Emperor Dongyue is the god of Taishan, is a relatively important god worshipped by the folk religions on the mainland, in the eyes of the people, the god of Taishan, as the embodiment of Taishan, is a divine messenger of communication between heaven and the world, and is the protector god of the emperors who have been ordered by the emperors to govern the world, and the power is very great.
In ancient times, the ancestors of their own survival of the natural living environment has not yet fully recognized and mastered, such as the occurrence of landslides, earthquakes, lightning, forest fires and other phenomena, in the eyes of ancient humans, the mountain forest is a completely uncontrollable, beyond the scope of their own cognition of foreign bodies, therefore, they often have a reverence for the mountains and rivers, that is, mountain worship, in this gradual worship process, "mountain gods" came into being.
According to the Book of Rites and Rituals, "Mountains, forests, rivers, valleys, and hills can emerge from the clouds, for the wind and rain, and for the monsters to be seen, they are all gods." ”
As the ancestor of the mountains and the head of the five mountains, Taishan naturally evolved into a god of Taishan. According to the Western Han Dynasty Dongfang Shuo's "Divine Anomaly Classic", the god of Taishan is the Pangu V Sun Jinhong clan.
According to the "Three Sects search for gods, Dongyue Biography", the Eastern Yue Emperor Jin Hongshi once had meritorious service in the Changbai Mountains, and when he reached the Fuxi clan, he was named "Tai Nian", holding the six books of the Heavenly Immortals, and was revered as "Taihua Zhenren"; to the Shennong Dynasty, he was also given the title of "Tianfu Duguan" and the title of Fujun.
After Qin Shi Huang unified the world and personally went to Mount Tai to seal Zen, successive dynasties have continuously pushed the status of the god of Mount Tai higher. According to the "Three Sects search for gods, Dongyue Biography": "During the reign of Emperor Ming of Hanming, the god Taishan was appointed as the marshal of Taishan, who was in charge of the distinction between the noble and the inferior of the residents of the world, the matter of the length and length of the Lu Section, the book of the six cases of the Eighteen Hells, and the period of life and death of the Seventy-five Divisions. ”
During the Tang Dynasty, Wu Zetian was first given the title of "King of Shenyue Tianzhong" and later honored as "Tianqi Jun". Emperor Xuanzong of Tang was given the title of "King of Tianqi". During the reign of Emperor Zhenzong of Song, he was enfeoffed as "King of Eastern Yue Ren Shengtian Qi", and later honored as "Holy Emperor of Dongyue Tianqi Ren". During the Yuan Dynasty, he was also crowned as "Heavenly Qi Dashengren Saint Emperor".
At this point, the god of Taishan rose from the initial real person to the capital official, then to the marshal and the king, and finally rose to become the emperor, and his status reached the peak, and he became the righteous Emperor of Dongyue.
As a result, the image of Emperor Dongyue was similar to that of the emperor of the world, wearing a purple and gold crown, holding a wat board, wearing a yellow dragon robe, majestic, living in the center of the temple, with a golden boy and a jade girl around him, and there were also statues of gods holding swords and silver guns on both sides.
The god of Taishan was promoted to empress, and Taoism also gave it higher divine powers, saying in the Taoist texts that "Dongyue Dasheng Tianqi Renyuan Saint Emperor: Qi Ying Qingyang, The Position of Zhen Zhen, Living Alone in the Middle Realm, Ruling All Souls." In charge of the power of good and evil in the world, si yin fu is the eye of right and wrong, the case sentence is seventy-two Cao, the punishment is divided into thirty-six yue, the punishment of adultery and punishment of evil, the death of the spirit is injected into life, the incarnation of the four mountains and the four heavenly holy emperors, and the nurturing of all things in The Liuhe. ”
As a result, the god of Taishan in Dongyue leapt from the yin king in charge of the yin soul to the emperor who was in charge of the life and death of good and evil in the world. Every year, the 28th day of the third month of the lunar calendar is the birthday of Emperor Dongyue, and good men and women from all over the country come here to burn incense and worship to celebrate.
After the Ming Dynasty mythological novel "Fengshen Yanyi" circulated, Huang Feihu became the more recognized Emperor of Dongyue, and his son Huang Tianhua was Binglinggong, the son of Emperor Dongyue.
Finally, let's take a look at how similar the title of Emperor Dongyue in the Yuan Dynasty was "Tianqi Dashengren Shengdi", which is similar to Sun Wukong's title of "Qi Tianda Sheng" in the Ming Dynasty mythological novel "Journey to the West"!
I don't know if Wu Cheng'en was influenced by the title of Emperor Dongyue of the Yuan Dynasty when he created "Journey to the West" when he added the title of "Qi Tian Dasheng" to Sun Wukong?