Is Liu Bang really a god like Sima Qian said?

Liu Bang, Emperor Gaozu of the Han Dynasty, was the founding emperor of the Han Empire and a famous legend in the history of China.

For this strange man, there are many legends in history, such as the famous snake-cutting uprising, such as the Hongmen banquet and so on.

Among Liu Bang's numerous legends, his life experience has always been the biggest mystery. In the history of more than two thousand years in China, Liu Bang has always been regarded as a god. How did this happen?

There is a mainstream view about Liu Bang's life experience. This view holds that Liu Bang's father is not a mortal, but a dragon, and Liu Bang's mother mates with the dragon in the wild and then gives birth to Liu Bang. Liu Bang looks very strange, "Dragon Ball Long Yan", with 72 moles on his left leg. The reason why Liu Bang has such magical qualities is that his true identity is the son of Chi Di!

This kind of content, which looks like fantasy novel to us today, has become the mainstream view of the ancients in China for two thousand years, because this statement is not from unofficial history or folklore, but from the most authoritative historical book in ancient China: Biography of Historical Records and Gaozu.

In other words, it was written by Sima Qian, the official of the Han Dynasty, and it was very serious!

For this statement, the official of the Han Dynasty couldn't put it down, because it meant that Liu Bang was the real dragon emperor and it was not difficult to understand that the world was "God's will".

But what we don't understand is why Sima Qian, who is known as "straightforward in writing", also recorded these absurd legends.

According to Records of the Emperor Gaozu, Liu Tuo, Liu Bang's mother, was sleeping in the wild and suddenly dreamed of a fairy. At that time, there was lightning and thunder, and Liu Bang's father went to find his wife. As a result, he saw a dragon lying on his wife, and then his wife got pregnant and gave birth to Liu Bang.

Later, Liu Bangdang, director of the pavilion, escorted the prisoner to Lishan. On the way, he let the prisoner go. The prisoner thanked Liu Bang and rebelled with him. At that time, Liu Bang was drunk and there was a big snake on the road ahead. Everyone was scared. Liu bang used his wine to wield a sword to cut the snake. Later, someone saw the old woman crying beside the snake's body and said, "This is my son, Bai Di's son, and now he was killed by Chi Di's son." Then the old woman disappeared. When this word came out, everyone was afraid of Liu Bang, who was still so complacent.

This is the origin of Liu Bang's life experience in Historical Records.

To put it bluntly, "Historical Records" can be called "the historian's swan song, leaving Sao without rhyme". Although it has its own uniqueness, Sima Qian can't be divorced from his era, nor can he surpass his era.

In the Confucianism of Han dynasty, the concept of "fate" has always been respected. Later, there was a fierce debate with people about the theory of "destiny" to prove that "destiny lies in Liu"

Not surprisingly, the Liu Jianli Dynasty naturally hoped that everyone in the world would think that Liu was the only legal ruler recognized by God. The concept of "destiny" has naturally become the mainstream concept under the vigorous promotion of the Han central government.

After all, Sima Qian was also a figure of that era. Although his Historical Records is not as profound as that of later historians, it has begun to take shape.

It doesn't matter whether Liu Bang is the son of a fairy, whether it was born by Shenlong and her mother or Chi Di. The important thing is to make people believe that he is different. This technology was later absorbed by emperors of past dynasties. Anyone who became an emperor has similar magical phenomena in history books. Over time, people found something fishy here, and everyone laughed it off.

However, the 400-year-old concept of destiny in the Han Dynasty collapsed with the decline of the Han Dynasty at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, which led Cao Cao to replace Confucianism with the study of name and law.