The origins of Emperor Jianwen and Dazhou Zhongshan Temple were extinguished

A few years ago, on the morning of the spring breeze, I came to Longtan with a group of Experts and Scholars of Pakistani culture and paid my first visit to the ruins of Zhongshan Temple, which is now part of Tongchuan District. Those exquisite stone carvings and carved on the stone, the handwriting is square and thick, majestic and solemn, those tall and tall towering ancient trees and weeds growing from the stone crevices of the steps, concealing a mysterious and majestic royal atmosphere. I couldn't help but walk lightly, as if to avoid disturbing the deceased who had been buried here. According to legend, the person buried in the "Tomb of The Son of Heaven" is really the rumored Jianwen Emperor of the Ming Dynasty? The identity of the deceased under the tomb, which was flooded with sprawling wildflowers, was so mysterious and incomprehensible that for hundreds of years there had been a lot of controversy and controversy, and the "mystery of the life and death of Emperor Jianwen" had become one of the seven unsolved cases in Chinese history.

Historical records such as the History of the Ming and Qing Dynasties and local chronicles record the death of Emperor Jianwen in various versions, such as "burning to death", "stand-in" and "escape", and it is still difficult to find accurate information in the canonical records, as if historians and researchers of all generations have cautiously maintained collective silence.

Interestingly, compared with the silent and deserted history, the wild history is particularly noisy and lively, the heat continues to rise unabated, and various anecdotes, folklore and research and excavation of related relics in various places, coupled with the help of the bold hypotheses of some historians in recent years, have produced comprehensive evidence, all of which approach the mysterious deceased buried at Zhongshan Temple 600 years ago in the Battle of Jingnan - the Usurped Emperor Zhu Yunjiao, the fourth uncle of the emperor, Zhu Di, who was hunted down and killed by the usurper of the throne. Personally, I don't think this is out of the ordinary.

When it comes to this 600-year-old historical suspense case, we have to mention another important party, that is, Tang Yu, the emperor who assisted three generations of Ming emperors.

Who is Tang Yu? Is he a Ming Dynasty emperor? Tang Yu was ordered to travel to Shu, and Buju Dazhou Xuanhan lectured to solve the puzzle, was he really shouldering an earth-shattering top-secret task as the legend goes--by Ming Chengzu Zhu Di secretly sent to secretly monitor and hunt down Emperor Jianwen, who had been hiding and hiding for many years?

With curiosity and all kinds of questions, I began to intentionally or unintentionally dabble in the scattered historical materials about Emperor Jianwen and Emperor Tang Yu, and took the opportunity to go to Xuanhan every time, accompanied by Mr. Tang Yisheng, director of the Xuanhan Tang Zhen Tangyu Thought and Culture Research Center in Dazhou City, and Mr. Deng Gao, an expert in Pakistani culture, conducted field investigations of the "Tomb of Tianzi" and Tang Yu of Zhongshan Temple many times, visited several descendants of the Tang clan, I wanted to salvage relevant historical fragments from the vast Shihai, and finally complete the puzzle of the outline of this historical suspense shipwreck with my superficial words. Try to get as close as possible to its truth and its original appearance.

Every time I visit the Emperor's Cultural Park in Xuanhan Nanba, I will stop by to the Dongxikou of DongyiQianHe, and climb along the path to the Beipo Estuary Terrace to pay homage to the tomb of Tang Yu and his wife. When I touch the tombstone inscribed with the inscription "Tomb of Tang Yu" with my hand, I always see the illusion related to the tomb's high fu immediately: the heavy eaves, the bucket arch and the niche wall of the regressive hall carved with the pattern of the green dragon and the white tiger, the stone turtle stele, the four-pillar top hat, the stone lion, and the towering mast inscribed with "Three Worships of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Eight Generations and Four Supervisors of the Lineage". These scenes are not imaginary, they are derived from the "Xuanhan County Chronicle (1911-1985)" and the Daoguang Eighteenth Edition of the "Tang Family Genealogy". Every association of standing in front of the tomb made me have respect and reverence for the tomb owner Tang Yu.

According to the limited information I have consulted, the first person to put forward the hypothesis of "The Ming Dynasty Jianwen Emperor lived in seclusion in Zhongshan Temple in Daxian County" was Mr. Deng Gao, director of the Sichuan Provincial Local History Society and head of the editing section of the Dazhou Zhiban. In March 1999, Deng Gao wrote "Smoke and Clouds of Zhongshan Temple", which first proposed the hypothesis that Emperor Jianwen lived in seclusion in Zhongshan Temple in Daxian County; on February 13, 2003, he published the article "The First Emperor's Mentor in Dazhou - Tang Yu", which for the first time determined the proposition that "Tang Yu is the Emperor's Mentor". Deng Gao's later article "Emperor Tang Yu "Qin Cha" Arrived in Zhou" revealed that the study of the Ming Emperor Tang Yu "Qin Cha" came to Dazhou originated in a passage in the "Xuanhan County Chronicle (1911-1985)": "Tang Yu, the character Jingding, the ancestor of the thinker Tang Zhen XI in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. In the twelfth year of Ming Hongwu (1379), he entered the priesthood and gave Hanlin. For fourteen years, he was appointed as the lecturer of the Eastern Palace Teachings and Feast Day, and Chengzu ordered him to be an official, and Yu was called Lao Bushi. In the twelfth year of Yongle (1414), he entered Shu and lived in Lanmugou in Dongxiang (present-day Xuanhan Kunchi, Dazhou). Died, buried on the north bank of Dongyang Creek in Nanba. "He believes that this small passage contains and hides rich historical information." The sentence "The Eastern Palace Teachings Scripture Feast Day Speaker" indicates that Tang Yu is the honorable status of the Ming Emperor."

I found corroboration in Mr. Xie Gui'an's article "Conditions for the Selection of Ming Dynasty Feasts and Japanese Lecturers". The author said: The emperor of the Ming Dynasty and his imperial court formulated clear and strict standards and various specific conditions for the selection of lecturers on the feast day: it was required that the lecturers must be from Hanlin and have qualifications such as birth in the imperial examination, in addition, they also required the cultivation of character, virtue and appearance, to be outstanding, to be knowledgeable, profound in thought, and to have unique vision, and even had strict requirements for appearance, stature, facial features, voice, and teaching experience and experience, and their harsh conditions were not inferior to those of the horse masters.

From this point of view, Tang Yu's identity as an imperial master did not need to be questioned. The logical connection between Tang Yu and the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao was consolidated, thus greatly enhancing the credibility of "the Ming Dynasty Jianwen Emperor's hermitage in Zhongshan Temple in Daxian County". At this point, Tang Yu's identity as an imperial master can still be recognized.

Historical records show that from the fourteenth year of Hongwu (1381), Tang Yu was appointed by the Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang as a lecturer and a lecturer in the Eastern Palace for 17 years; he was also promoted to emperor by Emperor Ming chengzu zhu Di and assisted Zhu Di for many years. In the middle of this period, it also occurred in the twenty-fifth year of Hongwu (1392), when the crown prince Zhu Biao fell ill and died, and his son Zhu Yunjiao succeeded to the throne with the era name Jianwen. It can be said that Tang Yu maintained an inextricable and close relationship with the imperial family, accompanied by three generations of emperors throughout his life, and was a witness to the ming dynasty's imperial succession full of intrigue, lies and bloodshed. But he was always cautious in his words, neutral, conscientious, and well-behaved, and he was definitely a rare loyal subject.

When Tang Yu served as the teaching of zhu Yuanzhang's many children and grandchildren and the children of meritorious heroes, he treated the domineering and strong Zhu Di equally and the kind and cowardly Zhu Yunjiao's uncle and nephew, and was impartial, and even when he learned that Zhu Yuanzhang was indifferent and ignored Zhu Di because he suspected that zhu Di was not his own flesh and blood, he still painstakingly taught and guided Zhu Di to get along with everyone in harmony and respect each other.

In the long years of teaching the emperor's grandson and the children of the heroes, Tang Yu devoted countless efforts to carefully cultivating Zhu Yunjiao and Zhu Di's nephews and uncles, and naturally they also had a long-term affection, and they developed a deep teacher-student friendship with each other. According to the "Ming Shi Benji Fifth Chengzu I" record, in the first year of Jianwen (1399), the Yan king Zhu Di rebelled, and in the fourth year of Jianwen (1402), Zhu Di led the Yan army to drive south and take Jinling directly. Emperor Jianwen sent the kings to seek peace without success, the rebellion and separation of the people, the chaos in the capital, and the desperate attempt to commit suicide, Emperor Jianwen was dissuaded by eunuchs and close courtiers, and according to the escape and life-saving strategy left by Taizu, he disguised himself as a monk and escaped to the palace. Zhu Di, the King of Yan, added his dragon robe and ascended the throne as he wished.

Facts have proved that after Chengzu Zhu Di sat on the throne, he was not thin for Tang Yu, the imperial master who carefully adjusted himself from childhood and grew up with him all the way, and his rewards were great. In the third year of Yongle (1405), Chengzu Zhu Di summoned Tang Yu, made him a founding Confucian minister, and then appointed him an official. However, Tang Yu, who is more than fifty years old, called himself an old man and repeatedly resigned. why? Perhaps Tang Yu knew too well the usurper Zhu Di and Zhu Yunjiao, who had been thrown off the dragon chair by the emperor, and it was inconvenient to take sides in the enmity and resentment between the uncle and nephew, and he had no intention of getting involved in this bloody and conspiratorial imperial power struggle, and he was embarrassed and finally had no choice but to "leave the rest". When Zhu Di saw this, he had no choice but to give him the seal book and allow him to leave his hometown to return to his hometown for the elderly. His descendants were appointed as officials and signed as Confucians.

Every time I stood on the site of Tang Yu's tomb, my gaze crossed the top of the tall tombstone and slid into the high and empty heaven, and my thoughts traveled through time and space. I would always guess for no reason that when Tang Yurong, who had served the imperial court for half a lifetime, returned to his hometown, lectured in Lanxi County, Zhejiang Province, and lived a leisurely retirement life, he must have had compassion and sighs about fate after occasionally hearing some sporadic messages from Zhu Yunjiao, who was chased and killed by Zhu Di.

Tang Yu would never have dreamed that in the twelfth year of Yongle (1414), Chengzu Zhu Di's holy will would have brought his leisurely and idyllic old age to an abrupt end. Why did Zhu Di so inhumanely "re-employ" the elderly Tang Yu to give a lecture in the far corners of Bashu? This is unbelievable. Since the ancient emperor's orders were difficult to violate, Tang Yu could only kneel down to receive the holy will even if he was unhappy. According to historical records, Tang Yu "entered Shu in the twelfth year of Yongle (1414) and lived in Lanmugou (present-day Xuanhan Kunchi) in Dongxiang. Died, buried on the north bank of Dongyang Creek in Nanba. "When the guest died in another place, he buried an old bone in the corner of the Western Shu Far Away from his homeland, leaving behind two piles of loess soil for a husband and wife tomb, silently telling the lonely sorrow that could not fall leaves and return to the roots.

The Tang Yu family, with roots in Zhejiang, branches developed in the state. After 600 years of ups and downs, it has multiplied for more than 20 generations. The descendants of the Tang clan are prosperous, the network is widespread, the talents are abundant, and the heroes are gathered. Many historical and cultural celebrities such as Tang Kun, Tang Li, Tang Ren, Tang Jinzhou, Tang Jietai and so on emerged, the best of which were Tang Zhen, one of the "Four Great Enlightenment Thinkers" in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the author of the "Hidden Book" who was known as "five hundred years without this article", and the eleventh grandson of Tang Yu.

Back to the "Battle of Jingnan", the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao, it is said that he suddenly disappeared after taking advantage of the defeat in the palace fire and fled the capital, as if the world had evaporated. This strange suspense of life and death became a heart disease that the usurper Chengzu Zhu Di could not cure. Of course, Zhu Di had to cut the grass and remove the roots and eliminate the troubles forever, otherwise how could he personally send reliable cronies to pursue him everywhere? Fearing that Emperor Jianwen was exiled from the sea, he sent Zheng He to the West to secretly search for his whereabouts; he also ordered HuBu to secretly track and arrest Hu Zhongzhong in Zhejiang, Hubei, Hunan, Yunnan, and Sichuan provinces.

In order to avoid being pursued and killed, the fallen Jianwen Emperor could only hide his name and flee everywhere, successively going to Luzhou, Chongqing, Linshui, Dazhu, Tongjiang, Bazhong, Nanfang, Langzhong and other places, and finally settled in Daba Mountain, cutting his hair and becoming a monk at the Zhongshan Temple in Longtan, Daxian County. Since then, he has never left Daxian County until his death and is buried in Zhongshan Temple.

Legend has it that during the reign of Emperor Jingtai of the Ming Dynasty (1450-1457), Emperor Daizong ordered the monk FangSi of the Ministry of Rites to send the senior monk Beijing Yinxiu monk (number Bitian, a native of Baoquan County, Tianjin) to come to the funeral. The Yinxiu monk expanded the Zhongshan Temple into the "First Brahma Of Tongzhou (present-day Dazhou)" and built a tomb on the side of the Zhongshan Temple according to the standards of the imperial tomb. Emperor Myeongjinzong renovated the Temple of Zhongshan during the Wanli Dynasty, and ordered the official Shangshu Wei Chengfang to go to supervise the work, wrote the "Monument to the Reconstruction of the Zhongshan Temple" for posterity, and built the "Minghui Emperor Temple" at the Xiaohezui Dragon King Pond in the upper reaches of the dacheng Prefecture River, which belongs to Dachuan District.

Unfortunately, this temple has long been destroyed, and the traces of the ruins in the wilderness weeds are still faintly visible, but the two ancient yellow trees are leafy, tall and tall, and the roots are thick and thick like a crouching dragon, which makes the present people who have gone to hang themselves arouse infinite reverie. This, of course, is an afterthought.

Judging from various secret clues, Zhu Di decided that Zhu Yunjiao's last place of activity was in the area of Daba Mountain, and decided to send the "Chincha" who was monitoring Emperor Jianwen to his mentor Tang Yu. In the twelfth year of Yongle (1414), Zhu Di gave Tang Yu the "Five Classics confucian lectures" and sealed the Xuexue Temple, and rushed to Sichuan; and secretly ordered Wang Qing, a military attendant, to enter Sichuan, one article and one martial arts, two heavy generals, and embarked on the arduous road of tracking down and monitoring Zhu Yunjiao's secret mission.

However, the execution of this secret special pursuit mission is bound to be full of variables.

According to the "Genealogy of the Wang Clan of Xuanhan County (2017 Edition)" and Wang Chongyang, a descendant of the Wang Clan Ancestral Hall in Hongling Town, Xuanhan County, Wang Chongyang dictated that Wang Qing, the ancestor of entering Sichuan, was to cover Tang Yu's entry into Shu to track down the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen, and indeed found the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen Zhu Yunjiao at Zhongshan Temple in Longtan Township, Daxian County. However, because Tang Yu and Wang Qing learned that Emperor Jianwen had "no power to bind the chicken", recited Buddhist scriptures all day long, did not ask about mundane things, and could no longer pose any threat to Zhu Di's rule, Tang Yu and Wang Qingyi discussed and decided to risk killing the head for the crime of "deceiving the king" and let Emperor Jianwen live without authorization. When he was reinstated, he lied that he had only found clues to the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen, and still needed to be stationed in Dazhou for further investigation, pending the identification of his identity.

Then, from the defeat and escape of the Jianwen Emperor zhu Yunzhi in 1402, to the Zhongshan Temple in Longtan Township, Daxian County, and then to the "death" of the Ming Dynasty during the Jingtai period (1450-1457), for nearly 50 years, did the fallen Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunju really escape into the empty door, see through the red dust, and devote himself to the Buddha until his death?

I think there is still some debate about this.

I think that the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao not only did not willingly "accept defeat and accept his fate", on the contrary, he always had the dream of "regaining the throne". At least, the years of exile before the hermitage to the Zhongshan Temple were full of "comeback" ambitions.

In fact, examples similar to those of Emperor Jianwen are not uncommon. For example, luo bin wang and Li Zicheng, who are widely spread by the people, are not like Emperor Jianwen, who had no choice but to cut their hair and become monks when they were in danger, escaped into the empty door, preserved their strength, and waited for the opportunity to take revenge? Even the wing king Shi Dakai, is not it also said that a few years after the fall of Tianjing, some people have seen the wing king at a ferry port in the mountains of southwest Shu, and the heroic posture is still the same, holding an iron umbrella? Emperor Jianwen was able to overcome all kinds of difficulties and dangers, and painstakingly fled to the far land of Shu and hid in a desolate and remote mountainous area, did not he hold the expedient strategy of "staying in the green mountains and not being afraid of running out of firewood"? The answer is yes.

The "Twenty-Second Historical Record" written by Zhao Yi of the Qing Dynasty quotes Emperor Jianwen's "Crescent Moon Poem": Who will cut the jade nails and break the blue sky marks? In the shadows, the dragon did not dare to swallow. It's a lot like poetry.

The "Ming Chronicle at the End" contains another poem by Emperor Jianwen: The wind and dust suddenly invaded the south overnight, and the Mandate of Heaven dived to the heart of the four seas. The phoenix returns to the red sun of Danshan Mountain, and the dragon returns to the depths of the sea and blue clouds. The purple micro has an elephant star and arches, and the jade leaks silent water sinks itself. Imagine the Forbidden City tonight and the moon, the sixth palace is still looking forward to Cuihua Lin. The poem also reveals Zhu Yunjiao's desire for restoration; the "Red Cliff Heavenly Book" on the rock wall on the west side of Thejia Mountain in Guanling Buyi and Miao Autonomous County, Anshun City, Guizhou Province, is about 100 meters long, 3 meters wide, and about 10 meters high, which no one has been able to recognize for hundreds of years, after years of careful study by domestic ancient literature experts, in 2015 finally cracked the full text, the original mysterious "Red Cliff Heavenly Book" is written in the ancient script of the long-lost Qilao, written in the fourth year of Yongle (1406), the content is a jianwen Emperor's crusade against the Yan king Zhu Di's " The full text of the Yan Zhao Is as follows: Yan's rebellious heart, forcing the Sun Kingdom, rebellion and cruelty, Jinchuan Gate broken, killing corpses, and difficult to read. The great tomorrow and the moon have no light, and they will become a place of imprisonment and killing. He must subdue the Yan Demons and serve as a prisoner of the order. Cheng, the phoenix of the world (imperial system).

It can be seen from this that when Zhu Yunxiu fled to the end of the world, he still cherished Zhu Di's usurpation of the throne and never forgot to avenge his family and the country, which was his oath to overthrow Zhu Di's regime!

This is also more in line with the revenge psychology of a fallen emperor who has been ousted from the throne.

In the eighteenth year of Yongle (1420), the Forbidden City was built. This year was also the eighteenth year that Zhu Di had sent people to track down Zhu Yunjiao, who had never seen anyone alive or dead. Built on the commanding heights of Beijing's central axis, this magnificent and splendid palace shimmers with infinite ostentation of supreme feudal imperial power.

It is conceivable that when Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor who prides himself on being the Son of Heaven, ascended the Banzai Mountain 600 years ago and admired the Forbidden City that belonged to him, although he was completely unaware that Zhu Yunjiao had implicitly conveyed his vow to seek justice from him and regain the throne with a "Zhao Yan Zhao" 18 years ago, but in his proud eyes, there must have been a wisp of ominous clouds -- the ominous illusion that the vengeful Jianwen Emperor had repeatedly flashed into the capital with thousands of troops and horses in the depths of his soul that he could never be at peace. This was a problem that the usurper of the throne could never eradicate, and it was also the nightmare of the night that he had been frightened into a cold sweat countless times in his life.

□ Cao Wenrun