Soon after the founding of the Liao State, Yelu Abaoji became emperor, asked the ministers: The appointed monarch should worship God, which one do you say should be sacrificed first? The crowd replied, "Buddha." Abaoji said: Buddha is not Chinese. The crown prince Yelubei on the side said: Confucius is a great sage, and he should sacrifice Confucius first.
Abaoji was very happy, and Yelubei was also very happy, because he had always admired Zhongyuan, but he didn't know what price he would pay for it.
A month after Abaoji became emperor, Yelubei, who was only 18 years old, was made the crown prince and became the nominal heir to the throne of the Great Khitan Kingdom. After that, Yelubei followed his father to the north to Wugu, to the west to conquer the party, to the south to Hebei, and expanded the territory of the Khitan.
The Bohai Kingdom in the east had a long-standing grudge with the Khitan, and after the situation was stable, Abaoji led a large army to attack the Bohai Kingdom, accompanied by the empress Shu Luping, the crown prince Yelu Bei, and the second son Yelu Deguang. In 926 AD, Abaoji destroyed the Bohai Kingdom, and then changed the Bohai Kingdom to the Dongdan Kingdom, which means the Eastern Khitan Kingdom; At the same time, he canonized Yelubei as the emperor and made him the king of Dongdan.
The lord of a country is naturally very glorious, but sealing a dignified prince in a country outside the domain shows that Abaoji is hesitant about whether Yelubei should succeed to the throne, and this vast Dongdan Kingdom may just be a compensation for him. On the way back to the Khitan capital, Abaoji died, and because he had not appointed an heir before, the queen Shuluping was in power.
Although Yelubei relied on the identity of the crown prince and the strength of the Dongdan Kingdom, it may not be difficult to directly inherit the throne, but he was influenced by the Confucian concept of loyalty and filial piety, and he did not want to fall out with his mother and younger brother, but Shu Luping had already decided to kill.
Perhaps because of the old mother's partiality for her younger son, and because of Yelubei's admiration for Han culture, Shu Luping, who maintained the Khitan tradition, was very annoyed, in short, she wanted Yelu Deguang, who served as the generalissimo of soldiers and horses, to succeed her. So, she first summoned those Khitan nobles who disagreed with her, used the Khitan people to martyr the old customs, and forced them to be martyred for the first emperor.
After that, she let the two princes ride on horses, and said to the ministers: I like both children very much, but I don't know who to choose as emperor and who you support, so I will lead his horse. Of course, the people knew her thoughts, and they all said, "May I be a generalissimo." Yelubei had no choice but to say: Deguang's meritorious deeds are world-renowned, and he should preside over the country's social affairs. She naturally pushed the boat along the river, so Yelu Deguang succeeded to the throne for Liao Taizong.
It doesn't matter if you can't be an emperor, compared to the king of the world, Yelubei prefers group books, poetry and painting.
A long time ago, Yelubei organized the construction of Wanghaitang, the largest library building in the Khitan Kingdom. At that time, there were many wars in various places, and there were very few newly printed books, but he still collected them everywhere, so that the collection of books in Wanghaitang reached more than 10,000 volumes, so it was called the "10,000-volume library building".
Facing the sea and the spring flowers are blooming, Jelubei decided to live in seclusion here. But Liao Taizong didn't worry about him, after all, he was the eldest son, and if he wanted to seize the throne, it would be justified. Liao Taizong then first moved the subjects of the Dongdan Kingdom to the interior, and then moved Yelubei to live in Nanjing, the Khitan State, effectively putting him under house arrest. Two years later, Yelubei returned to Dongdan to seal the country, and Liao Taizong ordered the emperor Wang Yiwei to be called to comfort his brother, but in fact he was directly monitored.
Jerebe was so depressed that he couldn't show his anger so as not to be distracted. Therefore, when the invitation letter from Li Siyuan of Later Tang Mingzong reached him again, he decided to go to the Central Plains. In this way, he will not only be able to better understand the Han culture, but also dispel his younger brother's concerns.
In 930 A.D., the envoys of the Later Tang Dynasty came to invite him again, and Jelubei said to his attendants: I have given the world to the Lord, but now I am under suspicion; It's better to defect to another country and become a virtuous name like Uncle Wu. Wu Taibo, also known as Taibo, was the eldest son of King Tai of Zhou, knowing that his father wanted to make his youngest son Ji Li as his heir, so he and his second brother Zhongyong fled to Jiangnan and established the state of Wu.
Before leaving, Jerubi set up a wooden sign by the sea, on which was engraved a poem: The small mountain presses the big mountain, and the mountain is powerless. I was ashamed to see my hometown, and I went to a foreign country from now on. A few strokes, full of helplessness, Zhao Yi of the Qing Dynasty once commented on the poem: The love words are poignant, the words are short and the meaning is long, and it is deeply in line with the purpose of the people. After that, Yelubei took his concubine Gao Mei and some of his retinue, loaded some books onto the ship, and fled across the sea to the Later Tang Dynasty.
In the Later Tang Dynasty, Yelubei was not only treated politely by Li Siyuan, but also served as the envoy of the festival. Liao Taizong did not pursue his escape to the Later Tang Dynasty, and later there were often envoys between them, and Yelubei, who was no longer under pressure, picked up the paintbrush again.
The famous "Riding and Archery Drawing" was painted by him in the Later Tang Dynasty, in which the horse has a large head and a thick neck, a long body and short limbs, but it is abnormally strong, inheriting the tradition of human and horse painting since the Sui and Tang dynasties, and the human and horse shapes are full of flesh and blood.
The days of such poetry and painting were pleasant, but fate soon played a joke on him again, and he was once again involved in the struggle for the throne.
In the first year of Yingshun of the Later Tang Dynasty (934), Li Congke, the adopted son of Li Siyuan, killed the son of Li Siyuan, who had just ascended the throne, and established himself as the emperor. This made Yelubei very angry, not only because Li Siyuan had great kindness to him, but also because as a loyal supporter of Confucian culture, he could not tolerate this kind of murder.
He asked someone to report to Liao Taizong: Li Congke killed the king, and he should be crusaded against. Later, Liao Taizong did send troops, but this was mainly because Shi Jingjiao, a rebel general of the Later Tang Dynasty who had a conflict with Li Congke, borrowed troops from the Khitan ministers.
In 936 AD, the Later Jin Emperor Shi Jingjiao led an army to besiege Luoyang, the capital of the Later Tang Dynasty. Li Congke saw that the general trend had gone and wanted to self-immolate, but suddenly remembered Yelubei, so he summoned him, who was still in Luoyang, to self-immolate with him. Yelubei did not comply, and Li Congke sent someone to kill him directly.
After Jerube's death, only one monk hastily collected his body. Later, Liao Taizong welcomed back his bones and posthumously recognized him as the Khitan Emperor. A few years later, after some internal struggles in the Khitan, Yelubei's son succeeded to the throne as Liao Shizong, and posthumously honored his father Yelubei as the emperor, and was called the emperor of the country. After that, almost all the emperors of the Great Liao (including the emperors of the Northern Liao) were descendants of Yelubei.
Yelubei's paintings in the Central Plains were collected, and after the war, they were finally hidden in the secret palace of the Ouchi Imperial Palace, according to the "Xuanhe Painting Spectrum", a total of 15 paintings. It's a pity that after the shame of Jingkang and the southern crossing of the Song Dynasty, not many of these paintings have survived.
As a painter of the northern grasslands, Yelubei is good at painting aquatic grass grazing or riding and hunting, especially good at painting saddle horses.
Yelubei is also good at writing Khitan poems, Jin Dynasty Yuan Hao asked once read his Khitan poems, and made "Dongdan Riding Shooting" inscription poem cloud: Yiqi once saw small character poems, and the pictures are now majestic. He also once translated the Chinese "Yin Fu Jing" into Khitan, which promoted cultural exchanges between the Central Plains and the north.
It can be said that Yelubei, who was a bibliophile, an onmyologist, a medical scientist, a musician, a writer, a translator, a sinologist and a painter, was an erudite and talented Confucian who could be called the first great artist of the Liao Dynasty. It's a pity that for the Great Liao Kingdom, which has not been established long ago and urgently needs to expand its territory, what they need is not an artist emperor.