Yu the Great
Xia Dynasty king and founder / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Yu the Great (Chinese: 大禹; pinyin: Dà Yǔ) or Yu the Engineer was a legendary king in ancient China who was famed for "the first successful state efforts at flood control,"[1] his establishment of the Xia dynasty which inaugurated dynastic rule in China, and his upright moral character.[2][3] He figures prominently in the Chinese legend titled "Great Yu Controls the Waters" (大禹治水; Dà Yǔ zhì shuǐ). Yu and other "sage-kings" of ancient China were lauded for their virtues and morals by Confucius and other Chinese teachers.[4] He is one of the few Chinese monarchs who is posthumously honored with the epithet "the Great".
Yu the Great 大禹 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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King of the Xia dynasty | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Predecessor | Shun | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Successor | Qi | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Died | Mount Kuaiji | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Spouse | Lady Tushan | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Issue | Qi of Xia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Father | Gun | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Mother | Nüzhi | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese | 大禹 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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There is no contemporary evidence of Yu's existence as traditionally attested in the Records of the Grand Historian. Yu is said to have ruled as sage-king during the late 3rd millennium BCE, which predates the oracle bone script used during the late Shang dynasty—the oldest known form of writing in China—by nearly a millennium.[5] Yu's name was not inscribed on any artifacts which were produced during the proposed era in which he lived, nor was it inscribed on the later oracle bones; his name was first inscribed on vessels which date back to the Western Zhou period (c. 1045–771 BCE).