thick fog. This leads the emperor to develop the south-pointing chariot, which he uses to lead his army out of the miasma.[122] He next calls upon the drought demon Nüba to dispel Chi You's storm.[122] He then destroys the Nine Li and defeats Chi You.[123] Later he engages in battle with the Yan Emperor, defeating him at Banquan and replacing him as the primary ruler.[121]

Death Edit

Main article: Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor

The Yellow Emperor was said to have lived for over a hundred years before meeting a phoenix and a qilin and then dying.[24] Two tombs were built in Shaanxi within the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor, in addition to others in Henan, Hebei and Gansu.[124]

Modern-day Chinese people sometimes refer to themselves as the "Descendants of Yan and Yellow Emperor", although non-Han minority groups in China may have their own myths or not count as descendants of the emperor.[125]

Meaning as a deity Edit

Symbol of the centre of the universe Edit

 
Temple of Huangdi in Jinyun, Lishui, Zhejiang, China
 
Huangdi Shrine, Xinzheng City, Henan Province

As the Yellow Deity with Four Faces (黃帝四面 Huángdì Sìmiàn) he represents the centre of the universe and vision of the unity which controls the four directions. It is explained in the Huangdi Sijing ("Four Scriptures of the Yellow Emperor") that regulating "heart within brings order outside". In order to reign one must "reduce himself" abandoning emotions, "drying up like a corpse", never allowing oneself to be carried away, as according to the myth the Yellow Emperor himself did during his three years of refuge on Mount Bowang in order to find himself. This practice creates an internal void where all the vital forces of creation gather, and the more indeterminate they remain and the more powerful they will be.[126]

It is from this centre that equilibrium and harmony emanate, equilibrium of the vital organs which becomes harmony between the person and the environment. As sovereign of the centre, the Yellow Emperor is the very image of the concentration or re-centering of the self. By self-control, taking charge of his own body one becomes powerful outside. The centre is also the vital point in the microcosm by means of which the internal universe viewed as an altar is created. The body is a universe, and by going into himself and by incorporating the fundamental structures of the universe, the sage will gain access to the gates of Heaven, the unique point where communication between Heaven, Earth and Man can occur. The centre is the convergence of within and outside, the contraction of chaos on the point which is equidistant from all directions. It is the place which is no place, where all creation is born and dies.[126]

The Great Deity of the Central Peak (中岳大帝 Zhōngyuèdàdì) is another epithet representing Huangdi as the hub of creation, the axis mundi (which in Chinese mythology is Kunlun) that is the manifestation of the divine order in physical reality, that opens to immortality.[5]

 
Temple of the Central Peak, Mount Song, in Henan.

As ancestor Edit

Further information: Chinese emperors family tree (ancient)

Throughout history, several sovereigns and dynasties claimed (or were claimed) to descend from the Yellow Emperor. Sima Qian's Shiji presented Huangdi as ancestor of the two legendary rulers Yao and Shun, and traced various lines of descent from Huangdi to the founders of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. He claimed that Liu Bang, the first emperor of the Han dynasty, was a descendant of Huangdi. He believed that the ruling house of the Qin dynasty was originated also from the Yellow Emperor, but by stating that Qin Shihuang was in fact the child of Qin chancellor Lü Buwei, he perhaps meant to leave the First Emperor out of Huangdi's descent.

Claiming descent from illustrious ancestors remained a common tool of political legitimacy in the following ages. Wang Mang (c. 45 BC – 23 AD), of the short-lived Xin dynasty, claimed to descend from the Yellow Emperor in order to justify his overthrow of the Han.[127] As he announced in January of 9 AD: "I possess no virtue, [but] I rely upon the fact that] I am a descendant of my august original ancestor, the Yellow Emperor..."[128] About two hundred years later a ritual specialist named Dong Ba 董巴, who worked for at the court of the Cao Wei, which had recently succeeded the Han, promoted the idea that the Cao family was descended from Huangdi via Emperor Zhuanxu.[129]

During the Tang dynasty, non-Han rulers also claimed descent from the Yellow Emperor, for individual and national prestige, as well as to connect themselves to the Tang.[130] Most Chinese noble families also claimed descent from Huangdi.[131] This practice was well established in Tang and Song times, when hundreds of clans claimed such descent. The main support for this theory – as recorded in the Tongdian (801 AD) and the Tongzhi (mid 12th century) – was the Shiji's statement that Huangdi's 25 sons were given 12 different surnames, and that these surnames had diversified into all Chinese surnames.[132] After Emperor Zhenzong (r. 997–1022) of the Song dynasty dreamed of a figure he was told was the Yellow Emperor, the Song imperial family started to claim Huangdi as its first ancestor.[133]

A number of overseas Chinese clans that keep a genealogy also trace their family ultimately to Huangdi, explaining their different surnames as name changes claimed to have derived from the fourteen surnames of Huangdi's descendants.[134] Many Chinese clans, both overseas and in China, claim Huangdi as their ancestor to reinforce their sense of being Chinese.[135]

Gun, Yu, Zhuanxu, Zhong, Li, Shujun, and Yuqiang are various emperors, gods, and heroes whose ancestor was also supposed to be Huangdi. The Huantou, Miaomin, and Quanrong peoples were said to be descended from Huangdi.[136]

Traditional dates Edit

 
Martino Martini, a seventeenth-century Jesuit who, based on Chinese historical records, calculated that the Yellow Emperor's reign began in 2697 BC. Martini's dates are still used today.

Although the traditional Chinese calendar did not mark years continuously, some Han-dynasty astronomers tried to determine the years of the life and reign of the Yellow Emperor. In 78 BC, under the reign of Emperor Zhao of Han, an official called Zhang Shouwang (張壽望) calculated that 6,000 years had passed since the time of Huangdi; the court refused his proposal for reform, countering that only 3,629 years had elapsed.[137] In the proleptic Julian calendar, the court's calculations would have placed the Yellow Emperor in the late 38th century BC rather than in the 27th century BC that is conventional nowadays.

During their Jesuit missions in China in the seventeenth century, the Jesuits tried to determine what year should be considered the epoch of the Chinese calendar. In his Sinicae historiae decas prima (first published in Munich in 1658), Martino Martini (1614–1661) dated the royal ascension of Huangdi to 2697 BC, but started the Chinese calendar with the reign of Fuxi, which he claimed started in 2952 BCE.[138] Philippe Couplet's (1623–1693) "Chronological table of Chinese monarchs" (Tabula chronologica monarchiae sinicae; 1686) also gave the same date for the Yellow Emperor.[139] The Jesuits' dates provoked great interest in Europe, where they were used for comparisons with Biblical chronology.[140] Modern Chinese chronology has generally accepted Martini's dates, except that it usually places the reign of Huangdi in 2698 BC (see next paragraph) and omits Huangdi's predecessors Fuxi and Shennong, who are considered "too legendary to include."[141]

Helmer Aslaksen, a mathematician who teaches at the National University of Singapore and specializes in the Chinese calendar, explains that those who use 2698 BC as a first year probably do so because they want to have "a year 0 as the starting point", or because "they assume that the Yellow Emperor started his year with the Winter solstice of 2698 BC", hence the difference with the year 2697 BC calculated by the Jesuits.[142]

Starting in 1903, radical publications started using the projected date of birth of the Yellow Emperor as the first year of the Chinese calendar.[77] Different newspapers and magazines proposed different dates. Jiangsu, for example counted 1905 as year 4396 (making 2491 BC the first year of the Chinese calendar), whereas the Minbao (the organ of the Tongmenghui) reckoned 1905 as 4603 (first year: 2698 BC).[143] Liu Shipei (1884–1919) created the Yellow Emperor Calendar to show the unbroken continuity of the Han race and Han culture from earliest times. There is no evidence that this calendar was used before the 20th century.[144] Liu's calendar started with the birth of the Yellow Emperor, which was reckoned to be 2711 BC.[145] When Sun Yat-sen declared the foundation of the Republic of China on January 2, 1912, he decreed that this was the 12th day of the 11th month of year 4609 (epoch: 2698 BCE), but that the state would now be using the solar calendar and count 1912 as the first year of the Republic.[146] Chronological tables published in the 1938 edition of the Cihai (辭海) dictionary followed Sun Yat-sen in using 2698 as the year of Huangdi's accession; this chronology is now "widely reproduced, with little variation."[147]

Cultural references Edit

  • The emperor appears as an ancestor hero in the strategy game Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom made by Sierra Entertainment. In the game, he is a patron of acupuncturist and silk weaver, and has the skills needed for leading men into battle, especially the Chariot-Fort soldiers.
  • The emperor serves as the hero in Jorge Luis Borges's story, "The Fauna of the Mirror". British fantasy writer China Miéville used this story as the basis for his novella The Tain, which describes a post-apocalyptic London. "The Tain" was included in Miéville's short-story collection "Looking For Jake" (2005).
  • The popular Chinese role-playing video game series for the PC, Xuanyuan Jian, revolves around the legendary sword used by the emperor.
  • The emperor is an important NPC in the action RPG Titan Quest, The player must reach the emperor to learn the truth about Typhon's imprisonment. He also reveals a bit of information about the war between the gods and the titans, while also revealing that he has been following the players actions since the beginning of the Silk Road.[clarification needed]
  • A 2016 Chinese drama film about the story of the Yellow Emperor is titled "Xuan Yuan: The Great Emperor" (軒轅大帝).[148]
  • In the Shin Megami Tensei games, Huang Di is a summonable ally. He's created in various means depending on which game he is in.

See also Edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Yellow Emperor.

Notes Edit

  1. ^ A 斗 dǒu in Chinese is an entire semantic field meaning the shape of a "dipper", as the Big Dipper (北斗 Běidǒu), or a "cup", signifying a "whirl", and also has martial connotations meaning "fight", "struggle", "battle".

References Edit

Citations Edit

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  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji 史記, c. 100 BC), Chapter 1, "Wudi benji" 五帝本紀 ("Annals of the Five Emperors"); on Chinese Text Project (retrieved on 2016-10-08).
  3. ^ "Huang Ti". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  4. ^ a b Storm, Rachel (2011). Sudell, Helen (ed.). Myths & Legends of India, Egypt, China & Japan (2nd ed.). Wigston, Leicestershire: Lorenz Books. p. 176.
  5. ^ a b c Fowler (2005), pp. 200–201.
  6. ^ Witzel, Morgen (December 6, 2019). A History of Leadership. Routledge. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-351-66649-7. The Yellow Emperor, who was believed to be the ancestor of the Chinese people and who was – and remains – a symbol of Chinese nationalism.
  7. ^ a b c Windridge, Charles (2003). Tong Sing: The Book of Wisdom: Based on the Ancient Chinese Almanac. Consulting work done by Cheng Kam Fong (Revised and Updated ed.). New York: Barnes & Noble Books. pp. 59, 107. ISBN 978-0-7607-4535-9. OCLC 54439373.
  8. ^ a b c d "Huangdi". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved May 22, 2023.
  9. ^ World Religions: Eastern Traditions. Edited by Willard Gurdon Oxtoby (2nd ed.). Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press. 2002. p. 395. ISBN 0-19-541521-3. OCLC 46661540.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
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  14. ^ Major 1993, p. 18: "Thearch captures well the character of ancient Chinese thought wherein divinities might be (simultaneously and without internal contradiction) high gods, mythical/divine rulers, or deified royal ancestors: beings of enormous import, straddling the numinous and the mundane."
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  58. ^ Puett 2002, p. 303 ("centralized statecraft"; LeBlanc 1985–1986, pp. 50–51 ("paradigmatic emperorship").
  59. ^ von Glahn 2004, p. 38; Lewis 2007, p. 565. Both scholars rely on a claim made in chapter 28 of the Shiji, p. 1364 of the Zhonghua Shuju edition.
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  61. ^ von Glahn 2004, p. 38 ("By the reign of King Zheng, the future First Emperor of Qin, the cult of Huangdi overshadowed all of its rivals for the attention of the Qin rulers").
  62. ^ Yi 2010, in section titled "Yan–Huang chuanshuo 炎黄传说" ("The legends of Yandi and Huangdi") (original: "到了司马迁《史记》才有较系统记述.... 《史记·五帝本纪》整合成了一个相对完整的故事"); Lewis 1990, p. 174 ("the earliest surviving sequential narrative of the career of the Yellow Emperor"); Birrell 1994, p. 86 ("[Sima Qian] composed a seamless biographical account of the deity that had no basis in the earlier classical texts that recorded myth narratives.").
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Further reading Edit

  • Csikszentmihalyi, Mark (2006), "Reimagining the Yellow Emperor's Four Faces", in Martin Kern (ed.), Text and Ritual in Early China, Seattle: University of Washington Press, pp. 226–248  – via Project MUSE (subscription required)
  • Harper, Donald (1998), Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts, London and New York: Kegan Paul International, ISBN 0-7103-0582-6.
  • Jochim, Christian (1990), "Flowers, Fruit, and Incense Only: Elite versus Popular in Taiwan's Religion of the Yellow Emperor", Modern China, 16 (1): 3–38, doi:10.1177/009770049001600101, S2CID 145519916.
  • Leibold, James (2006), "Competing Narratives of Racial Unity in Republican China: From the Yellow Emperor to Peking Man", Modern China, 32 (2): 181–220, doi:10.1177/0097700405285275, S2CID 143944346.
  • Luo, Zhitian 罗志田 (2002), "Baorong Ruxue, zhuzi yu Huangdi de Guoxue: Qingji shiren xunqiu minzu rentong xiangzheng de nuli" 包容儒學、諸子與黃帝的國學：清季士人尋求民族認同象徵的努力 [The Rise of "National Learning": Confucianism, the Ancient Philosophers, and the Yellow Emperor in Chinese Intellectuals' Search for a Symbol of National Identity in the Late Qing], Taida Lishi Xuebao 臺大歷史學報, 29: 87–105{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link).
  • Sautman, Barry (1997), "Racial nationalism and China's external behavior", World Affairs, 160: 78–95[dead link]
  • Schneider, Lawrence (1971), Ku Chieh-gang and China's New History: Nationalism and the Quest for Alternative Traditions, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ISBN 9780520018044.
  • Seidel, Anna K. (1987), "Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts Found in Tombs", in Akizuki, Kan'ei 秋月观暎 (ed.), Dōkyo to shukyō bunka 道教と宗教文化 [Taoism and religious culture], Tokyo: Hirakawa shuppansha 平和出版社, pp. 23–57{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link).
  • Shen, Sung-chiao 沈松橋 (1997), "Wo yi wo xue jian Xuan Yuan: Huangdi shenhua yu wan-Qing de guozu jiangou" 我以我血薦軒轅: 黃帝神話與晚清的國族建構 [The myth of the Yellow Emperor and the construction of Chinese nationhood in the late Qing period], Taiwan Shehui Yanjiu Jikan 台灣社會研究季刊, 28: 1–77{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link).
  • Unschuld, Paul U. (1985), Medicine in China: A History of Ideas, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-05023-1.
  • Wang, Ming-ke 王明珂 (2002), "Lun Panfu: Jindai Yan-Huang zisun guozu jiangou de gudai jichu" 論攀附：近代炎黃子孫國族建構的古代基礎 [On progression: the ancient basis for the nation-building claim that the Chinese are descendants of Yandi and Huangdi], Zhongyang Yanjiu Yuan Lishi Yuyan Yanjiusuo Jikan 中央研究院歷史語言研究所集刊, 73 (3): 583–624{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link).
Yellow Emperor
Regnal titles
Preceded by Mythological Emperor of China Succeeded by

October 02, 2023
yellow, emperor, huangdi, emperor, china, emperor, china, also, known, yellow, thearch, chinese, name, huangdi, ɑː, either, individual, deity, shen, chinese, religion, legendary, chinese, sovereigns, cultural, heroes, included, among, mytho, historical, three,. For Huangdi Emperor of China see Emperor of China The Yellow Emperor also known as the Yellow Thearch or by his Chinese name Huangdi ˈ hw ɑː ŋ ˈ d iː 3 is either an individual deity shen in Chinese religion one of the legendary Chinese sovereigns and cultural heroes included among the mytho historical Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors or a part of the Five Regions Highest Deities 4 Chinese 五方上帝 pinyin Wǔfang Shangdi 5 Calculated by Jesuit missionaries who based their work on various Chinese chronicles and later accepted by the twentieth century promoters of a universal calendar starting with the Yellow Emperor Huangdi s traditional reign dates are 2697 2597 or 2698 2598 BC Yellow Emperor黃帝One of the Three Sovereigns and Five EmperorsThe Yellow Emperor as depicted in a tomb from the mid second century AD The inscription reads The Yellow Emperor created and changed a great many things he invented weapons and the well field system he devised upper and lower garments and established palaces and houses 1 PredecessorFuxiSuccessorShaohao disputed ZhuanxuBornGongsun XuanyuanSpouseLeizu Fengleishi Tongyushi MomuIssueShaohao ChangyiNamesAncestral name Gōngsun Kung sun 公孫 2 Given name Xuanyuan Hsuan yuan 軒轅 2 FatherShaodianMotherFubaoChinese nameTraditional Chinese黃帝Simplified Chinese黄帝Literal meaning Yellow Emperor Yellow Thearch TranscriptionsStandard MandarinHanyu PinyinHuangdi Gwoyeu RomatzyhHwangdihWade GilesHuang2 ti4IPA xwa ŋti Yue CantoneseYale RomanizationWohng daiJyutpingWong4 dai3Southern MinTai loN g te col Hong te lit Old ChineseBaxter Sagart 2014 N kʷˤaŋ tˤek sYellow EmperorMember of Wufang ShangdiMajor cult centreMount SongPredecessorChidi Wuxing cycle also political with the Flame Emperor SuccessorBaidi Wuxing cycle also political with Shaohao PlanetSaturnAs depicted by Gan Bozong woodcut print Tang dynasty 618 907 Huangdi s cult became prominent in the late Warring States and early Han dynasty when he was portrayed as the originator of the centralized state as a cosmic ruler and as a patron of esoteric arts A large number of texts such as the Huangdi Neijing a medical classic and the Huangdi Sijing a group of political treatises were thus attributed to him Having waned in influence during most of the imperial period in the early twentieth century Huangdi became a rallying figure for Han Chinese attempts to overthrow the rule of the Qing dynasty which they considered foreign because its emperors were Manchu people citation needed To this day the Yellow Emperor remains a powerful symbol within Chinese nationalism 6 Traditionally credited with numerous inventions and innovations ranging from the lunar calendar Chinese calendar Taoism 7 wooden houses boats carts 8 the compass needle 9 the earliest forms of writing 10 civilization and its benefits 11 and or an early form of football the Yellow Emperor is now regarded as the initiator of Han culture later Chinese culture 12 Contents 1 Names 1 1 Huangdi Yellow Emperor Yellow Thearch 1 2 Xuanyuan and Youxiong 1 3 Other names 2 History 3 Origin of the myth 4 History of Huangdi 4 1 Earliest mention 4 2 Warring States period 4 3 The state of Qin 4 4 The Shiji version 4 5 Imperial era 4 6 In Taoism 4 7 Twentieth century 4 7 1 Late Qing 4 7 2 Republican period 4 8 Modern significance 5 Elements of Huangdi s myth 5 1 Birth 5 2 Achievements 5 3 Battles 5 4 Death 6 Meaning as a deity 6 1 Symbol of the centre of the universe 6 2 As ancestor 7 Traditional dates 8 Cultural references 9 See also 10 Notes 11 References 11 1 Citations 11 2 Sources 12 Further readingNames Edit nbsp Temple of Huangdi in Xinzheng Zhengzhou Henan Huangdi Yellow Emperor Yellow Thearch Edit Until 221 BC when Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty coined the title huangdi 皇帝 conventionally translated as emperor to refer to himself the character di 帝 did not refer to earthly rulers but to the highest god of the Shang dynasty c 1600 1046 BC pantheon 13 In the Warring States period c 475 221 BC the term di on its own could also refer to the deities associated with the five Sacred Mountains of China and colors Huangdi 黃帝 the yellow di was one of the latter To emphasize the religious meaning of di in pre imperial times historians of early China commonly translate the god s name as Yellow Thearch and the first emperor s title as August Thearch in which thearch refers to a godly ruler 14 In the late Warring States period the Yellow Emperor was integrated into the cosmological scheme of the Five Phases in which the color yellow represents the earth phase the Yellow Dragon and the center 15 The correlation of the colors in association with different dynasties was mentioned in the Lushi Chunqiu late 3rd century BC where the Yellow Emperor s reign was seen to be governed by earth 16 The character huang 黃 yellow was often used in place of the homophonous huang 皇 which means august in the sense of distinguished or radiant giving Huangdi attributes close to those of Shangdi the Shang supreme god 17 Xuanyuan and Youxiong Edit The Records of the Grand Historian compiled by Sima Qian in the first century BC gives the Yellow Emperor s name as Xuan Yuan traditional Chinese 軒轅 simplified Chinese 轩辕 pinyin Xuan Yuan lt Old Chinese B S qʰa r ɢ ʷa n lit Chariot Shaft 18 Third century scholar Huangfu Mi who wrote a work on the sovereigns of antiquity commented that Xuanyuan was the name of a hill where Huangdi had lived and that he later took as a name 19 The Classic of Mountains and Seas mentions a Xuanyuan nation whose inhabitants have human faces snake bodies and tails twisting above their heads 20 Yuan Ke a contemporary scholar of early Chinese mythology noted that the appearance of these people is characteristic of gods and suggested that they may reflect the form of the Yellow Thearch himself 21 The Qing dynasty scholar Liang Yusheng 梁玉繩 1745 1819 argued instead that the hill was named after the Yellow Emperor 19 Xuanyuan is also the name of the star Regulus in Chinese the star being associated with Huangdi in traditional astronomy 22 He is also associated to the broader constellations Leo and Lynx of which the latter is said to represent the body of the Yellow Dragon 黃龍 Huanglong Huangdi s animal form 23 Huangdi was also referred to as Youxiong 有熊 Yǒuxiong This name has been interpreted as either a place name or a clan name According to British sinologist Herbert Allen Giles 1845 1935 that name was taken from that of Huangdi s hereditary principality 24 William Nienhauser a modern translator of the Records of the Grand Historian states that Huangdi was originally the head of the Youxiong clan which lived near what is now Xinzheng in Henan 25 Remi Mathieu a French historian of Chinese myths and religion translates Youxiong as possessor of bears and links Huangdi to the broader theme of the bear in world mythology 26 Ye Shuxian has also associated the Yellow Emperor with bear legends common across northeast Asia people as well as the Dangun legend 27 page needed Other names Edit nbsp The eagle faced Thunder God 雷神 Leishen in a 1923 drawing punisher of those who go against the order of HeavenSima Qian s Records of the Grand Historian describes the Yellow Emperor s ancestral name as Gongsun 公孫 2 In Han dynasty texts the Yellow Emperor is also called upon as the Yellow God 黃神 Huangshen 28 Certain accounts interpret him as the incarnation of the Yellow God of the Northern Dipper 黄神北斗 Huangshen Beidǒu note 1 another name of the universal god Shangdi 上帝 or Tiandi 天帝 29 According to a definition in apocryphal texts related to the Hetu 河圖 the Yellow Emperor proceeds from the essence of the Yellow God 30 As a cosmological deity the Yellow Emperor is known as the Great Emperor of the Central Peak 中岳大帝 Zhōngyue Dadi 5 and in the Shizi as the Yellow Emperor with Four Faces 黃帝四面 Huangdi Simian 31 In old accounts the Yellow Emperor is identified as a deity of light and his name is explained in the Shuowen jiezi to derive from guang 光 light and thunder and as one and the same with the Thunder God 雷神 Leishen 32 33 who in turn as a later mythological character is distinguished as the Yellow Emperor s foremost pupil such as in the Huangdi Neijing History Edit nbsp Map of tribes and tribal unions in Ancient China including tribes of Huang Di Yellow Emperor Yan Di Flame Emperor and ChiyouThe Chinese historian Sima Qian and much Chinese historiography following him considered the Yellow Emperor to be a more historical figure than earlier legendary figures such as Fu Xi Nuwa and Shennong Sima Qian s Records of the Grand Historian begins with the Yellow Emperor while passing over the others 2 34 Throughout most of Chinese history the Yellow Emperor and the other ancient sages were considered to be historical figures 12 Their historicity started to be questioned in the 1920s by historians such as Gu Jiegang one of the founders of the Doubting Antiquity School in China 12 In their attempts to prove that the earliest figures of Chinese history were mythological Gu and his followers argued that these ancient sages were originally gods who were later depicted as humans by the rationalist intellectuals of the Warring States period 35 Yang Kuan a member of the same current of historiography noted that only in the Warring States period had the Yellow Emperor started to be described as the first ruler of China 36 Yang thus argued that Huangdi was a later transformation of Shangdi the supreme god of the Shang dynasty s pantheon 15 Also in the 1920s French scholars Henri Maspero and Marcel Granet published critical studies of China s accounts of high antiquity 37 In his Danses et legendes de la Chine ancienne Dances and legends of ancient China for example Granet argued that these tales were historicized legends that said more about the time when they were written than about the time they purported to describe 38 In the middle of the 20th century a group of Chinese historians proposed the theory that the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors were originally Chinese gods who became thought of as human during the later period of the Zhou dynasty 39 Most scholars now agree that the Yellow Emperor originated as a god who was later represented as a historical person 40 K C Chang sees Huangdi and other cultural heroes as ancient religious figures who were euhemerized in the late Warring States and Han periods 12 Historian of ancient China Mark Edward Lewis speaks of the Yellow Emperor s earlier nature as a god whereas Roel Sterckx a professor at University of Cambridge calls Huangdi a legendary cultural hero 41 Origin of the myth Edit nbsp Twentieth century statue of the Yellow Emperor carved by Ju Ming on display at the National Palace Museum in TaipeiThe origin of Huangdi s mythology is unclear but historians have formulated several hypotheses about it Yang Kuan a member of the Doubting Antiquity School 1920s 40s argued that the Yellow Emperor was derived from Shangdi the highest god of the Shang dynasty 42 43 44 Yang reconstructs the etymology as follows Shangdi 上帝 Huang Shangdi 皇上帝 Huangdi 皇帝 Huangdi 黄帝 in which he claims that huang 黃 yellow either was a variant Chinese character for huang 皇 august or was used as a way to avoid the naming taboo for the latter 45 Yang s view has been criticized by Mitarai Masaru 46 and by Michael Puett 47 Historian Mark Edward Lewis agrees that huang 黄 and huang 皇 were often interchangeable but disagreeing with Yang he claims that huang meaning yellow appeared first 42 Based on what he admits is a novel etymology likening huang 黄 to the phonetically close wang 尪 the burned shaman in Shang rainmaking rituals Lewis suggests that Huang in Huangdi might originally have meant rainmaking shaman or rainmaking ritual 48 Citing late Warring States and early Han versions of Huangdi s myth he further argues that the figure of the Yellow Emperor originated in ancient rain making rituals in which Huangdi represented the power of rain and clouds whereas his mythical rival Chiyou or the Yan Emperor stood for fire and drought 49 Also disagreeing with Yang Kuan s hypothesis Sarah Allan finds it unlikely that such a popular myth as the Yellow Emperor s could have come from a taboo character 43 She argues instead that pre Shang history including the story of the Yellow Emperor can all be understood as a later transformation and systematization of Shang mythology 50 In her view Huangdi was originally an unnamed lord of the underworld or the Yellow Springs the mythological counterpart of the Shang sky deity Shangdi 43 At the time Shang rulers claimed that their mythical ancestors identified with the ten suns birds east life and the Lord on High i e Shangdi had defeated an earlier people associated with the underworld dragons west 51 After the Zhou dynasty overthrew the Shang dynasty in the eleventh century BC Zhou leaders reinterpreted Shang myths as meaning that the Shang had vanquished a real political dynasty which was eventually named the Xia dynasty 51 By Han times as seen in Sima Qian s account in the Shiji the Yellow Emperor who as lord of the underworld had been symbolically linked to the Xia had become a historical ruler whose descendants were thought to have founded the Xia 52 Given that the earliest extant mention of the Yellow Emperor was on a fourth century BC Chinese bronze inscription claiming that he was the ancestor of the royal house of the state of Qi Lothar von Falkenhausen speculates that Huangdi was invented as an ancestral figure as part of a strategy to claim that all ruling clans in the Zhou dynasty culture sphere shared common ancestry 53 History of Huangdi Edit nbsp A section of the poem from the Tung ShingEarliest mention Edit Explicit accounts of the Yellow Emperor started to appear in Chinese texts during the Warring States period The most ancient extant reference to Huangdi is an inscription on a bronze vessel made during the first half of the fourth century BC by the royal family surnamed Tian 田 of the state of Qi a powerful eastern state 54 Harvard University historian Michael Puett writes that the Qi bronze inscription was one of several references to the Yellow Emperor in the fourth and third centuries BC within accounts of the creation of the state 55 Noting that many of the thinkers who were later identified as precursors of the Huang Lao Huangdi and Laozi tradition came from the state of Qi Robin D S Yates hypothesizes that Huang Lao originated in that region 56 Warring States period Edit The cult of Huangdi became very popular during the Warring States period 5th century 221 BC a period of intense competition between rival states which ended with the unification of the realm by the state of Qin 57 In addition to his role as ancestor he became associated with centralized statecraft and emerged as a figure paradigmatic of emperorship 58 The state of Qin Edit Further information Qin state In his Shiji Sima Qian claims that the state of Qin started worshipping the Yellow Emperor in the fifth century BC along with Yandi the Fiery Emperor 59 The altars were established at Yong 雍 near modern Fengxiang County in Shaanxi province which was the capital of Qin from 677 to 383 BC 60 By the time of King Zheng who became king of Qin in 247 BC and First Emperor of a unified China in 221 BC Huangdi had become by far the most important of the four thearchs di 帝 who were then worshiped at Yong 61 The Shiji version Edit The figure of Huangdi had appeared sporadically in Warring States texts Sima Qian s Shiji or Records of the Grand Historian completed around 94 BC was the first work to turn these fragments of myths into a systematic and consistent narrative of the Yellow Emperor s career 62 The Shiji s account was extremely influential in shaping how the Chinese viewed the origin of their history 63 The Shiji begins its chronological account of Chinese history with the life of Huangdi whom it presents as a sage sovereign from antiquity 64 It recounts that Huangdi s father was Shaodian 2 and his mother was Fubao 附寶 65 The Yellow Emperor had four wives His first wife Leizu of Xiling bore him two sons 2 His other three wives were his second wife Fenglei 封嫘 third wife Tongyu 彤魚 and fourth wife Momu 嫫母 65 66 The emperor had a total of 25 sons 67 14 of whom began their own surnames and clans 2 The oldest was Shaohao or Xuan Xiao who lived in Qingyang by the Yangtze River 2 Changyi the second son lived by the Ruo River When the Yellow Emperor died he was succeeded by Changyi s son Zhuan Xu 2 The chronological tables found in chapters 13 of the Shiji represent all past rulers legendary ones such as Yao and Shun the first ancestors of the Xia Shang and Zhou dynasties as well as the founders of the main ruling houses in the Zhou sphere as descendants of Huangdi giving the impression that Chinese history was the history of one large family 68 Imperial era Edit nbsp Inquiring of the Dao at the Cave of Paradise hanging scroll color on silk 210 5 x 83 cm by Dai Jin 1388 1462 This painting is based on the story first recounted in the Zhuangzi that the Yellow Emperor traveled to the Kongtong Mountains to inquire about the Dao with the Daoist sage Guangchengzi The Yellow Emperor was credited with an enormous number of cultural legacies and esoteric teachings While Taoism is often regarded in the West as arising from Laozi many Chinese Taoists claim the Yellow Emperor formulated many of their precepts 7 The Yellow Emperor s Inner Canon 黃帝內經 Huangdi Neijing which presents the doctrinal basis of traditional Chinese medicine was named after him 69 He was also credited with composing the Four Books of the Yellow Emperor 黃帝四經 Huangdi Sijing the Yellow Emperor s Book of the Hidden Symbol 黃帝陰符經 Huangdi Yinfujing and the Yellow Emperor s Four Seasons Poem included in the Tung Shing fortune telling almanac 7 Xuanyuan number is also the Chinese name for Regulus and other stars of the constellations Leo and Lynx of which the latter is said to represent the body of the Yellow Dragon 23 In the Hall of Supreme Harmony in Beijing s Forbidden City there is also a mirror called the Xuanyuan Mirror 70 71 In Taoism Edit In the second century AD Huangdi s role as a deity was diminished because of the rise of a deified Laozi 72 A state sacrifice offered to Huang Lao jun was not offered to Huangdi and Laozi as the term Huang Lao would have meant a few centuries earlier yellow Laozi 73 Nonetheless Huangdi kept being considered as an immortal he was seen as a master of longevity techniques and as a god who could reveal new teachings in the form of texts such as the sixth century Huangdi Yinfujing to his earthly followers 74 Twentieth century Edit The Yellow Emperor became a powerful national symbol in the last decade of the Qing dynasty 1644 1911 and remained dominant in Chinese nationalist discourse throughout the Republican period 1911 49 75 The early twentieth century is also when the Yellow Emperor was first referred to as the ancestor of all Chinese people 76 Late Qing Edit Starting in 1903 radical publications started using the projected date of his birth as the first year of the Chinese calendar 77 Intellectuals such as Liu Shipei 1884 1919 found this practice necessary in order to preserve the Han race baozhong 保種 from both dominance by Manchu people and foreign encroachment 77 Revolutionaries motivated by Anti Manchuism such as Chen Tianhua 1875 1905 Zou Rong 1885 1905 and Zhang Binglin 1868 1936 tried to foster the racial consciousness they thought was missing from their compatriots and thus depicted the Manchus as racially inferior barbarians who were unfit to rule over Han Chinese 78 Chen s widely circulated pamphlets claimed that the Han race formed one big family descended from the Yellow Emperor 79 The first issue Nov 1905 of the Minbao 民報 People s Journal 80 which was founded in Tokyo by revolutionaries of the Tongmenghui featured the Yellow Emperor on its cover and called Huangdi the first great nationalist of the world 81 It was one of several nationalist magazines that featured the Yellow Emperor on their cover in the early twentieth century 82 The fact that Huangdi meant yellow emperor also served to buttress the theory that he was the originator of the yellow race 83 Many historians interpret this sudden popularity of the Yellow Emperor as a reaction to the theories of French scholar Albert Terrien de Lacouperie 1845 94 who in a book called The Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilization from 2300 B C to 200 A D 1892 had claimed that Chinese civilization was founded around 2300 BCE by Babylonian immigrants 84 Lacouperie s Sino Babylonianism posited that Huangdi was a Mesopotamian tribal leader who had led a massive migration of his people into China around 2300 BC and founded what later became Chinese civilization 85 European sinologists quickly rejected these theories but in 1900 two Japanese historians Shirakawa Jirō and Kokubu Tanenori omitted these criticisms and published a long summary that presented Lacouperie s views as the most advanced Western scholarship on China 86 Chinese scholars were quickly attracted by the historicization of Chinese mythology that the two Japanese authors advocated 87 Anti Manchu intellectuals and activists who searched for China s national essence guocui 國粹 adapted Sino Babylonianism to their needs 88 Zhang Binglin explained Huangdi s battle with Chi You as a conflict opposing the newly arrived civilized Mesopotamians to backward local tribes a battle that transformed China into one of the most civilized places in the world 89 Zhang s reinterpretation of Sima Qian s account underscored the need to recover the glory of early China 90 Liu Shipei also presented these early times as the golden age of Chinese civilization 91 In addition to tying the Chinese to an ancient center of human civilization in Mesopotamia Lacouperie s theories suggested that China should be ruled by the descendants of Huangdi In a controversial essay called History of the Yellow Race Huangshi 黃史 which was published serially from 1905 to 1908 Huang Jie 黃節 1873 1935 claimed that the Han race was the true master of China because it was descended from the Yellow Emperor 92 Reinforced by the values of filial piety and the Chinese patrilineal clan 93 the racial vision defended by Huang and others turned vengeance against the Manchus into a duty owed to one s ancestors 94 Republican period Edit nbsp nbsp Top image A five yuan banknote carrying the effigy of the Yellow Emperor issued in 1912 by the government of the newly established Republic of China Bottom image A 100 yuan banknote displaying the Yellow Emperor issued in 1938 by the Federal Reserve Bank of China of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China 1937 40 a Japanese puppet regime in North China The Yellow Emperor continued to be revered after the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 which overthrew the Qing dynasty In 1912 for instance banknotes carrying Huangdi s effigy were issued by the new Republican government 95 After 1911 however the Yellow Emperor as national symbol changed from first progenitor of the Han race to ancestor of China s entire multi ethnic population 96 Under the ideology of the Five Races Under One Union Huangdi became the common ancestor of the Han Chinese the Manchu people the Mongols the Tibetans and the Hui people who were said to form the Zhonghua minzu a broadly understood Chinese nation 96 Sixteen state ceremonies were held between 1911 and 1949 to Huangdi as the founding ancestor of the Chinese nation 中華民族始祖 and even the founding ancestor of human civilization 人文始祖 95 Modern significance Edit nbsp Xuanyuan Temple dedicated to the worship of Huangdi in Huangling Yan an ShaanxiThe cult of the Yellow Emperor was forbidden in the People s Republic of China until the end of the Cultural Revolution 97 The prohibition was halted during the 1980s when the government reversed itself and resurrected the Yellow Emperor cult 98 Starting in the 1980s the cult was revived and phrases relating to the Descendants of Yan and Huang were sometimes used by the Chinese state when referring to people of Chinese descent 99 In 1984 for example Deng Xiaoping argued for Chinese unification saying Taiwan is rooted in the hearts of the descendants of the Yellow Emperor whereas in 1986 the PRC acclaimed the Chinese American astronaut Taylor Wang as the first of the Yellow Emperor s descendants to travel in space 100 In the first half of the 1980s the Party had internally debated whether this usage would make ethnic minorities feel excluded After consulting experts from Beijing University the Chinese Academy of Social Science and the Central Nationalities Institute the Central Propaganda Department recommended on March 27 1985 that the Party speak of the Zhonghua Minzu the Chinese nation broadly defined in official statements but that the phrase sons and grand sons of Yandi and the Yellow Emperor could be used in informal statements by party leaders and in relations with Hong Kong and Taiwanese compatriots and overseas Chinese compatriots 101 After retreating to Taiwan in late 1949 at the end of the Chinese Civil War Chiang Kai shek and the Kuomintang KMT ruled that the Republic of China ROC would keep paying homage to the Yellow Emperor on April 4 the National Tomb Sweeping Day but neither he nor the three presidents that succeeded him ever paid homage in person 102 In 1955 the KMT which was led by Mandarin speakers and still poised on retaking the mainland from the Communists sponsored the production of the movie Children of the Yellow Emperor Huangdi zisun 黃帝子孫 which was filmed mostly in Taiwanese Hokkien and showed extensive passages of Taiwanese folk opera Directed by Bai Ke 1914 1964 a former assistant of Yuan Muzhi it was a propaganda effort to convince speakers of Taiyu that they were linked to mainland people by common blood 103 In 2009 Ma Ying jeou was the first ROC president to celebrate the Tomb Sweeping Day rituals for Huangdi in person on which occasion he proclaimed that both Chinese culture and common descent from the Yellow Emperor united people from Taiwan and the mainland 102 104 Later the same year Lien Chan a former Vice President of the Republic of China who is now Honorary Chairman of the Kuomintang and his wife Lien Fang Yu paid homage at the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor in Huangling Yan an in mainland China 102 105 Gay studies researcher Louis Crompton 106 107 108 has cited Ji Yun s report in his popular Notes from the Yuewei Hermitage 1800 that some claimed the Yellow Emperor was the first Chinese to take male bedmates a claim that Ji Yun dismissed 109 Ji Yun argued that this was probably a false attribution 110 Today Xuanyuanjiao based on Taiwan represents an organised form of Yellow Emperor worship married to Confucian orthodoxy Elements of Huangdi s myth Edit nbsp One of the two turtle based steles at Shou Qiu Qufu Shandong the legendary birthplace of the Yellow EmperorAs with any myth there are numerous versions of Huangdi s story emphasizing different themes and interpreting the main character s significance in different ways Birth Edit According to Huangfu Mi 215 282 the Yellow Emperor was born in Shou Qiu Longevity Hill 111 which is today on the outskirts of the city of Qufu in Shandong Early on he lived with his tribe near the Ji River Edwin Pulleyblank states that there seems to be no record of a Ji River outside the myth 112 and later migrated to Zhuolu in modern day Hebei He then became a farmer and tamed six different special beasts the bear 熊 the brown bear 罴 羆 the pi 貔 and xiu 貅 which later combined to form the mythical Pixiu the ferocious chu 貙 and the tiger 虎 Huangdi is sometimes said to have been the fruit of extraordinary birth as his mother Fubao conceived him as she was aroused while walking in the country by a lightning bolt from the Big Dipper She delivered her son on the mount of Shou Longevity or mount Xuanyuan after which he was named 113 Another story states that Huang Di came into being when the energies that instigated the beginning of the world merged with one another and created human beings by placing earthen statues at the cardinal points of the world and leaving them exposed for 300 years During that time the statues became filled with the breath of creation and eventually began to move after the 300 years Huang Di received his magic powers when he was 100 years old He became a xian and riding a dragon rose to heaven where he became one of the five Wufang Shangdi Huang Di himself rules over the fifth cardinal point the centre 4 Achievements Edit In traditional Chinese accounts the Yellow Emperor is credited with improving the livelihood of the nomadic hunters of his tribe He teaches them how to build shelters tame wild animals and grow the Five Grains although other accounts credit Shennong with the last He invents carts boats and clothing Other inventions credited to the emperor include the Chinese diadem 冠冕 throne rooms 宮室 the bow sling 8 early Chinese astronomy the Chinese calendar math calculations code of sound laws 音律 114 coins and the concept of money 8 and cuju an early Chinese version of football 115 He is also sometimes said to have been partially responsible for the invention of the guqin zither 116 although others credit the Yan Emperor with inventing instruments for Ling Lun s compositions 117 There are other major traditions where Fuxi was the one who invented the calendar and the Yellow Emperor merely reformed and intercalated it 118 In traditional accounts he also goads the historian Cangjie into creating the first Chinese character writing system the Oracle bone script and his principal wife Leizu invents sericulture and teaches his people how to weave silk and dye clothes At one point in his reign the Yellow Emperor allegedly visited the mythical East sea and met a talking beast called the Bai Ze who taught him the knowledge of all supernatural creatures 119 120 This beast explained to him there were 11 522 or 1 522 kinds of supernatural creatures 119 120 nbsp Chi You the mythical opponent of the Yellow Emperor at the Battle of Zhuolu here depicted in a Han dynasty tomb reliefBattles Edit Main articles Battle of Zhuolu and Battle of Banquan The Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor were both leaders of a tribe or a combination of two tribes near the Yellow River The Yan Emperor hailed from a different area around the Jiang River which a geographical work called the Shuijingzhu identified as a stream near Qishan in what was the Zhou homeland before they defeated the Shang 112 Both emperors lived in a time of warfare 121 8 The Yan Emperor proving unable to control the disorder within his realm the Yellow Emperor took up arms to establish his domination over various warring factions 121 According to traditional accounts the Yan Emperor meets the force of the Nine Li 九黎 under their bronze headed leader Chi You and his 81 horned and four eyed brothers 122 and suffers a decisive defeat He flees to Zhuolu and begs the Yellow Emperor for help During the ensuing Battle of Zhuolu the Yellow Emperor employs his tamed animals and Chi You darkens the sky by breathing out a thick fog This leads the emperor to develop the south pointing chariot which he uses to lead his army out of the miasma 122 He next calls upon the drought demon Nuba to dispel Chi You s storm 122 He then destroys the Nine Li and defeats Chi You 123 Later he engages in battle with the Yan Emperor defeating him at Banquan and replacing him as the primary ruler 121 Death Edit Main article Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor The Yellow Emperor was said to have lived for over a hundred years before meeting a phoenix and a qilin and then dying 24 Two tombs were built in Shaanxi within the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor in addition to others in Henan Hebei and Gansu 124 Modern day Chinese people sometimes refer to themselves as the Descendants of Yan and Yellow Emperor although non Han minority groups in China may have their own myths or not count as descendants of the emperor 125 Meaning as a deity EditSymbol of the centre of the universe Edit nbsp Temple of Huangdi in Jinyun Lishui Zhejiang China nbsp Huangdi Shrine Xinzheng City Henan ProvinceAs the Yellow Deity with Four Faces 黃帝四面 Huangdi Simian he represents the centre of the universe and vision of the unity which controls the four directions It is explained in the Huangdi Sijing Four Scriptures of the Yellow Emperor that regulating heart within brings order outside In order to reign one must reduce himself abandoning emotions drying up like a corpse never allowing oneself to be carried away as according to the myth the Yellow Emperor himself did during his three years of refuge on Mount Bowang in order to find himself This practice creates an internal void where all the vital forces of creation gather and the more indeterminate they remain and the more powerful they will be 126 It is from this centre that equilibrium and harmony emanate equilibrium of the vital organs which becomes harmony between the person and the environment As sovereign of the centre the Yellow Emperor is the very image of the concentration or re centering of the self By self control taking charge of his own body one becomes powerful outside The centre is also the vital point in the microcosm by means of which the internal universe viewed as an altar is created The body is a universe and by going into himself and by incorporating the fundamental structures of the universe the sage will gain access to the gates of Heaven the unique point where communication between Heaven Earth and Man can occur The centre is the convergence of within and outside the contraction of chaos on the point which is equidistant from all directions It is the place which is no place where all creation is born and dies 126 The Great Deity of the Central Peak 中岳大帝 Zhōngyuedadi is another epithet representing Huangdi as the hub of creation the axis mundi which in Chinese mythology is Kunlun that is the manifestation of the divine order in physical reality that opens to immortality 5 nbsp Temple of the Central Peak Mount Song in Henan As ancestor Edit Further information Chinese emperors family tree ancient Throughout history several sovereigns and dynasties claimed or were claimed to descend from the Yellow Emperor Sima Qian s Shiji presented Huangdi as ancestor of the two legendary rulers Yao and Shun and traced various lines of descent from Huangdi to the founders of the Xia Shang and Zhou dynasties He claimed that Liu Bang the first emperor of the Han dynasty was a descendant of Huangdi He believed that the ruling house of the Qin dynasty was originated also from the Yellow Emperor but by stating that Qin Shihuang was in fact the child of Qin chancellor Lu Buwei he perhaps meant to leave the First Emperor out of Huangdi s descent Claiming descent from illustrious ancestors remained a common tool of political legitimacy in the following ages Wang Mang c 45 BC 23 AD of the short lived Xin dynasty claimed to descend from the Yellow Emperor in order to justify his overthrow of the Han 127 As he announced in January of 9 AD I possess no virtue but I rely upon the fact that I am a descendant of my august original ancestor the Yellow Emperor 128 About two hundred years later a ritual specialist named Dong Ba 董巴 who worked for at the court of the Cao Wei which had recently succeeded the Han promoted the idea that the Cao family was descended from Huangdi via Emperor Zhuanxu 129 During the Tang dynasty non Han rulers also claimed descent from the Yellow Emperor for individual and national prestige as well as to connect themselves to the Tang 130 Most Chinese noble families also claimed descent from Huangdi 131 This practice was well established in Tang and Song times when hundreds of clans claimed such descent The main support for this theory as recorded in the Tongdian 801 AD and the Tongzhi mid 12th century was the Shiji s statement that Huangdi s 25 sons were given 12 different surnames and that these surnames had diversified into all Chinese surnames 132 After Emperor Zhenzong r 997 1022 of the Song dynasty dreamed of a figure he was told was the Yellow Emperor the Song imperial family started to claim Huangdi as its first ancestor 133 A number of overseas Chinese clans that keep a genealogy also trace their family ultimately to Huangdi explaining their different surnames as name changes claimed to have derived from the fourteen surnames of Huangdi s descendants 134 Many Chinese clans both overseas and in China claim Huangdi as their ancestor to reinforce their sense of being Chinese 135 Gun Yu Zhuanxu Zhong Li Shujun and Yuqiang are various emperors gods and heroes whose ancestor was also supposed to be Huangdi The Huantou Miaomin and Quanrong peoples were said to be descended from Huangdi 136 Traditional dates Edit nbsp Martino Martini a seventeenth century Jesuit who based on Chinese historical records calculated that the Yellow Emperor s reign began in 2697 BC Martini s dates are still used today Although the traditional Chinese calendar did not mark years continuously some Han dynasty astronomers tried to determine the years of the life and reign of the Yellow Emperor In 78 BC under the reign of Emperor Zhao of Han an official called Zhang Shouwang 張壽望 calculated that 6 000 years had passed since the time of Huangdi the court refused his proposal for reform countering that only 3 629 years had elapsed 137 In the proleptic Julian calendar the court s calculations would have placed the Yellow Emperor in the late 38th century BC rather than in the 27th century BC that is conventional nowadays During their Jesuit missions in China in the seventeenth century the Jesuits tried to determine what year should be considered the epoch of the Chinese calendar In his Sinicae historiae decas prima first published in Munich in 1658 Martino Martini 1614 1661 dated the royal ascension of Huangdi to 2697 BC but started the Chinese calendar with the reign of Fuxi which he claimed started in 2952 BCE 138 Philippe Couplet s 1623 1693 Chronological table of Chinese monarchs Tabula chronologica monarchiae sinicae 1686 also gave the same date for the Yellow Emperor 139 The Jesuits dates provoked great interest in Europe where they were used for comparisons with Biblical chronology 140 Modern Chinese chronology has generally accepted Martini s dates except that it usually places the reign of Huangdi in 2698 BC see next paragraph and omits Huangdi s predecessors Fuxi and Shennong who are considered too legendary to include 141 Helmer Aslaksen a mathematician who teaches at the National University of Singapore and specializes in the Chinese calendar explains that those who use 2698 BC as a first year probably do so because they want to have a year 0 as the starting point or because they assume that the Yellow Emperor started his year with the Winter solstice of 2698 BC hence the difference with the year 2697 BC calculated by the Jesuits 142 Starting in 1903 radical publications started using the projected date of birth of the Yellow Emperor as the first year of the Chinese calendar 77 Different newspapers and magazines proposed different dates Jiangsu for example counted 1905 as year 4396 making 2491 BC the first year of the Chinese calendar whereas the Minbao the organ of the Tongmenghui reckoned 1905 as 4603 first year 2698 BC 143 Liu Shipei 1884 1919 created the Yellow Emperor Calendar to show the unbroken continuity of the Han race and Han culture from earliest times There is no evidence that this calendar was used before the 20th century 144 Liu s calendar started with the birth of the Yellow Emperor which was reckoned to be 2711 BC 145 When Sun Yat sen declared the foundation of the Republic of China on January 2 1912 he decreed that this was the 12th day of the 11th month of year 4609 epoch 2698 BCE but that the state would now be using the solar calendar and count 1912 as the first year of the Republic 146 Chronological tables published in the 1938 edition of the Cihai 辭海 dictionary followed Sun Yat sen in using 2698 as the year of Huangdi s accession this chronology is now widely reproduced with little variation 147 Cultural references EditThe emperor appears as an ancestor hero in the strategy game Emperor Rise of the Middle Kingdom made by Sierra Entertainment In the game he is a patron of acupuncturist and silk weaver and has the skills needed for leading men into battle especially the Chariot Fort soldiers The emperor serves as the hero in Jorge Luis Borges s story The Fauna of the Mirror British fantasy writer China Mieville used this story as the basis for his novella The Tain which describes a post apocalyptic London The Tain was included in Mieville s short story collection Looking For Jake 2005 The popular Chinese role playing video game series for the PC Xuanyuan Jian revolves around the legendary sword used by the emperor The emperor is an important NPC in the action RPG Titan Quest The player must reach the emperor to learn the truth about Typhon s imprisonment He also reveals a bit of information about the war between the gods and the titans while also revealing that he has been following the players actions since the beginning of the Silk Road clarification needed A 2016 Chinese drama film about the story of the Yellow Emperor is titled Xuan Yuan The Great Emperor 軒轅大帝 148 In the Shin Megami Tensei games Huang Di is a summonable ally He s created in various means depending on which game he is in See also Edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Yellow Emperor Chinese folk religion Chinese theology Emperors Yan and Huang monument Jiutian Xuannu goddess of war sex and longevity as well as teacher of the Yellow Emperor Simianshen Tianxia Xuanyuanism Jade EmperorNotes Edit A 斗 dǒu in Chinese is an entire semantic field meaning the shape of a dipper as the Big Dipper 北斗 Beidǒu or a cup signifying a whirl and also has martial connotations meaning fight struggle battle References EditCitations Edit Birrell 1993 p 48 a b c d e f g h i Sima Qian Records of the Grand Historian Shiji 史記 c 100 BC Chapter 1 Wudi benji 五帝本紀 Annals of the Five Emperors on Chinese Text Project retrieved on 2016 10 08 Huang Ti Random House Webster s Unabridged Dictionary a b Storm Rachel 2011 Sudell Helen ed Myths amp Legends of India Egypt China amp Japan 2nd ed Wigston Leicestershire Lorenz Books p 176 a b c Fowler 2005 pp 200 201 Witzel Morgen December 6 2019 A History of Leadership Routledge p 89 ISBN 978 1 351 66649 7 The Yellow Emperor who was believed to be the ancestor of the Chinese people and who was and remains a symbol of Chinese nationalism a b c Windridge Charles 2003 Tong Sing The Book of Wisdom Based on the Ancient Chinese Almanac Consulting work done by Cheng Kam Fong Revised and Updated ed New York Barnes amp Noble Books pp 59 107 ISBN 978 0 7607 4535 9 OCLC 54439373 a b c d Huangdi Encyclopedia Britannica Retrieved May 22 2023 World Religions Eastern Traditions Edited by Willard Gurdon Oxtoby 2nd ed Don Mills Ontario Oxford University Press 2002 p 395 ISBN 0 19 541521 3 OCLC 46661540 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint others link Ivanhoe Philip J Van Norden Bryan W 2005 Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy 2nd ed Indianapolis Hackett Publishing Company p 380 ISBN 0 87220 781 1 OCLC 60826646 World Religions Eastern Traditions Edited by Willard Gurdon Oxtoby 2nd ed Don Mills Ontario Oxford University Press 2002 p 395 ISBN 0 19 541521 3 OCLC 46661540 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint others link a b c d Chang 1983 p 2 Allan 1984 p 245 Only after the First Emperor of Qin styled himself Shi Huangdi did huangdi come to refer to an earthly ruler rather than the August Lord Major 1993 p 18 Thearch captures well the character of ancient Chinese thought wherein divinities might be simultaneously and without internal contradiction high gods mythical divine rulers or deified royal ancestors beings of enormous import straddling the numinous and the mundane a b Allan 1991 p 65 Walters 2006 p 39 Engelhardt 2008 pp 504 505 An Liu John S Major 2010 The Huainanzi A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China Columbia University Press ISBN 978 0231142045 p 117 note 11 a b Nienhauser 1994 p 1 note 6 Shanhaijing Ch 7 quote 軒轅之國 人面蛇身 尾交首上 Richard E Strassberg translator 2018 A Chinese Bestiary Strange Creatures from the Guideways through Mountains and Seas 1st edition p 173 Ho Peng Yoke Li Qi and Shu An Introduction to Science and Civilization in China Courier Corporation 2000 ISBN 0486414450 p 135 a b Sun amp Kistemaker 1997 pp 120 123 a b Giles 1898 p 338 cited in Unschuld amp Tessenow 2011 p 5 Nienhauser 1994 p 1 note 3 Mathieu 1984 p 29 p 243 Ye 2007 Poo 2011 p 20 Espesset 2007 p 1080 Espesset 2007 pp 22 28 Sun amp Kistemaker 1997 p 120 SCPG Publishing Corp The Deified Human Face Petroglyphs of Prehistoric China World Scientific 2015 ISBN 1938368339 p 239 in the Hetudijitong and the Chunqiuhechengtu the Yellow Emperor is identified as the Thunder God Yang Lihui An Deming Handbook of Chinese Mythology ABC CLIO 2005 ISBN 157607806X p 138 Wu 1982 pp 49 50 and chapter endnotes Puett 2001 p 93 description of Gu s general purpose Lewis 2007 p 545 rest of the information Allan 1991 p 64 Lewis 2007 p 545 Lewis 2007 pp 545 46 World Religions Eastern Traditions Edited by Willard Gurdon Oxtoby 2nd ed Don Mills Ontario Oxford University Press 2002 p 325 ISBN 0 19 541521 3 OCLC 46661540 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint others link Lewis 2007 p 556 modern scholars of myth generally agree that the sage kings were partially humanized transformations of earlier supernatural beings who figured in shamanistic rituals cosmogonic myths or tales of the origins of tribes and clans Lewis 2007 p 565 Sterckx 2002 p 95 a b Lewis 1990 p 314 note 116 a b c Allan 1991 p 65 Puett 2001 p 97 Lewis 1990 p 314 note 116 huang 黄 as variant Allan 1991 p 65 huang 黄 as taboo character Mitarai 1967 Puett 2001 pp 246 47 note 16 Lewis 1990 p 194 Lewis 1990 pp 179 82 Allan 1991 p 175 a b Allan 1991 p 73 Allan 1991 pp 64 73 175 In the Xia annals of the Shiji the Xia ancestry is traced from Yu 禹 back to Huang Di the Yellow Lord the lord of the underworld and Yellow Springs and thus closely associated with the Xia By the Han their the Xia ancestor the Yellow Emperor originally the lord of the underworld had been transformed into an historical figure who with his descendant Zhuan Xu ruled before Yao von Falkenhausen 2006 p 165 Warring States texts document a variety of attempts to coordinate all or most of the clans of the Zhou culture sphere under a common genealogy descended from the mythical Yellow Emperor Huangdi who may have been invented for that very purpose LeBlanc 1985 1986 p 53 quotation Seidel 1969 p 21 who calls it the most ancient document on Huangdi le plus ancient document sur Houang Ti Jan 1981 p 118 who calls the inscription the earliest existing and datable source of the Yellow Emperor cult and claims that the vessel dates either from 375 or 356 BC Chang 2007 p 122 who gives the date as 356 BCE Puett 2001 p 112 Huangdi s first appearance in early Chinese literature is a passing reference in a bronze inscription where he is mentioned as an ancestor of the patron of the vessel Yates 1997 p 18 earliest extant reference to Huangdi is in a bronze inscription dedicated by King Wei r 357 320 von Glahn 2004 p 38 which calls Qi the dominant state in eastern China at the time Puett 2001 p 112 Yates 1997 p 19 Sun 2000 p 69 Puett 2002 p 303 centralized statecraft LeBlanc 1985 1986 pp 50 51 paradigmatic emperorship von Glahn 2004 p 38 Lewis 2007 p 565 Both scholars rely on a claim made in chapter 28 of the Shiji p 1364 of the Zhonghua Shuju edition von Glahn 2004 p 43 von Glahn 2004 p 38 By the reign of King Zheng the future First Emperor of Qin the cult of Huangdi overshadowed all of its rivals for the attention of the Qin rulers Yi 2010 in section titled Yan Huang chuanshuo 炎黄传说 The legends of Yandi and Huangdi original 到了司马迁 史记 才有较系统记述 史记 五帝本纪 整合成了一个相对完整的故事 Lewis 1990 p 174 the earliest surviving sequential narrative of the career of the Yellow Emperor Birrell 1994 p 86 Sima Qian composed a seamless biographical account of the deity that had no basis in the earlier classical texts that recorded myth narratives Loewe 1998 p 977 Nienhauser 1994 p 18 in Translators note a b Chinareviewnews com The ugliest among the empresses and consorts of past ages 歷代后妃中的超級醜女 in Chinese Retrieved on August 8 2010 Big5 huaxia com Momu and the Yellow Emperor invent the mirror 嫫母與軒轅作鏡 in Chinese Retrieved on 2010 09 04 Sautman 1997 p 81 Vankeerberghen 2007 pp 300 301 Unschuld amp Tessenow 2011 p 5 Maine edu Hall of Supreme Harmony Retrieved on 2010 08 29 Singtao ca The Xuanyuan mirror in the Imperial Throne Room the Hall of Supreme Harmony where the emperor held court 金鑾寶座軒轅鏡 御門聽政太和殿 in Chinese Retrieved on 2010 08 29 Engelhardt 2008 p 506 Lagerwey 1987 p 254 Komjathy 2013 pp 173 date of the Yinfujing and 186 note 77 rest of the information Duara 1995 p 76 Sun 2000 p 69 中华这个五千年文明古国由黄帝开国 中国人都是黄帝子孙的说法 则是20 世纪的产品 The claims that the 5000 year old Chinese civilization was inaugurated by Huangdi and that Chinese people are the descendants of Huangdi are products of the twentieth century a b c Dikotter 1992 p 116 Dikotter 1992 pp 117 18 Dikotter 1992 p 117 Chow 1997 p 49 Sun 2000 pp 77 78 Dikotter 1992 p 116 note 73 Dikotter 1992 p 116 note 73 Chow 2001 p 59 Hon 2010 p 140 Hon 2010 p 145 Hon 2010 pp 145 47 Hon 2010 p 149 Hon 2010 p 150 Hon 2010 pp 151 52 Hon 2010 p 153 Hon 2010 p 154 Hon 2003 pp 253 54 Duara 1995 p 75 Dikotter 1992 pp 71 and 117 racial loyalty was perceived as an extension of lineage loyalty Hon 2010 p 150 call to arms to wage a racial war against the Manchus a b Liu 1999 pp 608 9 a b Liu 1999 p 609 Sautman 1997 pp 79 80 Sautman 1997 p 80 Sautman 1997 pp 80 81 Sautman 1997 p 81 Schoenhals 2008 pp 121 22 a b c President Ma pays homage in person to the Yellow Emperor China post Formosa September 4 2010 Zhang 2013 p 6 Tan 2009 p 40 10 000 Chinese pay homage to Yellow Emperor China daily September 4 2010 Louis Crompton 1925 2009 UNL Louis Crompton Scholarship LGBTQA Programs amp Services Louis Crompton Scholarship Fund NU foundation archived from the original on May 18 2012 retrieved April 4 2012 Crompton 2003 p 214 Yun Ji Huaixi zazhi er 槐西雜志二 Miscellaneous records from Huaixi Part 2 Yuewei caotang biji 閱微草堂筆記 雜說稱孌童始黃帝 殆出依托 Nienhauser 1994 p 1 note 6 a b Pulleyblank 2000 p 14 note 39 Yves Bonnefoy Asian Mythologies University of Chicago Press 1993 ISBN 0226064565 p 246 Wang 1997 p 13 Liu Xiang 77 6 BC Bielu 别录 It is said that cuju was invented by Huangdi others claim that it arose during the Warring States period 蹴鞠者 传言黄帝所作 或曰起戰國之時 cited in Book of the Later Han 5th century chapter 34 p 1178 of the standard Zhonghua shuju edition in Chinese Yin 2001 pp 1 10 Huang 1989 vol 2 page needed World Religions Eastern Traditions Edited by Willard Gurdon Oxtoby 2nd ed Don Mills Ontario Oxford University Press 2002 p 392 ISBN 0 19 541521 3 OCLC 46661540 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint others link a b iFeng com The traitor Bai Ze 背叛者白澤 Archived July 20 2011 at the Wayback Machine in Chinese from Xu 2008 Retrieved on 2010 09 04 a b Ge 2005 p 474 a b c Haw 2007 pp 15 16 a b c Wang 2005 pp 11 13 Roetz 1993 p 37 China org cn Mausoleums of the Yellow Emperor Retrieved on 2010 08 29 Sautman 1997 p 83 a b Levi 2007 p 674 Loewe 2000 p 542 Wang 2000 pp 168 169 Goodman 1998 p 145 Lewis 2009 p 202 Abramson 2008 p 154 Engelhardt 2008 p 505 Ebrey 2003 p 171 Lagerwey 1987 p 258 Pan 1994 pp 10 12 Sautman 1997 p 79 Yang amp An 2005 p 143 Loewe 2000 p 691 referring to Book of Later Han chapter 21A p 978 of the standard Zhonghua shuju edition Mungello 1989 p 132 Lach amp van Kley 1994 p 1683 Mungello 1989 p 133 Mungello 1989 pp 131 32 the citation is on p 132 Helmer Aslaksen The Mathematics of the Chinese Calendar Archived April 24 2006 at the Wayback Machine section Which Year is it in the Chinese Calendar retrieved on 2011 11 18 Wilkinson 2013 p 519 Cohen 2012 pp 1 4 Kaske 2008 p 345 Wilkinson 2013 p 507 Mungello 1989 p 131 note 78 軒轅大帝 2016 Sources Edit Works citedAbramson Mark Samuel 2008 Ethnic Identity in Tang China University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN 978 0 8122 4052 8 Allan Sarah 1984 The Myth of the Xia Dynasty The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 116 2 242 256 doi 10 1017 S0035869X00163580 JSTOR 25211710 S2CID 162347912 via JSTOR subscription required 1991 The Shape of the Turtle Albany NY SUNY Press ISBN 0 7914 0460 9 Birrell Anne 1993 Chinese Mythology An Introduction Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN 0 8018 4595 5 0 8018 6183 7 1994 Studies on Chinese Myth Since 1970 An Appraisal Part 2 History of Religions 34 1 70 94 doi 10 1086 463382 JSTOR 1062979 S2CID 161421169 via JSTOR subscription required Chang Chun shu 2007 The Rise of the Chinese Empire vol 1 Nation State and Imperialism in Early China ca 1600 BC AD 157 Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press ISBN 978 0 472 11533 4 Chang K C 1983 Art Myth and Ritual The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China Cambridge MA Harvard University Press ISBN 0 674 04807 5 0 674 04808 3 Chow Kai wing 1997 Imagining Boundaries of Blood Zhang Binglin and the Invention of the Han Race in Modern China in Dikotter Frank ed The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Honolulu University of Hawai i Press pp 34 52 ISBN 962 209 443 0 2001 Narrating Nation Race and National Culture Imagining the Hanzu Identity in Modern China in Chow Kai wing Doak Kevin Michael Fu Poshek eds Constructing Nationhood in Modern East Asia Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press pp 47 84 ISBN 0 472 09735 0 0 472 06735 4 Cohen Alvin 2012 Brief Note The Origin of the Yellow Emperor Era Chronology PDF Asia Major 25 pt 2 1 13 archived from the original PDF on August 1 2020 retrieved September 25 2014 Crompton Louis 2003 Homosexuality and Civilization Cambridge MA Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 02233 1 Dikotter Frank 1992 The Discourse of Race in Modern China London Hurst amp Co ISBN 1 85065 135 3 Duara Prasenjit 1995 Rescuing History from the Nation Questioning Narratives of Modern China Chicago and London University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 16722 0 Ebrey Patricia Buckley 2003 Women and the family in Chinese history London and New York Routledge ISBN 0 415 28822 3 hardback ISBN 0 415 28823 1 paperback Engelhardt Ute 2008 Huangdi 黃帝 in Pregadio Fabrizio ed The Encyclopedia of Taoism Routledge pp 504 6 ISBN 978 1135796341 Espesset Gregoire 2007 Latter Han religious mass movements and the early Daoist church in Lagerwey John Kalinowski Marc eds Early Chinese Religion Part One Shang Through Han 1250 BC 220 AD Leiden Brill pp 1061 1102 ISBN 978 90 04 16835 0 Fowler Jeanine D 2005 An Introduction to the Philosophy and Religion of Taoism Pathways to Immortality Sussex Academic Press ISBN 1845190866 Ge Hong 283 343 2005 Gu Jiu 顧久 ed Baopuzi neipian 抱朴子內篇 Taipei Taiwan shufang chuban youxian gongsi 台灣書房出版有限公司 ISBN 978 986 7332 46 2 Giles Herbert Allen 1898 A Chinese Biographical Dictionary London B Quaritch Goodman Howard L 1998 Ts ao P i Transcendent The Political Culture of Dynasty Founding in China at the End of the Han Seattle Wash Scripta Serica distributed by Curzon Press ISBN 0 9666300 0 9 Haw Stephen G 2007 Beijing A Concise History London and New York Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 39906 7 Hon Tze ki 2003 National Essence National Learning and Culture Historical Writings in Guocui xuebao Xueheng and Guoxue jikan Historiography East amp West 1 2 242 86 doi 10 1163 157018603774004511 Hon Tze ki 2010 From a Hierarchy in Time to a Hierarchy in Space The Meanings of Sino Babylonianism in Early Twentieth Century China Modern China 36 2 136 69 doi 10 1177 0097700409345126 S2CID 144710078 Huang Dashou 黃大受 1989 Zhongguo tongshi 中國通史 General history of China in Chinese Wunan tushu chuban gufen youxian gongsi 五南圖書出版股份有限公司 ISBN 978 957 11 0031 9 Jan Yun hua 1981 The Change of Images The Yellow Emperor in Ancient Chinese Literature Journal of Oriental Studies 19 2 117 37 Kaske Elizabeth 2008 The Politics of Language in Chinese Education 1895 1919 Leiden Brill ISBN 978 90 04 16367 6 Komjathy Louis 2013 The Way of Complete Perfection A Quanzhen Daoist Anthology Albany NY SUNY Press ISBN 978 1 4384 4651 6 Lach Donald F van Kley Edwin J 1994 Asia in the Making of Europe vol III A Century of Advance Book Four East Asia Chicago University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 46734 4 Lagerwey John 1987 Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History New York and London MacMillan ISBN 0 02 896480 2 LeBlanc Charles 1985 1986 A Re examination of the Myth of Huang ti Journal of Chinese Religions 13 14 45 63 doi 10 1179 073776985805308158 Levi Jean 2007 The rite the norm and the Dao Philosophy of sacrifice and transcendence of power in ancient China in Lagerwey John Kalinowski Marc eds Early Chinese Religion Part One Shang Through Han 1250 BC 220 AD Leiden Brill pp 645 692 ISBN 978 90 04 16835 0 Lewis Mark Edward 1990 Sanctioned Violence in Early China Albany NY SUNY Press ISBN 0 7914 0076 X 0 7914 0077 8 2007 The mythology of early China in John Lagerwey Marc Malinowski eds Early Chinese Religion Part One Shang through Han 1250 BC 220 AD Leiden and Boston Brill pp 543 594 ISBN 978 90 04 16835 0 2009 China s Cosmopolitan Empire the Tang Dynasty Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 03306 1 Liu Li 1999 Who were the ancestors The origins of Chinese ancestral culture and racial myths Antiquity 73 281 602 13 doi 10 1017 S0003598X00065170 S2CID 163123858 Loewe Michael 1998 The Heritage Left to the Empires in Michael Loewe Edward L Shaughnessy eds The Cambridge History of Ancient China From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B C Cambridge UK and New York Cambridge University Press pp 967 1032 ISBN 0 521 47030 7 2000 A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin Former Han and Xin Periods 221 BC AD 24 Leiden and Boston Brill ISBN 9004103643 Major John S 1993 Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought Chapters Three Four and Five of theHuainanzi Albany NY SUNY Press ISBN 0 7914 1585 6 hardback ISBN 0 7914 1586 4 paperback Mathieu Remi 1984 La Patte de l ours The bear s paw L Homme 24 1 5 42 doi 10 3406 hom 1984 368468 JSTOR 25132024 via JSTOR subscription required Mitarai Masaru 御手洗 勝 1967 Kōtei densetsu ni tsuite 黃帝伝説について About the legend of the Yellow Emperor Hiroshima Daigaku Bungaku Kiyō 広島大学文学部紀要 Bulletin of the Literature Department of Hiroshima University 27 33 59 Mungello David E 1989 1985 Curious Land Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology Honolulu University of Hawai i Press ISBN 0 8248 1219 0 Nienhauser William H Jr ed 1994 The Grand Scribe s Records vol 1 The Basic Annals of Pre Han China Bloomington amp Indianapolis Indiana University press ISBN 0 253 34021 7 Pan Lynn 1994 Sons of the Yellow Emperor A History of the Chinese Diaspora New York Kodansha America ISBN 1 56836 032 0 Poo Mu chou 2011 Preparation for the Afterlife in Ancient China in Amy Olberding Philip J Ivanhoe eds Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought Albany NY SUNY Press pp 13 36 ISBN 978 1438435640 via Project MUSE subscription required Puett Michael 2001 The Ambivalence of Creation Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China Stanford CA Stanford University Press ISBN 0 8047 3623 5 Puett Michael 2002 To Become a God Cosmology Sacrifice and Self Divinization in Early China Cambridge MA Harvard University Asia Center ISBN 0 674 01643 2 Pulleyblank Edwin G 2000 Ji 姬 and Jiang 姜 The Role of Exogamic Clans in the Organization of the Zhou Polity PDF Early China 25 1 27 doi 10 1017 S0362502800004259 JSTOR 23354272 S2CID 162159081 archived from the original PDF on November 18 2017 retrieved September 28 2016 Roetz Heiner 1993 Confucian ethics of the axial age a reconstruction under the aspect of the breakthrough toward postconventional thinking SUNY Press ISBN 0 7914 1649 6 Sautman Barry 1997 Myths of Descent Racial Nationalism and Ethnic Minorities in the People s Republic of China in Dikotter Frank ed The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Honolulu University of Hawai i Press pp 75 95 ISBN 962 209 443 0 Schoenhals Michael 2008 subscription required Abandoned or Merely Lost in Translation Inner Asia 10 1 113 30 doi 10 1163 000000008793066777 JSTOR 23615059 Seidel Anna K 1969 La divinisation de Lao Tseu dans le taoisme des Han The divinization of Laozi in Han dynasty Taoism in French Paris Ecole francaise d Extreme Orient ISBN 2 85539 553 4 Sterckx Roel 2002 The Animal and the Daemon in Early China Albany NY SUNY Press ISBN 0 7914 5269 7 0 7914 5270 0 Sun Longji 孙隆基 2000 Qingji minzu zhuyi yu Huangdi chongbai zhi faming 清季民族主义与黄帝崇拜之发明 Qing period nationalism and the invention of the worship of Huangdi Lishi Yanjiu 历史研究 2000 3 68 79 archived from the original on March 31 2012 retrieved November 7 2011 Sun Xiaochun Kistemaker Jacob 1997 The Chinese Sky During the Han Constellating Stars and Society Brill Bibcode 1997csdh book S ISBN 9004107371 Tan Zhong 譚中 May 1 2009 Cong Ma Yingjiu yaoji Huangdi ling kan Zhongguo shengcun shizhi 從馬英九 遙祭黃帝陵 看中國生存實質 Haixia Pinglun 海峽評論 221 40 44 Unschuld Paul U Tessenow Hermann eds 2011 Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen An Annotated Translation of Huang Di s Inner Classic Basic Questions 2 volumes Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press ISBN 9780520266988 Vankeerberghen Griet 2007 The Tables biao in Sima Qian s Shi ji Rhetoric and Remembrance in Francesca Bray Vera Dorofeeva Lichtmann Georges Metailie eds Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China The Warp and the Weft Leiden and Boston E J Brill pp 295 311 ISBN 978 90 04 16063 7 von Falkenhausen Lothar 2006 Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius 1000 250 BC The Archaeological Evidence Los Angeles Cotsen Institute of Archaeology University of California ISBN 1 931745 31 5 von Glahn Richard 2004 The Sinister Way The Divine and the Demonic in Chinese Religious Culture Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press ISBN 0 520 23408 1 Walters Derek 2006 The Complete Guide to Chinese Astrology The Most Comprehensive Study of the Subject Ever Published in the English Language Watkins ISBN 978 1 84293 111 0 Wang Aihe 2000 Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China Cambridge Eng Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 62420 7 Wang Hengwei 王恒伟 2005 Zhongguo lishi jiangtang 中国历史讲堂 Lectures on Chinese history in Chinese Beijing Zhonghua shuju 中华书局 ISBN 962 8885 24 3 Wang Zhongfu 王仲孚 1997 Zhongguo wenhua shi 中國文化史 Chinese cultural history in Chinese Wunan tushu chuban gufen youxian gongsi 五南圖書出版股份有限公司 ISBN 978 957 11 1427 9 Wilkinson Endymion 2013 Chinese History A New Manual Cambridge MA and London Harvard University Asia Center ISBN 978 0 674 06715 8 Windridge Charles Fong Cheng Kam 2003 1999 Tong Sing The Chinese Book of Wisdom Based on the Ancient Chinese Almanac Kyle Cathie ISBN 0 7607 4535 8 Wu Kuo cheng 1982 The Chinese Heritage New York Crown ISBN 0 517 54475 X Xu Lai 徐来 2008 Xiangxiang zhong de dongwu shanggu shidai de qiyi niaoshou 想象中的动物 上古时代的奇异鸟兽 Imaginary animals the strange bird beasts of high antiquity in Chinese Shanghai Shanghai wenyi chubanshe 上海文艺出版社 ISBN 978 7 80685 826 4 Yang Lihui An Deming with Jessica Anderson Turner 2005 Handbook of Chinese Mythology Oxford and New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 533263 6 a href Template Citation html title Template Citation citation a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Yates Robin D S 1997 Five Lost Classics Tao Huang Lao and Yin Yang in Han China New York Ballantine ISBN 978 0 345 36538 5 Ye Shuxian 叶舒宪 2007 Xiong tuteng Zhonghua zuxian shenhua tanyuan 熊图腾 中华祖先神话探源 The bear totem the origins of the Chinese ancestral myth in Chinese Shanghai Shanghai wenyi chubanshe 上海文艺出版社 ISBN 978 7 80685 826 4 Yi Hua 易华 2010 Yao Shun yu Yan Huang Shiji Wudi benji yu minzu rentong 尧舜与炎黄 史记 五帝本记 与民族认同 Yao Shun and Yan Huang the Shiji s Basic Annals of the Five Emperors and ethnic identity China Folklore Network Yin Wei 殷伟 2001 Zhongguo qinshi yanyi 中国琴史演义 The romance of the history of the Chinese zither in Chinese Yunnan renmin chubanshe 云南人民出版社 Yunnan People s Press Zhang Yingjin 2013 Articulating Sadness Gendering Space The Politics and Poetics of Taiyu Films from 1960s Taiwan Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 25 1 1 46 JSTOR 42940461 via JSTOR subscription required Further reading EditCsikszentmihalyi Mark 2006 Reimagining the Yellow Emperor s Four Faces in Martin Kern ed Text and Ritual in Early China Seattle University of Washington Press pp 226 248 via Project MUSE subscription required Harper Donald 1998 Early Chinese Medical Literature The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts London and New York Kegan Paul International ISBN 0 7103 0582 6 Jochim Christian 1990 Flowers Fruit and Incense Only Elite versus Popular in Taiwan s Religion of the Yellow Emperor Modern China 16 1 3 38 doi 10 1177 009770049001600101 S2CID 145519916 Leibold James 2006 Competing Narratives of Racial Unity in Republican China From the Yellow Emperor to Peking Man Modern China 32 2 181 220 doi 10 1177 0097700405285275 S2CID 143944346 Luo Zhitian 罗志田 2002 Baorong Ruxue zhuzi yu Huangdi de Guoxue Qingji shiren xunqiu minzu rentong xiangzheng de nuli 包容儒學 諸子與黃帝的國學 清季士人尋求民族認同象徵的努力 The Rise of National Learning Confucianism the Ancient Philosophers and the Yellow Emperor in Chinese Intellectuals Search for a Symbol of National Identity in the Late Qing Taida Lishi Xuebao 臺大歷史學報 29 87 105 a href Template Citation html title Template Citation citation a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Sautman Barry 1997 Racial nationalism and China s external behavior World Affairs 160 78 95 dead link Schneider Lawrence 1971 Ku Chieh gang and China s New History Nationalism and the Quest for Alternative Traditions Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press ISBN 9780520018044 Seidel Anna K 1987 Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts Found in Tombs in Akizuki Kan ei 秋月观暎 ed Dōkyo to shukyō bunka 道教と宗教文化 Taoism and religious culture Tokyo Hirakawa shuppansha 平和出版社 pp 23 57 a href Template Citation html title Template Citation citation a CS1 maint multiple names editors list link Shen Sung chiao 沈松橋 1997 Wo yi wo xue jian Xuan Yuan Huangdi shenhua yu wan Qing de guozu jiangou 我以我血薦軒轅 黃帝神話與晚清的國族建構 The myth of the Yellow Emperor and the construction of Chinese nationhood in the late Qing period Taiwan Shehui Yanjiu Jikan 台灣社會研究季刊 28 1 77 a href Template Citation html title Template Citation citation a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Unschuld Paul U 1985 Medicine in China A History of Ideas Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press ISBN 0 520 05023 1 Wang Ming ke 王明珂 2002 Lun Panfu Jindai Yan Huang zisun guozu jiangou de gudai jichu 論攀附 近代炎黃子孫國族建構的古代基礎 On progression the ancient basis for the nation building claim that the Chinese are descendants of Yandi and Huangdi Zhongyang Yanjiu Yuan Lishi Yuyan Yanjiusuo Jikan 中央研究院歷史語言研究所集刊 73 3 583 624 a href Template Citation html title Template Citation citation a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Yellow EmperorThree Sovereigns and Five EmperorsRegnal titlesPreceded byYandi Mythological Emperor of China Succeeded byShaohao Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Yellow Emperor amp oldid 1167656511, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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