Wu Zong and the Buddhists

They are wrong, however. China has at least one emperor who ordered Buddhism to be rooted out. That emperor is Wu Zong of the Tang Dynasty (唐武宗: 841-847).

A fanatic follower of Taoism, Wu Zong heeded a false accusation a Taoist high priest made against the religion imported from India. All Tang monarchs, except the Empress Wu (武后), favored Taoism, a native religion founded by Lao Tzu, who happens to have the family name of Li — the same as the imperial house. For that reason, the Li family claimed descent from what they venerated as the Emperor of Mysterious Origin. The priest memorialized to Wu Zong that Confucius predicted “Black Gown” would succeed “Eighteen Sons,” the former identifying Buddhist monks (who are black gowned), and the latter being those of the Tang family.

That alone was more than enough for the emperor to exterminate the Buddhists.

The accusation was made at the height of an ideological struggle between the Taoists and Buddhists. Factional strife within the imperial court also fanned anti-Buddhist sentiments, with the scholar-bureaucrats allied with the emperor on one side opposing Buddhism, and the eunuchs on the other favoring it.

The strife finally led to the suppression of 845, the most widespread of its kind in China. Untold thousands of monks were massacred.

According to the imperial edict summing up the effects of the suppression, more than 4,600 monasteries and 40,000 temples and shrines were destroyed, over 260,000 monks and nuns were returned to the laity, all temple lands confiscated and all images made of gold, silver, jade, and bronze turned over to the government.

Because this suppression dealt a crippling blow to the Buddhist community in China, it is one of the most significant events in Chinese history, for it marked the end of the apogee and the beginning of the decline of Buddhism in China.

But before the religion declined, it stimulated Chinese thought through the establishment of a number of Buddhist schools. All of them were subsequently transplanted to Japan, where two more — Jodo shin shu (True Pure Land) and Nichiren shu (Sun Lotus) — were created. The True Pure Land school, the one claiming the largest following, allows parish monks to marry, while followers of Sun Lotus have formed a Soka gakkai, whose political arm is the Komeito, an ally of the Liberal Democratic Party in a ruling coalition in Japan today.

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