And to bless my men and their wives.[5]
Shen-nung was not content with two annual sacrifices, and fixed two others at the equinoxes, “that in spring to implore a blessing on the fruit of the earth, and that in autumn, after the harvest was over, to offer the first fruits to the ruler of heaven”.
After Shen-nung died the emperor Hwang-Ti (“The Yellow God”) ascended the throne. He was in the literal sense the “Son of Heaven”, for his real father was the thunder-god, and he had therefore “a dragon-like countenance”. As in the case of Osiris, who was reputed to have reigned over Egypt, it is difficult to conclude whether he was a deified monarch or a humanized deity. He belongs, of course, to the mythical period of the “five Tis” in Chinese legendary history.
The account of his origin sets forth that one night his mother witnessed a brilliant flash of lightning which darted from the vicinity of the star chʼoo in the Great Bushel (the “Great Bear”) and lit up the whole country. [[278]]Her Majesty became pregnant, but did not give birth to her son until twenty-five months later. Hwang Ti was able to speak as soon as he was born. When he ascended the throne, he possessed the power of summoning spirits to attend at the royal palace, and his allies in battle included tigers, panthers, and bears, as those of Rama, the hero of the Indian epic, the Rámáyana, included bears and gigantic monkeys. Hwang Ti was a lover of peace, and because he caused peaceful conditions to prevail, phœnixes nested in his garden, or, like swallows, perched on the palace roof and terraces and sang in the courtyard. Other spirit-birds haunted the residence of the “Yellow God”.
He built a large temple so that he might not be prevented by bad weather from offering up sacrifices and performing other religious ceremonies at any season of the year, and he instructed the people in their duties towards the spirits, their ancestors, and himself. He fixed the holy days and introduced music in temple worship. His wife undertook the duty of nourishing silk-worms and producing silk. An enclosure on the north side of the temple was planted with mulberry trees, and in this grove the Empress and the ladies of her court attended to the silk-worms specially kept for the silk required for religious ceremonies. Her Majesty was the goddess as her husband was the god, and had therefore to promote reproduction and growth. She therefore visited also the enclosure on the southern side of the temple in which grew the cereals and fruits offered to the deities.
Hwang Ti was specially favoured by the goddess known as “the heavenly lady Pao”, who on one occasion stopped the heavy and destructive rains that had been caused by the enemy.
When the Emperor was in his seventy-seventh year, he retired from the world, like an Indian ascetic, to practise [[279]]austerities beside the Jo water. He died in his one hundredth year. Some tell that when he was ascending to heaven an earthquake occurred; others hold that he never died but was transformed into a dragon. After he passed away, either as a soul or dragon, to associate with the immortals, a wooden image of him was made and worshipped by princes.
His successor is said to have been the Emperor Che, whose dynastic title was Shao-Hao. This monarch was the son of a star god. One night his mother beheld a star, which resembled a rainbow, floating on a stream in the direction of a small island. After retiring to rest she dreamed that she received the star, and, in due course, she gave birth to her son. Phœnixes visited the royal palace on the day that he ascended the throne. This monarch had some mysterious association with the west—probably with the goddess of the west—and is said to have commanded an army of birds.
He was followed by the Emperor Chuen-Heugh (Kao-Yang). He, too, was the son of a star-god. It chanced that his mother witnessed the Yao-Kwang star passing through the moon like a rainbow. She gave birth to her son in the vicinity of the Jo water. There was a shield and spear on his head at birth, a tradition which recalls that when the Indian princess Pritha gave birth to Karna, son of Surya, the sun-god, he was fully armed.
Chuen-Heugh was a great sage. “He invented calendaric calculations and delineations of the heavenly bodies,” and composed a piece of music called “The Answer to the Clouds”.