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Human Sovereign
The Human Sovereign (), otherwise called the Sovereign of Man, was the third Chinese legendary king after Pangu's era. According to ''Yiwen Leiju'', he was the third and last of the Three Sovereigns. Biography According to the "Basic Annals of the Three Sovereigns" (三皇本紀) in Sima Zhen’s supplement to the ''Records of the Grand Historian'':Sima Zhen. 補史記 (Supplement to the ''Records'') (second-to-last paragraph) The legends says that he subdivided the land of China into nine provinces, which were united during a 45,600-year dynasty. See also *Chinese mythology *Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors The Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors were two groups of mythological rulers in ancient north China. The Three Sovereigns supposedly lived long before The Five Emperors, who have been assigned dates in a period from 3162 BC to 2070 BC. Today ... References , - {{end Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors Chinese monarchs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and borders fourteen countries by land, the most of any country in the world, tied with Russia. Covering an area of approximately , it is the world's third largest country by total land area. The country consists of 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong and Macau). The national capital is Beijing, and the most populous city and financial center is Shanghai. Modern Chinese trace their origins to a cradle of civilization in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. The semi-legendary Xia dynasty in the 21st century BCE and the well-attested Shang and Zhou dynasties developed a bureaucratic political system to serve hereditary monarchies, or dyna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pangu
Pangu (, ) is a primordial being and creation figure in Chinese mythology who separated heaven and earth and became geographic features such as mountains and rivers. Legends The first writer to record the myth of Pangu was Xu Zheng during the Three Kingdoms period. Recently his name was found in a tomb dated AD 156 (predating the Three Kingdoms period). In the beginning, there was nothing and the universe was in a featureless, formless primordial state. This primordial state coalesced into a cosmic egg for about 18,000 years. Within it, the perfectly opposed principles of yin and yang became balanced and Pangu emerged (or woke up) from the egg. Pangu inside the cosmic egg symbolizes Taiji. Pangu is usually depicted as a primitive, hairy giant who has horns on his head. Pangu began creating the world: he separated yin from yang with a swing of his giant axe, creating the earth (murky ''yin'') and the sky (clear ''yang''). To keep them separated, Pangu stood between them and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yiwen Leiju
The ''Yiwen Leiju'' is a Chinese ''leishu'' encyclopedia completed by Ouyang Xun in 624 under the Tang. Its other contributors included Linghu Defen and Chen Shuda. It is divided into 47 sections and many subsections. It covers a vast number of subjects and contains many quotations from older works, which are well cited. Many of these older works are otherwise long lost, so this is one of the sources used by Ming and Qing scholars to reconstruct the lost ''Record of the Seasons of Jingchu The ''Jingchu Suishiji'', also known by various English translations, is a description of holidays in central China during the 6th and 7th centuries. It was compiled by Du Gongzhan in the Sui or early Tang (early 7th century) as a revised, ...''.. References External linksRicci Library Catalog — Chinaknowledge.de. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Three Sovereigns And Five Emperors
The Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors were two groups of mythological rulers in ancient north China. The Three Sovereigns supposedly lived long before The Five Emperors, who have been assigned dates in a period from 3162 BC to 2070 BC. Today they may be considered culture heroes. The dates of these mythological figures may be fictitious, but according to some accounts and reconstructions, they supposedly preceded the Xia Dynasty. Description The Three Sovereigns, sometimes known as the Three August Ones, were said to be god-kings or demigods who used their divine abilities to improve the lives of the Chinese peoples and gift them essential skills and valuable knowledge. The Five Emperors are portrayed as exemplary ancestral sages who possessed a great moral character and lived to an extremely old age and ruled over a period of great Chinese peace. The Three Sovereigns on the other hand are ascribed various identities in different Chinese historical texts. These high kin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sima Zhen
Sima Zhen (; 679–732), courtesy name Zizheng (Tzu-cheng; 子正), was a Tang dynasty Chinese historian born in what is now Jiaozuo, Henan. Sima Zhen was one of the most important commentators on the ''Shiji ''Records of the Grand Historian'', also known by its Chinese name ''Shiji'', is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories. The ''Records'' was written in the early 1st century by the ancient Chinese hist ...''. His commentary is known as the ''Shiji Suoyin'' (), which means "Seeking the Obscure in the ''Records of the Grand Historian''". References Further reading * Schwaab-Hanke, Dorothee, ''Why did Sima Zhen want to correct the Shiji's account of High Antiquity?'' Paper submitted to the IJSCS Conference 'Thought, Body, Culture. New Approaches to Chinese Historical Studies', to be held at the National Ts'ing-hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, Nov. 12-14, 2004. Clicherefor her ''preliminary draft''. External links— China ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Records Of The Grand Historian
''Records of the Grand Historian'', also known by its Chinese name ''Shiji'', is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories. The ''Records'' was written in the early 1st century by the ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian, whose father Sima Tan had begun it several decades earlier. The work covers a 2,500-year period from the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the author's own time, and describes the world as it was known to the Chinese of the Western Han dynasty. The ''Records'' has been called a "foundational text in Chinese civilization". After Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, "Sima Qian was one of the creators of Imperial China, not least because by providing definitive biographies, he virtually created the two earlier figures." The ''Records'' set the model for all subsequent dynastic histories of China. In contrast to Western historical works, the ''Records'' do not treat history as "a cont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xian (Taoism)
''Xian'' () refers to a person or similar entity having a long life or being immortal. The concept of ''xian'' has different implications dependent upon the specific context: philosophical, religious, mythological, or other symbolic or cultural occurrence. The Chinese word ''xian'' is translatable into English as: * (''in Daoist philosophy and cosmology'') spiritually immortal; transcendent human; celestial being * (''in Daoist religion and pantheon'') physically immortal; immortal person; an immortal; saint * (''in Chinese alchemy'') alchemist; one who seeks the elixir of life; one who practices longevity techniques ** (''or by extension'') alchemical, dietary, or qigong methods for attaining immortality * (''in Chinese mythology'') wizard; magician; shaman; sorcerer * (''in popular Chinese literature'') genie; elf, fairy; nymph; (''xian jing'' is fairyland, faery) * (''based on the folk etymology for the character , a compound of the characters for ''person'' and ''mountain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nine Provinces
The term Nine Provinces or Nine Regions (), is used in ancient Chinese histories to refer to territorial divisions or islands during the Xia and Shang dynasties and has now come to symbolically represent China. "Province" is the word used to translate '' zhou'' (州) – since before the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), it was the largest Chinese territorial division. Although the current definition of the Nine Provinces can be dated to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, it was not until the Eastern Han dynasty that the Nine Provinces were treated as actual administrative regions. Different interpretations of the Nine Provinces The ''Rongcheng Shi'' bamboo slips from the Chu state has the earliest interpretation of the Nine Provinces, but these early descriptions differ widely from the currently recognized Nine Provinces. The Nine Provinces, according to the ''Rongcheng Shi'', are Tu (涂), Jia (夾), Zhang (竞), Ju (莒), Ou (藕), Jing (荊), Yang (陽) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jiuzhou
The term Nine Provinces or Nine Regions (), is used in ancient Chinese histories to refer to territorial divisions or islands during the Xia and Shang dynasties and has now come to symbolically represent China. "Province" is the word used to translate '' zhou'' (州) – since before the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), it was the largest Chinese territorial division. Although the current definition of the Nine Provinces can be dated to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, it was not until the Eastern Han dynasty that the Nine Provinces were treated as actual administrative regions. Different interpretations of the Nine Provinces The ''Rongcheng Shi'' bamboo slips from the Chu state has the earliest interpretation of the Nine Provinces, but these early descriptions differ widely from the currently recognized Nine Provinces. The Nine Provinces, according to the ''Rongcheng Shi'', are Tu (涂), Jia (夾), Zhang (竞), Ju (莒), Ou (藕), Jing (荊), Yang (陽), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Mythology
Chinese mythology () is mythology that has been passed down in oral form or recorded in literature in the geographic area now known as Greater China. Chinese mythology includes many varied myths from regional and cultural traditions. Much of the mythology involves exciting stories full of fantastic people and beings, the use of magical powers, often taking place in an exotic mythological place or time. Like many mythologies, Chinese mythology has in the past been believed to be, at least in part, a factual recording of history. Along with Chinese folklore, Chinese mythology forms an important part of Chinese folk religion. Many stories regarding characters and events of the distant past have a double tradition: ones which present a more historicized or euhemerized version and ones which present a more mythological version. Many myths involve the creation and cosmology of the universe and its deities and inhabitants. Some mythology involves creation myths, the origin of things, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
