Huang Di

[Chinese] One of the legendary Chinese emperors (see: Wu-di), lit. "Yellow Emperor". His life span was variously given as 2697 - 2597 BCE or 2674 - 2575 BCE. He is venerated as one of the founders of religious Taoism (tao-jiao) and the alleged author of the Huang-di nei-jing, the first medical treatise in the history of China. Furthermore Huang-di is credited with the creation of mankind, the invention of writing, the compass, the pottery wheel, and the breeding of silkworms. He is also considered to have been a determining influence in establishing Chinese social order, in that he allocated a name to each family. According to one tradition, Huang-di spontaneously came into being as a result of the fusion of energies that marked the beginning of the world. He created man by placing earthen statues at the cardinal points of the world, leaving them exposed to the breath of the world's beginning for three hundred years. When they were totally pervaded by the energy of that breath, the statues wer...
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