THE GOD OF AGRICULTURE
by Umberto Bresciani
Foreword
Chinese popular
religion is picturesque in the variety of its expressions and beliefs. There is
one god (or object of worship), who is primarily related to agricultural
activity. His name is Shennong (Divine
Farmer). He is an important object of worship for tillers of the soil and for
grain dealers, but also for Chinese doctors and pharmacologists, and revered by
all Chinese in general.
The Legendary Age
According to traditional Chinese
historical records, before the three historical dynasties of Xia (2205?-1600?
BCE), Shang (1600?-1100? BCE), and Zhou (1100?-249 BCE), there was a long age
shrouded in legend, which left a rich heritage of mythology. Chinese mythology
is as rich and varied as Greek mythology, from which much of Western culture developed.
The Yijing (Book of Change), one of the most
ancient Chinese writings, starts by introducing the figure of Fuxi, who studied
stars and earth, birds, and animals, and learned many things from them; then it
continues: “After Fuxi died, Shennong rose. He made plow and taught people how to
raise crops and fishing. He invented money and market for the exchange of
goods."
In the very beginning, Chinese religion
had been worshipping Heaven, ancestors, and spirits of mountains, rivers,
trees, stars, etc. One later scholar’s statistic figure calculated some twelve
thousand names of different divinities. Later on, official worship, following
Confucian teachings that shunned superstition, concentrated on three categories
of spiritual beings, namely heaven, ancestors and sages/heroes. Natural deities
(the gods of mountains and rivers, stars, etc.) survived in the popular lore,
and were later absorbed for the most part into the Daoist religion.
Shennong is a figure belonging to the
“legendary age” of Chinese history. He is one of the Three August Ones, namely Fuxi (“Animal Domesticator”: 2953-2852), Shennong
(“Divine Farmer”: 2737-2699), and Huangdi (“Yellow Emperor”: 2698-2599).
Shennong’s surname was Jiang; he was a
chief for the tribe of Jiang. While working with its tribesmen, Shennong
invented a ploughshare-shaped agricultural tool, which greatly advanced grain
agriculture. Therefore, he was given the name Shennong, or Divine Farmer.
Shennong is said to have helped
people transition from a diet of meat, clams, and wild fruits, to one based on
grains and vegetables, and for developing herbal medicine.
He stayed on the throne for 140 years and was replaced by Emperor Huangdi,
another ancestor of the Chinese race. Shennong was also called emperor Yan (Yandi). Shennong is viewed as their
ancestor also by the Vietnamese.
According to references in ancient books,
Shennong was born and lived in the Jiang
River area, near modern day Baoji, Shaanxi.
Both he and Huangdi, who lived on the Wei
River, in nearby Baoji, were sons of Shaodian. Later Yandi was
defeated by Huangdi and allied with him, so that they became a strong force in Northern China. Later Shennong moved to live in Suizhou (Hubei), at the confluence of the Huai
River with the Yangtze
River, where he opened up the place to agriculture. He died in Kangle,
Lingxian, near Changsha, Hunan, where he was buried.
A legend tells that Shennong’s mother one
day went for a trip to Huayang, where she met a divine dragon, who with his
influx made her pregnant, and she then bore Shennong.
Again according to legend, Shennong was just born for three days, and he
already could speak. After five months he could walk; after seven months he had
all his teeth. When he was three, he already knew the technique of cultivation
of herbs and cereals.
Shennong’s Contributions to
Human Civilization
According to tradition, the contributions
of Shennong to human civilization include the following eight items:
1) The Plough. He devised an implement – a plough with a handle - for tilling the
land and preparing it for cultivation. This implement has been used by Chinese
farmers for a very long time, around 7-8 thousand years. He invented also the
axe, the hoe, and other implements, and taught people how to use them.
2) Teaching the planting of various grains. Shennong is also called Emperor of the Five Grains (Wugu
xiandi). The "five
grains" were specifically sesamum, legumes, wheat, panicled millet, and glutinous millet. Rice is not included, because
the ancients were only used to the environment of Northern
China, where rice cultivation is not suitable.
3) Medicinal herbs. The Divine Farmer is the ‘patron saint’
not only of agriculture, but also of pharmacology. There were 69 remedy recipes
(herbs) included in the earliest known materia medica attributed to him.
These represented a tradition of pragmatic medicine not integrated with the
theories of Yinyang or Wuxing. He was
said to have the penchant for tasting all kinds of herbs, to experience their
effect on the body. One story has that his father was once very sick and passed
out. Everybody was in despair and did not know what to do. Then his young son
Shennong made a potion with a certain herb he went to pick, and poured some
drops of the potion on his father’s mouth, and his father came back to life.
As a result of his efforts, numerous herbs
became routinely used for health care, and the knowledge was handed down by
oral tradition for centuries. When these herbs were described in a formal
manner, the book was named after Shennong, known today as the Shennong Bencao Jing, or Herbal Classic of the Divine Farmer. The
Shennong Bencao Jing is a fundamental
book in Chinese medicine. It was written sometime before 200 CE and was
attributed to Shennong. He is also said to have tested all 365 Bencao recipes personally, watching
their effect through his conveniently transparent abdomen. He reportedly turned
green and eventually died as a result of such experiments. This book was
expanded and revised many times in the following centuries.
4) Invention of a simple
loom. Shennong taught people to pick mulberry
leaves and to plant hemp, then to
weave fabrics using silk thread and hemp cords to make simple clothing.
5) Invention of bow and
arrows.
6) Invention of commerce. He realized that some people were in need of artifacts that they
were not making. Thereupon, he arranged people to trade their goods for the
things that they most wanted in a set place. So, he is said to have helped
develop the earliest market in China,
because he established the marketplace, where to exchange and sell goods on fixed
days during the month.
7) Invention of pottery
art. He is supposed to be the inventor also of
ceramic containers, which are a very useful commodity in people’s lives.
8) Invention of the guqin musical instrument. He is
considered the inventor – together with Fuxi and Huangdi – of the guqin, a five-stringed (later seven-stringed)
musical instrument of the zither family. He also wrote many songs to entertain
people after work. His son was said to have invented another musical
instrument, the bell, for which he composed several pieces.
Beside these eight major items, in
various legends other aspects of civilization are attributed to Shennong. A
legend says that it was Shennong who discovered that drinking water could be
made healthier by boiling. Or take, for instance, the invention of tea
drinking. In one popular Chinese legend, Shennong
was drinking a bowl of boiling water some time around 2737 BC. The wind blew
and a few leaves from a nearby tree into his water and the water began to
change its color. The ever inquisitive and curious monarch took a sip of the
brew and was pleasantly surprised by its flavor and its restorative properties.
A variant of the legend tells that the emperor tested the medical properties of
various herbs on himself, some of them poisonous, and found tea to work as an
antidote to poison.
The Best Known Legend
The best known of the legends surrounding the figure of Shennong is the following. At Shennong's time, grains and weeds grew together, as did useful herbs and wild plants. People could not distinguish edible plants nor differentiate poisonous plants from medicinal herbs. The common people relied on hunting as the main means to obtain food, but as time went by, birds and animals became scarce. Those who could not hunt anything went hungry. If people developed diseases, there were no medicines available to treat them. People had no choice but to let the conditions worsen until they ultimately died.
When Shennong saw the tragedies around him, he felt the pain in his heart. He meditated for three days and three nights, and then came up with a decision. He led a group of his people and headed for the mountains to the northwest. After crossing numerous rivers, climbing over countless hills, and walking for innumerable miles, on the 49th day, they came to a mysterious mountain covered by thick fog. In the air floated a strange yet pleasant fragrance.
As they were about to approach the mountain, suddenly, a large pack of wild beasts jumped out of a nearby valley and surrounded them. Shennong told his people to fight the beasts with whips. After driving away one group of the wild beasts, another group would come to attack them. They fought ceaselessly for seven days and seven nights before they drove away all the beasts. The whips left deep scars on the skins of those leopards, tigers, and pythons. The scars later turned into the patterns on the skins of the wild animals that we see today.
After realizing how dangerous this place was, Shennong's followers all urged him to leave, but Shennong firmly replied: "Our people are suffering from hunger and disease, how could I return to face them?" He then took the lead and walked over to the canyon at the foot of the mountain.
As they looked up, they discovered that the mountain rose into the clouds with sheer cliffs on all sides. No one could see the top and the mountain appeared to be impossible to climb. The crowd once again urged Shennong to return to home. He again shook his head with determination, and said: "Our people are suffering from hunger and disease, how could I return to face them?"
Shennong stood on a small rocky hill, looked around and thought about how to climb the mountain. Suddenly he saw several monkeys climbing from vines hanging off the cliff, and he immediately knew what to do. Shennong asked his people to chop down trees and build platforms leaning against the cliff. For many days they built platforms, a layer of platform a day.
Seasons came and went, and they spent an entire year building 360 layers of platform before they finally reached the summit. The legend describes how modern day scaffolding techniques were derived from his method of platform construction.
Once at the summit of the mountain, they saw stretching in front of them a vast world of plants, with leaves of all shapes and flowers of all colors. Shennong knew he had found what he was looking for. He led his people to settle there, and started to taste various types of plants. At night, Shennong made a bonfire and used the light of the flame to record his discoveries. He thoroughly documented which types of plants were bitter, which had warm or cold qualities, which ones could be used as food, and which ones could be used to cure illnesses. There were times when Shennong tasted up to 70 different kinds of poisonous plants within one day.
Shennong spent 49 days tasting hundreds of plants; his footprints covered the mountain top. He successfully identified modern day staples such as wheat, rice, millet, bean, and sorghum. He told his people to take back the seeds of those plants and to grow them in the fields. These five plants were later called five grains. Shennong differentiated poisonous plants from medicinal herbs, and discovered 365 kinds of herbal medicines which can be used to cure hundreds of diseases. He compiled his findings into a medical journal called "The Divine Farmer's Herb-Root Classic", and instructed his people to take the book with them and use the knowledge to help other people in the world to treat illnesses.
This magic mountain of plants was later called "The Mountain of Shennong," and Shennong has been regarded as the King of the Five Grains and Father of Chinese medicine.
Canonization
References to Shennong go back to the
remotest antiquity. The first historical reference is found in the Spring and Autumn Annals. Later, the Zuo
Commentary (Zuozhuan), the Discourses
of the States (Guoyu), the Book of
Rites (Liji), all add some details. While
in ancient books references are scant, popular legends in later times are
abundant. As many other figures of popular religion, he was canonized by various
emperors, and became known as Shennong
dadi (Great Emperor Shennong), or also Yandi
(the Flame Emperor).
Under the Qing, the emperor granted to all
district magistrates the faculty to appropriate a piece of land for the temple of Shennong, and to lead the local
population in the worship of Shennong (mainly a yearly sacrifice, on the date
of his birthday). In Beijing
it was a solemn ceremony, and it was the first sacrifice of the year.
Shennong’s birthday is
celebrated on April 26 (of the lunar calendar), usually with a solemn
procession.
Sacred Sites
Three are the places sacred to Shennong:
they have become places of pilgrimage for the Chinese from all over the country
and from abroad.
1)
His birthplace. Tradition
indicates as his birthplace the village of Yuquan,
near Baoji, Shaanxi, on the southern bank of the Wei River, where a memorial
temple of modest size exists in a beautiful surrounding, between the Wei River
(north) and the Qin Hills (south).
2)
Suizhou, in Northern Hubei, in the area
where the Huai River
flows into the Yangzi
River. It is the place
where he brought his people, and together with them opened up the place to
farming and to other civilized activities. It
is a place that becomes crowded every year for the solemn celebration of
Shennong. There are numerous monuments there (such as the Shennong Cave,
the Nine Wells, a temple, a Shennong Square, etc.), and they are surrounded by
a mountain landscape of pristine beauty.
3)
Finally, his burial place,
called Yandiling, in Hunan
province.
The burial site of
Shennong (Yandiling) is a large complex (10,000 sq.m.) including a tumulus and
a temple. Both were rebuilt in 1986-87 at government expense, and there are
various stele dedicated by important figures, such as Hu Yaobang and Jiang
Zemin. The present tumulus is 6 m.
high and 27 m. in
diameter. But the place is very ancient. There are no clear records about when
the place started to exist. It is recorded that in 976, Emperor Taizu, the founder
of the Song Dynasty, sent a mission to search for the forgotten tomb of
Shennong. They searched many ancient burial sites all over the country, and
finally found it near Changsha.
Thereby they built a temple, still existing after one thousand years, on the
scale of an imperial palace.
The temple includes five pavilions. The
first one is the entrance, looking south. At both sides of the entrance there
are rooms full of inscribed stele recording the visits of famous persons. The
second pavilion is the one reserved traditionally for the liturgy celebrations.
The third one is before the main hall. The forth one contains the funerary
stele, bearing the large-sized inscription Yandi
shennongshi zhi mu. In the fifth yard the actual tumulus is located.
Temples and Iconography
Other temples to Shennong are spread
everywhere, given also that China
is mainly an agricultural country. In many temples dedicated to other deities,
there is also a chapel, or an altar, with Shennong’s statue.
In Taiwan, there are over one hundred
temples dedicated to Shennong. The temple in Shilin, Taipei, is noteworthy for its beauty and
antiquity. It was built over 300 years ago during the reign of Kangxi and is
built on two floors. The ground floor is for the worship of Tudi Gong (the lord
of the place), the second floor is for the worship of Shennong.
The statue of Shennong is easily
recognizable among the myriad of icons in Chinese temples. He is always
represented as sitting, the usual way of oriental kings. His head has two
horns, referring to the ancient legend that he was a human being with a buffalo
head. His torso is bare and at the waist he wears a skirt of tree leaves. This
is to indicate that he belongs to the age when clothes had not yet been
invented, when humans did not yet know how to weave fabrics.
Shennong always holds
in his hand a handful of ears of grain of golden yellow color (ripe for
harvesting). This is to remind the onlooker that his main contribution to
civilization was teaching people how to plant grains.
In certain temples (and
special feasts), his statue is covered with a splendid, gold-woven mantle, to
signify his regal stance (and of course, to give the faithful an excuse to
bestow on him precious gifts, thus hoping to make him happy and to propitiate
him).
His face is either
white, or red, or black. Most often it is black, reminding people of the way how
Shennong died, namely by poison.
The head inscription above Shennong altar
was decreed by the Qing emperors to be written in golden characters on a red
background.
Modern Criticism
Since time immemorial, China has been an agricultural society,
a country living on agriculture. Already seven or eight thousand years ago,
there existed a relatively well-developed agriculture along the Yellow River and the Yangzi. The agricultural techniques of
the Chinese were certainly avant-garde until the modern age. Shennong is the founder
of agricultural technique. He is often mentioned together with Huangdi, and
they speak of “Yan Huang” to mean Shennong and Huangdi. Both of them
contributed, the one with some inventions, the other with other inventions, to
the start of the agricultural civilization of the Chinese people. It is because
of this that the Chinese people traditionally like to call themselves Yan Huang zisun, which means “the
descendants of Shennong and Huangdi.”
Shennong is a legendary figure. Modern
critical historians have been working on the meaning of this kind of
mythological heritage. The dividing line between the Paleolithic (jiu shiqi shidai) and the Neolithic age
(xin shiqi shidai) is the beginning
of plant cultivation and animal domestication around 10,000 years ago (the
Neolithic Revolution). That plants did not only serve as food (like millet and
rice) but also as medicine can still be seen in the long tradition of Chinese
medicine (see the book Shennong
bencao jing "Materia Medica of the Divine Farmer"). A
third use of plants consists in their property to provide fibers, fuel, or even
poison.
Some scholars would say
that a legendary figure such as Shennong was not a person, but a tribe. Ancient
indications hint that Shennong was born in Shaanxi,
then moved south and settled in Hubei, and
finally died near Changsha,
Hunan. This would mean that a
nomadic tribe, of hunters and sheep raisers, eventually moved south to Hubei,
where they settled down permanently – thus ending their nomadic life – and
started cultivating the land, living no longer only on hunting-fishing, but
mainly on farm products.
On this line, the fact
that since antiquity Shennong was described as having a buffalo head (two
horns), would indicate that the “Shennong” tribe’s totem was the buffalo, and
that by then, with the practice of agriculture, the buffalo had become extremely
important, the main working force in social life.
Political implications
The Divine
Farmer was one of the mythological bearers of culture at the beginning of civilization.
Han historians and myth makers describe his most fundamental task as having led
humanity out of a state of hunting and savagery, away from eating raw flesh,
drinking blood and wearing skins, towards an agrarian utopia. Here is the Huainanzi account from the 2nd
century BCE:
In
ancient times the people ate grasses and drank from rivers; they picked fruit
from trees and ate the flesh of mollusks and beetles. At that time there was
much suffering from illness and poisoning. So the Divine Farmer taught the
people for the first time how to sow and cultivate the five grains and to
examine the suitability of the earth, to differentiate dry or waterlogged,
fertile, high and lowland. He tasted the flavor of the hundred plants and the
sweet or bitterness of river and spring; and he taught the people what to avoid
and what to follow. At that time, on just one day he came across seventy
poisons.
Along Chinese history, there have been people who extolled the age
of Shennong for political purposes as a social utopia. The idea was that in
Shennong’s age there was no social exploitation; everyone was friendly and
equal to each other. The tribe chief was working and tilling the soil as any
other man. They worked together in the fields in great harmony. Men did farm
work in fields and women stayed home weaving cloth and doing stitching work. No
prisons or police were needed. No army was raised.
Concluding Observations
In the pantheon of
Chinese popular religion, Shennong belongs to the “ancestors” category. Furthermore,
he was a sage and a hero and benefactor of humankind. His figure is beloved by
the Chinese masses in general, together with Huangdi, and other mythical
ancestors of the Han race.
While considering the figure of Shennong,
two observations come to my mind:
1)
The Chinese emphasis on remembering
their ancestors on a regular base is quite special. The need of paying our debt
of gratitude to our ancestors, to those who, with their efforts and labors,
contributed to our civilization, is not felt so vividly in our Western cultural
tradition. In Western countries, although at times a statue may be built to an important
ancestor, usually the memory does not materialize in temples and routine rituals
of the Chinese kind. The
difference is possibly due to the different historical development of the two
cultures. In Western countries, civilization is connected to a millennia-long
process of confluence of a multitude of cultures, so that the great founders of
each individual culture have faded in the background. In the case of the
historical development of Chinese civilization, although foreign contributions
are not absent, the bulk of it goes back to a clear definite straight
historical line, back ultimately to the legendary figures of mythical
antiquity, the likes of Shennong and Huangdi.
2)
In the case of Shennong, same as
for other important deities, such as Mazu, Guan Gong, or Tudi Gong, it is clear
that – at least in mainstream Confucian ideology – he is not a god; he is a
spirit in Heaven. He is powerful because of his good deeds during his life on
earth; and he is always acting and exerting his power on behalf of Heaven.
The Vatican
decree Plane Compertum Est (1939)
allowed Chinese Catholics to give tribute of respect to Confucius and to
ancestors, a respect that could as well imply bowing and burning of incense in
front of their statues and memorial tablets. Logically, Chinese Catholics
should be allowed to pay their respects to the temple of Shennong,
as they do to Confucius and to their ancestors. Shennong too is an ancestor and
a sage!
In previous times, most
Western missionaries – both Catholic and Protestant - used to loathe the
figures of popular religion, or even to openly advocate their destruction. They
viewed those religious figures as the like of pagan idols stigmatized by
Biblical prophets. Even today, usually missionaries ignore their existence. It should
be time to change this attitude. Christian leaders should encourage their
faithful to show due respect to ancestors and sages, Shennong included. As long
as Christian religious leaders utterly ignore the existence of, or disrespect,
the most cherished figures of popular religion (such as Shennong the beneficent
ancestor, Guan Gong the personification of righteousness and loyalty; Mazu the
epitome of mercy, and so on), how can our foreign religion earn appreciation
and respect from the large majority of the Chinese masses?
A statue of Shennong, 6 meter high, in the countryside of Xinpu, northern Taiwan.
The main icon of Shennong in the Shennong temple of Tianmu. Taipei.
The main achievements of Shennong (cultural contributions to humankind: ploughing, archery, botanics-pharmacology, pottery, musical instruments, huts, weaving, agricultural cultivation)
Bibliographical Hints:
·
Ma Shutian, Zhongguo minjian
zhu shen [the gods of Chinese
popular religion], Guojia chubanshe, 2001.
·
Zhou Zhuojie, Yandi, Taipei: Guojia chubanshe, 2001.
·
http://search.minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/11/30/143293.html
Many Chinese pilgrims come to visit from
the country and from abroad, seeking the ancestral roots of the Chinese race
(in the same trip, they visit also the shrine/tomb of the Yellow Emperor in Qiaoshan, Shaanxi).
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