Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty: His Life, Times, and Legacy

8. Religions

8 Religions In Sui times, Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, collectively known as the Three Teachings (sanjiao ), were regarded as three competitive yet complementary systems of thought. The Sui scholar Li Shiqian expressed the prevailing sentiment about them when he declared, “Buddhism is the sun, Daoism the moon, and Confucianism the five planets.”1 By comparing the Three Teachings to the seven celestial bodies, known as the Seven Luminaries (qiyao ) in astrology,2 Li ranked Buddhism the highest, followed by Daoism and Confucianism. As the last of the Three Teachings, Confucianism played an important religious role in society, particularly in ancestral worship, Heaven worship, and a host of ritual sacrifices. However, having neither priesthood nor church organization, Confucianism by Sui times had been essentially an ethnical tradition.3 Furthermore, policy decisions of the Sui court regarding Confucianism were primarily concerned with its secular aspects.4 So despite its involvement in contention for supremacy as a thought system against Buddhism and Daoism, Confucianism was by no means a major religious force under the Sui. The focus of this chapter is on the first two of the Three Teachings, Buddhism and Daoism. As institutional religions with distinct theologies, ordination practices, clergies, and church organizations, both Buddhism and Daoism underwent a crucial period of transition during the Sui dynasty. Daoism Throughout his reign, Wendi, judging from the sporadic surviving records, had remained a strong patron of Daoism and consistently regarded it with 143 respect despite the contempt he showed for certain Daoist adepts. The immediate revival of the religion after it had just survived a persecution under the Northern Zhou would not have been possible without royal support. In his early days as sovereign, Wendi rewarded three Daoist adepts, Zhang Bin , Jiao Zishun , and Dong Zihua , who had predicted Wendi’s rise to royal power. He even invited the famed Daoist medical doctor Sun Simiao to serve as erudite of the National Academy ( guozi boshi ), an offer Sun declined. It is no coincidence that his first reign title, Kaihuang, was from the reign title of Tianzun , the supreme deity of Daoism.5 When Wendi’s initial effort to suppress the rebellion by the Northern Zhou loyalist Wang Qian in Shu (Sichuan)6 was stymied, with many of his troops allegedly killed or sickened by a miasma, he came to Daoism for help, and set up a Yellow Register Tract of the Way (huanglu daochang ) inside his palace. The Yellow Register was a key Daoist rite of salvation that took place at an altar set up for the occasion.7 After praying to Heaven for three days and nights for protection, Wendi met a divine person in his dream, who took forbidden water from the altar, and spurt it towards the southwest, while saying, “As soon as rain falls they shall heal. There is no need for His Majesty to worry. If an attack is launched on the day of zi , Shu shall be conquered.” The prophesy was soon fulfilled: Wang Qian and his followers were indeed crushed on a day of zi.8 This record clearly testifies to Wendi’s belief in Daoism, even though the de facto state religion was Buddhism. In a 600 edict, he declared, “The law of the Buddha is profound and miraculous, and the teachings of the Dao are empty and harmonious. Both bring great blessings to creatures of all kinds. All those with feelings receive protection from them.”9 For Wendi, Daoism was not a rival to Buddhism, but a complementary faith. The high esteem Wendi held for Daoism is reflected both by the stiff penalty he imposed for acts of vandalism against Daoist icons and by his patronage of Daoist structures. Under him, theft or destruction of Tianzun statues by lay people was a crime of depravity; destruction of Tianzun statues by clerics was a crime of contumacy. Both are among the unpardonable Ten Abominations. Meanwhile, he also extensively sponsored the building of Daoist abbeys. According to the Late Tang Daoist adept Du Guangting (850–933), Wendi built thirty-six Daoist abbeys ( guan ), known then as mysterious altars (xuantan ), in the metropolitan area of Daxingcheng.10 A major beneficiary of Wendi’s pro-Daoist policy was the Louguan (Lou Abbey) school, with its main abbey about 60 kilometers southwest of Xi’an in the Zhongnan Mountains . It was characterized by the worship of the Eastern Zhou official Yin Xi as its first patriarch. Legend 144 Yangdi and His Empire [3.145...