The founding monarch of the Liao State, Yelü Abaoji, was a figure that had to be mentioned, his life was full of legends, and his outstanding military achievements were even more admired by his courtiers. And what we want to tell today is the well-known story of Yelü Apaoji, although there is no small controversy about the authenticity of this story, but he undoubtedly confirms the mysterious color of Yelü Apaoji itself.
Through the history books "History of Liao" and "Khitan Chronicles" we can find records in it that Yelü Abaoji once shot a dragon, and even the Khitans built a temple to commemorate this event.
If this is just a deliberate fabrication made up by the Khitan people in order to praise and commemorate the founding monarch, then the "Mengxi Pen Talk" written by the Northern Song Dynasty scientist Shen Kuo also has a detailed record of the incident of Yelü Abaoji shooting the dragon, so we should still retain some recognition for this matter.
According to the records, we can understand that the founding monarch was able to walk like a three-year-old child as soon as he was born, and after a hundred days he could speak, although the authenticity of this matter can no longer be proved, but there is no doubt that this incident, like the shooting of the dragon by The Jeroboam, shows a uniqueness and irreplaceability of his own existence.
In fact, many people think that the dragon that Jeroboam shot was definitely not a real dragon, but some kind of huge reptile, such as a large snake like a python. The climate in the northeast is cold, and naturally there are few large snakes, which are not known to ordinary people, and even surprised by gods.
Whether true or false, the case of The Dragon Shooting by the Jeroboam Machine lets us know that the body of the dragon was once kept and stored by the ancients, so the ancient craftsmen may not have portrayed the shape of the dragon purely by imagination, but had a solid basis.
However, considering the limited understanding of people at that time, it is still debatable whether the dragon that Jeroboam shot by the Modern People is still debatable, and whether people at that time added some of their own imaginations to the painting for the sake of mythological phenomena.
Until later, archaeologists dug up an ancient tomb dating back 8,000 years and found ironclad evidence of the existence of real dragons. This ancient tomb is called chahai ruins and is located in Fuxin, Liaoning. Since its discovery in 1982, it has undergone 7 large-scale archaeological excavations by 1994. And in the last excavation, archaeologists found a pile of stone sculptures of dragons.
This is the earliest dragon-shaped cultural relics found in the archaeological community so far, its total length is 19.7 meters, the dragon head alone is 2 meters, and it is 8,000 years old, and the description of the dragon in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" is also said to have appeared in the Yellow Emperor period more than 8,000 years ago.
Therefore, in many paintings, we can see that the painting of the dragon basically has this conventional image, and where does this image come from? Perhaps it is from this 8,000-year-old Chahai site that the legend of Liao Taizu Yelü Abaoji's slaying of dragons is also convincing.
In fact, the problem of whether the real dragon is real or not may not be so important. Our self-proclaimed descendants of the dragon are enough to prove that the dragon represents the spiritual beliefs, and most importantly, that it carries a spiritual force that can guide us to do what we advocate and believe in.
Just like foreigners believe in God, we Chinese believe in dragons, although there is a specific image, but no one has seen him really, but it does not affect the existence of his majority of believers. Maybe it's a spiritual culture, whether he's a god or a dragon, we just need a species to carry our faith.
It doesn't matter whether Or not Jeroboam ever shot a dragon, what matters is that people are willing to believe that he shot a dragon, that he has unique powers. That is the dragon totem that has been imprinted in the bones of the Chinese nation for thousands of years.