黄帝历史形象的塑造

脱离传说境界以后,黄帝的形象是向神仙偶像与历史人物两个方向发展的。司马迁撰写《五帝本纪》,将黄帝塑造成中华正史第一人物,凝炼成虚实之间形象,尊崇为帝王样板,供奉为华夏始祖,从而适应了汉武帝构建大一统宏图和巩固家天下专制局面的时代需要。北齐史家魏收充分领会司马迁思想精髓,在《魏书》首篇首句中将拓跋氏初祖认作黄帝之孙,又在《官氏志》中梳理出诸部落汉化姓氏,将黄帝推广成北朝各族共同祖先,从而体现出民族融合潮流,适应了中华文明升华趋势。又经过社会长期弘扬,黄帝历史形象终于发展成为受到海内外广泛认可的人文初祖形象,原因就在于凝聚中华民族的需要。

Shaping the Historical Image of Huangdi

Once it left the realm of legend,the image of Huangdi developed in two directions:as an immortal and as a historical figure.In Sima Qian’s"Biography of Five Emperors,"Huangdi is portrayed as the originator of Chinese history,a figure compounded of the real and the imaginary,venerated as the model for later emperors and the ancestor of the Huaxia.This met the need of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to realize the great unity of China and consolidate an autocratic monarchy in which the empire belonged to a single family.Fully grasping the essence of Sima Qian’s thought,Wei Shou,a Northern Qi historian,pointed out in the first sentence of"Biography of Emperors I"in Book of Wei that the ancestor of the Tuoba was the grandson of Huangdi.At the same time,he put in order the sinicized family names of all the tribes in"Treatise on State Offices"and promoted Huangdi as the common ancestor of all ethnic groups under the Northern Dynasties,a move which conformed to the trend to national integration and the rise of Chinese culture.Following a long period of such promotion,the historical image of Huangdi as the ancestor of Chinese civilization became widely recognized both at home and abroad.