The term "Taimiao" began in the Qin and Han dynasties, meaning the ancestral temple and ancestral hall of the emperors of the generations. However, in the late feudal period, the Taimiao temple not only worshipped the ancestors of the emperors of the dynasty, but also some famous emperors in history.
Today, we will talk about the Taimiao Temple of the Ming Dynasty.
The emperors who can be enshrined in the temples of the emperors of previous dynasties to enjoy incense are all glorious deeds that have left a lot of ink and color in the historical materials, in addition to the three emperors and five emperors who founded Chinese civilization, most of the emperors who can enjoy the temple are the founding emperors. In addition, some of the most accomplished rulers were also eligible to enter the Taimiao Temple. As for those faint and even brutal rulers, they were not eligible to be enshrined by posterity in the temple to enjoy incense.
The ming temple was built by Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Yuanzhang was born in the lower class of society, and his early life experience was bumpy, so he was different from most of the emperors in history, very jealous and hateful, and love and hatred were clear. It is reasonable to say that as the founding emperor, he must have respect for the elders in history, so that they can bless their own dynasty with long-term peace and stability. However, Zhu Yuanzhang was different, he only selected a few emperors who had a good eye for him to place in the Taimiao Temple, and as for the other emperors, they did not sacrifice at all.
Therefore, in the early Ming Dynasty, there were not many kings who deserved to enjoy the Taimiao Temple. Throughout the five thousand years, there are only sixteen emperors who have the opportunity to have a place in the Ming Tai Temple. Even so, in the Jiajing Dynasty, there was still an ancient emperor who was kicked out of the Taimiao Temple and lost his qualifications. The emperor who was "expelled from the temple" by Jiajing was Kublai Khan, the founder of the former dynasty.
So, when Kublai Khan was removed from the Ming Temple, what were the hidden secrets in between?
The Taimiao Temple built by Zhu Yuanzhang is located in Jiming Mountain, Nanjing, and we know that although Zhu Yuanzhang was born in the grassroots, he still attached great importance to feng shui, and there were many yin and yang gentlemen under him, including Liu Bowen. Therefore, this temple was built very elaborately, in line with the principle of "ancestors in the center, left zhao right Mu". In this temple, a total of sixteen statues of historical emperors appeared.
The ancients feared gods and ghosts, so the status of the Temple was quite high. When summoning craftsmen to build the Taimiao Temple, Zhu Yuanzhang would come to the construction site every three to five minutes to personally supervise the project. Strange things happened when Zhu Yuanzhang inspected the Taimiao Temple, and a craftsman told Zhu Yuanzhang that the statue of Kublai Khan, the ancestor of the Yuan Dynasty, was "weeping", as if it was about to appear.
Although Zhu Yuanzhang had a reverential attitude toward the gods and ghosts, his courage was relatively large, and he came to the clay statue of Kublai Khan and said something to the old man:
"Foolish Dazi, the Ruhu people have entered China, it can be said that they are fortunate, they have returned to their fate today, they have the world, and they do not kill the descendants of Ru, but they drive back to the north, and Ru he hates Yahweh? Stop crying. ”
To the effect:
"You northern Tartars have been fortunate to be able to enter the Central Plains for a hundred years. Today, instead of slaughtering your descendants, how great a grace it is to let them continue to live in the north. You still don't cry anymore. ”
Strange to say, after Zhu Yuanzhang said these words to Kublai Khan that seemed to be appeased and threatening, Kublai Khan's clay statue never shed tears again.
After Zhu Yuanzhang's death, emperor Zhu Di drove out the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao and usurped the throne as emperor. Under his orders, the capital was moved to Yanjing. Since then, the Ming emperors who lived in Beijing have no longer personally sacrificed the temples of the emperors because of their long distances. Therefore, the taimiao temple built by Zhu Yuanzhang became snubbed, and only some ministers who stayed in Nanjing were ordered to come and pretend to sacrifice every year.
With the development of the times, the Ming Dynasty completely gained a foothold in the Central Plains. The revival of Cheng Zhu Lixue has made more and more readers begin to question the legitimacy of the rule of the Mongolian Yuan ethnic minority. As a result, many people criticized the list of sacrifices left by Zhu Yuanzhang. They believed that Kublai Khan was a Mongol emperor who belonged to the ranks of the "Hu people", and that the Orthodox Ming Dynasty, as a Han Chinese, had no reason to sacrifice a Hu person.
For example, during the Chenghua period, the university scholar Qiu Mao said in the song chapter: "Or the ancestors of the Yuan Dynasty did not contribute to China, and they could not worship." The "China" mentioned here is obviously based on a very narrow national perspective. There were many ministers who held the same attitude as Qiu Mao, and every few years there was a small wave of asking the emperor to remove Kublai Khan from the temple.
However, after all, Kublai Khan was personally invited into the Taimiao Temple by Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang. Therefore, even if everyone has a lot of criticism on their lips, every time they think that the sacrifice of the Centennial Taimiao Temple has become a tradition, it is "thunder and rain and small", and no one really has to embarrass an emperor of the Yuan Dynasty who has been dead for more than two hundred years.
It is conceivable that the ministers talking about Kublai Khan in the Temple of Taimiao are nothing more than to reaffirm the legitimacy of the Ming regime and thus flaunt their loyalty.
It is this kind of joke,000 arguments, and there are also emperors who take it seriously.
The emperor who took this seriously was the unreliable Jiajing Emperor. Originally, no one planned to toss and turn around with great fanfare and move a clay statue of a former emperor out of the Taimiao Temple. However, Jiajing was an emperor with a clear brain circuit, and he felt that the emperors enshrined in the Nanjing Taimiao Temple were all set by Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, and now that he had become the king of a country, who he wanted to sacrifice should be decided by him. Therefore, under Jiajing's arrangement, a brand-new Taimiao Temple was erected in Beijing, and the Sixteen Emperors who originally deserved to enjoy the Taimiao Temple became fifteen, and Kublai Khan, the "Lord of Hu Yuan", was naturally kicked away.
In fact, when the Jiajing Emperor built the Beijing Taimiao Temple, he did not take this into account. He was an emperor who advocated taoism and etiquette, and felt that it was inappropriate to put the temple in Nanjing, and wanted to build a temple in Beijing, so that in the future, Emperor Daming would personally worship it every year. Therefore, he originally had no objection to the list of the Sixteen Emperors, after all, these were all old things of the former dynasty, and these emperors had long since returned to dust, and there was no difference in worship.
However, just as the Taimiao Temple was completed, a piece of music was sent to the imperial court, requesting Kublai Khan to revoke Kublai Khan's eligibility for the Taimiao Temple. The reason why the minister submitted the chapter is similar to what we said above, which is nothing more than to flaunt the destiny of the Ming Dynasty, so it will slander the former dynasty as not "the heavenly right of kingship".
Jiajing did not take it seriously, but only asked the Rebbe to prevaricate the past on the grounds that "Hu Yuan was ordained by the Ninth Emperor, the most virtuous of the ancestors", and worshiped Kublai Khan as always.
Until this time, we could not see that Jiajing still had respect for Kublai Khan.
Why, then, did Jiajing remove Kublai Khan again in the twenty-fourth year?
This goes back to the old grudge between the Ming Dynasty and its old enemy, the Mongols. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang and his descendants pursued the Remnant Yuan regime and basically returned the Mongol Empire in North Asia to its fragmented original form. Later, the rising Wallachians carried out a "tumu fort change" and captured the Ming emperor as a prisoner. Fortunately, the Ming Dynasty had a strong foundation in national strength, and it did not take long to teach the Wallachians a harsh lesson in the defense of Beijing. After Vara, the Mongols began to rebel again.
He is a direct descendant of the "Golden Family" Bo Erzhu Jin Clan. Like his ancestors, Li Da led the Mongol tribes to launch a southern invasion, repeatedly causing chickens and dogs to jump on the border of Daming. It should be known that the foreign policy adopted by the Ming Dynasty was "the son of heaven guarding the gate of the country", and not far south of the border was the emperor's lair. Therefore, every time the news of lida harassing the border reached the palace, Jiajing was afraid for a while. During this time, whenever he saw the words "Hu" and "Barbarian" on the song, Jiajing was shocked and angry, and the slightest thing would remind him of the Mongolian answer that made the whole Daming sit on a needle and felt.
At this time, Jiajing's impression of the Mongols changed greatly. Under the influence of "Hating House and Wu", he not only hated the Mongols, but also hated all the Mongols. Therefore, every year when the temple is worshipped, the mud statue of Kublai Khan, which does not move, seems to him more and more unpleasant. In the twenty-fourth year of Jiajing, another minister sent a recital entitled "It is advisable to withdraw Kublai Khan and his minister Mu Huali and other five gods and lords." At this point, Jiajing immediately signed the song chapter: "Withdrawn, quickly withdrawn." It seems that he felt that it was not painful enough to remove Kublai Khan's tablet, and Jiajing also ordered that the clay statues of the Nanjing Taimiao Temple be demolished together.
However, no matter how big the movement of Jiajing demolishing the clay statue, it cannot solve any practical problems. After all, tablets and clay statues are ignorant, and dismantling them will not make the Mongols less meat. Therefore, I replied that I should harass and harass, that I should invade and invade, and come to Jiajing's home as often as a regular tour to "be a guest". In the twenty-ninth year of Jiajing, the scene of the defense war in Beijing was repeated again, and Li Da came to the city of Beijing with thousands of troops and horses, and surrounded the vast City of Forty-Nine. The Jiajing Emperor was so frightened that he shrunk like a turtle, and quickly sent emissaries to negotiate with the enemy and agreed to sign an agreement to restore the Ming Dynasty and the Mongolian horse market.
The invasion of Beijing was originally a bluff. After receiving Jiajing's promise, the Mongol army sang triumphantly. Since then, trade between the two countries has resumed, and the Mongols have harassed the border much less frequently. However, even so, the Jiajing Emperor, who was "bitten by a snake for a lifetime", still hated and feared the Mongols. Under these circumstances, Jiajing naturally would not invite Kublai Khan back to the Temple. In the late Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty faced internal and external troubles, so the later emperors did not have the energy to take care of the affairs of the Taimiao Temple.
What's more, the number one enemy of the Ming Dynasty at this time was the Mongols and Manchus who were entrenched outside the Guan, and in the eyes of the Ming rulers, the "Hu people" represented by "Kublai Khan" were this group of people. Therefore, even if there is an opportunity to revise the list of emperors who are entitled to the Temple, no one is willing to invite Kublai Khan back.
Therefore, in the late Ming Dynasty, the emperors who were enshrined with incense in the Taimiao Temple were: Fuxi, Shennong, Yellow Emperor, Shaohao, Emperor Zhao, Yao, Shun, Yu, Shang Tang, Zhou Wu Wang Ji fa, Han Gaozu Liu Bang, Guangwu Emperor Liu Xiu, Tang Taizong Li Shimin, Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin, but there was no Yuan Taizu Kublai Khan.
Resources:
【History of the Ming Dynasty" and "Records of the Ming Dynasty"】