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Xuanzong › Who Was
Definition and Origins
Xuanzong (birth name, Li Longji, 685-762 CE, r. 712-756 CE) was the 7th emperor of the Tang Dynasty of China, whose domestic and foreign policies established the Tang Dynasty as the Golden Age in Chinese history. Many of the most important cultural and scientific advancements China is famous for were made during Xuanzong's reign. He increased trade and foreign commerce, which resulted in cross-cultural exchange of many new ideas and innovations.
Xuanzong was a poet and writer, grandson of Empress Wu Zetian, and a gifted statesman, who initially took his responsibilities seriously and improved the lives of his people. He ruled for 43 years, and his accomplishments as emperor made him a legend long after his death. The last good emperor of the Tang Dynasty took his name to associate himself with Xuanzong's golden age of rule.
He is equally famous, though, as a literary character in the poet Bai Juyi 's 806 CE work Song of the Everlasting Sorrow (also known as Song of Everlasting Regret ) which tells the story of his tragic love affair with the Lady Yang. The Song of the Everlasting Sorrow was very popular in its time and remains one of the most popular Chinese poems in the present day.Xuanzong's relationship with Lady Yang would seriously compromise his abilities as emperor and contributed to his personal decline as well as that of the Tang Dynasty.
EARLY LIFE & RISE TO POWER
Li Longji was born in Luoyang in 685 CE, the third son of Ruizong (the second son of Empress Wu Zetian) and his concubine Consort Dou. Wu Zetian had married the emperor Gaozong (649-683 CE) and taken control of the government after his death.She first placed her son Zhongzong on the throne in 684 CE and tried to rule through him but his wife, Lady Wei, had her own ambitions for power and got in the way so Wu Zetian had him removed and sent into exile. She, then, elevated Ruizong to emperor the same year and kept him under house arrest in the palace so he could not be influenced by others, especially other women.
Ruizong proved to be as disappointing to his mother as his brother had been and she exiled him as well in 690 CE and openly proclaimed herself head of state. Wu Zetian had Li Longji's mother (Consort Dou) and Ruizong's wife (Lady Liu) murdered in 693 CE, after they were falsely accused of plotting against her. Wu Zetian could have then had the rest of the family killed but instead kept Li Longji and his relatives under strict house arrest inside the palace. Li Longji was still considered a threat to Wu Zetian, and she would have had him killed but for the intervention of his aunt, Princess Taiping, Wu Zetian's daughter. Taiping took a special interest in the boy and guarded him from her mother's schemes.
Li Longji grew up in this strange atmosphere under his grandmother's close watch, practicing poetry and music, until 699 CE when he and his relatives were released. By this time, Wu Zetian's power was in decline and she was spending most of her time with two young men known as the Zhang Brothers who were her favorite lovers. She had begun to ignore affairs of state and showed signs of paranoia so, in 704 CE, court officials had the Zhang brothers murdered and forced Wu Zetian to abdicate in favor of her exiled son Zhongzong (reigned 705-710 CE). Zhongzong returned with his wife, Lade Wei, and Wu Zetian retired, dying a year later.
While Zhongzong and Lady Wei began their rule, Li Longji took a position as secretary general in modern-day Shaanxi Province but was recalled to the capital of Chang'an in 710 CE to attend an important ceremony. When he arrived, diviners claimed they sensed the presence of the new emperor in the city but could not tell whether it was Li Longji or one of his relatives.
Lady Wei had watched Wu Zetian as empress closely and felt there was no reason she could not do what her mother-in-law had done. She grew tired of manipulating affairs through Zhongzong and poisoned him in 710 CE to make way for her son to rule. Princess Taiping was a highly influential member of the court at the time and, with the help of Li Longji, she stopped Lady Wei's coup before it could go any further. Taiping and Li Longji then had Wei and her son killed, along with any other conspirators, and Ruizong became the new emperor.
Ruizong declared that his eldest son, Li Chengqi, would succeed him, but Li Chengqi claimed the honor should go to his younger brother who had helped their father to the throne. Taiping's support for Li Longji ensured that he was made crown prince and successor to Ruizong. Taiping, like Lady Wei, had also closely observed her mother's reign and thought she could do likewise and rule through Li Longji. She paid the court astrologers to interpret the celestial sign of a comet as meaning that the time had come for Ruizong to abdicate in favor in Li Longji, and in 712 CE Ruizong stepped aside, and his son became emperor, taking the name Xuanzong. Taiping was at first very pleased with this situation but soon found she could not manipulate Xuanzong as she had hoped. Feeling betrayed by him, and with no prospects of gaining the power she desired, she hanged herself.
XUANZONG'S REIGN
XUANZONG ABOLISHED THE DEATH PENALTY, IMPROVED THE ECONOMY THROUGH SECURITY ON THE SILK ROAD, DECREED FINANCIAL REFORMS, CONSTRUCTED TEMPLES AND ADMINISTRATIVE COMPLEXES, BUILT ROADS, AND IMPROVED INDUSTRY.
Under Xuanzong's reign the Tang Dynasty began its golden age. Under Taizong and Wu Zetian, Buddhism had been elevated as the most popular religion in the country, but Xuanzong saw Buddhist teachings as lacking in spirituality and so promoted Taoism and even decreed that "a copy of the Tao teaching be kept in every household (Wintle, 148)". Xuanzong felt Buddhism placed too much emphasis on the individual at the expense of the community but that Taoism was a unifying belief which would promote greater harmony. According to scholar Justin Wintle, his religious and political reforms resulted in domestic tranquility which encouraged productivity and foreign trade.
Xuanzong abolished the death penalty, improved the economy through security on the Silk Road, increased maritme trading, decreed financial reforms, constructed temples and administrative complexes, built roads, and improved industry. He reorganized the military so that farmers were no longer conscripted against their will and built a professional army of veterans who were more effective in guarding the borders and reclaiming land from nomadic tribes.
CULTURAL ADVANCEMENTS
Xuanzong was a cultured man who patronized the arts and encouraged creative expression. Construction of the famous Leshan Giant Buddha, an enormous statue of a Maitreya (a future Buddha) was started in 713 CE under Xuanzong's reign. A Buddhist monk named Hai Tong began the project to ward off evil spirits from the river at the bottom of the cliffs. This statue of the Maitreya, carved into the cliff, is 233 feet (71 meters) tall and remains a popular tourist attraction today. Even though Xuanzong did not support Buddhism, he encouraged artists like Hai Tong to create whatever they wanted.
Leshan Giant Buddha
Over 50,000 poems, plays, short stories, and other literary works were produced during the Tang Dynasty, mainly under Xuanzong's reign, and an encyclopedia was completed. Woodblock printing, which began on a large scale under Taizong, was improved, and more books became available, which led to greater literacy and better jobs for the lower classes since they were now eligible to take civil service exams for government jobs. Public libraries were built to collect all the books in print and calendars were printed for wide distribution. Advances in medicine, such as recognized symptoms of a disease and how to treat it, were available now outside the medical profession. Medical books also suggested preventative habits and promoted diet as an important factor in one's health.
Technological advances led to the creation of clocks; the first clock mechanism in the world was invented by the engineer Yi Xing in 725 CE. Mechanical expertise also resulted in the creation of automatons, motorized figures, who moved by themselves through intricate mechanisms.
Even though motorized puppets had existed in China since the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BCE), the automatons of the Tang Dynasty were more complex and based on designs by Hero of Alexandria (c. 10-70 CE) who was famous for his inventions in Egypt. One example of Tang automatons was a motorized monk who collected donations, and another was an automatic wine-pourer shaped like a mountain which used a hydraulic pump.
The poor, who used to wear mainly animal skins, could now afford the linen worn by the middle class. The quality of life for the people of China improved dramatically, and the increase in trade brought new ideas, inventions, and products in greater numbers than ever before.
THE TREACHERY OF LI-LINFU
Xuanzong's reign was so successful because he understood how a balanced rule promoted fairness and justice, which improved the lives of everyone. One of Wu Zetian's most important government reforms, which Xuanzong kept, was placing people in high positions based on merit instead of family connections. Teachers were hired because they knew their subject, not because they were another official's cousin, and agricultural administrators were promoted to their position for the same reason, and so on with other appointments.
Xuanzong started to grow tired of public life c. 734 CE and began depending more on the advice of his consort, Lady Wu Hui-fei, who suggested he elevate a close friend of her family, Li-Linfu, to a more prominent position in order to take on some of the burden of rule. Li-Linfu was made chancellor, and since he was a close friend of the family, Xuanzong felt he could trust him but he was wrong. Li-Linfu was a corrupt and power-hungry man who only cared about advancing himself. While he played the part of the devoted servant of the emperor he schemed to seize power himself and depose Xuanzong.
The emperor suspected nothing and placed great trust in Li-Linfu. In 737 CE Consort Wu died, and Xuanzong withdrew further into his own pleasures and left the business of government to Li-Linfu. Xuanzong had over 4,000 of the most beautiful women brought to the palace for his pleasure and kept them imprisoned there to entertain him. All of these women were nothing, however, once he saw the one who would become his true love but who would also lead to his ruin.
XUANZONG & LADY YANG
In 741 CE, Xuanzong fell in love with a woman named Yang Guifei who was married to one of his sons. Yang left her husband and moved into the imperial palace with Xuanzong. He neglected his duties as emperor for this love affair and agreed to anything Lady Yang asked. She began with small requests which he granted, and these grew into larger demands until she got him to promote members of her family to important positions even though these people could not do the jobs. All of the important reforms and progress Xuanzong had made started to unravel as the members of Yang's family abused their positions and neglected their duties.
Lady Yang Guifei
At the same time, the policy of using foreign nationals in the army (which had grown out of Xuanzong's military reforms) led to the promotion of some of these men to very high positions of command. Li-Linfu exploited this situation to place men loyal to him in command of the army, at the same time he was accepting bribes from Yang's family to appoint them to comfortable bureaucratic posts. The former prosperity of the country began to decline as the people in authority spent more time enjoying themselves than taking care of their responsibilities.
THE AN LUSHAN REBELLION
A half-Sogdian/half-Turk general named An Lushan saw the Yang family's abuses as a sign that Xuanzong was no longer fit to rule and the Tang Dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven which legitimized every dynasty. An Lushan commanded the best troops in the Chinese army and felt he had a duty to take action and lead these men to restore a proper government; so he mounted a rebellion against the ruling house in 755 CE. He overthrew Xuanzong and declared himself emperor. He was challenged by the Tang forces and his rebellion eventually crushed, but he had started something which could not be stopped.Between 755-763 CE the country was torn apart by wars in which close to 36 million people died.
Xuanzong fled the capital in 755 CE with Lady Yang and her family. The men of the military escort who accompanied them blamed Yang for the troubles and murdered her family en route. The commanders of the army then demanded that Lady Yang be killed also. Xuanzong refused but the men would not back down, and he had no choice but to comply. He admitted he had allowed himself to be seduced away from his duties and consented that Lady Yang should be strangled.
The story of their love affair and Yang's death was later romanticized by the popular poem Song of the Everlasting Sorrow by Bai Juyi in 806 CE. In the poem, Lady Yang gives her life willingly so the emperor can protect the kingdom from invading armies. Although the emperor is victorious, he cannot recover from his loss and mourns her the rest of his life. Lady Yang's death may not have been as romantic or self-sacrificing as Bai Juyi depicted it but it is true that Xuanzong never recovered from it. After she was killed, he abdicated in favor of his son, Li Heng, who became Emperor Suzong (reigned 756-762 CE) and took control of the army against the forces of An Lushan.
LATER LIFE & DEATH
Suzong was a capable leader but no match for the superior forces of An Lushan. No matter what he tried, he could not win a victory, and the rebel forces grew stronger. Suzong and his father became more and more depressed and frustrated as Suzong's strategies failed. Xuanzong died from illness in 762 CE, and Suzong died from the same sickness less than two weeks later.
He was succeeded by his son Li Yu who became Emperor Daizong (reigned 762-779 CE). Daizong crushed the An Lushan rebellion in 763 CE but the country was in ruins and the traditional respect given the emperor and royal house was compromised. Independent warlords now ruled different parts of China and Daizong could not command the kind of authority Xuanzong had at the beginning of his reign.
Almost a hundred years after his death, a man named Li Chen became emperor of China and took the name Xuanzong to honor his great predecessor. Xuanzong II is considered the last good emperor of the Tang Dynasty who modeled his reign on that of the great Taizong while trying to recreate the glory of the early years of Xuanzong and the golden age of the Tang Dynasty.
Horyuji › Ancient History
Definition and Origins
The Horyuji Temple near Nara in Japan was founded in 607 CE by Prince Shotoku and is the only surviving Buddhistmonastery from the Asuka Period in its original state. The complex, consisting of 48 listed buildings including a 5-storey pagoda, has the oldest wooden buildings in Japan. Within the temples are many ancient Buddhist sculptures including some of the oldest bronze and wood figures produced by Japanese sculptors. In 1993 CE the temple complex became the country's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.
FOUNDATION & DESIGN
The Horyuji Temple was founded during the reign of Prince Shotoku (594-622 CE), regent to his aunt, Empress Suiko. Shotoku helped spread Buddhism in Japan, which had arrived via Korea in the mid-6th century CE. He oversaw the construction of many Buddhist temples, among them Shitennoji (593 CE) and Hokoji (596 CE), but Horyuji is the only one to have survived in its original state. The site was not without its problems for several buildings burnt down c. 670 CE but were then rebuilt so that by 710 CE it had regained its former glory. The historian EF Fenollosa suggests that the outer gate, pagoda, and Great Hallescaped the fire. The site is divided into two connecting precincts, the Sai-in (Western) and slightly later To-in (Eastern), both of which have their paving covered in white sand and are enclosed within walls to separate them from the non-sacred outer world.
HORYUJI'S WOODEN BUILDINGS, RARE EXAMPLES OF EARLY EAST ASIAN ARCHITECTURE, ARE THE OLDEST SUCH STRUCTURES IN JAPAN.
Horyuji's wooden buildings, rare examples of early East Asian architecture, are the oldest such structures in Japan. Features typical of Asuka Period (538-710 CE) architecture include double terrace platforms on which the buildings stand, columns which curve slightly and taper as they rise so as to appear perfectly straight at a distance (entasis), columns topped by wooden block plates to bear the weight of the heavy tiled roofs, and wooden brackets decorated with cloud designs, again to aid in load-bearing. The site benefitted from major restoration works in 1374 CE, 1603 CE, and in the mid-20th century CE.
ARCHITECTURAL HIGHLIGHTS
Main Hall
The Main Hall or Kondo (aka Golden Hall) of the complex is a two-storey wooden building in the Western Precinct (Sai-in) of the complex. It has a tiled hip and gable or irimoya roof. The exterior wood decoration includes dragons, a water deity thought to protect against fires. The railings on the second level are carved to represent swastikas, and they join inverted V-shaped support posts, both typical features of the architecture of the Asuka Period.
Main Hall, Horyuji
The interior of the Hall is made to resemble the Buddhist vision of paradise via brightly coloured murals on all four walls. There are 12 distinct panels, each measuring 3 x 2.6 metres (10 x 8.5 ft.) and depicting scenes with the Buddha and bodhisattvas.The style is similar to paintings at the Ajanta caves in India and the Khotan of Western China. Unfortunately, the original 8th-century CE wall paintings were destroyed by a fire in 1949 CE but have since been restored exactly. The flooring is made of compacted clay, and the ceiling is decorated with lotus designs. Here too are four heavenly guardians (Shiten-no), each standing on a prostrate demon, many bronze Buddhist sculptures, and the most important object of worship at the site, the Shaka Triad.
The Shaka Triad is a cast bronze and gilded sculpture of the seated Buddha flanked by two standing bodhisattvas by the celebrated sculptor Tori Busshi, as indicated by his signature on the large central halo. The back of the sculpture is dated 623 CE and also carries a lengthy engraved prayer for the health and afterlife in the Land of Bliss for Prince Shotoku and his family. On either side of this triad are two similar-sized Buddhist sculptures, the one on the left side dates to 607 CE and represents Yakushi, the Buddha of healing. All three sculptures are set beneath intricately carved wooden canopies while behind them stands an ancient wooden sculpture of the bodhisattva Kannon and a bronze screen triad of the Amida Buddha.
Pagoda, Horyuji
Pagoda
The five-storey pagoda stands on a double terrace next to the Main Hall and was built to house the site's main relics. Its central column is over 35 metres (100 ft) tall. Both the exterior and interior are painted with a red oxide of lead. The first floor has a series of clay sculptures which date to 711 CE and depict four scenes from the life of Buddha. The 50 or so original figures, considered national treasures of Japan, have been replaced with copies.
Treasury
East of the Main Hall stands the Treasury or Daihozoden which contains other treasures of note such as the portraits of Prince Shotoku, the celebrated Kudara Kannon statue, the Dream-changing Kannon, and the Tamamushi Shrine which has rows of small ivory Buddhas.
Lecture Hall
The single-storey Lecture Hall or Daikodo, also in the Western Precinct, is a long rectangular building which was built in 990 CE after the original was destroyed by fire. Inside it are two bodhisattva statues - Nikko and Gekko - either side of a figure of Yakushi Nyorai.
Bell Tower, Horyuji
Bell Tower
Between the Lecture Hall and Main Hall stands the Shoro bell tower. The structure has a distinctive flared base and contains a bell from the Nara Period (710-794 CE).
Central Gate
The large Central Gate or Chumon gives access to the sacred buildings at the heart of the Western Precinct. It has two storeys and, unusually, four bays. There is a second gate, the Nandaimon or South Gate, which stands at the outskirts of the complex.
Central Gate & Pagoda, Horyuji Temple
Hall of Dreams
The Hall of Dreams or Yumedono is located in the Eastern Precinct (To-in). It was first built in 739 CE on the site of Shotoku's palace, and again in the 12th century CE. The distinctive octagonal building stands on a double stone terrace and contains the wooden and gold -foil statue of Kannon attributed to Shotoku. The Hall also contains the 'hidden Buddha' known as the Guze Kannon. For centuries the statue was wrapped in a silk cloth to hide it from view and so preserve its special powers. Only in 1884 CE was it uncovered to reveal a gilded figure resembling Shotoku. The Yumedono also houses a portrait of Shotoku which is only shown to the public for one month each spring and one month in autumn.
This article was made possible with generous support from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.
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