Emperor Yao

Emperor Yao was the fourth of the Five Emperors. His ancestral name was Yi Qi or Qi and his given name was Fangxun. Also known as Tang Yao, he was the second son to Emperor Ku and Qingdu, Yao's mother, who has been worshipped as the goddess Yao-mu. Often extolled as the morally perfect and intelligent sage-king, Yao's benevolence and diligence served as a model to future Chinese monarchs and emperors. According to the legend, Yao became the ruler at 20 and died at 119 when he passed his throne to Shun the Great, to whom he had given his two daughters in marriage. According to the Bamboo Annals, Yao abdicated his throne to Shun in his 73rd year of reign, and continued to live during Shun's reign for another 28 years. [Source: Wikipedia +]

Early Chinese often speak of Yao, Shun and Yu the Great as historical figures, and contemporary historians believed they may represent leader-chiefs of allied tribes who established a unified and hierarchical system of government in a transition period to the patriarchal feudal society. In the Classic of History, one of the Five Classics, the initial chapters deals with Yao, Shun and Yu. +

Another version of Emperor Yao

Dr. Eno wrote: “Examining into antiquity, we find the Emperor Yao was named Fangxun. He was reverent, intelligent, patterned, and thoughtful, with a manner of graceful ease. He was sincerely reverent and able to yield to those worthy of it. His brilliance pervaded the four quarters of the land and reached to all on high and below. He shone forth his heroic virtue and thereby cleaved to all in the many lineages of his kin. Once his kin were in harmonious accord, he brought order and decorum to the many clans of his people, whose excellence shone forth. Finally, he united and harmonized the myriad states. In this way, the black-haired people were transformed in a timely peace. [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University indiana.edu /+/ ]

“Although Yao is said to have inherited the throne of China from his father, during the Classical period, history really begins with the Emperor Yao. Yao appears originally to have been the hero of a myth about astronomy. The great act of cultural creation for which he was deemed responsible was the determination of the movements of the sun and the creation of a calendar that matched the schedule of the human world with the rhythm of the natural seasons. In this way, Yao gets credit for three great achievements: 1) He adapted the “patterns” of the heavens to fashion a pattern for social activity; 2) He facilitated the rise of agriculture by giving farmers a reliable clock for planting and harvesting; 3) He invented government institutions to disseminate information about the schedule of society and supervise administration of social activity. In the view of Classical Chinese, these accomplishments amounted to the invention of civilized behavior, the promotion of economic prosperity, and the creation of bureaucratic government. /+/

“The Emperor Yao became a very important figure to Confucianism, and it is probably the Confucians of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. who embellished his legend into the text we have here. “The Canon of Yao” is the opening section of the “Book of Documents”, which became one of the five most sacred Confucian texts. The style of the text itself is so consciously archaic that it is nearly unreadable (it purports, after all, to date from about 2000 B.C.). [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University indiana.edu /+/ ]