The title of Huang San has a long history. Fuxi and others just inherited the title of ancient Huang San. The earliest emperor era was about three million years ago, and the latest Tai Huang (that is, Ren Huang) was about three hundred thousand years ago. In the Tang Dynasty, Sima Zhen wrote Biography of Huang San to complete the historical records, and supplemented the history of ancient mythical figures and tribal leaders such as Fuxi, Nu Wa and Shennong.
Huang San, the names of the emperor, the Yellow Emperor and Tai Huang, were first recorded in Records of the First Qin Shihuang. "History of Taoism": "The things of the former emperors, the former Huangdi and the former emperors are too old. As the saying goes, things can't be pushed."
Later works supplemented the pre-and post-Huang San on the basis of ancient Huang San in the original sense, so there were the former Huang San, the middle Huang San and the post-Huang San, which became the nine emperors. The later supplements of the three emperors and five emperors have different opinions in different works.
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In the ancient legends of the earliest ancient history system in China, the Three Emperors and Five Emperors were widely circulated, and the theory of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors was recorded in the history books of Qin and Han Dynasties. The original meaning of "emperor" also includes "greatness" and "beauty", which are not nouns. At the end of the Warring States period, because the word "emperor" of God was used as the title of master, the word "emperor" was used to address God, such as the western emperor, the eastern emperor and God in Chu Ci.
At that time, it was also called "Huang San" under the names of emperors, Huangdi and Tai Huang. There are also three emperors and five emperors in Zhou Li, Lv Chunqiu and Zhuangzi. Guanzi explains the different meanings of emperor, emperor, king and tyrant, but its name has not been confirmed.
The word "emperor" originally refers to the heavenly emperor, but the word "five emperors" did not appear in the Mencius era. His book only mentions "three kings and five tyrants". Only in Xunzi did the word "five emperors" come before "three kings", but no one named them. Only Yao, Shun, Yu and Tang are called "Four Emperors" in On Soldiers.
There is a saying in Sun Tzu's Art of War that "the Yellow Emperor is superior to the Four Emperors", which seems to be called the Four Emperors and Five Emperors (but Mei said that the word "emperor" was a mistake of "army"). Both Guanzi and Zhuangzi mentioned "Three Emperors and Five Emperors" many times, neither of which refers to their real names. Twelve ancient emperors and other ancient emperors mentioned repeatedly in the book are listed in Zhuangzi, 15 in Tamia Liu and 26 in Yizhoushu.
Since the theory of five elements was gradually established in the late Warring States period or the Han Dynasty, everything should be combined into a number, so it is necessary to list the "five emperors" among the many ancient emperors mentioned above, so the following theory of five emperors and five emperors appeared.
Baidu encyclopedia-three emperors and five emperors