In ancient times, the monks did many major historical events, Tang Xuanzang Obtained the True Scriptures in Xitian, translated the Buddhist scriptures brought back to the Tang Dynasty into Chinese, and contributed to the cause of Chinese Buddhism; the Jian Zhen monks crossed east to Japan 6 times to strengthen exchanges and friendship between China and Japan; Zhu Yuanzhang, who had been a monk for three years, established the Ming Dynasty and restored Han rule.
Zhu Yuanzhang went to Huangjue Temple to be a monk purely for the sake of eating food, when there was a drought and locust plague in his hometown, his family was starved to death, he went to be a monk in order to survive, who knew that after only 50 days of going, he encountered "the monks of the temple starved to eat", Zhu Yuanzhang could only beg along the road, and then there was the establishment of the Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty's national name strictly speaking not "Ming", is "Daming", this national name has nothing to do with Buddhism, but has something to do with Mingjiao, Mingjiao is the Manichaeanism that originated from the ancient Persian Sassanid Dynasty, and the Tang Dynasty was introduced to China.
The famous historian Wu Han said in his article "Ming Sect and the Ming Empire" in 1941 that "the name of the country of 'Daming' is privately thought to be the 'Ming King' of the Han father and son." Zhu Yuanzhang once submitted to the regime of King Xiaoming, and after King Xiaoming died, he took "Daming" as the national name.
There is a person in history who has a similar practice with Zhu Yuanzhang, setting his faith as the name of the country, but this person's dynasty only existed for 3 months. Gao Tansheng was a monk in Huairong County in the late Sui and early Tang dynasties, but he could not practice in the pure temple at that time, because the tyranny of the Sui Emperor at the end of the Sui Dynasty led to the uprising of all walks of life, and Huairong County was also affected.
In 618, Gao Tansheng led 50 monks and soldiers to kill in the sacrifice activities in Huairong County, there were many officials and ordinary people in the sacrifice activities, everyone saw so many monks with weapons, they were frightened and fled, Gao Tansheng was very principled to only kill the bad officials who usually did evil, not to kill innocent people.
General rebellions must find a reasonable excuse for themselves, otherwise the people of later generations will curse themselves to death, just like Zhu Di usurped the throne and found a "Qingjun side", which sounds very just, after Gao Tansheng cleaned up the people in the official palace, he also found an excuse for himself, he claimed that he was the reincarnation of the god and Buddha, the son of heaven who could bring peace to everyone, and launched the surrounding people to rebel against Sui. The common people had long been miserable under the rule of the Sui Emperor, and when they heard Gao Tansheng take the lead in opposing The Sui, they joined his ranks one after another, and it was in response to Li Shimin's later saying that "water can carry boats and can also overturn boats", and Gao Tansheng took a few thousand people he gathered to occupy Huairong County.
However, Gao Tansheng was too unproductive, just occupying such a small county town as Huairong was satisfied, and established himself as king on the spot, calling himself the Mahayana Emperor, since they all began to call themselves emperors, they should have a national name, and he used his belief "Buddha" as the national name. Gao Tansheng had just become the so-called emperor and could not wait to choose an empress for himself, and the empress was also a monk, a nun of a nunnery, Jingxuan, who was named "Empress Yeluo".
Gao Tansheng was too confident, thinking that if he was the king of the enclosure, others would really recognize him as a king, and he wrote a "holy will" to another rebel leader, Gao Kaidao. Gao Kaidao had tens of thousands of soldiers and horses under his hands, and he had fought with Wang Shichong, whether it was the people under his hands or their personal strength was much higher than Gao Tansheng,He only dared to call himself "King of Yan".
And Gao Tansheng not only called himself emperor, but also expressed in the Holy Will that he wanted to recruit Gao Kaidao, Gao Kaidao only wanted to laugh when he saw it, but he thought about it again, since Gao Tansheng had invited himself to go to his account, when would the people who did not annex Gao Tansheng strengthen their own forces at this time? He pretended to agree to the recruitment and went with 3,000 people.
After Gao Kaidao went there, he found that Gao Tansheng was sincerely recruiting, Gao Tansheng crowned him as the King of Qi, gao Kaidao ostensibly thanked the lord Long En, and decided to be a loyal courtier, but privately he was inquiring about Gao Tansheng's specific strength. Three months later, Gao Kaidao found out that Gao Tansheng was only a hollow emperor, and led his troops to eliminate Gao Tansheng, and Gao Tansheng's regime existed for only 3 months before perishing with him.