Di Ku is one of the five ancient emperors. He is the grandson of the Yellow Emperor and the son of Shaohao. Because he was sealed in Gaoxin before becoming emperor, he is also called Gaoxin Emperor Ku, or Emperor. Ku Gaoxin. There were many magical things about Emperor Ku when he was born. According to legend, he could speak and write his own name as soon as he was born. The appearance is even more strange and unusual. The head is very much like a bird, but it also has two horns, just like the horns of a goat. The body is very thin and small, almost like a monkey, and the body is covered with hair. What is puzzling is that he only has one foot and needs a cane to walk. However, Emperor Ku was very smart. When he was a teenager, he was granted the fief of Gaoxin because of his meritorious service in assisting Emperor Zhuanxu. When Emperor Ku was thirty years old, he replaced Zhuan Xu as emperor.
Regarding Emperor Ku becoming the emperor, there is a story among the Yao people that "the divine dog Panhu helped Emperor Ku and the Gaoxin clan kill General Wu and conquer the world". The story goes like this: Emperor Ku once felt his left ear was particularly itchy, and when he took it out, he actually pulled out a strange-looking worm. Emperor Ku put the insect in a container called a panhu. After a while, the insect turned into a divine dog. This divine dog was very brave and good at fighting, and only listened to Emperor Ku's words. Emperor Ku also casually named this divine dog "Panhu". Later, Panhu helped Di Ku defeat his rival General Wu, allowing Di Ku to dominate the world.
In order to thank Panhu, Emperor Ku married his daughter to Panhu and multiplied the descendants of the Yao people. Therefore, the totem of the Yao people's god is the divine dog Panhu. Emperor Ku's daughter, known as Xinnu, married Panhu and followed Panhu on the banks of the Yuan River, where men farmed and women weaved, and had children. Xinnu liked to wash her clothes and bathe in the water. After she became a mother, she often took her children naked to play in the river. When the children were hungry, they would sit by the shallows to nurse. Every three to five days after the beginning of autumn, she would go to the river to bathe every day. From then on, this period of time was called "cleansing day" by the Yao people, and it became the origin of nude swimming for future generations.
Di Ku is also called Di Jun, perhaps because he has the head of a bird. He likes to make friends with a colorful bird. There are three types of colorful birds: one is called the emperor bird, one is called the phoenix bird, and one is called the phoenix bird. They are actually what was called the phoenix in ancient times. It is shaped like a chicken and has colorful feathers. They do not eat human food and often sing and dance by themselves. As long as they appear in the human world, the world will be peaceful. Later Confucius said that "the phoenix and the bird will not come", which was his emotion for the war period in the Spring and Autumn Period. According to some books, Huang Di, the grandfather of Emperor Ku, had never seen a phoenix. Because Huangdi had never seen a phoenix, he went to ask his most knowledgeable minister, Tianlao. Tian Lao had never seen a phoenix, but his imagination was very amazing, so he told Huangdi: The first half of the phoenix looks like a wild goose, but the second half looks like a unicorn; it has the neck of a snake, the tail of a fish, and the tail of a dragon. The same literary talent, like the back shell of a tortoise; the chin of a swallow, the beak of a chicken... depicts a large picture, gathering the characteristics of various animals such as birds, beasts, reptiles, fish, etc., into the phoenix The body makes Phoenix become very mysterious and unpredictable. As for the reason why Emperor Ku became friends with these colorful birds, it was because Emperor Ku himself had a swallow head and was originally called the Emperor of Heaven in the East. He and these colorful birds in the East were of the same species a long time ago, so these birds Made friends with Di Ku and danced around him.
In addition to the myth of Emperor Ku making friends with colorful birds, there is also a myth about Emperor Ku’s bamboo forest. There is a hill in the remote wilderness in the north. To the south of the hill is the bamboo forest of Emperor Ku. It is hundreds of miles in radius. Each bamboo grows very thick. You can choose one section and cut it open to use it as two boats. . This kind of bamboo is hundreds of feet long, more than three feet thick, and one foot thick. It is called "tear bamboo".
Emperor Ku had three wives, two of whom were the sun god Xihe and the other the moon god Chang Xi.
The sun god Xihe and Emperor Ku gave birth to ten sons. They are the ten suns in the sky. Every day, Xihe took her ten children to bathe in the East China Sea. The place where they bathed was called "Tanggu". The water in this place was very hot because her ten sons bathed in it. Not far from Tang Valley, there is a hibiscus tree towering into the sky. Every time, the children have to climb up the tree to play after taking a bath, but only one child can play at the top of the tree, and the rest of the children can only play on the lower branches.
This is the reason for the story of the ten suns in the sky. However, because they later disobeyed the rules of heaven, nine of them were shot down by Hou Yi, the magic archer.
Chang Xi, the moon goddess, gave birth to twelve beautiful daughters together with Emperor Ku. They have a very gentle temperament and love to be clean. Their mother Chang Xi often took them to bathe in a rippling blue lake in the west. They are obedient, play happily, and never cause trouble to their mothers, and their parents will not cause any trouble because of them.
Emperor Ku also had a concubine, the daughter of the Zou Tu family. At first, after the Yellow Emperor defeated Chi You, he exiled all the bad guys in the world to the cold and desolate north. Move the good people to Zoutu and let them live together. Zou Tu's daughter is the best among these good people. She is as holy as snow. She never touches the ground when she walks, let alone being stained with any dust. She always floats back and forth quietly like clouds floating in the sky. She often swims over Yishui and Luoshui, and often falls down to play by the water, carefree. When Emperor Ku met such an extraordinary and beautiful woman, he certainly did not miss it and married her. Not long after Zou Tu's daughter had been with Emperor Ku, she began to have very strange dreams. Each time she had the same dream, she gave birth to a son after each dream. After having eight dreams in a row, Zou Tu gave birth to eight magical sons. These eight sons have been proficient in music and music since birth, and each has his or her own expertise. When they grew up, they became the eight gods of music in the sky.
Emperor Ku also had two sons, Yan Bo and Shi Shen. The two brothers were very discordant. As soon as they met, they would fight for no reason. Every time they would get their heads broken and they would continue to fight. No matter how much Di Ku persuaded and educated the two sons, they still went their own way and turned a deaf ear to their father's words. As soon as Di Ku walked away, the two of them would be incompatible and fight to the death. Emperor Ku was so troubled by this that he had no choice but to separate them. Therefore, Emperor Ku sent Yan Bo to Shangqiu and asked him to take charge of the star Shang in the east, and then sent Shi Shen to Daxia in the west to take charge of the star Zhen in the western sky. The participating dealers are exactly opposite each other in the sky and can never appear together at the same time. When one rises, the other falls. They fell one after another and could never see each other again, and they would never quarrel again.
Legend has it that Emperor Ku could control the stars to control the changes in time and seasons and guide people's production and life. Emperor Ku was very fond of music. He asked the musician Xianhei to compose songs such as Jiuzhao, Liuli and Liuying. He also ordered Yuechui to make musical instruments such as drums, bells and pans. When the palace maids danced, they wore colorful clothes, accompanied by such beautiful music, and played various musical instruments, attracting many precious fairy birds such as the Phoenix and the Great Zhai from the sky, and danced with the palace ladies.
Emperor Ku was a man of noble virtue and knew how to cultivate his moral character. He lived to be one hundred and five years old. He likes to travel, has climbed the towering Mount Tai, swam in the majestic East China Sea, and visited famous mountains and rivers all over the world.