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Heavenly Sovereign
The Heavenly sovereign () was the first Chinese legendary king after Pangu’s era. According to ''Yiwen Leiju'', he was the first of the Three Sovereigns. Name The book Lushi from the Song Dynasty records that his family name was Wang(望),his given name was Huo(獲) and his courtesy name was Zirun(子潤). 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) *After the Heaven and the Earth were formed, there was Tiānhuáng, who had twelve heads, cast his magic to fill the Earth with water. *The king was said to have an unselfish personality(or in a calm state or living in retirement) that even if he did not try to help the people, people's customs changed for the better.(澹泊無所施為，而民俗自化) *And, Tiānhuáng was a king of many achievements. He lived to 18,000 years old. His tw ... [...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] |
Kunlun (mythology)
The Kunlun () or Kunlun Shan is a mountain or mountain range in Chinese mythology, an important symbol representing the '' axis mundi'' and divinity. The mythological Kunlun is based on various sources — mythologic and geographic — of the modern so-called Kunlun Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau and Mount Kailash (as an archetypal '' omphalos''). The term "Kunlun" has also been applied to Southeastern Asian lands or islands and seemingly even Africa — although the relationship to the mountain is not clear beyond the nomenclature. In any case, Kunlun refers to distant, exotic, and mysterious places. Different locations of Kunlun have been ascribed in the various legends, myths, and semi-historical accounts in which it appears. These accounts typically describe Kunlun as the dwelling place of various gods and goddesses where fabled plants and mythical creatures may also be found. Many important events in Chinese mythology were based around Kunlun. Historical development As the ... [...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] |
Xu Zheng (Eastern Wu)
Xu Zheng (fl. 200s) was an Eastern Wu official and a Daoist author of the "Three Five Historic Records" (, literally: "Three Five Calendar"). The "3-5" refers to the "Three August Ones and Five Emperors" (三皇五帝). Xu Zheng relates two different variants of the creation myth of 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 t .... References Eastern Wu politicians Eastern Wu historians Chinese folklorists Eastern Wu poets 3rd-century Chinese historians Chinese classicists {{China-bio-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Earthly Sovereign
The Earthly Sovereign () was the second Chinese legendary king after Pangu's era. According to ''Yiwen Leiju'', he was the second 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'': *Dìhuáng had eleven heads, was the king ruling under the influence( De) of the element fire (火德王). *And, Dìhuáng was a king of many achievements, had eleven brothers, died aged eighteen thousand years old. After he was born, the world was filled in chaos. That year, the sun and the moon born from two eyes of Pangu, the stars from Pangu’s hairs couldn't move smoothly and correctly, which caused many days without sun, or many days with the sun shined throughout the whole day, or many dangerous fallen star accidents. With his power, Dìhuáng corrected the false. He made the sun and the moon move correctly, and stipulated the days of a month and the months of a year. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tianxia
''Tianxia'' (), literally meaning "(all) under Heaven", is a Chinese term for a historical Chinese cultural concept that denoted either the entire geographical world or the metaphysical realm of mortals, and later became associated with political sovereignty. In ancient China and imperial China, ''tianxia'' denoted the lands, space, and area divinely appointed to the Chinese sovereign by universal and well-defined principles of order. The center of this land was directly apportioned to the Chinese court, forming the center of a world view that centered on the Chinese court and went concentrically outward to major and minor officials and then the common subjects, tributary states, and finally ending with fringe "barbarians". The center of this world view was not exclusionary in nature, and outer groups, such as ethnic minorities and foreign people, who accepted the mandate of the Chinese Emperor were themselves received and included into the Chinese ''tianxia''. In classical ... [...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] |
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] |
