Research On Chinese Ancient Kunlun Concept

In ancient Chinese mythology,Kunlun is the center of the earth,the capital of God on earth,and the sacred mountain where the gods live.In ancient Chinese geography,Kunlun is a great mountain located in the west.It is the source of many rivers and the ancestor of all mountains.In Taoism,Kunlun is a place of immortality where the immortals live and where those who seek immortality ascend to heaven.Since the first record of Kunlun in the,Kunlun has attracted people’s attention with its strong mythology and has become a place that has haunted people’s dreams throughout the ages.Therefore,Kunlun has become the object of endless exploration by scholars,travelers,immortal seekers and even emperors and rulers.Many researchers throughout history have developed different views of Kunlun,depending on their times,motivations,and understanding of the original texts.This paper selects five prominent aspects to study the concept of Kunlun in ancient China:the mythical cosmology of Kunlun,the concept of Kunlun related to Taoism,the concept of Kunlun under the influence of Buddhism,the concept of Kunlun in geomancy,and the concept of Kunlun in the exploration and study of northwest geography.Through these five areas of inquiry,I hope to make clear the origin and evolution of the Kunlun concept in history.The chapter 1 is an introduction,which discusses the origin of the study,provides an overview of the research,and explains the research methodology and what this paper will study.The second chapter explores the occurrence of the mythical cosmology of Kunlun in the pre-Qin and Qin-Han periods,studying the original appearance of Kunlun and its deification through ancient texts.Kunlun was the center of the universe,the stairway to heaven,the palace of the gods,and the source of rivers with many treasures and immortal medicines.Because of the misunderstanding of the Shanhaijing,Kunlun gradually changed from the mountain of the east to the mountain of the west in people’s minds.In the third chapter,the association between the concept of Kunlun and Daoism is explored,and the pre-Daoist Kunlun concept and Daoism’s Kunlun concept are discussed.The geographical and Kunlun mythological geography of the Shanhaijing is the source of the belief in the spirit and the Taoist concept of immortality.Chapter 4 discusses the influences of the spread of Buddhism on Chinese mythological cosmology and analyzes the changes in the concept of Kunlun under the influence of the Buddhist Sumeru cosmology.Buddhism used the mythical cosmology of kunlun to integrate into China,and to some extent reconstructed the central view of the Chinese people.Chapter 5 discusses the kunlun concept in geomancy,including the background of the formation of the Chinese dragon vein theory and the occurrence of the concept of kunlun as the "ancestor of the mountains".The concept of Kunlun’s dragon veins is the fusion It is an applied combination of positivistic and mythological geography in geomancy that has long influenced on how Chinese people view the world.Chapter 6 explores the cosmology of ancient geography,discusses the "discovery" of Kunlun in different eras,and examines the dynastic conception of geography reflected therein,with particular emphasis on the study of Kunlun-He Yuan by Qing Dynasty scholars,and elucidates the influence of the traditional concept of Kunlun on the exploration of river sources in the Qing Dynasty.The search for Kunlun and the study of Kunlun through the ages have been based mainly on the Shanhaijing and the concept of Kunlun arising from the misunderstanding of the Shanhaijing.The research in this paper shows that the Shanhaijing is the original source of all later generations’ views of Kunlun.Scholars from different eras misinterpreted and interpreted the Kunlun accounts in the Shanhaijing based on their specific time,cultural,and ideological backgrounds,resulting in a variety of complex and ambiguous conceptions of Kunlun throughout history.