Shennong's Introduction What has Shennong done?

Shennong was one of the Three Emperors of the Ancients, and Sima Qian's "Records of the Three Emperors" has this record:

"Yandi Shennong, surnamed Jiang." Mother and daughter. There is the daughter of the Wa clan. For the young concubine. Feeling the dragon and giving birth to the Yan Emperor. Human bull head. Longer than ginger water. Because I thought it was a surname.

Fire King. Therefore, he was known as emperor Yan. Officers named after fire. Wood is used to teach thousands of people. Start teaching farming. Hence the name Shennong. So he made a wax sacrifice to whip the grass and wood with an ochre whip. First taste the herbs, first there is medicine. And the five strings. Teach people to be in the middle of the day for the market, trade and retreat, each get what they want. The weight of the bagua is sixty-four. At first, he was in Chen, and later in Qufu. One hundred and twenty years of collapse. Buried in Changsha. ...... The daughter of the Shennong Na Ben Shui clan is known as the Tingrus. For concubines."

The gist of the above article is:

Yandi Shennong, surnamed Jiang, his mother's name is Nudeng, is a woman of the Youwa tribe, married to the leader of the Shaodian tribe as a concubine, because she felt the dragon and gave birth to the Shennong clan. Shennong's personal head, because he grew up near the river, used ginger as his surname.

Since the Shennong clan belonged to Huode (which involved the problem of the later Five Virtues), it was called Yandi and used Fire as an official name. Shennong made wood into farming tools and taught thousands of people to use them. Since he was the first to teach the people to cultivate, he was called Shennong. So he held a wax sacrifice (a kind of sacrifice related to agriculture) and whipped the grass and trees with an ochre whip. Shennong first began to taste hundreds of herbs, and thus there was medicine. He also made a five-stringed serpent, and taught the people to go back at the noon market, and when the trade was over, everyone could get what they wanted. The Shennong clan extended the gossip made by the FuXi clan to sixty-four yao. At first he established his capital in Chen, and later lived in Qufu, Shandong.

Shennong married a woman from the Benshui tribe as a concubine, died after one hundred and twenty years on the throne, and was buried in Changsha.

Emperor Yan, the name of the tribal leader of the Shennong clan (some say to be the descendants of Shennong), surnamed Jiang, because of the Fire King, so called Yandi, is the era of Chinese legends (or ancient times), about three or four thousand years BC, the co-lord of the Jiang clan in present-day Shaanxi and Hubei, it is rumored that Emperor Yan was born on the bank of Jiangshui (present-day Baoji, Shaanxi), known as the Shennong clan.

The following legends are the deeds of Emperor Yan (or his ancestors):

Teach the people to farm

According to legend, emperor Yan invented the method of farming, he ordered the people to collect the grain seeds, and then sow them on the reclaimed fields, and then the people cultivated the grains according to this method, and the Shennong clan was called the source.

Invent the Lei

Emperor Yan pioneered the wooden silk and is considered to be the beginning of the invention of agriculture.

赭鞕

Emperor Yan had a divine whip, called the ochre whip, which was used to whip all kinds of flowers and herbs, which could expose the medicinal, poisonous, cold, hot and other characteristics of the flowers and herbs.

Taste the herbs

According to legend, in order to identify various herbs, Emperor Yan personally tried, and finally tried a herb containing severe poison, which could not be solved, and finally sacrificed his life.

Invent pottery

Emperor Yan also invented pottery, which appeared at the same time as farming and was hailed as another major innovation after the use of fire.