Big coffee said | Is the Yellow Emperor a real person? What is his last name? How to become the common ancestor of the Chinese nation?

Qianjiang Evening News Hourly News Reporter Liu Yuhan Sun Wen

Will you have such a question: is the Yellow Emperor a legendary figure in the end? Or are they real people in history?

This is a problem that people often have when facing the Yellow Emperor.

On October 12th, the 4th Yellow Emperor Cultural Symposium was held in Jinyun, Zhejiang. Experts and scholars who studied the culture of the Yellow Emperor gathered in Xiandu, and the first thing to discuss was the issue of the "faith" of the Yellow Emperor.

Shen Changyun, advisor to the Chinese Pre-Qin History Society and professor at the School of History and Culture of Hebei Normal University, gave his answer - the Yellow Emperor really had his own person. He also brushed the yellow emperor with a sense of existence based on literature and archaeological data.

Professor Shen said that the "emperor" of the "Yellow Emperor" is different from the "emperor" of the "first emperor". It is not the meaning of the emperor, but the honorific title of the ancient tribe to the deceased ancestors, which is the meaning of the ancestral ranking. Therefore, the title of "Yellow Emperor" represents that he is the ancestor of an ancient tribe.

So which tribe is he the ancestor of? Only by being able to find descendants can we be sure of the existence of ancestors.

It has to do with the last name.

The Yellow Emperor has a surname, and if he has a surname, he has descendants. What is the yellow emperor's surname? "Chinese" tells us. The Chinese is a pre-Qin work that predates the History, so it is the most reliable surviving text. The Chinese says: "The Yellow Emperor took Ji Shuicheng ... Therefore, the Yellow Emperor was Ji. "It says that the Yellow Emperor lived next to Ji Shui, so the Yellow Emperor's surname was Ji.

So what other ancient tribes in the pre-Qin period were surnamed Ji?

Shen Changyun said that the surname system probably originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty, when the tribes of the Central Plains did not have the surname Ji except for Zhou.

Therefore, the Zhou people are the descendants of the Yellow Emperor, and the Yellow Emperor is the ancestor of the Zhou people.

This can also be corresponded to from the perspective of the activity area of the ancestors. According to the Records of History, there is a so-called Yellow Emperor's "tomb" in Gaobai Mountain north of today's Zichang County, Yan'an; according to the Book of Han, there is a "shrine" dedicated to the Yellow Emperor in the southeast of today's Yulin. Professor Shen deduced from this that the Yellow Emperor lived in the loess plateau of northern Shaanxi. The early Zhou people also lived in the Loess Plateau in northern Shaanxi, which just confirms that the Yellow Emperor is the earliest ancestor of the Zhou people.

After this deduction, a new question arises: Since the Yellow Emperor is the ancestor of the Zhou people, how did he become the common ancestor of our Chinese nation?

This is the result of the Zhou people's promotion of ethnic integration, and it is also related to the formation of the "Huaxia" ethnic group - this is Professor Shen's answer.

Before the Zhou people destroyed the Shang, they had already called themselves "Xia", and "Xia" meant "big", so they claimed to be to strengthen the momentum of anti-Shang forces. After the Zhou people destroyed the Shang, the feudal princely states were also called "Xia", that is, "Zhuxia". By the Spring and Autumn Period, because the sounds of "Hua" and "Xia" were common, the literature would also write "Zhu Xia" as "Zhu Hua". Slowly, the words "Hua" and "Xia" also appeared. At the same time, the various princely states achieved great national integration through the mixing with the time of the old patriarchs of the Central Plains.

In this way, under the leadership of the Zhou people, the newly formed national community naturally worships the ancestors of the Zhou people as their most important ancestors. Since the Warring States period, the rulers of various countries have recognized the Yellow Emperor as their ancestor and made solemn sacrifices.

The Yellow Emperor also evolved from the ancestor of the Zhou people to the common ancestor of the Chinese nation and the first ancestor of humanity.

On October 11, the rehearsal site of the Yellow Emperor Ceremony of the Yellow Emperor was sacrificed. Photo by Yu Biyin, reporter of this newspaper

At the seminar site, many experts and scholars demonstrated this view through their own methods. However, due to the age, most of the arguments are based on historical materials for logical inference rather than historical judgment. While expecting more archaeological discoveries to turn logical inference into historical inference, scholars have also reached a consensus: whether the Yellow Emperor is indeed a person or an illusory person, the cultural identity of the sons and daughters of China is common, and this identity will continue and will continue.

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Source: Qianjiang Evening News Hourly News