Origins
The origin of Huangdi's legend is unclear, but historians have formulated several hypotheses about it. Yang Kuan (楊寬), a member of the Doubting Antiquity School (1920s–1940s), argued that the Yellow Emperor was derived from Shangdi, the highest god of the Shang dynasty. Yang's view is based on the series Shangdi 上帝 => Huang Shangdi 皇上帝 => Huangdi 皇帝 => Huangdi 黄帝, in which he claims that huang 黄 ("yellow") either was a graphic variant of huang 皇 ("august") or was used as a taboo character for the latter.
Historian Mark Edward Lewis agrees that huang 黄 and huang 皇 were often interchangeable, but, disagreeing with Yang, he claims that huang meaning "yellow" appeared first. Based on what he admits is a "novel etymology" likening huang 黄 to the phonetically close wang 尪 (the "burned shaman" in Shang rainmaking rituals), Lewis suggests that "Huang" in the Yellow Emperor's title might originally have meant "rainmaking shaman" or "rainmaking ritual." Citing late Warring States and early Han versions of Huangdi's myth, he further argues that the figure of the Yellow Emperor originated in ancient rain-making rituals in which the Yellow Emperor represented the power of rain and clouds, whereas his mythical rival Chi You (or Yandi) stood for fire and drought.
Also disagreeing with Yang Kuan's hypothesis, Sarah Allan finds it unlikely that such a popular myth as the Yellow Emperor's could have come from a taboo character. She argues instead that pre-Shang "history," including the story of the Yellow Emperor, "can all be understood as a later transformation and systematization of Shang myth." In her view, Huangdi was originally an unnamed "lord of the underworld" (or the "Yellow Springs"), the mythological counterpart of the Shang sky deity Shangdi. At the time, Shang rulers claimed that their mythical ancestors, identified with "the suns, birds, east, life, the Lord on High" (i.e., Shangdi), had defeated an earlier people associated with "the underworld, dragons, west." After the Zhou overthrew the Shang in the eleventh century BC, Zhou leaders reinterpreted Shang myths as meaning that the Shang had vanquished a real political dynasty, which was eventually named the Xia dynasty. By Han times – as seen in Sima Qian's account in the Shiji – the Yellow Emperor, who as lord of the underworld had been symbolically linked to the Xia, had become a historical ruler whose descendants were thought to have founded the Xia.
Read more about this topic: Yellow Emperor, Origin and Development of The Myth
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