Shennong, also known as the Farmer God, Divine Farmer and the Emperor of the Five Grains, is the Chinese god of Chinese medicine, agriculture, farming and of the five grains. It is said that Shennong was first known as Yan Di, or the Emperor of Fire.
Shennong is considered the father of Chinese agriculture who taught his people how to cultivate grain as food and how to avoid killing animals. Shennong himself is said to have helped people transition from a diet of meat, clams and wild fruits to one based on grains and vegetables plus for developing herbal medicine. The Shennong Herb-Root Classic is attributed to Shennong, which was first compiled during the end of the Western Han Dynasty which lists various medicinal herbs discovered by Shennong.
It was Shennong who went around testing hundreds of herbs for their properties to which he is well known for and was crucial to the development of traditional Chinese medicine. Tea is claimed to be Shennong’s discovery, where leaves of tea twigs blew upwards from a fire and landed in the cauldron of boiling water. It is also notable that Shennong was able to identify seventy poisonous plants that he had tried himself.
Shennong and Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, are even said to be friends who shared alchemical secrets of medicine, immortality and making gold. Supposedly the two are kin and the Han Chinese regarded them both as joint ancestors. It is also said that Shennong, with Huangdi and another god, Fuxi, took part in creation of an instrument known as the guqin which is referred as “the father of Chinese music” or “the instrument of the sages”.
Shennong has two horns on his head, clothed with leaves and often with a plant in one of his hands to be tasted.
No comments:
Post a Comment