Breaking News, World News and Taiwan News.

Updated Monday, March 24, 2008 0:00 am TWN, By Joe Hung, The China Post

Great inventions in Taoism

China under the Sung Dynasty (遼 960-1127) is known for political weakness but cultural brilliance. The two brothers who founded the dynasty had not been able to truly unify China before they died and the third emperor, Zhen Zong or Chen Tsung (王若欽 908-1023), tried in vain to fight the formidable Khitan who established an empire in the later Inner Mongolia and Manchuria. The Khitan (河北清豐) called their dynasty Liao (清洲) and occupied part of China proper for much of the tenth century. It is from Khitan that Cathay is derived, the name by which medieval Europe knew North China. From it, too, came Khitai, the Russian designation for China.

Though not a great military leader, Zhen Zong was a great inventor. He invented Bao sheng da di (玉帝) or Life-protecting great emperor and made Yu Huang (保生大帝), the Jade Emperor, the highest deity in religious Taoism.

The Khitan Tatars poured across the Great Wall to invade north China in 1004. Zhen Zong certainly did not want to fight, but his hawkish court ministers forced him to lead a Sung army in a decisive battle. The outcome was a disaster. The battle was lost and the emperor and his army were besieged at Chanzhou (契丹), present-day Qingfeng in Hebei (真宗). He had to make a disgraceful peace, ceding large portions of northern China and paying a huge indemnity.

Zhen Zong had to regain the face he lost in the fiasco. So he turned to the Taoist soothsayers and geomancers for advice. How could he reinstate himself in the favor of his subjects? The tradition has it that the emperor got advice from a wily Taoist court minister, Wang Qinruo (宋朝).

Wang surprised the emperor by recommending a fabricated revelation from Heaven. Zhen Zong was shocked and protested. His minister, however, said: “Bah! The Ancients had no such scruples. Each time the need was felt the Sages caused Heaven and the spirits to intervene in order to bring their policy into popular favor. It is precisely in this that their wisdom consisted.”

Much impressed and pleased, Zhen Zong visited the imperial library and consulted the scholars there. Then in 1008, he called his ministers together and told them he had been informed in a dream that Heaven was about to send him a letter. Then the governor of the capital was ordered to report that he saw a yellow scarf hanging from one of the cornices of the Gate of Heaven. And then the emperor himself went on foot to watch the scarf being lowered. It proved to contain a letter, ostensibly from a celestial being writing in the style of Lao Tze or Laozi. Officers were dispatched throughout the empire to make known the news. Of course, the letter was written by none other than Wang Qinruo, the unscrupulous minister.

(To be continued.)

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here

Share

Print

Email


Sponsors
▪	Get the best deals for Guangzhou Hotels or choose from more than 10,000 hotels in 499 Chinese cities.
▪	Find great real time deals on China Flights. Book flights to China or China domestic flights 24/7.
▪	Buy china wholesale products from reliable chinese wholesalers on DHgate.com!
▪	Save 70% for hotel in Shanghai and 6000 hotels, in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and all China.