User:Madalibi/Yellow Emperor notes

Goes with User:Madalibi/Yellow Emperor. See also Yellow Emperor.

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• "legendary cultural hero" (Sterckx 2002: 95)

Sarah Allan (1991)

• QUOTE: "The assumption that myth derives from history is no longer possible."

• Zhou texts place Yao and Shun at the beginning of history. QUOTE: "In the early Han dynasty, the Yellow Emperor Huang Di and his descendant Zhuan Xu were placed before Yao in the historical sequence."

• QUOTE: "In the Xia annals of the Shiji, the Xia ancestry is traced from Yu 禹 back to Huang Di, the Yellow Lord. The Annals of the Five Emperors, the first chapter of the Shiji, also begin with Huang Di. Thus, by the end of the second century B.C., Huang Di was regarded as the first ruler of China. This tradition, as Yang Kuan observed in the Gushibian, did not begin until the late Warring States period. But even in the texts of the late Warring States and early Han, history conventionally bagins with the time of Yao."

• QUOTE: "Huang Di was credited with the ancestry of many ancient tribes, but he is particularly associated with the Xia, so much so that Chen Mengjia attempted to identify him with Yu 禹. [Note 32:.] His surname, for example, was You Nai (or Xiong) Shi 有熊氏 or, alternatively, Xuan Yuan Shi 軒轅氏. As I shall discuss below, both Yu and his father Gun turned into a yellow 熊, three-legged turtle or dragon. Xuan Yuan is also the Heavenly or Black Turtle (tian 天 or xuan 玄黿) and in some versions of the myth this is the name of the mountain through which Yu passed when he turned into a 熊.[Note 33:.]

• QUOTE: "Yang Kuan, on the other hand, argued that Huang Di was Shang Di. This is based on a series: Shang Di 上帝, Huang Shang Di 皇上帝, Huang Di 皇帝, Huang Di 黃帝--in which Huang Di 黃帝, the Yellow Lord is supposed to have originated with a taboo for the character huang 皇, 'august' referring to the High Lord. Huang 黃, 'yellow' and huang 皇, 'august' were homophones in classical Chinese (*g'wâng), but their meaning is quite distinct and it is unlikely that the cult of the Yellow Emperor, which was very popular in the late Warring States and Han times, could have derived from a taboo character. Huang, august (originally a shining sun over earth) refers to the sky (as in da huang 大皇) and it was used as an adjuective to describe Shang Di as early as the Shijing. (Only after the 'First Emperor' of Qin styled humself Shi Huangdi, did huangdi come to refer to an earthly ruler rather than the August Lord.) Huang 黃, yellow on the other hand, is the color of the springs which ran under the earth and in oracle bone inscriptions it is one of two colors, yellow-bright, as opposed to xuan 玄 dark, the color of the sky and sun-birds, in a primitive color dualism. This suggests that the Yellow Lord may have originally been the Lord of the underworld, the counterpart of Shang Di, the Lord on High.

• QUOTE: "In five element theory, Huang Di was associated with the earth, yellow, dragons, and the center. According to the Lüshi chunqiu (13/4a) which was written in the late third century B.C. and includes one of the earliest formulations of five-element theory, "In the time of the Yellow Lord, Heaven first caused large earthworms and mole-crickets to appear. The Lord said, 'The spirit of earth is in ascendancy'. The spirit of earth was in ascendancy, therefore he esteemed yellow as his color and took soil as his concern." Earthworms, as mentioned above, both eat soil and drink from the Yellow Springs. Mole-crickets, bore in the earth and sing sadly in the evening. The Huainanzi (3/3a), about a century later, stated, "As for the central land, its lord is the Yellow Lord,...his animal, the yellow / dragon.' Elsewhere in the Huainananzi (4/11a), we are told that the Yellow Dragon born of the ether of the central earth (after a number of transformations) hides in the Yellow Springs. The yellow earth and the yellow springs which run beneath it are thus connected.

• QUOTE: "However, Huang Di is not only the Lord of the central region. He is frequently identified with a cult of immortality associated with the Kunlun 崑崙 Mountains in the far west of China. At the foot of the Kinlun Mountains, there was a Ruo (*ńiok) 弱 River identifiable with the 若 (*ńiak) River which had its source at the Ruo Tree. This was the birthplace of Huang Di's descendants, as I shall discuss below. It may also have been an entry to the land of the dead. (Ultimately all waters must have derived from the Yellow Springs). The Kunlun Mountains were also the home of Xi Wang Mu 西王母, the Queen Mother of the west who have the Archer Yi the elixir of immortality.

• Two souls, hun 魂 and po 魄. [Attested in the Shang?] QUOTE: "In Shang times, the Lord on high, Shang Di--usually called simply Di--was the lord of the spirit world, issuing commands to the natural phenomenon and standing at the apex of the hierarchy of ancestral spirits. However, the Shang not only divined to determine the approval of Di and their ancestors before performing certain acts, they also divined about the approval of 'below and above' (xia shang 下上). Only in Zhou times, was Shang Di identified with Tian 天, heaven. If a Lord of the Yellow Springs, that is a Lord Below, existed, he, like the po soul, had no cult. In the late Warring States Period, however, men began to attempt to preserve themselves not simply as ancestors, that is hun souls receiving offerings, but corporeally, by prolonging life and by preservation of the corpse, as at Mawangdui. This may explain the sudden prominence of the Yellow Lord.

• QUOTE: "With the rise of the Warring States cults of immortality, the Lord of / the netherworld was transformed into the Lord of the western paradise. In five-element theory, however, he became the Lord of the center. In this guise, he fought the Red Lord Yan Di 炎帝 (that is Chi You 蚩尤), whose emblem was fire, for possession of the Hollow Mulberry--perhaps a new transformation of the earlier fire and water dualism. In the historiography, there also became five emperors: Huang Di, Zhuan Xu (his descendant, as discussed below), Yao, Shun and Yu.

• QUOTE: "According to the Shiji Huang Di had a son by the "Woman of the Western Mound" Lei Zu 缧祖, called Chang Yi 昌意. In the Shanhaijing, Lei Zu is written as 雷祖, 'thunder ancestress'. Chang Yi and his descendants are identified with the west, water and death or immortality. In the Xia Annals, Chang Yi was the father of Zhuang Xu 顓頊, but in the Shanhaijing, Han Liu 韓流 intervenes between the two generations:

Huang Di's wife Lei Zu gave birth to Chang Yi. Chang Yi descended and made his home in the Ruo River. He begot Han Liu. Han Liu had a long throat and small ears, a human face with a pig's snout, a scaly body, thighs like wheel rims and pettitoed feet. He took Zhuozi X子 who was called A Nü 阿女 as his wife; she bore him Di Zhuan Xu.

The Guben zhushu jinian 古本竹書紀年 also records that Chang Yi descended and made his home in the Ruo River although in that confusion of sequence which is characteristic of this mythological era, Chang Yi and his son--called Han Huang 韓荒 in this text--are placed before Huang Di. The Ruo River, as I noted above, had its source at the Ruo Tree, the western counterpart of the Fu Sang."

• QUOTE: "The historical legends of Yao and Shun and of a Xia dynast founded by Yu derive from Shang myth. Within the Shang myth system, their ancestors were identified with the ten suns which were also birds which was the basis of their ritual calendar and they had a myth of descent from a sun-bird. THis Shang origin myth occurs in Zhou texts in several forms: as the myth of Di Ku 帝嚳 and the black bird (xuan niao 玄鳥) who impregnated Jian Di 簡狄 to give birth to Shang Xie 商契; as the story of Xihe 羲和 who have birth to the ten suns (the jun-ravens X鳥) and whose husband was called Jun 俊; and, in the historical tradition, as Yao's appointment of Shun who, with Yao's daughter E Huang 娥皇, was the progenitor of Shang Jun 商均 (see figure 8).

• QUOTE: "Within the Shang myth system, there was also a dualism, the antecedent of later yin-yang theory, in which the suns, sky, birds, east, life, the Lord on High were opposed to the moons, watery underworld, dragons, west, death, the Lord below..., and a myth in which the Shang ancestors who were identified with the suns, east,..., had vanquished a previous people, the Xia, identified with the underworld, dragons, west,.... When the Zhou conquered the Shang, this myth was reintepreted in the light of their own historical context as a similar historical event at an earlier period and the Xia came to be regarded as a political dynasty. Later, Huang Di 黃帝, originally the lord of the underworld or Yellow Springs and thus closely associated with the Xia, was also transformed into an historical ruler and, with his descendant Zhuan Xu 顓頊, placed before Yao, who was a transformation of the Lord on High, Shang Di 上帝, in the historical sequence. Thus, the historical accounts from Huang Di to the Xia may all be understood as deriving from a Shang myth system."

• QUOTE: "The belief that the Shang were fathered by a bird and there were ten sun-birds which rose alternately from the branches of a mulberry tree in the far east of the world has the hallmark of myth--an impossibility in the natural world. Though the myth contined at some level of society, its irrationality was recognized and, indeed, made explicit by the Han Dynasty rationalist Wang Chong who argued, for example, that the Mulberry Tree would have been burntup by the heat of the suns and their fire extinguished when they bathed in the pond at the foot of the tree. At another level, that of the literati and historians, the problem of the irrationality of the ancient myths was dealth with by excising their more fantastic elements and regarding them as exaggerated history. This was the origin not only of the story of Yao's abdication to Shun, but of the Xia as a dynasty which preceded the Shang and the Yellow Emperor whose original role was lord of the underworld."

• QUOTE: "Pre-Shang 'history', from the Yellow Emperor to the founding of the Xia dynasty can all be understood as a later transformation and systematizaion of Shang myth. The story of Yao's abdication to Shun which first appears in the Yaodian chapter of the Shang shu was originally a story of the High Lord Di's appointment of the first Shang ancestor. Thus the cosmogonic events of the Zhou texts, such as the great flood and the butting of the northwestern mountain which caused the earth and sky to tilt toward one another, are normally placed 'in the time of Yao--that historical period which had come to represent the mythical 'time long ago' of the high ancestors. The Xia were also the mythological opposites of the Shang, a watery people associated with death and the underworld, who were transformed into a political dynasty by the Zhou. By the Han, their 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.

K.C. Chang (1983)

• Yellow Emperor as "the initiator of civilization."
• QUOTE: "The most prominent of the heroic deeds of the Three Sovereigns and the Five Emperors are those attributed to the Yellow Emperor (Figure 18). He was the first great warrior among the sage ancestors: he fought Ch'ih Yu, a rival for supremacy, and defeated him at Chuo-lu (in Hopei), in the first great battle in Chinese history. He was also credited with the invention of the carriage and boat, the bronze mirror, housing, the cooking pot and the steamer, the crossbow, and a kind of football."
• A few things on p. 120 about the similarities between legendary stories and the archeological record.

Kwang-chih Chang (1999)

• Shi ben 世本 (Roots of the generations), a text available already to Sima Qian, credited Huangdi with the invention of "cooked meals" and the "crown."
• QUOTE: "Although different reconstructions of the Shi ben sometimes give different attributions of the same inventions, the major heroes are invariably Fu Xi, Sui Ren, and Shen Nong. They were, respectively, the inventors of hunting, fire, and agriculture (and medicine). They were followed by the Yellow Emperor (Huang Di), who established rule and most of its trappings. In the historiographic sources of the Later Han dynasty, these heroes were systematized into the San huang 三皇 (Three August Ones), and the Wu di 五帝 (Five Emperors). In the three-period system adopted here, we may place the creation heroes into the category of gods, the San huang into that of the demigods, and the Wu di into that of the legendary kings."

Kenneth DeWoskin (1983)

• QUOTE: "Huang-Lao was a school of Taoism popular from late archaic times and the early Han, and ultimately influential in the development of religious Taoism as it emerged at the fall of the Han. While the provenance of the name is the subject of debate, it is generally agreed that scholars of the Chi-hsia Academy (beginning from the fourth century B.C.) were in the Huang-lao tradition, engaged in the merging of fundamental Taoist doctrine associated with Lao-tzu, and the numerological speculation, alchemical research, and physiological investigations associated with Huang-ti, the Yellow Sovereign."

Frank Dikotter (1992)

• QUOTE: "Commonalities are created as groups develop symbols of identification and distinguish between in- and outgroup members. 'Race' was a symbol of fictive biological cohesion capable of overarching regional allegiances and linking lineage loyalties in the face of foreign aggression. 'Race', as will be demonstrated in the next chapter, would create nationhood. On the basis of internal conflicts between lineages, the reformers constructed a representation of external conflicts between races. Members of the yellow lineage had to fight against the members of the white lineage. The Yellow Emperor became the common ancestor of all Chinese. The ancestral territories, the divine soil of the Middle Kingdom traditionally associated with the colour yellow, in opposition to the 'red' and 'black' soils of the barbarians, needed to be defended against the white lineage. The 'white peril' was indeed a remarkable Chinese counterpart of the 'yellow peril' fear than prevailing in the West."

• QUOTE: "The myth of blood was sealed by elevating the figure of the Yellow Emperor to a national symbol. The Yellow Emperor (Huangdi) was a mythical figure thought to have reigned from 2697 to 2597 BC. He was hailed as the first ancestor (shizu) of the Han race, and his portrait served as the frontispiece in many nationalist publications. From mis-1903, the radical magazines started using dates based on the supposed date of birth of the Yellow Emperor. Liu Shipei's (1884-1919) first published article advocated the introduction of a calendar in which the foundation year corresponded to the birth of the Yellow Emperor. 'They [the reformers] see the preservation of religion [baojiao] as a handle, so they use the birth of Confucius as the starting date of the calendar; the purpose of our generation is the preservation of the race [baozhong], so we use the birth of the Yellow Emperor as a founding date.' Liu Shipei estimated that the Yellow Emperor ascended the throne in his eleventh year. The Mongolian barbarians had destroyed the Song in 3993, the Manchus had captured Shanhaiguan in 4359, and the international expedition had entered Beijing in 4611: all were foreign races that had forcibly occupied the territory of the descendants of the Yellow Emperor, the Han race. The Yellow EMperor remained a powerful figure for many decades. Despite the historian Gu Jiegang's severe criticism of the myth in the 1920s, he was still officially revered in 1941 as the founder of the nation and initiator of the race."

• QUOTE: "The religion of the Yellow Emperor was formally established in Taiwan in March 1957 with government approval; see C. Joachim, 'Flowers, fruit, and incense only: Elite versus popular in Taiwan's religion of the Yellow Emperor', Modern China, 16, no. 1 (Jan. 1990), p. 7."

• QUOTE: "Traditional ideas reinforced the construct of race. COnfucian values of filial piety and ancestor worship paved the way for the cult of the Yellow Emperor. Racial loyalty was perceived as an extension of lineage loyalty. The revolutionary Chen Tianhua (1875-1905) integrated traditional values into a pattern of racial solidarity in his influential pamphlets, read throughout the Yangzi valley: 'As the saying goes, a man is not close to people of another family [xing, 'surname']. When two families fight each other, one surely assists one's own family, one definitely does not help the foreign [wai, 'exterior'] family. Common families all descend from one original family: the Han race is one big family. The Yellow Emperor is the great ancestor, all those who are not of the Han race are not the descendants of the Yellow Emperor, they are exterior families. One shoud definitely not assits them; if one assists them, one lacks a sense of ancestry.' Kin terms were infused into a racial rhetoric that called forth emotional expressions usually reserved for close relatives: 'Racial feeling begins at birth. For the members of one's own race, there is surely mutual intimacy and love; for the members of a foreign race, there is surely mutual savagery and killing.' Such terms fostered the much needed bonds of association and loyalty within the group."

• QUOTE: "The young revolutionary Zou Rong also regretted the absence of a strong 'racual consciousness' (zhongxing) in China capable of uniting the people in their struggle against the oppressors. Zou Rong greeted the 'peasants with weatherbeaten faces and mud-caked hands and feet' as his genuine countryment, the proud / descendants of the Yellow Emperor."

• QUOTE: "It was the unchanging norm of race which distinguished 'the kinsmen and fellow countrymen of our great Han race' from 'barbarians', in particular the Manchus. The Manchus were to be excluded from the unsullied Han race: 'What you, fellow countrymen, today call court, government or emperor, are what we once called barbarians (of North, South, East or West), Hsiung-nu or Tartars. These tribes, living beyond the Shanhaikuan, were not by origin of the same race as the illustrious descendants of our Yellow Emperor. Their land is foul land, they are of a furry race, their hearts are beast's hearts, their customs are the customs of the users of wool, their writing is different from ours, and their clothes are different from ours."

Prasenjit Duara (1995)

• QUOTE: "We can better understand the complex transactions between past and present by examining the representational and linguistic structures of revolutionary ideology.... Donald Price believes that the representation of the nation embedded in the new conception of common descent from the Yellow Emperor was enabled by an extended and redefined filial piety (xiao). Racial vengeance against the Manchus was now an obligation one owed to one's ancestors whether or not they were of one's immediate lineage (Price 1992, 1052-53).

• The Yellow Emperor's QUOTE: "status as a national symbol came to dominate nationalist discourse throughout the first few decades of the twentieth century.

• QUOTE: "Neither the notion of simple continuity nor that of invention can do justice to the subtle transactions between the past and the present. The past does not shape the present simply by persisting in it. It enables the transformation of the present and in that transformation, is itself much transformed. Attention to the manner in which dominant narratives seek to inflect and mobilize the meanings of existing symbols and practices offers a more promising beginning to understanding history."

• QUOTE: "Racial loyalty came to be perceived as an extension of lineage loyalty and the myth of common ancestry and blood became a most important bond for the Republican revolutionaries' conception of the racially pure nation (Indeed, at one point in the first essay, Tao remarks: "Are we Han Chinese not all children of the Yellow Emperor?" [Tao Chengzhang n.d., 125])."

Patricia Ebrey (1996)

• QUOTE: "Most peoples have myths about their origins, and the Chinese are no exception. THroughout most of the imperial period, literate Chinese had a 'great man' theory of how their civilization developed. Unlike other peoples who pointed to gods as their creators or progenitors, the Chinese attributed to a series of extraordinarily brilliant human beings the inventions that step by step transformed the Chinese from a primitive people to a highly civilized one. Fu Xi, the Ox-tamer, domesticated animals and invented the family. Shen Nong, the Divine Farmer, invented the plough and hoe. Huang Di, the Yellow Lord, invented the bow and arrow, boats, carts, ceramics, writing, and silk. He also fought a great battle against alien tribes, thus securing the Yellow River plain for his people. In China's earliest histories he was labelled the first of the five great pre-dynastic rulers, the last two of whom were Yao and Shun....

These legends reveal how educated Chinese from the time of COnfucius (c. 500 BC) onwards constructed 'China'."

Lothar von Falkenhausen (2006)

• QUOTE: "If the institution of clan exogamy was a Zhou innovation, it may have stemmed from a deliberate policy, intended--like Alexander's command to his Macedonian officers to marry Persian women--to unify the Zhou realm by eliminating preexisting ethnic and cultural differences within it. Another potential strategy for incorporating outsiders into a kin-based network is adoption. As a possible instance of this, 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. [Note 8: Karlgren 1946; Wang Mingke 1999.] Contrary to many historians who take these constructions as historical fact, I believe that they represent retrospective attempts to shape historical memory and to conceptualize relationships among ever larger populations in terms of 'fictive kinship.' (One indicator of mythopoeia is the curious fact that the later / the sources, the more ancient are the allegedly shared ancestors.) Such processes are commonplaces among all ethnic groups all over the world."
• Defined in glossary as a "mythical ruler of remote antiquity"

Richard von Glahn (2004)

• QUOTE: "Despite his allegiance to the tenets of Legalism, which denied the existence of a huminous realm beyond mundane sense perception, the First Emperor instituted a state religion that combined the doctrines of correlative cosmology and the exuberant visions of favored fangshi with worship of deities long honored by Qin rulers, most notably Huangdi, or the Yellow Thearch. In part due to Qin patronage, Huangdi became the most vaunted figure in both official ad popular pantheons of the gods."
• QUOTE: "The systematizing impulse of correlative cosmology prompted incorporation of these sundry local gods [i.e., mountain and river spirits] into a comprehensive pantheon crowned by the Five Thearchs (Wudi), each of whom symbolized one of the Five Phases of cosmic order. The Five Thearchs also fused with ancient mountain-god cults, assuming alter egos as the presiding deities of the Five Marchmounts (Wuyue), the five sacred mountains of China. Zhou texts often invoked the Four Marchmounts as a metaphor or the ruling lineages of distant regions, especially the foreign peoples around the periphery of the Zhou ecumene. By the Warring States period a fifth marchmount had been added, to conform to the symmatry of Five Phases cosmology, and each of the marchmounts was identified with a particular sage-king of antiquity.
• QUOTE: "According to the Han historian Sima Qian, veneration of the Five Thearchs dated back at least to Lord Xiang of Qin (r. 776-764 B.C.E.), the first Qin ruler admitted into the collegium of Zhou vassals, who was said to have worshiped the White Thearch (Baidi) as patron of the Qin ruling house. The White Thearch was believed to be the apotheosis of Shaohao, eldest son of Huangdi. Shaohao was associated with the power of metal and hence its corresponding color, white, and direction, the west. Since Qin was located at the extreme western edge of the Zhou polity, it logically followed that the Qin rulers should have adopted Shaohao, in the guise of the White Thearch, as their patron deity. But the claim that Lord Xiang initiated the Qin cult of the White Thearch probably represents a later interpolation that retroactively identified the White Thearch with an ancient god worshiped in the area of the original Qin capital. In any event, the Qin rulers were not exclusively dedicated to the cult of the White Thearch. Lord Ling of Qin (r. 423-413 B.C.E.) built shrines for the worship of Huangdi and the Fiery Thearch (Yandi), two figures depicted in legend as fierce adversaries. 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."
• QUOTE: "In late Warring States texts Huangdi appears as an ancient sage-king, but by Han times Huangdi was regarded as an avatar of the supreme deity (Shangdi/Tiandi). The ruling house of Qi, the dominant state in eastern China, claimed descent from Huangdi, and the prominence of the Qi capital as the main philosophical forum of the day and the hearth of theories of correlative cosmology no doubt burnished Huangdi's image as a paragon of wisdom and leadership. At this time the name SHangdi also was rendered as Huangdi [皇帝] or "Resplendent Thearch," and it seems / likely that as the precepts of correlative cosmology became more deeply entrenched the homonymous Huangdi (Yellow Thearch) gained wide currency as an alternative name for the supreme deity. Huangdi [皇帝] was also the title chosen by King Zheng of Qin (who styled himself Qin Shihuangdi, or "First of the Resplendent Thearchs of Qin") to express his dignity as emperor. (The prosaic English translation of Huangdi as "emperor" obviously fails to capture the implications of theocratic power imbedded in the Chinese word.)"
• QUOTE: "Huangdi emerged in Warring States mythology as the archetypal hero of the autocratic monarchs of the day and the antithesis of the warriors of the Spring and Autumn aristocracy. Legends current in Han times depict Huangdi as an extraordinary mortal named Xuanyuan who lived at the dawn of human civilization, in the declining years of the dynasty established by the first sage-king, Shennong (the Divine Husbandsman, reputed to be the inventor of agriculture). Xuanyuan fought righteous wars against the forces of disorder, restoring tranquility to the human world, and in gratitude the multitude elected him as supreme ruler, displacing the lineage of Shennong. Huangdi also figured in Han legend as a god of storms and rain, and thus was the natural adversary of the Fiery Thearch, god of the sun and drought. Huangdi and the Fiery Thearch used their respective "weapons of water and fire" to battle each other for control over the fate of the agricultural cycle and dominion over the mortal world. Virtually all myths emphasize Huangdi's resort to coercion and violence as a necessary expedient to subdue lawless elements and restore civil rule. Consequently, the exaltation of Huangdi as the paragon of sage rule affirmed the sovereign's legitimate use of violence to impose order. As the inventor of the codes of ritual and law by which civil society could be created and sustained, Huangdi provided a compelling precedent for autocratic monarchs seeking to bring to heel the obdurate and fractious warrior nobility."
• QUOTE: "In legend and myth Huangdi's most formidable opponent was a baleful warrior known as Chiyou. Though scholars differ on the mythic origins of Chiyou, by the Warring States period Chiyou was joined to Huangdi mythology as the archetype of anarchic violence and conflict. In the Punishments of Lü (Lüxing; now preserved as a chapter of the Documents) and other third-century B.C.E. texts, Chiyou is blamed for inventing metallic weapons and using them to sow disorder. A late Han text describes Chiyou as a savage man-beast hybrid.... / Unable to restrain Chiyou and his cohorts with suasion and kindness, Huangdi finally launched a punitive campaign against them. Yet Huangdi triumphed only through divine intercession. Heaven dispatched the Dark Woman to bestow magic charms on Huangdi, who used them as weapons to vanquish Chiyou and put him to death."
• QUOTE: "Popular legends, such as the one just cited, identified Chiyou as the inventor of "the five kinds of weapons" (wubing), though learned authorities, no doubt appalled by Chiyou's outlaw character, instead credited the invention of weapons to Huangdi. Both Huangdi and Chiyou were venerated as gods of war by the Qin and Han emperors. The two represented contrasting faces of violence: whereas Huangdi exemplified the legitimate use of force in defense of the rule of law, Chiyou stood for wanton mayhem. But of course the two aspects of warfare could not be completely differentiated. Following his defeat at the hands of Huangdi, Chiyou was said to have entered the latter's service and earned distinction as Huangdi's loyal lieutenant. Huangdi's defeat of Chiyou thus became a metaphor for the triumph of order over anarchy, a basic motif in Chinese religious culture."
• Popular Han worship of Chiyou as a demon-repelling deity. QUOTE: "Shrines dedicated to Chiyou in the vicinity of Jizhou (Shandong), reputedly the site of the climactic battle between Chiyou and Huangdi, depicted him in human form but with bovine hooves, four eyes, and six hands. Chiyou was also described as having horns, and forelocks as sharp as the blades of weapons. Chiyou thus became the mythic double of Huangdi: while the latter evolved into a regal sovereign presiding over a tranquil kingdom, Chiyou remained a stark reminder of the harsh punishments meted out to those who flouted the monarch's laws."
• QUOTE: "The Qing rulers' devotion to Huangdi heralded the rise of a new conception of the ruler as a thaumaturgic king, master of all the elemental powers of the universe. Huangdi quite literally became central to the conceptions of human history that arose from Five Phases cosmology: as the presiding god-king of the Center (linked to the element earth and the color yellow in Five Phases correspondences), Huangdi stood both at the beginning of Chinese civilization and the apex of the celestial pantheon. The august majesty of Huangdi shines through the epiphany described in the Hanfeizi, a Legalist treatise of the third century B.C.E.... Here we see Huangdi commanding the awesome powers of nature embodied in spirits like the Wind Lord and Rain Master. Although the ceremonial complex the Qin rulers built at Yong, their capital from 677 to 384 B.C.E., included altars devoted to the other thearchs in addition to Huangdi, the latter ranked as the supreme lord of the divine and mortal realms. In Han dynasty cosmological lore Huangdi was transmogrified into an omnipotent deity and progenitor of the universe. One of the cosmographic works collected into the anthology Treatises of Huainan (second century B.C.E.) portrays Huangdi as a star god with power over the fate of mortals. The stellar monarch and his four chamberlains, located in the central constellations of the northern sky, took note of human conduct, rewarding virtue with long life and punishing evildoers by shortening their allotted life span. Elsewhere in the same anthology Huangdi / is said to be the "creator of yin and yang," the elemental forces of the universe."
• QUOTE: "The apotheosis of Huangdi perhaps reflects a process of euhemerization, the transformation through myth and legend of an actual person into a god. But it is more likely that Huangdi originated as a god of rain and storms, and only later did philosophers and historians, turning their back on what they regarded as the fanciful caricatures, treat him as a historical figure. The rationalist temper of Warring States-Han thought produced two utterly distinct images of Huangdi. In political philosophy, Huangdi was dressed int he raiment of the sage-king, a paragon of the just use of force, but nevertheless very much a mortal human being. Metaphysicians, in contrast, rendered Huangdi into a wholly depersonalized abstraction, a categorical imperative of Five Phases cosmology, essential to the workings of the cosmos but divorced from mundane life. Yet among the populace at large, as we shall see, these two contrasting images fused into the more vivid person of the awesome lord of the underworld."
• QUOTE: "We find in Han religion a variety of gods who appear as supreme deities, controlling the fate of mortals in life and in death. As we have seen, contemporary mythology ascribed to Huangdi the power (not unlike that of Siming, the Sovereign of Life Destiny) to lengthen or shorten the life span of mortals in accordance with their good and evil actions. More commonly, the disposition of the dead was ascribed to the Lord of Mount Tai (Taishan fujun), the presiding deity of the sacred mountain of the east, chief among the Five Marchmounts (Wuyue). The Lord of Mount Tai ruled over an array of officials charged with recording all good and evil acts committed by individual mortals, as well as the appointed hour of their death, in voluminous registers of life and death.... Although the Lord of Mount Tai prevailed over Huangdi as the supreme god of the underworld in later mythology, in Han texts the two deities seem to be virtually interchangeable. For example, a mortuary text deated 173 C.E. states that "the Yellow God [Huangshen; i.e., Huangdi] governs the Five Marchmounts, who are in charge of the registers of the dead and summon the hun and po souls." This document suggests that the gods of each of the Five Marchmounts kept registers of life and death for the population within their jurisdiction, while Huangdi retained final control over the fate of the dead. Even more commonly, Han tomb documents refer to the supreme deity as the Celestial Thearch (Tiandi)."
• Cites talisman found in tomb. QUOTE: "The language of this talisman, which closes with the standard valediction used in Han imperial edicts, expresses the close correspondence between the operations of imperial and celestial government. The underworld magistrates before whom the dead were brought to be judged applied inquisitorial procedures that replicated the language and / formalities of the actual Han justice system. The Celestial Thearch (or, alternatively, Huangdi or the Lord of Mount Tai) delegated authority over matters of life and death to subordinates who--like their counterparts in Han government, the local magistrates--determined guilt or innocence after meticulous review of the comprehensive documentary record of the individual's life.
• New type of documents in tombs from the end of the first century C.E. QUOTE: "The petitions were addressed to the Celestial Thearch or the Yellow God (that is, Huangdi). Early specimens of these documents, which Anna Seidel has called "celestial ordinances for the dead," beseech the magistrates of the underworld to make certain that the deceased was fated to die at this moment, and to protect the soul from hostile demons."
• QUOTE: "Figures like the Queen Mother of the West, the Lord of Mount Tai, and to some extent Huangdi were directly modeled on terrestrial monarchs, yet they remained transcendent gods. In contrast, most of the gods of Han religion were portrayed as once having been ordinary mortals."
• QUOTE: "Lewis (1990: 183-85) describes Chiyou as an alter ego of Huangdi, associated (like Huangdi) with dragons and storms, an interpretation that finds support from the research of Mori 1970. But Allan (1991: 67) instead identifies Chiyou with the Fiery Thearch, and thus the antithesis of the Huangdi."
• QUOTE: "Most scholars regard stories about Huangdi as a divine figure associated with rain and storms as vestiges of an older oral mythology. Puett (1998) has / challenged this view, instead arguing that the deified Huangdi was a later transfiguration of a figure originally portrayed as a mortal sage-king who symbolized the necessity of the monarch's resort to legitimate force to create a civil society. Puett rightly disparages the notion that there is a single, coherent mythology of Huangdi, and he is probably correct in asserting that the image of Huangdi as the archetypal civilizing ruler is a product of the political discourse of the late Warring States era and not derived from any putative older oral traditions. Yet Sima Qian's claim that the Qin rulers already in the fifth century B.C.E. worshiped Huangdi and the Fiery Thearch, presumably as paired gods of rain and sun, should not be dismissed out of hand. As in the case of the Queen Mother of the West, it is probably that there were regional variations in the myths related to Huangdi."

Martin Kern (2000)

• QUOTE: ""The earliest passage where Mt. T'ai appears in a truly exalted position is Han Fei-tzu (3.44), i.e., in a Ch'in text almost contemporary with the inscriptions: here, we are told that the legendary Yellow Thearch (Huang-ti 黄帝) once assembled the spirits on the top of Mt. T'ai. It seems that the cosmic significance of the mountain developed parallel to, or maybe even together with, the equally recent myth of the Yellow Thearch as a cosmic ruler. (To Han Wu-ti the Yellow Thearch became the foremost model of a cosmic emperor who performed the feng ritual on Mt. T'ai and thereby finally achieved transcendence.)"

Mark Edward Lewis (2006)

• QUOTE: "The sages play two key roles in the later sections of the Shan hai jing. First, they are the mythic forebears of virtually all the peoples listed in the / "Vast Waste" chapters. Their role as ancestors is suggested by the fact that throughout the text there are references to their tombs. More important is that the chapters of the final section of the book insist on the sagely or dicine origins of the vast majority of the peoples mentioned, and they name the sages in question. Most of the genealogies trace the peoples' origins back to the god Jun, the Yellow God, Zhuan Xu, and Yu. Such figures as Fu Xi, the god Ku, the Fiery God, and several little known deities are also represented."

Michael Loewe (1974)

• QUOTE: "The longest and most elaborate account of the story is that of the Han Wu-ti nei-chuan, which is probably to be dated in the sixth century. As a full translation of this fascinating text is easily available, it is sufficient here to note a few points of special interest.

1. The visit of the Queen Mother is said to have taken place in the year 110 BC, which was a highly significant year in the history of the state cults of Han. Recently a number of steps had been taken to reaffirm the importance that the state attached to worshipping the Five Powers of the cosmos, the Grand Unity and the Earth Queen. The ceremonies that were performed at Mount T'ai in 110 BC were addressed principally to the Power of Yellow, or Huang ti, now being associated with the idea of immortality. These developments were taking place at a time when the faith that had been placed in the powers of the intermediaries was fast ebbing owing to their failure to substantiate their claims."

Michael Loewe (1994 [1982])

• Of all these deities, di was the earliest. "Supreme god of the Shang people." Array of lesser gods including ancestors. QUOTE: "At a later stage, perhaps in the fourth century BC, a new concept of ti enters in. This was due in part to the impact of a philosophy which saw the universe in terms of five orders (see Chapter 4), which comprehended all things, spiritual and temporal, earthly and heavenly. To suit the growing urge to conceive and classify all beings in such terms, five ti were named for special honour. They were associated with the five colours, / likewise conceived as being characteristic of the five orders of the universe; in this way the five ti of green, red, yellow, white and finally black came into special prominence. In time these became the objects of worship in the cults of state during the second and first centuries BC. Of these five ti, the god or power of yellow (Huang ti) appears conspicuously in mythology, religion and philosophy in a number of significant ways, of which two deserve mention. In mythology Huang ti is named as the earliest ruler of the world in the remote past; and just before 100 BC we hear of Huang ti being invoked as a means of acquiring immortality."
• QUOTE: "One further idea regarding life and death occurs in connection with the services that an emperor performed; this will be mentioned in that context below (see Chapter 12). This was the / belief that Huang ti, the Yellow Emperor, had achieved immortality himself and wa able to act as an intermediary on behalf of others who desired it."
• QUOTE: "The term wu hsing, whcih is variously rendered as the 'Five Phases' or 'Five Elements' or 'Five Agents', is mentioned in some of the earliest texts of Chinese literature. Wrting in about 100 BC, Ssu-ma Ch'ien tells of the contemporary view of the origin of the idea. Nothing, he implies in a famous passage, is known of the ideas that were current in the remote past during the time of Shen ning, who was one of the earliest lords of the world. It was Huang ti, the 'Yellow Emperor', who examined the movements of the stars, worked out their cycles and initiated the concept of the five phases that comprehended universal activity. One of Ssu-ma Ch'ien's contemporaries, who contributed to the Huai-nan-tzu, credited human beings of a somewhat superior type with having discerned the principle. 'The materials grown in heaven and earth are basically limited to five categories,' we read; 'the saintly men recognised the distinction of the Five Phases; as a result their efforts to keep things in order were not waster.'"
• QUOTE: "Wu ti had thus suffered a series of disappointments at the hands of men who promised him the gifts and blessings that their knowledge of the occult could bring. It may be noted that the emperor's final disillusionment and his fury with Luan Ta coincided with attempts of an entirely new different nature to communicate with sacred powers. Reference will be made below to the cults of state which were being established at exactly this time and to the hopes of achieving deathlessness through the help of Huang ti, Power of Yellow, or the Yellow Emperor."
• QUOTE: "Different motives were dominant when Wu ti made his ascent in 110 BC. Three years previously a shaman had made a somewhat unusual discovery at Fen-yin, in the form of an ancient bronze tripod. In due course this was brought before the emperor who first satisfied himself that the discovery had not been faked and then asked his advisers for an explanation of the sudden appearance of this highly auspicious object. He was persuaded that it was an instrument intended for communication with sacred powers. In particular it was associated with the activities of Huang ti, the ti of yellow, or, in personified form, the Yellow Emperor. It was suggested to Wu ti that he was himself destined to possess comparable powers to those of Huang ti, and that the emergence of the tripod would enable him to conduct the feng and the shan sacrifices, just as they had been performed by Huang ti on Mount T'ai."
• QUOTE (continued from the above): "So far from there being a contradiction here with the established forms of worship, it was explained that Huang ti had himself performed the services of the bounds, addressed to shang ti, at the holy site of Yung. In addition there was one further characteristic of achievement of Huang ti that doubtless / appealed to Wu ti. It was said that his immortal spirit had ascended to heaven; if Huang ti could achieve deathlessness in this way, so also, was it urged, could his successor. There was apparently every reason why Wu ti should begin his emulation of Huang ti's achievements by making the ascent of Mount T'ao and performing the feng and shan rites."
• QUOTE: "As a preliminary step for the ceremonies Wu ti also sacrified at the tomb of Huang ti. It is reported that he expressed surprise at the existence of a tomb for someone who had gone straight to heaven; in response to his enquiry he was old that the tomb had been built solely for the burial of his hat and robes. When he enquired how the feng and the shan sacrifies should be conducted he met ignorance, as these ceremonies had been carried out too rarely for a living tradiiton to have been formulated. On the basis of some early texts he was advised that he should perform the rite at some distance from the summit of the mountain, and that a bull should be slain by arrows. The account of the discussions shows that Wu ti was more amenable to the advice tendered by specialist advisers such as Kung-sun Ch'ing than by the regular scholars who represented the established tradiiton; he rejected their advice on precedent outright.

Michael Loewe (1999)

• QUOTE: "Nonetheless, the contribution made by Sima Tan and Sima Qian to the formation of China's ideas ot its own past cannot be stressed too strongly. As distinct from references in earlier texts, in their majestic account of the origins of human society and the succession of the world's rulers, they fastened on Huang Di as the earliest of the monarchs, following the decline of the time of the culture hero Shen Nong 神農. They ignore claims that might have been made on behalf of figures of mythology such as Fu Xi to be the founders of sovereignty, and traced the succession of monarchs in two collateral lines, each springing from Huang Di; and they treated Huang Di in human rather than in divine terms."

Michael Loewe (2000)

• QUOTE: "From his predecessors Wudi inherited the duty of worshipping the Five Powers (Wu di 五帝) which were performed at altars erected at Yong 雍 since 144 at least."
• QUOTE: "Huangdi 黃帝, Power of Yellow, duly featured in the services rendered to the Five Powers. Seen earlier as a culture hero, he was also attracting attention for other reasons, such as his alleged power of conferring immortality, and his association with the discovery of certain tripods in 113. That he was not singled out for special devotion in the newly arising cults of state may perhaps be due to the loss of faith in his powers or the shameful end in 122 of Liu An (2), whose court had sponsored his cause. Wudi sacrificed at the site alleged to be his tomb in 106. It is not clear what his immediate objectives were behind his visit to Mount Tai 泰 and performance of the feng 封 and shan 禪 rites there (for these religious developments, see Loewe, Crisis and Conflict, pp. 167-70)."
• QUOTE: "In his discussions with Wudi in 113, regarding the Feng 封 and Shan 禪 ceremonies and the tradition of Huangdi 黃帝, Gongsun Qing 公孫卿 claimed that he was quoting a document that he had received from Shen Gong. This text drew attention to certain predictions and could be interpreted as promising an era of blessings for the Han dynasty, ruled as it was under the auspices of Wudi. In answer to Wudi's question, Gongsun Qing replied that Shen Gong of Qi, who had died some time previously, had been in contact with the immortal Anqi sheng, who had imparted Huangdi's message verbally."
• QUOTE: "As Director of Astrology (Taishi Ling), Zhang Shouwang submitted a memorial in 78 suggesting that an adjustment of the calendar was necessary. In response Xianyu Wangren 鮮于妄人, described as a Commissioner responsible for calendar, was ordered to argue the case with him. At Zhan Shouwang's refusal to conceded to his view, Xianyu Wangren requested permission to organise a series of observations of the heavenly bodies by a team of some twenty observers, who included Ma Guang 麻光. In the ensuing course of observation and calculation, which was conducted over several years, Zhang Shouwang's results were judged to be inaccurate, and his views thought to make him guilty of disrespectful conduct (Da Bujing 大不敬); but orders were given not to proceed with an indictment. his further calculation that 6,000 years had intervened since the time of Huangdi 黃帝 differed from that of 3,629 years, as others maintained. In addition he raised doubts regarding the traditional accounts of the succession of monarchs in pre-imperial times. He was brought up on various charges, including that of immoral behaviour (Budao 不道) and finally sent for trial. --HS 21A, p. 978.

Michael Loewe (2004)

• QUOTE: "It is to Sui Hong that there may be traced the earliest statement in imperial times that Han owed its ancestry to Yao 堯. The transmission of rulership though the succession of the 'Five Sovereigns' (Wu di 五帝), who included Yao, was to become an important issue in the claims made for legitimacy bith by Han and Wang Mang. Whereas the Shiji recorded two lines of descent from Huangdi 黃帝, of which one included Yao and one included Shun 舜, a statement ascribed to Wang Mang substituted a single, direct line which included both of those heroes."

Lu Gwei-djen and Joseph Needham (2000 [1980])

• QUOTE: "Of course none of the sceptical scholars of the Sung and Yuan believed that the two parts of the Nei Ching went back to the time of the Yellow Emperor himself, pre-Shang as that would have to have been. [Note e: Lü Fu of the Yuan well expressed this. One could wish that their philosophical examples had been followed by many writers in Western languages, both Chinese and Western, in our own century."
• QUOTE: Liang Chhi-chhao long ago maintained that the Nei Ching was unquestionably a Han work; he pointed out that some expressions recall typical phrases on the Chhin period, with ways of thinking very like those of the Lü Shih Chhun Chhiu (-239). Then the fictional dialogue form, with Huang Ti and his interlocutors, Chhi Po, Lei Kung, Shao Yü, and Po Kao, is very reminiscent of the conversations in the Chuang Tzu book, with Huang Ti and Kuang Chhêng Tzu, for example; and many other imaginary debate in the literature of the -4th and -3rd centuries. So suggestive are the parallels that doubt arises whether the Nei Ching were not better ascribed to the -3rd century, yet we may be content with the view that some passages in it may well be of that date, and that in any case it indubitably summarizes the clinical experience of all the Chou and the Chhin.

Lynn Pan (1994)

Lynn Pan, who has done research on the Chinese diaspora, shows that a number of Chinese clan genealogies trace their ancestry to the Yellow Emperor.

Michael Puett (2002)

• QUOTE: "It is clear from Sima Qian's account that Huangdi was a major figure for the fangshi. Indeed, many of the sacrificial reforms of the Qin and early Han empires were responses to the fangshis claims concerning Huangdi's ritual actions and eventual ascension to Heaven. For example, a certain Gongsun Qing presented a letter to Emperor Wu relating how "Huangdi had become a transcendent and ascended to Heaven." Gongsun Qing claimed the letter had been given to him by Shen Gong, like Gongsun a native of Qi. Shen Gong wrote:

Of the seventy-two kinds who have attempted the feng and shan, only Huangdi was able to ascend Mount Tai and give the feng sacrifice. The Han ruler who attempts it will also ascend and perform the feng. If he does ascent and give the feng, he will be able to become a transcendent and climb to Heaven/ ("Fengshan shu," 28.1393)

Gongsun Qing also told the emperor:

These five mountains [Mounts Hua, Shou, Tai Shi, Tai, and Dong Lai] were where Huangdi often traveled and met with spirits. Huangdi at times fought wars at times studied to become a transcendent. He was concerned that the hundred families opposed his way, so he thereupon had anyone who opposed ghosts and spirits / beheaded. After more than a hundred years he was able to obtain communication with the spirits. ("Fengshan shu," 28.1393)

Gongsun Qing further recounted that a dragon came down from the sky to meet Huangdi. Huangdi and seventy court officials mounted the dragon and ascended to Heaven. Upon hearing this, the emperor expressed a wish to be like Huangdi ("Fengshan shu," 28.1394).

• QUOTE: "During the preparations for the feng and shan sacrifices, Sima Qian tells us, the emperor also invoked Huangdi:

The Son of Heaven had heard from Gongsun Qing and the fangshi that when Huangdi and those before him had performed the feng and shan sacrifices, they had summoned prodigious things and had communicated with the spirits. "I desire to imitate Huangdi and those before him by achieving contact with the spirits and transcendents on Penglai." ("Fengshan shu," 28.1397).

Behind these references is the fangshi's claim that Huangdi had become a transcendent and ascended to Heaven by communicating with the spirits. The fangshi claimed to possess formulas that would allow this to happen.

• QUOTE: "In this chapter and the preceding chapter, we have seen texts positing several different cosmologies. In the methods associated with the fangshi, the concern was to gain control over those spirits who control forms and thus to be able to appropriate their numinous powers. THe ultimate result of this is the full divinization and ascension of the patron. In this model, Huangdi achieves bodily ascension because of his ability to summon spirits, communicate with them, and gain their powers. Such a model achieved prominence in Qin and early Han imperial ideology, which was forged around a claim of theomorphic dominance--the ruler as he who could control spirits and bring order to the world. In contrast to this, the authors of, for example, the "Xinshu" chapters of the Guanzi (discussed in Chapter 4) argued for a monistic cosmology in which one could gain powers over phenomena but only through techniques of self-cultivation, and in which one could become a spirit but only within the limitations of the human form.

Both these models involved claims on the part of the practitioners that they could control phenomena, but the methods employed and the cosmologies posited with radically different. In contrast to both of these, one finds cosmologies that offered not a method of controlling phenomena but a call for a transcendence of forms and liberation from them. In varying ways, this framework can be found in the "Yuan you," the dialogue between Huangdi and Guang Chengzi from the Zhuangzi, and question four of the Shiwen. In all three texts, Huangdi is presented as having achieved, or as having received teachings on how to achieve, a full ascension from the world. No claims were made for controlling natural phenomena, nor was it claimed that these methods would benefit humanity. On the contrary, the explicit concern was with transcending the realm of the human and ascending to a higher level."

• Claim from "Lanming" chapter of the Huainanzi that Huangdi ordered the world and made the cosmos function properly. QUOTE: "The chapter is clearly intended as a critique of significant aspects of the Han imperial order, particularly the imperial vision of rulership in which the emperor imposes his will on the cosmos and orders the world through laws and commands. During this period, this aspect of Han ideology was clearly associated with Huangdi, and the authors of the Huainanzi argue the point by portraying Huangdi's methods of ordering the world as inadequate. Fu Xi is the exemplar of a superior way." [Against common attempt to classify the Huainanzi as Huang-Lao text.

• QUOTE: "In the Lanming" chapter, Huangdi is praised as a figure who succeeded in bring order to the cosmos, but he is clearly inferior to Fu Xi, the figure who ascended to the heavens and ruled through inaction. The arguments are similar to those of the Shiwen and the Zhuangzi, but here there is an explicit attempt to read the issues politically."

• Michael Puett has argued that, QUOTE: "Huangdi had come to be associated during the late Warring States and early Han with centralized statecraft. And as we saw in CHapter 6, Huangdi was the main figure invoked to legitimate the Qin--and later, Han--sacrificial system."

Roel Sterckx (2002)

• QUOTE: "Conquest through violence was embodied by the figure of the Yellow Emperor, who gathered and tamed wild bears, leopards, panthers, lynxes, and tigers and employed them as fierce warriors in the battles against his adversaries.[Note 47 (p. 288).] Music master Kui typified the conquest of animal instincts through music. THus a passage in the Liezi contracts the Yellow Emperor with music master Kui by stating that the former summoned animals through physical force (li 力) while the latter attracted birds and beasts through the medium of sound (sheng 聲).[Note 48, p. 288.]
• QUOTE: "Other narratives protrayed the observation of animal behavior as a barometer of the dialectic of decline and prosperity in the history of humankind. According to the Liezi, humans and animals lived together and walked side by side in antiquity but were frightened away and scattered for the first time during the period of the legendary Five Emperors and Three Kings. A more detailed account of how animal behavior changed according to the phases of degeneration and renaissance in human history occurs in the Huainanzi. It notes that during the rule of the Yellow Emperor dogs and pigs would spit out grain and millet on the roadside as a sign of abundance and propserity. Tigers and wolves would not bite recklessly, and predatory birds did not strike at random. During the same era, the phoenix roved over the courtyard, and the qilin roamed about in the suburbs. Green dragons came forward spontaneously to be yoked to carriages, and excellent horses such as the Flying Yellow 飛黃 reclined in the stables. The sequence is followed by a period of decline, following which the goddess Nü Wa 女娃 mends the sky and restores cosmic order."

Rudolf Wagner (2010)

• QUOTE: "Many years later, a professor at Frankfurt University, the late Chang Tsung-tung, made a new and radically different claim. COntinuing the late Qing and early Republican discussion of his teachers about the relationship between Eastern and Western institutions, he pointed to the northwestern origin attributed in Chinese mythological narratives to many cultural innovations, such as writing, and discovered at their fountainhead a man who had been misidentified as the "Yellow Emperor," Huangdi. Yellow, Chang argued, was not the emblematic color of the loess in the North China plain but the blond color of Huangdi's hair. He was a Caucasion. See Chang Tsung-tung 1988." Chang's paper is "Indo-European Vocabulary in Old Chinese: A New Thesis on the Emergence of Chinese Language and Civilization in the Late Neolithic Age," Sino-Platonic Papers 7.

Wang Mingke (2002)

• QUOTE: "簡單的說，我們可以將戰國至西漢之作者們（包括司馬遷）當作人類學田野中的「土著」，看看「土著」們如何追溯其祖先，或他們認為誰是此共祖的後裔。以此而言，首先，顯然此時黃帝的血液只流入三代、春秋戰國以來許多的大小封國之邦君家族及其支裔之中，並以「姓」作為此血緣聯繫的符記。所以，戰國至漢代雖然有「華夏」認同，然而此與今日「每一中國人皆為炎黃子孫」之認同概念仍有一大段距離."

• QUOTE: "如此黃帝記憶所界定的「華夏」或「中國」之人，與今日以「炎黃子孫」所界定的「中國人」或「中華民族」，其間自然有相當距離；其距離主要是後者在兩種「邊緣」上的擴大。一是，在政治地理邊緣上，今之「炎黃子孫」比漢代「黃帝之裔」之範圍更向外推移。二是，在華夏域內的社會邊緣上，今之「炎黃子孫」比漢代「黃帝之裔」之範圍更往社會下層擴大。以下我將說明，這兩種邊緣的變化都不只是近代國族主義下的創造，而有一個歷史的發展過程。推動此兩種邊緣人群認同變化的主要途徑，便是華夏邊緣人群對黃帝的「攀附」。"

• QUOTE: "《史記》不僅總結戰國末至漢初以來的黃帝論述，它也創造了一個以「英雄祖先」為骨幹（英雄傳記與帝王世系）的「文類」(genre)，所謂「正史」，並將「歷史」與司馬遷所稱「其言不雅馴」之神話傳說分離。"

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