The Human Sovereign (), otherwise called the Sovereign of Man, was the third
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
legendary king after
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 ...
's era. According to ''
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 ...
'', he was the third and last of the
Three Sovereigns
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 ...
.
Biography
According to the "Basic Annals of the Three Sovereigns" (三皇本紀) in
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 Histo ...
’s supplement to the ''
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 hist ...
'':
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 Histo ...
. 補史記 (Supplement to the ''Records'') (second-to-last paragraph)
The legends says that he subdivided the land of China into
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 t ...
, which were un