Looking at the feudal dynasties of ancient China, which emperor was not three palaces and six courtyards, there were countless female dependents.
The life of the ancients is not long, in order to reproduce, in order to consolidate the imperial power, the emperor in addition to dealing with the right thing of the government, there is another major thing is to open branches for the royal family and continue the royal bloodline.
Not marrying a wife or having children at an old age, as an emperor, is a great act of filial piety; It is also inappropriate to favor a harem concubine exclusively. However, there was such an emperor who did the opposite, was not close to the female color, and was called "Bodhisattva Emperor", he was The Liangwu Emperor Xiao Yan.
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Southern Dynasty, the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Lower Qi Sui Dynasty, had a total of twenty-four emperors, which lasted for one hundred and sixty-nine years.
Among them, Liang was the third dynasty of the Southern Dynasty, replaced by Xiao Yan of Yongzhou as emperor of Southern Qi, with the capital Jiankang, and the state name was Liang, also known as Xiao Liang because of the royal family name Xiao. This Xiao Yan was the founding emperor of Da Liang.
The Tang Dynasty poet Du Mu had a famous poem "Jiangnan Spring", which said:
"Four hundred and eighty temples in the southern dynasty, how many buildings in the smoke and rain."
It can be seen that there are many temples during the Southern Dynasty period. And the Daxing temple must have a great relationship with the support of the royal family.
Emperor Wu of Liang was the one who took the lead in believing in Buddhism, and he believed in Buddhism all his life and became a monk many times.
But to become a monk is to cut off the connection with the earthly world and devote himself to the cultivation of Buddhism, and how can an emperor manage the government and government?
Therefore, Emperor Wu of Liang was strange enough.
Xiao Liang had a Buddhist temple called Tongtai Temple, located in today's Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, and was established in the second year of Emperor Wu of Liang. Emperor Wu of Liang reigned for more than forty years, and he once ran to Tongtai Temple four times to become a monk, and each time he was paid by his ministers to redeem himself for the temple, and then brought back to continue to govern.
Xiao Yan was born in the famous Lanling Xiao clan, not from childhood to the Buddha, he also led soldiers to fight, heroic, in the early days of the founding of the country also worked hard to be a good emperor, and he was very frugal, good reputation.
In the early years, Xiao Yan had no sons, and in order to have a successor, he also succeeded his nephew Xiao Zhengde as an heir and was named crown prince, and later he also gave birth to a son himself, named Xiao Tong.
As a result, Xiao Zhengde, who was already the crown prince, was given the title of Xifenghou.
At the beginning of Xiao Liang's founding, Xiao Yan was still quite diligent, he changed the harsh government of the Xiao Baojuan period after southern Qi, learned the lessons of Qi's death, and also listened to the opinions of the people, and "one crown for three years, one was two years" frugal, counting as a Ming Jun.
While he was diligent in his administration, he did not forget to vigorously support Buddhism.
In 519 AD, Xiao Yan was ordained in the temple, and since then he has been known as the "Bodhisattva Emperor".
Between 527 and 548, Xiao Yan went to the temple many times, but he did not become a monk for more than three days, making it seem like he was joking.
In 529, Xiao Yan went to tongtai temple to be a monk again, this time he insisted for nearly two months, and all his ministers knelt in the temple to plead, and finally spent a lot of money to invite him back from the temple, looking like a joke.
Some people think that Xiao Yan, who is known for his frugality, always asked the imperial court to spend a lot of money to go to the temple to ransom him, which was contradictory enough, and he probably did so to test whether the courtiers were loyal to him.
Because his period was too turbulent and the regime changed frequently, Xiao Yan was not sure whether his throne was secure, so he made this decision and wasted the national treasury to test the loyalty of his former southern Qi subjects.
However, the test is tested, Xiao Yan is also convinced of the Buddha, since he believed in The Buddha, he is not close to the female color, does not eat meat, but also asks the Chinese people to follow suit, in the current period of Buddhism, this move has bought a wave of people's hearts, but also through the promotion of Buddhism, to restrain and control the people's thoughts, in one fell swoop.
Xiao Yan was the longest-reigning emperor of the Southern Dynasty. However, no matter how diligent the emperor is, there will be times of slackness. As he grew older, Xiao Yan slowly took care of political affairs.
In 548, hou Jing, a rebel general of Eastern Wei who had been taken in by Xiao Yan, colluded with Xiao Zhengde to launch an armed rebellion and proclaimed him emperor after promising to succeed, and in 549, Hou Jing led troops to attack Jiankang.
Xiao Yan was no match for the rebels, and was captured and imprisoned in Jiankangtai City, where he died shortly afterwards at the age of 86.
The reason why Xiao Yan failed had a lot to do with his disregard for the government and his obsession with studying Buddhism. He built temples on a large scale, and the number of monks during his reign reached 100,000. In the end, he devoted himself to the Buddha and Bodhisattva Emperor and personally buried the country and mountains that he had beaten down.
However, in that era when the average life expectancy was not high, Xiao Yan could live to the age of 86, which was indeed amazing, and it was probably related to his lack of female self-cultivation.