五行 이론으로 본 五帝의 기원과 형성

Abstract

This study traced the formation process of the Five Emperors (五帝) through the traditional literature of ancient East Asia, and examined its essential form through the excavated Oracle bone script data. The representative great men selected as Five Emperors appear slightly differently depending on the times and literature. As a result, the Five Emperors concept was created to secure their historical legitimacy and legitimacy of state management by creating a Chinese-centered worldview during the warring states period and Qin and Han Dynausty. Five Emperors were selected from the main great men who influenced ancient China during the Pre-ancient era. The principle applied to the selection is the theory of the application of five elements claimed by the Chueh-yeon of the Warring States Period, and based on this, a genealogy in the form of the history presented in a series of biographies was written. In the Shanghai dynasty era, there was already a systematic recognition of the five direction and their areas, which divided the geographical perspective into five types: East, South, West, North, and Center. At that time, the five districts were appointed to represent themselves in the form of the Five the king’s servants (五官), and the concept was expanded and changed with the flow of the times, with the names Five vassals (五臣), Five kings, or Five administrative assistants (五佐). Also, an unique the East Asian Philosophical Concept of Relationship system was formed in which everything was assigned to elements that represent five directions. After East Zhou dynasty, the use of five spatial-centered elements was systematized by a new theory of the mutual generation (相生) or the mutual overcoming (相克), and attempts were made to interpret the phenomenon of everything based on the concepts. The rise and fall of the dynasty and the change of history were also interpreted based on the mutual generation (相生) or the mutual overcoming (相克) concepts. Strictly speaking, the Five Emperors distributed in five geographical spaces and the Five Emperors based on the mutual generation and the mutual overcoming concepts are completely different results. This new concept is interpreted as being used to secure the rationality and legitimacy of the construction of the dynasty by expanding its meaning from a spatial perspective that exists in reality to a temporal perspective. In conclusion, the emergence and formation of a new concept, Five Emperors, was based on the mutual generation and the mutual overcoming concepts during the East Zhou dystiness and Qin and Handy periods. As a result, the new concept of Five Emperors is a genealogy created to highlight the legitimacy and claim historical legitimacy of their history while creating a Chinese-centered world view during the Warring States and Qin and Handysts.