《사기》 〈오제본기〉의 황제 실존성 연구

Abstract

Since the Doubting Antiquity School questionning the existentiality of Whag Je, the studies on the origin of Huaxia are mostly about the time when Whag Je was created. It is said that Whag Je was created at the end of Qing period or early Jin and Han period at the end of Warring States Period. The reason is that Whag Je was described to be more imperial and in details in the literature in later times.
 What indicates the existentiality of Whag Je includes orally transmitted historical records, epigraph and various historical records on surnames and institutional memory. More imperial appearance of Whag Je observed in literature in later days than in early literature is related to the distribution of letters. The view that Whag Je was created by ‘making ancestors’ is related to the surnames. However, it was verified that Whag Je was not created by ‘making ancestors’ through genealogy literature referred by researchers. It’s difficult to consider that Whag Je was the fictional character because existentiality of Whag Je was indicated by diverse facts including ancestral rite as the institutional memory.
 Furthermore, Whag Je is the real figure which can’t be created because Sima Qian wrote “Annals of the Five Emperors” as checking diverse kinds of achievements and referring to old rumors, the records on Whag Je in Pre-Qin period were not clearly described and so those records were primary historical records which were not clearly arranged as the old stories.