The Yan Emperor () or the Flame Emperor was a legendary ancient Chinese ruler in pre-dynastic times. Modern scholarship has identified the Sheep's Head Mountains (''Yángtóu Shān'') just north of

Baoji () is a prefecture-level city in western Shaanxi province, People's Republic of China. Since the early 1990s, Baoji has been the second largest city in Shaanxi. Geography The prefecture-level city of Baoji had a population of 3,321,853 accor ...

Shaanxi Province Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see § Name) is a landlocked province of China. Officially part of Northwest China, it borders the province-level divisions of Shanxi (NE, E), Henan (E), Hubei (SE), Chongqing (S), Sichuan (SW), Gansu (W), ...

as his homeland and territory. A long debate has existed over whether or not the Yan Emperor was the same person as the legendary

Shennong Shennong (), variously translated as "Divine Farmer" or "Divine Husbandman", born Jiang Shinian (), was a mythological Chinese ruler known as the first Yan Emperor who has become a deity in Chinese and Vietnamese folk religion. He is vene ...

. An academic conference held in China in 2004 achieved general consensus that the Yan Emperor and Shennong were the same person. Another possibility is that the term "flame emperor" was a title, held by dynastic succession of tribal lords, with Shennong being known as ''Yandi'' perhaps posthumously. Accordingly, the term "flame emperor''s''" would be generally more correct. The succession of these flame emperors, from Shennong, the first Yan Emperor, until the time of the last Yan Emperor's defeat by the

Yellow Emperor The Yellow Emperor, also known as the Yellow Thearch or by his Chinese name Huangdi (), is a deity ('' shen'') in Chinese religion, one of the legendary Chinese sovereigns and culture heroes included among the mytho-historical Three Soverei ...

, may have been some 500 years.

Historical records

No written records are known to exist from the era of Yan Emperor's reign. However, he and Shennong are mentioned in many of the classic works of ancient China. ''Yan'' literally means "flame", implying that Yan Emperor's people possibly uphold a symbol of fire as their tribal

totem A totem (from oj, ᑑᑌᒼ, italics=no or '' doodem'') is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system. While ''the ...

s. K. C. Wu speculates that this appellation may be connected with the use of fire to clear the fields in

slash and burn Slash-and-burn agriculture is a farming method that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. The downed veget ...

agriculture. In any case, it appears that agricultural innovations by Shennong and his descendants contributed to some sort of socioeconomic success that led them to style themselves as ''di'' (), rather than ''hou'' (), as in the case of lesser tribal leaders. At this time it appears that there were only the bare beginnings of written language, and that for record keeping a system of knotting strings (perhaps similar to

quipu ''Quipu'' (also spelled ''khipu'') are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America. A ''quipu'' usually consisted of cotton or camelid fiber strings. The Inca peop ...

) was in use. The Zuo Zhuan states that in 525 BC, the descendants of Yan were recognized as long having been masters of fire and having used fire in their names. Yan Emperor was known as "Emperor of the South"

Downfall

The last Yan Emperor, Yuwang, met the end of his reign in the third of a series of three battles, known as the Battle of Banquan. The exact location of this battle is disputed among modern historians, due to multiple locations adopting the same name at various points through history. Possible candidates include Zhuolu County and Huailai County in Zhangjiakou, Hebei,

Yanqing District Yanqing District (), formerly known as Yanqing County before 2015, is a district of the municipality of Beijing located northwest of the city proper of Beijing. The district consists of 3 subdistricts, 11 towns and 4 townships, and borders th ...

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the Capital city, capital of the China, People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's Li ...

, Fugou County in Zhoukou, Henan, and Yanhu District in

Yuncheng, Shanxi Yuncheng is the southernmost prefecture-level city in Shanxi province, People's Republic of China. It borders Linfen and Jincheng municipalities to the north and east, and Henan (Luoyang and Jiyuan to the east, Sanmenxia to the south) and Sha ...

. The Yan Emperor, retreating from a recent invasion from the forces of

Chiyou Chiyou (蚩尤, ) is a mythological being that appears in East Asian mythology. Individual According to the Song dynasty history book '' Lushi'', Chiyou's surname was Jiang (), and he was a descendant of flame. According to legend, Chiyou had a ...

, came into territorial conflict with its neighbouring Youxiong tribes, led by the

. The Yan Emperor was defeated after three successive battles and surrendered to the Yellow Emperor, who assumed the title of overlord () and agreed to merge the two tribes into a new confederation — the Yanhuang tribe. Under the Yellow Emperor's leadership, the newly combined tribes then went to war and defeated Chiyou in the Battle of Zhuolu, and established their cultural and political dominance in

China proper China proper, Inner China, or the Eighteen Provinces is a term used by some Western writers in reference to the "core" regions of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China. This term is used to express a distinction between the "core" regions pop ...

Historicity

Since the Battle of Banquan is treated as a historical fact by

Sima Qian Sima Qian (; ; ) was a Chinese historian of the early Han dynasty (206AD220). He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for his ''Records of the Grand Historian'', a general history of China covering more than two thousand years be ...

in his ''

Records of the Grand Historian ''Records of the Grand Historian'', also known by its Chinese name ''Shiji'', is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories. The ''Records'' was written in the early 1st century by the ancient Chinese his ...

'', it would appear that this is a pivotal transition point between mythology and history. Ironically, Yan Emperor enters history only with his submission to the will of the Yellow Emperor. In any case, the title of ''flame emperor'' apparently lapsed after this time, while his tribe's descendants were said to be perpetuated through intermarriage with that of the Yellow Emperor, and

Han Chinese The Han Chinese () or Han people (), are an East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, making up about 18% of the global population and consisting of various subgroups speaking distinctive v ...

throughout history have referred themselves as the " Descendants of Yan and Huang".

In traditional culture

Temple of Yandi in Baoji, Shaanxi, China

Both Huangdi and Yandi are considered in some sense ancestral to Chinese culture and people. Also, the tradition of associating a certain color with a particular dynasty may have begun with the Flame Emperors. According to the Five Elements, or Wu Xing model, red, fire, should be succeeded by yellow, earth—or Yandi by Huangdi. According to the records of ancient history books such as The "

Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư The ''Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư'' ( vi-hantu, 大越史記全書; ; ''Complete Annals of Đại Việt'') is the official national chronicle of the Vietnamese state, that was originally compiled by the royal historian Ngô Sĩ Liên under ...

", the earliest monarch of Vietnam, Hồng Bàng, was a descendant of Emperor Yan. Because of it, all the ancient Vietnamese dynasties regarded Emperor Yan as their common ancestor.

List of Flame Emperors

This is the most common list given by

Huangfu Mi Huangfu Mi (215–282), courtesy name Shi'an (), was a Chinese physician, essayist, historian, poet, and writer who lived through the late Eastern Han dynasty, Three Kingdoms period and early Western Jin dynasty. He was born in a poor farming fam ...

Historical records

Downfall

Historicity

In traditional culture

List of Flame Emperors

See also

References

Citations

Sources