The cultural roots of "He Tu" and "Luo Shu"

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The cultural roots of "He Tu" and "Luo Shu" are two pictures with dotted circles, called "He Tu" and "Luo Shu". They are the ancestors of mahjong, chess and Go. Although Mahjong, chess and Go are minor games, they are all related to these two figures. "He Tu" and "Luo Shu" belong to the mythological part of Chinese academic thought. According to old legend, when Dayu was controlling floods, he encountered many engineering difficulties. As a result, a horse came out of the river in the upper reaches of the Yellow River. The ancients deified it and called it a dragon horse. There is a pattern on the back of this dragon horse. The pattern is just these circles and dots and nothing else. Therefore, this pattern is called "River Diagram". Because of this pattern, mathematical methods and mathematical concepts were born. But the ancient myths are different from the general theory. The myths say that if Dayu obtained this "River Map", he could drive ghosts and gods and eliminate China's floods. Later, a turtle came out of Luoshui. On the turtle's back, there was another pattern made of circles. This pattern was called "Luo Shu". The combination of these two patterns resulted in the philosophy of Chinese mathematics and the doctrines applied in engineering. This is our traditional view. In later generations, until the Tang and Song Dynasties, most scholars did not agree with this view, and they adopted a skeptical attitude. In modern times, we are even more anti-ancient, thinking that these two pictures are meaningless and may be false myths. What basis does modern scholars have for this “meaningless assertion”? I can't say it, I just don't believe this statement. As far as we know, Chinese culture was not unified during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. At that time, not only were the languages, characters, transportation, and economy not unified, but the social forms of each region were also not unified. of Zhou Dynasty * * The so-called central emperor's rule, the enfeoffment of princes, and the division of local governments are not unified. The unification situation since the Qin and Han Dynasties is another matter. When we study history, we often look at the ancients in terms of their political and social forms. This is a big deviation. Since there was no unity in that era, judging from the culture of the Four Books and Five Classics preserved by Confucius, it is too difficult to organize written data on the history of Tang and Yu and above. Therefore, when there are reliable texts as a basis, we can start from Tang Yao and compile the "Shangshu". Based on these data, we can understand the different cultural regions of Yao, Shun, and Yu. At that time, it was in the north of the upper reaches of the Yellow River. The Yellow Emperor in the earlier period, such as the famous Battle of Zhuolu, was in the north of Hebei. The culture at that time was in the north. Later, the culture of the Zhou Dynasty reached almost south of the Yellow River. Chinese culture moved from north to south, the larger side from northwest to southeast, and the smaller side from north to south. For example, the culture of Jiangnan slowly moved from the north after the Jin Dynasty. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Jiangnan culture flourished. Not only China, but also foreign cultures are the same. They all originated in the north and slowly evolved to the south. In the history of China and foreign countries, the rulers who really prospered within one reign all came from the north, and few of them came from cities. Most of them came from the countryside. These are very relevant to the study of philosophical issues. Now we know that Chinese culture originally developed from the upper reaches of the Yellow River. It is obvious that the two cultural systems of "Hetu" and "Luoshu" took place in different places, one is in the upper reaches of the Yellow River in the north, and the other is in the south, in the Luoyang area on the south bank of the Yellow River. The cultural root knowledge of "Hetu" and "Luoshu" is compiled based on the content of Teacher Zhang Cheng's WeChat public account (Dacheng Zhidao Chinese Studies).