In the hit "Daming Fenghua", there is a supporting character, the black-clad monk Yao Guangxiao, who is probably the only character in the whole play who dares to lose his temper with emperor Zhu Di, and dares to accuse him in front of Zhu Di, but Zhu Di never pursues his offense. Who is Yao Guangxiao? He was the first contributor to Zhu Di's success in launching the 'Battle of Jing', and he and Zhu Di were both mentors and friends.
According to the Ming History, Yao Guangxiao was the second responsible person who instigated Zhu Di to launch a rebellion to compete for the throne, and the first responsible person was of course Zhu Di himself, and if he himself did not have the heart to rebel, no one would be of any use. After the Launching of the Battle of Jingnan, Yao Guangxiao was ordered to help Shizi Zhu Gaozi defend Zhu Di's old lair, Beiping: "Every time he leaves the division, he orders Shizi to live and defend, strictly prepare the imperial palace, appease the soldiers and the people, and conspire with Zan'".
Yao Guangxiao brilliantly helped Zhu Gaozi complete the task of defending Beiping, and once tried to protect Beiping under the siege of the imperial court's 500,000 troops, and stubbornly defended until Zhu Di returned with his troops to counterattack: "'Internal and external combined attack, beheading is not counted'". And Yao Guangxiao also persuaded Zhu Di when he could no longer support a long war: "Don't go down to the city, rush to the Capital Division." The Kyoshi is weak and is bound to lift ''.
It was precisely with this key decision made by Yao Guangxiao that Zhu Di was able to get rid of the troubles of the long war and kill Nanjing with a single blow to seize the world. Coupled with the fact that Yao Guangxiao insisted on not accepting the title given to him by Zhu Di after Zhu Di became emperor, and always dealt with Zhu Di in the name of a monk, Zhu Di respected him very much and could tolerate Yao Guangxiao's offense to his good intentions.
Because of his merits in the Battle of Jingnan and his ability to help Zhu Di cultivate two successors, The Crown Prince Zhu Gaozi and the Emperor's grandson Zhu Zhanji, with an extraordinary attitude, yao Guangxiao was very respected by the three generations of emperors from Yongle to Xuande, and even though he died in the sixteenth year of Yongle, Emperor Akihito and Emperor Xuanzong still gave him corresponding posthumous gifts and tributes after he ascended the throne.
However, Yao Guangxiao, who had received everything from the three generations of emperors starting from Zhu Di, began in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, but his reputation as a civilian official and a scholar and a member of the people was quite poor, and Wang Shizhen, a famous minister of the Jiajing Dynasty, openly criticized Yao Guangxiao.' The Qianlong Emperor also wrote him as a "great traitor and great evil" in the Siku Quanshu.
There are civil officials and scholars, a group that holds the power of public opinion, collectively advocating that Yao Guangxiao is a traitor, and Yao Guangxiao wants to become a good person in the eyes of the common people, including the imperial family, which is tacitly accepted, and the later emperors of the Ming Dynasty are also descendants of Zhu Di and are all beneficiaries of the "Battle of Jingnan", but why did the official attitude of the Ming Dynasty later belittle Yao Guangxiao? The reasons can be drawn from two aspects.
First: The "Battle of Jingnan" initiated by Zhu Di is to put it bluntly as a rebellion, and Yao Guangxiao, the main participant, wants to help carry the pot
Zhu Di's throne was taken from his nephew Emperor Jianwen, and Emperor Jianwen was Zhu Yuanzhang's successor, no matter what the reason, Zhu Di was plotting rebellion, so the clique of civil officials and scholars despised this behavior extremely, and seized the throne by force at every turn? How else can this Ming Dynasty be governed? Therefore, although Zhu Di also made many meritorious achievements after becoming emperor, he was still the object of condemnation by the civil officials and scholars.
However, Zhu Di was an emperor, and he always had to give some face and could not openly criticize Zhu Di, so he pulled out Yao Guangxiao, the first hero of the "Battle of Jingnan", to slander and criticize, in order to express his dissatisfaction with the usurpers. Although the imperial family was a descendant of Zhu Di, after the stability of Jiangshan, it did not approve of the rebellion of the king of the clan and must be strictly prevented, so it also acquiesced to the scholar group to belittle Yao Guangxiao.
Second: Yao Guangxiao's ideas ran counter to the official dominant ideology of the Ming Dynasty, and the clique of civil servants and scholars had to belittle him
Yao Guangxiao was a monk, so he followed and popularized the Buddhist Tao, and also compiled a book that justified the name of the Buddhist Tao, "Dao Yulu", and copied and promoted it everywhere, in fact, the Buddhist Tao was very marketable in ancient times, and it could coexist with Confucianism, under normal circumstances, the two generally did not conflict, but the "Dao Yulu" compiled by Yao Guangxiao had a lot of content that refuted Cheng (Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi) Zhu (Zhu Xi) Theory.
Cheng Zhu Lixue in the Ming Dynasty was the leading ideology on which the civil servants and scholars relied to educate the world, and the content of the imperial court's scientific expedition was also based on Cheng Zhu Lixue, and perhaps some enlightened people had a positive attitude towards the Daoyulu, but in the whole environment, the Daoyulu was still regarded as heretical, and similarly, Yao Guangxiao, who compiled this book, would naturally be rejected and denigrated by the clique of civil officials and scholars.
Therefore, based on political needs and resistance to the spread of heretical ideas, Yao Guangxiao gradually changed from a positive figure to a negative figure after Emperor Xuanzong Zhu Zhanji. Zhu Di posthumously awarded Yao Guangxiao the title of "Tui Zhongfu Guo Gong Gong Zhi
After Emperor Akihito succeeded to the throne, Zhu Gaozi continued to give Yao Guangxiao a young master, and ordered him to "deserve to enjoy", "Chengzu", and "temple court", but when he arrived at the Jiajing Dynasty, he invited Yao Guangxiao's tablet out of Zhu Di's Taimiao Temple, and the group of civil officials and scholars also clapped their hands and praised it, and continued until the Qing Dynasty, Yao Guangxiao could not have a good reputation, and perhaps only in the more open-minded modern era could Yao Guangxiao's historical merits be truly recognized.