Names

Huangdi

Until 221 BC, when Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty coined the title huangdi (皇帝) – conventionally "emperor" - the character di 帝 did not refer to earthly rulers but to Shangdi, the highest god of the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC) pantheon. 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.

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. 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. The character huang ("yellow") was often used in place of the homophonous huang , which means "august" (in the sense of 'distinguished') or "radiant", giving Huangdi attributes close to those of Shangdi, the Shang supreme god.

Xuanyuan and Youxiong

The Records of the Grand Historian, compiled by Sima Qian in the first century BC, gives the Yellow Emperor's name as "Xuan Yuan" (軒轅 Xuān Yuán < Old Chinese (B-S) *qʰar-ɢʷan, lit. "Chariot Shaft"). 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. The Classic of Mountains and Seas mentions a Xuanyuan nation whose inhabitants have human faces, snake bodies, and tails twisting above their heads; 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". The Qing dynasty scholar Liang Yusheng (梁玉繩, 1745–1819) argued instead that the hill was named after the Yellow Emperor. Xuanyuan is also the name of the star Regulus in Chinese, the star being associated with Huangdi in traditional astronomy. 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 ( Huánglóng), Huangdi's animal form.

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". 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. 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. Ye Shuxian has also associated the Yellow Emperor with bear legends common across northeast Asia people as well as the Dangun legend.

Other names

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

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

As a cosmological deity, the Yellow Emperor is known as the "Great Emperor of the Central Peak" (中嶽大帝 Zhōngyuè Dàdì), and in the Shizi as the "Yellow Emperor with Four Faces" ( Huángdì Sìmiàn). 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), who in turn, as a later mythological character, is distinguished as the Yellow Emperor's foremost pupil, such as in the Huangdi Neijing.

Historicity

The Chinese historian Sima Qianand much Chinese historiography following himconsidered 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.

Throughout most of Chinese history, the Yellow Emperor and the other ancient sages were considered to be historical figures. 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. 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. 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. Yang thus argued that Huangdi was a later transformation of Shangdi, the supreme god of the Shang dynasty's pantheon.

Also in the 1920s, French scholars Henri Maspero and Marcel Granet published critical studies of China's accounts of high antiquity. In his Danses et légendes de la Chine ancienne 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.

In the "middle of the 20th century, a group of" Chinese "historians proposed the theory that Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors" were originally Chinese gods who became thought of as human during the later period of the Zhou dynasty. Most scholars now agree that the Yellow Emperor originated as a god who was later represented as a historical person. K. C. Chang sees Huangdi and other cultural heroes as "ancient religious figures" who were "euhemerized" in the late Warring States and Han periods. 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".

Origin of the myth

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. 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 ("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. Yang's view has been criticized by Mitarai Masaru and by Michael Puett.

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. 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." 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.

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. 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." 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. 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." 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. 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.

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.

History of Huangdi

Earliest mention

Explicit accounts of the Yellow Emperor started to appear in Chinese texts during the Warring States period. The earliest extant mention of Huangdi is an inscription on the Chen Hou Yinqi dui (陳侯因齊敦), cast 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. As the Tian family had usurped the throne of Qi, establishing such a divine heritage would positively affect their claim to legitimacy.

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. 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.

Warring States period

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. In addition to his role as ancestor, he became associated with "centralized statecraft" and emerged as a figure paradigmatic of emperorship.

The state of Qin

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. 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. 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.

The Shiji version

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". The Shijis account was extremely influential in shaping how the Chinese viewed the origin of their history.

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

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.

Imperial era

The Dai Dai Liji (大戴禮記), compiled by Dai De towards the end of the Western Han dynasty, carries a quote attributed to Confucius:

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, including the quest for "long life". 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. 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(軒轅黃帝四季詩)" included in the Tung Shing fortune-telling almanac.

"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. In the Hall of Supreme Harmony in Beijing's Forbidden City, there is also a mirror called the "Xuanyuan Mirror".

In Taoism

In the second century AD, Huangdi's role as a deity was diminished because of the rise of a deified Laozi. 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". 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.

Twentieth century

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 (1912–1949). The early twentieth century is also when the Yellow Emperor was first referred to as the ancestor of all Chinese people.

Late Qing

Starting in 1903, radical publications started using the projected date of his birth as the first year of the Chinese calendar. 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. 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. Chen's widely circulated pamphlets claimed that the "Han race" formed one big family descended from the Yellow Emperor. The first issue (Nov. 1905) of the Minbao 民報 ("People's Journal"), 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." It was one of several nationalist magazines that featured the Yellow Emperor on their cover in the early twentieth century. The fact that Huangdi meant "yellow" emperor also served to buttress the theory that he was the originator of the "yellow race".

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. 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. 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. Chinese scholars were quickly attracted by "the historicization of Chinese mythology" that the two Japanese authors advocated.

Anti-Manchu intellectuals and activists who searched for China's "national essence" (guocui 國粹) adapted Sino-Babylonianism to their needs. 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. Zhang's reinterpretation of Sima Qian's account "underscored the need to recover the glory of early China." Liu Shipei also presented these early times as the golden age of Chinese civilization. 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. Reinforced by the values of filial piety and the Chinese patrilineal clan, the racial vision defended by Huang and others turned vengeance against the Manchus into a duty owed to one's ancestors.

Republican period

The Yellow Emperor continued to be revered after the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew the Qing dynasty. In 1912, for instance, banknotes carrying Huangdi's effigy were issued by the new Republican government. 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. 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. 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).

Modern significance

The cult of the Yellow Emperor was forbidden in the People's Republic of China until the end of the Cultural Revolution. The prohibition was halted during the 1980s when the government reversed itself and resurrected the "Yellow Emperor cult". 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. 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. 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".

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. 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. 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. 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.

Gay studies researcher Louis Crompton 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. Ji Yun argued that this was probably a false attribution.

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

Elements of Huangdis myth

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

According to Huangfu Mi (215–282), the Yellow Emperor was born in Shou Qiu ("Longevity Hill"), 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" – and later migrated to Zhuolu in modern-day Hebei. He then became a farmer and tamed six different special beasts: the bear (lang=zh熊), the brown bear (羆), the pí (lang=zh貔) and xiū (lang=zh貅) (which later combined to form the mythical Pixiu), the ferocious chū (lang=zh貙), and the tiger (lang=zh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.

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 the 300 years. Huang Di...received his magic powers when he was 100 years old. He a xian and, riding a dragon, rose to heaven where he became one of the five Shangdi. Huang Di himself rules over the fifth cardinal point, the centre."

Achievements

In traditional Chinese accounts, the Yellow Emperor is credited with teaching his people 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 (lang=zh冠冕), throne rooms (lang=zh宮室), the bow sling, early Chinese astronomy, the Chinese calendar, math calculations, code of sound laws (lang=zh音律), coins and the concept of money, and cuju, an early Chinese version of football. He is also sometimes said to have been partially responsible for the invention of the guqin zither, although others credit the Yan Emperor with inventing instruments for Ling Lun's compositions.

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

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. This beast explained to him there were 11,522 (or 1,522) kinds of supernatural creatures.

Battles

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. Both emperors lived in a time of warfare. 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.

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 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. He next calls upon the drought demon Nüba to dispel Chi You's storm. He then destroys the Nine Li and defeats Chi You. Later he engages in battle with the Yan Emperor, defeating him at Banquan and replacing him as the primary ruler.

Death

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

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.

Meaning as a deity

Symbol of the centre of the universe

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 the Yellow Emperor himself did during his three years of refuge on Mount Bowang in order to find himself according to the myth. This practice creates an internal void where all the vital forces of creation gather, and the more indeterminate they remain, the more powerful they will be.

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.

The Great Deity of the Central Peak (中嶽大帝 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.

As ancestor

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. 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..." 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.

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. Most Chinese noble families also claimed descent from Huangdi. 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 Shijis statement that Huangdi's 25 sons were given 12 different surnames, and that these surnames had diversified into all Chinese surnames. 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.

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. Many Chinese clans, both overseas and in China, claim Huangdi as their ancestor to reinforce their sense of being Chinese.

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.

Traditional dates

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. 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. Philippe Couplet's (1623–1693) "Chronological table of Chinese monarchs" (Tabula chronologica monarchiae sinicae; 1686) also gave the same date for the Yellow Emperor. The Jesuits' dates provoked great interest in Europe, where they were used for comparisons with Biblical chronology. 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."

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.

Starting in 1903, radical publications started using the projected date of birth of the Yellow Emperor as the first year of the Chinese calendar. 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). 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. Liu's calendar started with the birth of the Yellow Emperor, which was reckoned to be 2711 BC. 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. Chronological tables published in the 1938 edition of the Cihai dictionary followed Sun Yat-sen in using 2698 as the year of Huangdi's accession; this chronology is now "widely reproduced, with little variation".

文獻記載

傳世文獻中，以《左傳》及《尸子》的記載為最早，《尸子·神明》：「子貢問孔子曰：『古者黃帝四面，信乎？』孔子曰：『黃帝取合己者四人，使治四方，不謀而親，不約而成，大有成功，此之謂四面也。』」，被認為是在戰國時期成書的《山海經》與《國語》中，也有對黃帝的記載。至漢朝之後，傳世文獻增加，對於黃帝的記載也變多。

《左傳》記載，前525年郯子訪問魯國時，舉出古代帝王，稱黃帝氏為雲師，以雲為名。同時，將黃帝列在炎帝之前。

《史記》記載，對黃帝的祭祀最早出現於戰國秦靈公。

姓氏與稱號

《史記·五帝本紀》記載黃帝姓公孫，名軒轅，《路史》記載黃帝姓公孫，《國語》則記載黃帝依姬水而成長，因此為姬姓。清代學者崔述認為公孫是諸侯之孫的稱謂，並不是姓，且上古時代不存在這種稱謂。

其稱號黃帝，傳統上以五德終始說來解釋，認為其代表土行的黃色。甲骨文學者許進雄認為，在甲骨文中，「黃」源自於「璜」，是一種玉，黃帝的稱號可能與古代配戴玉的習俗相關。《史記‧五帝本紀》云：「有土德之瑞，故號黃帝。」又《史記索隱》載：「炎帝火，黃帝土代之，即『黃龍地螾見』是也。」黃帝之黃或源自黃龍之黃。

簡介

據《漢書人表考》卷一載：「黃帝，有熊國國君武王少典之子。少典娶有蟜氏，名附寶，感大電繞樞，孕二十五月，以戊巳日生黃帝于天水。」《史記·五帝本記》記載：「黃帝者，少典之子，姓公孫，名軒轅。……黃帝居軒轅之丘」。唐《軒轅黃帝傳》載:「軒轅黃帝，姓公孫，有熊國君少典之次子也。其母西橋氏女，名附寶，瞑見大電光繞北斗樞星，照於郊野。附寶感之而有娠。以樞星降，又名天樞。懷二十四月，生軒轅於壽丘」「軒轅之丘」位于新鄭的說法出《大明一統志》。相傳黃帝出生於夏曆三月初三，一說生於二月初二，俗言「二月二，龍抬頭；三月三，生軒轅。」炎、黃二帝展開阪泉之戰，黃帝勝。最後，黃帝集結炎、黃部落在涿鹿之戰打敗、擒殺了蚩尤，統一中原各部落。戰後，黃帝率兵進入九黎地區，隨即在泰山之巔，會合天下諸部落，舉行封禪儀式，告祭天地。突然，天上顯現大螾大螻，色尚黃，人們說他以土德為帝，故自稱為黃帝。從此，黃帝成為「天下」共主，其地位最終確立。

《路史·後紀一》載：「黃帝始分土建國」。據說，黃帝奠定天下後，「命風后方割萬里，畫野分疆，得小大之國萬區」，制定國家的職官制度，如以雲為名的中央職官，管宗族事務的稱青雲，管軍事的稱縉雲，又設置了左右大監，負責監督天下諸部落。風后、力牧、常先、大鴻被任命為治民的大臣。他又經常封祭山川鬼神。他以神蓍推算和制定了曆法。他定期巡視各地，瞭解人民生活情況，因此深得人民的愛戴。

此外，黃帝當共主的時候，去古未遠，人民生活簡樸，故黃帝教民生火做飯，吃熟食，又創紡織技術，製作衣服冠冕，禦寒護體。他又命大臣負責不同的技術創造，如羲和與常羲分別負責觀測太陽和月亮，臾區觀測行星，伶倫創製律呂，大撓創立甲子，隸首發明算數，容成綜合以上六術，製作樂律和律曆。黃帝還讓伶倫和垂製造樂器磬和鐘，沮誦和倉頡造字，史皇作圖，雍父造舂和杵臼，夷牟造矢，揮造弓，共鼓和貨狄作舟。

黃帝有四妃十嬪。正妃為西陵氏，名嫘祖，她教人民養蠶繅絲，織出絲綢做衣裳，故有「先蠶」的稱號。次妃名嫫母，傳說發明了鏡子，雖長相醜陋，但德行高尚，深受黃帝敬重。黃帝共有二十五個兒子，其中十四人被分封得姓。這十四人共得到十二個姓，它們是：姬、酉、祁、己、滕、葴、任、荀、僖、姞、儇、衣。而少昊、顓頊、帝嚳、唐堯、虞舜，以及夏朝、商朝、周朝的君主都是黃帝的子孫。據《山海經》大荒北經、大荒西經、大荒東經，北方的北狄、西方的犬戎、東方的東夷都是黃帝後裔。《世本》記載黃帝曾與鬼方聯姻。

據《史記·五帝本紀》，黃帝之子玄囂生帝嚳，帝嚳是商、周的神祖。《史記·周本紀》載，帝嚳元妃姜嫄即周人始祖后稷（棄）的母親。《史記·商本紀》載，帝嚳次妃簡狄則是商部落始祖契的母親。

黃帝的另一子昌意直接與華夏族有關。據《山海經·海內經》，黃帝娶嫘祖為妻，生昌意。昌意生韓流，韓流生顓頊（即高陽氏）。顓頊生窮蟬，窮蟬生敬康，敬康生句望、句望生瞽叟，瞽叟生舜。《國語·魯語》載：「殷人帝舜而祖契」。另據《世本》，顓頊生鯀，其形為白馬。天帝派火神祝融殺死鯀後，剖開鯀的腹部，生出一條黃龍，即大禹（據《山海經·海內經》）。大禹是華夏部族的祖神。

歷代神化

後世對黃帝的神化是逐漸進行的。《莊子》中提到黃帝得道成仙；《史記·孝武本紀》記載「黃帝且戰且學仙。患百姓非其道，乃斷斬非鬼神者。百餘歲然後得與神通」，「仙登於天」；《列仙傳》中的黃帝還能夠驅使群仙。黃帝在道教中被尊為道家開創者之一，有特殊的地位。中華人民共和國學者劉弘認為黃帝在漢朝時代的地位並不如後世這麼高，其地位低於女媧，可能與伏羲相等。

相傳黃帝亦通曉醫術，中醫《黃帝內經》是以黃帝與岐伯討論醫學問題的問答體裁編著的，分成《素問》與《靈樞》二部。但實際上可能是後人假託黃帝之名的作品。

黃帝崩，葬橋山（關于橋山的所在地歷來有所爭議，現今學術界較認可的說法是今河北省張家口市涿鹿縣溫泉屯鄉里虎溝村西南之橋山，其上直至後唐仍有黃帝廟並享有祭祀，直至遼統治中國北方後，從此斷祀）。全國有數座黃帝陵。其中，陝西黃帝陵處于中原漢族區域，因此，自秦統一中國後，歷朝歷代每歲祭奠黃帝陵延續不斷，並且被歷代帝王上升為國家大典，被稱為「天下第一陵」。但實際上，黃帝陵只屬一個衣冠塚，黃帝陵前碑亦表明此事，另外，根據文獻記載，黃帝離世之時在鼎湖鑄鼎，鼎成有飛龍乘彩雲，黃帝駕龍而歸天。

考古證據

河南靈寶西坡遺址被認為可能與黃帝有關。

河南省鞏義市河洛鎮「河洛古國」被認為是黃帝時代的都城遺址。

中華人民共和國考古人員在紅山文化牛河梁大墓發現一老人墓穴，出土了熊龍、雙熊首玉器、泥塑熊的下顎和泥塑熊掌等陪葬品，經分子生物學檢驗，該墓穴主人y染色體單倍群屬于東亞人常見的，也是新石器時代三大超級祖先之一的O-F5。幾乎可以肯定是某一代黃帝部落首領。

近代研究

1894年，拉克伯里在《中國上古文明的西方起源》提出，黃帝來自兩河流域，經崑崙山進入中國中原地區，說法得到章太炎支持。然而隨著分子人類學的發展，這種說法隨即遭到否定。

關於黃帝、炎帝和蚩尤關係的學術討論，目前結論是中國遠古文化並非來自單一來源，黃帝、炎帝和蚩尤可能代表三種不同地區的遠古文化，與考古學家找出的各地文化系統相符，例如遼河文明（紅山文化，對應黃帝）與黃河文明（仰韶文化，對應炎帝）、長江文明（高廟文化，對應伏羲）、長江下游文明（良渚文化，對應顓頊）等等。因此，蚩尤與黃帝、炎帝榆罔合稱「中華三祖」。

美國學者許靖華認為，公元前六千多年氣候變冷，原居葉尼塞河流域的漢藏人南下，擊敗原居於中國的苗族與傜族先民，佔據中國中原地區，形成黃帝擊敗蚩尤的傳說。黃帝代表由蒙古葉尼塞河進居中原的漢藏人，炎帝與蚩尤就代表原居中國東南的苗族與傜族先民。

中國學者楊寬認為，黃帝是周人將殷商的上帝觀念加以轉化及利用的傳說。

中華人民共和國學者徐中舒與丁山考據，最早來源為齊威王田因齊所鑄戰國中期銅器中的銘文，是陳侯因敦拓本，銘文第四行第三字起為「高祖黃帝，邇嗣桓文」，時間約為公元前356年至前320年間。在同時期鄒衍著作中也提到黃帝，說明在戰國時期中期，在齊國已有黃帝傳說，田齊君主以黃帝為高祖。

中國學者余太山認為，月氏與塞種的先祖為允姓之戎。允姓之戎起源自少昊之後，由若水移居至伊洛之間，逐步西遷，後建立貴霜王朝與月氏等。由於月氏與塞種皆具有原始印歐人血統，他進而推測，與允姓之戎一樣，源自黃帝的氏族，如陶唐氏、有虞氏、少昊等，皆可能帶有原始印歐人血統。而中華人民共和國學者曾憲法認為塞種人起源於克里米亞半島與黑海北岸，於公元前2000年至公元前1000年間東擴至羅布泊。中華人民共和國學者韓康信研究發現，漢代以前古代印歐人種東進的地理介限位於新疆東部至甘肅西部之間，在此以東的地區不存在具有印歐人種型態的類群。

中國學者田阡子等人的基因研究指出，漢藏人起源自東亞南部，於4萬至2萬年前間北上至黃河中上游。

中國學者李輝據現代分子人類學與考古學成果推測源於磁山文化的東夷少典部落分化出黃帝部落，於公元前4000年北遷，趕跑了使用芬蘭-烏拉爾語的趙寶溝文化上層，創造了紅山文化。。中華人民共和國學者高晶一認為漢語的雅言屬于漢藏語系，而漢語的俗語屬于漢芬蘭語系，這跟黃帝部落北遷有關。

中華人民共和國中國社會科學院考古研究所研究員曹定雲認為，天黿是軒轅氏的圖騰。

影響

黃帝被尊奉為「中華始祖」。柳翼謀評論黃帝時代是洪水以前最盛之時代：「自燧人以迄唐、虞洪水之時，其歷年雖無確數，以意度之，最少當亦不下數千年。故合而觀其製作，則驚古聖之多；分而按其時期，則見初民之陋。犧、農之時，雖有琴瑟、罔罟、耒耜、兵戈諸物，其生活之單簡可想。至黃帝時，諸聖勃興，而宮室、衣裳、舟車、弓矢、文書、圖畫、律曆、算數始並作焉。故洪水以前，實以黃帝時為最盛之時。」

黃帝部落和炎帝部落的後裔逐漸形成漢族，因而他們被視為漢民族共同的祖先，故華人（包括部分海外華人）以「炎黃子孫」自稱。

祭奠

早在春秋戰國時，新鄭就有三月三風後頂拜軒轅的習俗。軒轅黃帝是中華民族的人文始祖，華夏炎黃子孫的共同祖先。據史書記載，軒轅黃帝故里在河南新鄭。春秋時代的歷史典籍中就有三月三登新鄭具茨山（俗稱「始祖山」）朝拜黃帝的記載，由民間自辦，一直如此。此外在陝西黃帝陵、浙江縉雲縣也有舉行祭祀或拜祖活動。

中樞遙祭黃帝陵典禮

中華民國二十四年（1935年）4月7日中央派代表至陝西省中部縣橋山之麓黃帝陵致祭，舉行首次民族掃墓典禮，其後每年均比照辦理。

中華民國六十九年（1980年）由中華民國內政部主辦中樞遙祭黃帝陵典禮。

清明公祭軒轅黃帝典禮

2004年開始，由陝西省人民政府主辦清明公祭軒轅黃帝典禮。

黃帝故里拜祖大典

2006年，河南省委把新鄭當地舉辦的拜黃帝活動升格為由河南省人民政府、政協河南省委員會、國務院台灣事務辦公室、中華全國歸國華僑聯合會、中華全國台灣同胞聯誼會、中華炎黃文化研究會等主辦的黃帝故里拜祖大典，承辦單位為鄭州市人民政府、政協鄭州市委員會，執行單位為新鄭市人民政府。

黃帝故里拜祖大典是由中華人民共和國國務院下屬的國務院僑務辦公室、國務院台灣事務辦公室、中華全國台灣同胞聯誼會、中華炎黃文化研究會、世界華僑華人社團聯合總會和河南省人民政府於每年中國農曆三月初三在黃帝故里河南省新鄭市舉辦的祭拜性活動。台灣國民黨榮譽主席連戰、吳伯雄，台灣新黨主席鬱慕明，台灣親民黨主席宋楚瑜，中國當代著名藝術理論家、文化史學家、散文家余秋雨，澳門特別行政區社會文化司司長崔世安，著名演員唐國強，全國人大常委會副委員長、中華炎黃文化研究會會長許嘉璐，民革中央常務副主席周鐵農等等各界優秀的炎黃子孫出席歷屆大典。

2006年5月20日，黃帝陵祭典經中華人民共和國國務院批准列入第一批國家級非物質文化遺產名錄。

2008年國務院確定新鄭黃帝拜祖祭典為第一批國家級非物質文化遺產擴展項目（編號480Ⅹ-32）。

家庭

• 父母

　• 少典（《史記·五帝本紀》、《國語·晉語四》）

　• 附寶（《帝王世紀》）

• 兄弟

　• 炎帝（《國語·晉語四》）

• 妻妾

　• 嫘祖（《史記·五帝本紀》、《帝王世紀》）

　• 女節（《帝王世紀》）

　• 彤魚氏（《路史·黃帝紀》、《帝王世紀》，《漢書·古今人表》作「肜魚氏」，《雲笈七籤·軒轅本紀》作「費修」）

　• 嫫母（《漢書·古今人表》、《路史·黃帝紀》、《帝王世紀》）

• 子女

　• 玄囂，己姓。（《史記·五帝本紀》、《國語·晉語四》）

　• 昌意（《史記·五帝本紀》、《帝王世紀》）

　• 青陽，姬姓。（《國語·晉語四》、《帝王世紀》）

　• 揮（《路史·黃帝紀》）

　• 夷鼓，己姓。（《國語·晉語四》、《漢書·古今人表》、《帝王世紀》，《路史·黃帝紀》作「夷彭」）

　• 蒼林，姬姓。（《國語·晉語四》、《漢書·古今人表》、《路史·黃帝紀》）

　• 禺陽，任姓。（《路史·黃帝紀》）

　• 休（《路史·黃帝紀》）

　• 清（《路史·黃帝紀》）

　• 苗龍（《山海經·大荒北經》）

　• 駱明（《山海經·海內經》）

　• 禺虢（《山海經·大荒東經》）

• 孫子

　• 顓頊

　• 蟜極

影視形象

• 1996年大陸版電視劇《炎黃二帝》：董子武飾演黃帝

• 2001年香港版TVB電視劇《封神榜》：黃煒溏飾演黃帝

• 2006年大陸版電視劇《傳奇·幻想殷商》：楊千里飾演黃帝

• 2010年大陸版電視劇《遠古的傳說》：丁軍飾演黃帝

• 2013年大陸版電視劇《英雄時代·炎黃大帝》：朱曉漁、文替飾演黃帝

• 2016年大陸版電影《軒轅大帝》：于波飾演黃帝