[Yun]

Many Chinese will have heard of the 'Three Wu' - Emperor Taiwu of the Northern Wei (Tuoba Tao), Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou (Yuwen Yong), and Emperor Wuzong of the Tang (Li Yan), who were the only ones in Chinese history to proscribe and persecute Buddhism. Their policies were never continued by their successors, but Confucian and Marxist historians in China have often praised them for trying to destroy the power of religion in society - especially Yuwen Yong, since he was the only one to proscribe both Buddhism and Daoism.

It just happens that two of these three emperors were men of considerable ambition and accomplisment. Tuoba Tao of the Northern Wei unified all of north China and came rather close to capturing the Liu-Song capital too; Yuwen Yong of the Northern Zhou established a military system with which he conquered the Northern Qi. However, Li Yan (Wuzong) of the Tang was rather less accomplished - the successes in dealing with the Uyghur crisis were due to his Prime Minister Li Deyu, and Wuzong himself died young after taking too many Daoist elixirs.

Tuoba Tao and Li Yan were patrons of Daoism - indeed, Li Yan banned all foreign religions including not only Buddhism but also Zoroastrianism, Nestorian Christianity, and Manichaeism, allowing only Daoism and Confucianism in the Tang. Prof. Ku Cheng-mei argues that Tuoba Tao had wanted to be a Buddhist cakravartin king at first, but the monk whom he had wanted to employ as a consultant for this was murdered by the Northern Liang state, thus forcing him to adopt Kou Qianzhi's Heavenly Master Daoist model of sacred kingship. This interpretation is still open to debate.

As for Yuwen Yong, he was essentially a traditionalist Confucian unlike his devoutly Buddhist elder brothers (who had reigned before him), and banned Daoism as well - to the surprise of the Daoist ministers who had been urging him to get rid of Buddhism.

Tuoba Tao was a very cruel man who killed his own pro-Buddhist crown prince; Yuwen Yong was better but beat his crown prince severely to teach him to behave - this backfired and the crown prince became mentally quite sick, leading eventually to the usurpation by Yang Jian (Sui Wendi). As for Li Yan, he was a little insane when he died because of the elixirs he took. So they weren't without their flaws.

As for the common modern argument that what they did was meant to strengthen the economy and army by cutting off the flow of money and manpower to the monasteries, or to relieve the burden of the people, these are just Marxist interpretations derived from the idea of religion as an exploitative force. The reasons for the proscriptions were mainly ideological and not economic or administrative, and the proscriptions were definitely not popular among the pious populace. Tuoba Tao did have a partial security motive, however - he suspected the monasteries of colluding with rebels after he found weapons hidden in one monastery in Chang'an. In reaction, he had all the monks in Chang'an executed.

What do you think about the policies of these three emperors? Were they doomed to failure, or intolerant, and why have emperors in the Ming and Qing not tried to ban Buddhism despite the anti-Buddhist sentiments of Neo-Confucianism? [Indeed, anti-Buddhist scholars in the Ming were prevented from demanding the eradication of Buddhism and Daoism by the fact that Zhu Yuanzhang, despite placing severe restrictions on the expansion of Buddhism, had included laws on Buddhism in the Ming code, thus acknowledging its right to exist].

[urofpersia]

Firstly, I must profess ignorance of the banning of Buddhism by the 3 Emperors beyond having heard something of it.

I however agree that it was probably more to do with ideology than economic factors which prompted such acts. I would even hazard a guess that politics may have played a part in the banning of the religion. The religions had political influence and one of the reasons would be to undermine that influence, or change the power balance in court. (The traditional image of the Emperor being fully autocratic in practice is not one I subscribe to in general)

Depending upon interpretation, the religion (in this case Buddhism) could have been seen in an unfavourable light or even seditious. Basically it would not be too hard to find reasons to ban any religion.

As for the Ming, base my limited readings, Zhu Yuanzhang appeared to be a paranoid and a person of suspicious nature, and given his rise from peasant to Emperor must certainly have been a very good player in politics. While he himself may not have supported Buddhism, he might have seen Buddhism as counter-force to other elements in court, including ones which he may be favouring at the moment.

What of the Eunuchs during the Ming? Were they of a religious bent? If assuming they are allowed to have beliefs and practices in this area, they may have found more succour in Buddhism compared to the other religions and ideologies due to their status.

It would be interesting to hear what others have to say.

[Yun]

Regarding Zhu Yuanzhang: he tried in the early part of his reign to patronize Buddhism heavily and employ it as a sort of state religion (especially since he didn't trust the Jiangnan-dominated Neo-Confucian literati), but he gradually grew disillusioned with Buddhism's potential as a stabilizing force and alarmed at the proliferation of wandering and poorly-qualified monks, which threatened social control. He thus switched to a policy of strict supervision and restriction - small monasteries were forced to be absorbed into large ones in a central location (often these large ones would be set up by the government for that purpose), and all monks had to be registered by passing a qualification test. However, later Ming emperors were generally more lenient with Buddhism, and a few even became big patrons of Buddhism again.

[naruwan]

You forgot about Mao Tsedong

[MengTzu]

Yun, on Oct 26 2005, 09:04 AM, said:

What do you think about the policies of these three emperors? Were they doomed to failure, or intolerant, and why have emperors in the Ming and Qing not tried to ban Buddhism despite the anti-Buddhist sentiments of Neo-Confucianism? [Indeed, anti-Buddhist scholars in the Ming were prevented from demanding the eradication of Buddhism and Daoism by the fact that Zhu Yuanzhang, despite placing severe restrictions on the expansion of Buddhism, had included laws on Buddhism in the Ming code, thus acknowledging its right to exist].

Perhaps the Neo-Confucians no longer saw Buddhism as a "threat," since Neo-Confucianism had in a way succeeded to "overcome" both Daoism and Buddhism in the "religious competition." I might be wrong about the facts, but here's what I speculate based on the little I've read about this: the Neo-Confucians essentially took what they saw as the most sophisticated philosophical elements of Daoism and Buddhism and combined these with what they consider to be the essentials of Confucianism (they did not accept everything Confucian -- they also opposed some elements of Han Confucianism.) Thus the most sublime elements of Daoism and Buddhism are taken out and transferred into Neo-Confucianism, and Daoism and Buddhism are left with religious beliefs and practices that have little place in the elitist, intellectual strata of society. This is kind of like how Christianity was at one point the leader of Western intellectual thought, and when the Enlightenment Era inherited and extracted some of the most sophisticated thoughts from Christianity, and eventually Christianity became regarded by the academia skeptically as religious and therefore no longer the leader of the academia. That is not to say that Christianity, Daoism, and Buddhism lost their sophisticated elements, but then since these elements are already duplicated in Enlightenment theories and Neo-Confucianism, the academic elitists no longer needed to rely on them academically. Thus the status of these religions sank, and perhaps this is why Neo-Confucians didn't find Buddhism threatening enough to ban it.

[Yun]

Partly true and partly not

The Neo-Confucian gentry generally were resigned to believing that the common people were too ignorant and immature to absorb moral teachings from anything but religion, and that anyway the flashy processions and ceremonies of the temples were more attractive than Confucian academies. The more conservative ones were often alarmed and outraged, however, that even local gentry families were patronizing monasteries and making donations. It was the intense jealousy towards the popular appeal of Buddhism and Daoism (jealousy which was already apparent in Zhu Xi's writings on the need for more local Confucian academies) that led Neo-Confucian county magistrates to routinely heap scorn on Buddhism and Daoism even while writing records about the monasteries for the county gazetteers. One early Qing magistrate even decided to exclude the monasteries from the gazetteers altogether, sparking a debate about whether such records ought to be of a normative or purely archival nature:

Timothy Brook, a prominent social historian of the Ming, argues in an essay in his recent book "The Chinese State in Ming Society" that the codified rulings and precedents of the Ming (for example in the Ming Code and Da Ming Huidian) were a Chinese "constitution" that regulated the behaviour of the Ming state. Brook argues that the failure of a segment of the Ming Confucian elite to push effectively for an eradication of Buddhism was due to Buddhism having been given a place (albeit grudgingly) in the constitution of the Da Ming Huidian, in which it was acknowledged that Buddhism and Daoism are "difficult to do away with completely" and should merely be prevented from spreading further through official restrictions. As Brook puts it, the argument of the 'preservationists' against the 'eradicationists' was that "the state's promulgation of regulations restricting Buddhist institutions amounted de facto to a clear acknowledgment by the state that Buddhism had a right to exist, that it was an ineradicable component of Ming society." Thus, despite the scorn of Confucian magistrates, one of whom in the early Qing even excluded Buddhist and Daoist monasteries from the county gazetteer altogether, Buddhism remained an integral and legitimate part of local society, one in which many local gentry were also actively involved. The weakness of Brook's argument, however, is that he provides only one 1576 gazetteer as an example of the 'preservationist' or 'constitutional' argument (the author stresses that monasteries should be recorded as the laws of the dynasty permit Buddhism to exist, but conveniently stipulates that monasteries built after that date should not be recorded in future editions), and this is not adequate evidence of it having been widely used.

(quoted from a recent essay written by myself)

[urofpersia]

Quote

Buddhism remained an integral and legitimate part of local society, one in which many local gentry were also actively involved.

Question, who do you mean by local gentry?

[snowybeagle]

urofpersia, on Oct 27 2005, 11:56 PM, said:

Question, who do you mean by local gentry?

I think local gentry refer to landowners of large tracts of property, being de facto local rulers over tenant farmers and villages within the boundaries of their territories. They were sort of "grassroot" leaders of the era, though they represent not the actual grassroot - peasants, but the property owning class.

These gentries usually have sizable household guards, and owned slaves numbering anything from dozens to thousands.

Their support were necessary for local officials to get things done, such as obtaining taxes and corvees, as well as maintaining order and stability.

There were various reasons why local gentries would support buddhist temples.

I suspect one of them being "religion as opiate of the masses", as the gentries lavish and often extravagant lifestyle contrasted starkly with the poverty of most of the working class. Compared to the enigmatic Daoism and Confucianism which offered no hope in the afterlife, certain forms of Buddhism had a simple appeal to the masses.

By making generous donations to temples, the gentries also get "official" blessings for their families from the monks, not to mention adding "legitimacy" to the way they run their "little kingdoms".

By associating with religious institutions, the local tyrants "gentrify" their identity and elevate themselves socially.

These type of relationship echoes that betwen the church and landowners in Europe during the Middle Ages.

[jwrevak]

Yun, on Oct 26 2005, 02:04 AM, said:

As for the common modern argument that what they did was meant to strengthen the economy and army by cutting off the flow of money and manpower to the monasteries, or to relieve the burden of the people, these are just Marxist interpretations derived from the idea of religion as an exploitative force. The reasons for the proscriptions were mainly ideological and not economic or administrative, and the proscriptions were definitely not popular among the pious populace.

So, briefly, what were the idiological reasons they opposed Buddhism?

[General_Zhaoyun]

snowybeagle, on Oct 28 2005, 01:00 AM, said:

I think local gentry refer to landowners of large tracts of property, being de facto local rulers over tenant farmers and villages within the boundaries of their territories. They were sort of "grassroot" leaders of the era, though they represent not the actual grassroot - peasants, but the property owning class.

These gentries usually have sizable household guards, and owned slaves numbering anything from dozens to thousands.

Is gentry called "Di Fang hao qiang 地方豪强" in chinese, which I often came across in chinese history text ?

[snowybeagle]

General_Zhaoyun, on Oct 28 2005, 12:03 PM, said:

Is gentry called "Di Fang hao qiang 地方豪强" in chinese, which I often came across in chinese history text?

That is one term.
Another term used is 士族 shì zú, which is a more polite term with connotation of higher social class of landowners with some aristocratic family ties.

[Yun]

'Local gentry' is defined as those elite members of rural communities (i.e. villages and small towns) who had an education and had either taken the imperial examinations or were studying to take them. They would not be holders of official posts, but would be considered members of the scholar class and respected by their non-gentry peers as such. Retired officials who returned to their native places to live would also be considered as local gentry. The usual term for them in Chinese was "shen" or "shi", from which comes our modern translation for 'gentleman', "shenshi". "Shizu" was an earlier term for the scholar-aristocracy of the late Han to Tang, which was defined more by its pedigree of descent from high officials and less by its participation in the examination system. The sort of landowner elite that Snowybeagle describes is more the Han-Tang local aristocracy than the Song to Qing local gentry, who generally did not own lots of land.

Quote

So, briefly, what were the idiological reasons they opposed Buddhism?

A desire to enhance their imperial legitimacy as being a patron of another religion or philosophy - i.e., Daoism or Confucianism. In the case of Tang Wuzong, also an element of xenophobia that was becoming increasingly prevalent as a reaction to the An Lushan rebellion and the troubles with the Tibetans (who were Buddhists) and Uyghurs (who were Manichaeans).

[snowybeagle]

Yun, on Oct 28 2005, 07:00 PM, said:

The sort of landowner elite that Snowybeagle describes is more the Han-Tang local aristocracy than the Song to Qing local gentry, who generally did not own lots of land.

I think not post-Song, but unless the novel "Outlaws of the Marsh" set during the Song Dynasty were inaccurate on this point, many of the figures in the novels should also qualify as "landed gentry":

(1) Shi Jin (史进), the 9-tattooed dragon (九紋龍)
(2) Li Ying (李应), the sky eagle (撲天鵰)
(3) Hu (扈) family
(4) Zhu (祝) family
(5) Zeng (曾) family
(6) Squire Mao 毛太公 (the yuan-wai who robbed the Xie (解珍, 解宝) brothers of their tiger kill)
(7) Lu JunYi (卢俊义)

(1) to (5) were leaders of the local community, living in manorial estates and maintained an armed guard unit, ostensibly to protect themselves against bandits.

[Yun]

Yes - I should have been more specific. The Ming situation was different from that of the Song and the Qing, and is the one depicted in The Water Margin, which was written in the Ming although set in the Song. Wealthy gentry landlords with large manorial estates and many tenant-farmers and serfs were prevalent in the Ming, but the Qing reversed this by giving full property rights to the majority of smallholders and instituting laws to prevent landlords from forcing smallholding tenants into serfdom. Gentry landlords still existed in the Qing, but they were no longer dominant within the gentry class. As for the Song, the demise of the old aristocracy during the Five Dynasties had turned many former serfs and tenants into free smallholders, and the newly emerging gentry in the south were not yet strong enough economically and socially to gain ownership of much land.

[snowybeagle]

Coming back to the thread, was it unusual for a monastery to be self sufficient (through monks farming on temple's properties or receiving rental payments or manufacturing products for sale) rather than depend on public donations, stipends from local lords or gifts from nobility/royalty?