Three Sovereigns- Chinese GroupCollective"Sage-Kings of High Antiquity"
Also known as: Sanhuang, Sānhuáng, and 三皇
Titles & Epithets
Domains
Symbols
Description
Fuxi watched the tracks of birds and the markings on turtle shells until he drew the Eight Trigrams. Nüwa patched a broken sky with five-colored stones. Together with Shennong the Divine Farmer, they are the Sanhuang, the sage-rulers who civilized the world before recorded history.
Mythology & Lore
The Ordering of the World
Before the Sovereigns, humans lived without knowledge of the seasons or the patterns that governed the world. Fuxi changed that. The Yijing tradition credits him with observing the tracks of birds and animals, the markings on turtle shells, and the movements of stars until he derived the Eight Trigrams, the system of broken and unbroken lines that encodes the principles of all change. He taught humanity to fish with nets and to cook with fire. He established marriage as the foundation of family life.
Fuxi is always paired with Nüwa, his counterpart and spouse. Both are depicted with serpentine lower bodies. Where Fuxi ordered the world, Nüwa populated it. According to the Fengsu Tongyi, she fashioned the first humans from yellow earth, molding them individually by hand. When the labor proved too slow, she dipped a rope in mud and swung it, and the droplets became additional humans.
Her other great act was saving what she had made. When the water god Gonggong shattered one of the pillars supporting heaven, the sky tilted and tore open. Floods and fires swept the earth. The Huainanzi records that Nüwa smelted stones of five colors and used them to patch the broken sky, then cut the legs of a giant cosmic turtle to serve as new pillars at the four corners of heaven. She dammed the floods and extinguished the fires.
The Divine Farmer
Shennong addressed a different need: the body. He taught humanity to plow the earth and cultivate grain rather than rely on hunting alone, and he established markets where people could exchange goods.
His greater fame comes from medicine. Shennong personally tasted hundreds of plants to determine which were healing and which were poisonous. The poisons nearly killed him many times over. The Shennong Bencao Jing, though compiled centuries later, is attributed to his discoveries and remains a foundational text of Chinese herbal medicine. Some traditions depict him with a transparent abdomen, so he could watch each herb's effect as it traveled through his body.