【Editor's Note】
In the "2017 National Top Ten New Archaeological Discoveries" selected in April 2018, the ruins of the Shangqing Palace on Longhu Mountain in Yingtan, Jiangxi Are impressively listed. Lu Xun said in "Small Miscellaneous Feelings": "People often hate monks, hate nuns, hate Muslims, hate Christians, and hate Christians, but do not hate Taoists. Those who understand this principle understand most of China. "Taoism, as a native religion in China, has suffered a huge impact in the process of modernization, and the Shangqing Palace of Longhu Mountain, the sacred site of Taoism, collapsed and collapsed in the 1930s, becoming a ruin and unknown. So, why is the historical Shangqing Palace important? Why have few Taoist buildings and ruins been selected in archaeological excavations over the years? With these questions in mind, the www.thepaper.cn interviewed Mr. Tao Jin of the Cultural Heritage Protection Center of the Architectural Design and Research Institute of Tsinghua University, one of the discoverers of the Shangqing Palace site, who is also working on the conservation and utilization of the site. In 2015, with the design of Theodore Maoshan, Taukin was nominated for the "First Work Award" by the German architecture magazine bauwelt. It may also be the first religious building in the modern style of the Chinese mainland.
Associated with the Shangqing Palace
The Paper: How did you initially get involved in the excavation of the ruins of the Shangqing Palace?
Tao Jin: As early as early 2014, Yingtan City, Jiangxi Province, will host the Third International Taoist Forum at the end of that year, and in order to host this international event, Yingtan City decided to rebuild the Shangqing Palace, which was destroyed by fire in the early 19 century, as a venue for activities at Longhu Mountain. The Longhushan Taoist Association contacted the Cultural Heritage Protection Center of the Architectural Design and Research Institute of Tsinghua University. In March, Dr. Cui Guanghai, deputy director of the center, came to Longhu Mountain with me. At that time, we went to the site of the Shangqing Palace site and found a lot of emerald green glazed tile fragments. I am a Beijinger, I grew up playing in Beihai Park, and there are glazed tiles of this color everywhere, so I am more sensitive.
Intuition told us that there was something underneath these glazed tile fragments, so we immediately suggested that the relevant units suspend the construction and carry out archaeological excavations. The relevant departments of Yingtan City responded positively to this proposal, and in June 2014, the archaeological team officially moved in. Later, sure enough, the ruins of the Great Qing Palace were found under this.
Tao Jin (left) and Dr. Cui Guanghai (right) survey the site at the site
The Paper: I heard that the Cultural Heritage Protection Center of the Architectural Design and Research Institute of Tsinghua University has provided a lot of help for the protection and excavation of the ruins of the Shangqing Palace in Longhu Mountain, Yingtan, can you tell us about it?
Tao Jin: We mainly provide some technical support. In modern times, Taoism has often been seen as superstitious and dregs, and has been so greatly impacted that even the local people of Yingtan are not very clear about the importance of the Shangqing Palace and its significance in Chinese history. One of my own interests is the study of Taoist rituals, but when it comes to Taoist rituals, I can't get around Zhang Tianshi and Dragon Tiger Mountain. Relevant scholars in Taiwan and France have a very in-depth study of Longhu Mountain, and I mainly refer to their research. Personally, first of all, I provided some information to the archaeological team, such as the pictures of the Shangqing Palace in the Yongzheng period, which I scanned and provided from the catalogue published in the United States. There are also some text and picture materials in the museum to help organize the history of the Shangqing Palace. The second is to start the planning and architectural design of the protection and utilization of the site. More old-school cultural relics experts will feel that since you are a site, it is best to put it there and show it to people motionlessly. But our team believes that the Shangqing Palace is a sacred place of Taoism, and Taoism itself has not entered history, but has undergone a large revival in recent decades. Then, as a Taoist holy place, we should link the site with its past and future, and do site protection along this line of thinking, for example, we can keep the foundation of the old Shangqing Palace, but we can also add protective buildings on the ground and serve as a ceremonial space. In the future, religious ceremonies on Dragon tiger mountain, such as the ordination and transmission of the temple, can also be held here. This is our plan in the pre-Qingming report, and now the State Administration of Cultural Heritage has basically passed, and there will be buildings on the site in the future. What's more, if we do nothing, as we do now, exposing the ruins to the outside will not play a protective role. The summer temperature in Jiangxi is very high, and the winter is very cold, and several spring, summer, autumn and winter will cause great damage to the current ruins.
Guan Huai: Part of "Dragon and Tiger Mountain Map", which shows the architectural regulations of the Shangqing Palace after the three-year reconstruction of Zhengde in the Ming Dynasty and before the reconstruction of Yongzheng in the ninth year (now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
North Hole South Zhang
The Paper: Judging from the results of archaeological excavations, what are the characteristics of the architecture of the Shangqing Palace compared with the Taoist architecture in Jiangxi and other regions?
Tao Jin: In the past, Jiangxi people went to other places to do business, helped and promoted each other, and established the Jiangxi Guild Hall for the gathering and accommodation of fellow villagers, and the Jiangxi Guild Hall was also called the Wanshou Palace, which enshrined Xu Zhenjun, who was a famous scholar in the Wei and Jin dynasties, and was later revered as the local protector of Jiangxi, and the ancestral temple dedicated to him was the Yulong Wanshou Palace in Xinjian County, Nanchang, which was very grand in scale. Buildings like the Wanshou Palace are typical of Jiangxi's local style.
But the Shangqing Palace is a northern "official style".
Jiangxi Xinjian County Yulong Wanshou Palace Gaoming Hall Jiangxi local style Four corners up higher The building façade is flexibly organized
The Bohe Hall of the Forbidden City in Beijing and the Jade Emperor Hall of the Shangqing Palace are both official-style buildings
We go to see the wall on the ruins of the Shangqing Palace, the gap between the brick and the brick is very thin, there is no mortar, this is a very complex, very labor-intensive, costly process, called "grinding bricks to seam". This is the case with the Summer Palace, the Old Summer Palace, and some of the walls in the Forbidden City. The existing buildings of the Shangqing Palace are Qing Dynasty official style, but through the examination of materials and archaeological excavations, we can find that the Shangqing Palace of the Song and Ming Dynasties is also in the official style. The Ming Dynasty had many feudal kings in Jiangxi, and the craftsmen in the local royal palace maintained the same architectural style as the northern and southern erjing, and occasionally supported local construction, so the emergence of official-style buildings in Jiangxi during the Ming Dynasty was not new.
Shangqing Palace Ruins The walls are made of grinding bricks against the seam
General brick and tile craftsmanship
But it is very fresh to find the official architecture of the Qing Dynasty in the local area. First of all, the Qing Dynasty has no king in Jiangxi, the Qing Dynasty to expand the Shangqing Palace these craftsmen should not be from Jiangxi, it is likely to be selected by the Hangzhou Weaving Organization, the Hangzhou Weaving of the Qing Dynasty is somewhat similar to the Ming Dynasty's Fan King, they all belong to the inner court of this system, different from the outer dynasty.
The expansion of the Shangqing Palace was in the Yongzheng Dynasty, because lou Jinyuan, a Taoist priest of the Shangqing Palace, cured his illness, and he was grateful. The expansion used the silver of the Ministry of internal affairs, that is, the emperor's own money, and it was very important to find out where the money came from.
In the second year of Yongzheng, the fire of the Confucius Temple in Qufu, Shandong, was also repaired by the emperor himself, so from this point of view, the Shangqing Palace and the Qufu Confucius Temple were equally important, and the North Kong Nanzhang was said to be the Yanshenggong of Qufu and the Heavenly Master of Longhu Mountain.
Jiao Bingzhen: The protagonist of the Yongzheng Period Scroll: The protagonist of the Yongzheng Period Scroll is most likely Lou Jinyuan himself (a neutral red-clad person on the Stage)
(Now in the collection of the Friar and Shachola Art Museum of the Missonian Institution in Washington, D.C.)
In general, the Qing Dynasty was a relatively frugal dynasty that did not spend money indiscriminately. Even if it is built, it is to allocate silver to the local area and let the local craftsmen build it, so it is also a local architectural style. Like the Shangqing Palace, he also gave money and sent people, which shows the importance that the Yongzheng Emperor attached to the Shangqing Palace.
In addition to the architectural style, there is another point about the Shangqing Palace that we generally do not pay attention to. The entire valley around the Shangqing Palace is full of Taoist ruins, and the density is very high, equivalent to a mountain city. The Shangqing Palace has thirty-six taoist temples, which is the largest in China. A Taoist temple is like a big family, a master leads his disciples to burn cultivation, and the whole Shangqing Palace is like a big clan, and what maintains them is the Fa lineage, that is, the virtual bloodline, because the Daoists of the Shangqing Palace are to become monks, and the Daoists of the TianshiFu are at home.
The Paper: In religious archaeology, Buddhism has done more, especially the study of caves and cave temples, and has done a lot of work, but on the contrary, it has done less work on Taoist archaeology. Why have few Taoist buildings and sites been selected in archaeological excavations over the years?
Tao Jin: From the very beginning of Buddhism, in the time of Shakyamuni, there was a relatively complete monastic system. Monks living together and practicing the Dharma, such a form of organization can easily form a large-scale ruin. But Taoism is different, and Taoist monks are often accompanied by one or two people, living in the Hut Ashram, relatively independent of each other. Of course, this is the earliest situation in Buddhism and Taoism, two completely different methods of practice, resulting in different forms of settlement space.
Doctrinally speaking, Taoism and Buddhism are also very different. Although Chinese monks and Taoists returned to the hidden mountain forest, Buddhists dug caves into the mountain and then carved Buddha statues in it, which actually turned the mountain into human form. But in the Taoist view, the opposite is that nature itself is the best. Daoist monks hope that through cultivation, they can turn their bodies into a part of nature and enter the cave heavens, which is equivalent to turning people into mountains. Behind this is the essential difference between the material culture of Central Asia and East Asia, and behind the material culture of Central Asia is actually the two rivers and the Mediterranean Sea, while East Asia is indigenous. Now we often talk about cultural interconnection on the Silk Road, and many Western scholars habitually attribute what they find in China to inspiration from the West, but from another point of view, in fact, we are not particularly clear about what our local culture has.
Therefore, the practice method and organizational form derived from the teachings of Buddhism and Taoism just now make Taoism not as keen on opening grottoes as Buddhism, and in addition to the fact that Since Qianlong, Taoism has always been suppressed, many Taoist temples have fallen into decline, and there are naturally fewer architectural remains.
Left: Buddhist Yungang Grottoes Transform Mountains into Human Forms Right: Taoist Inner Scripture Diagram Transforms Humanoids into Landscapes
A reconciliation of Taoist beliefs, state sacrifices, and Confucianism
The Paper: In history, the Shangqing Palace was called "the place where a hundred gods were appointed", where did this statement come from? How to understand the significance of the Great Shangqing Palace on Longhu Mountain in the entire history of Chinese Taoism and even in the history of religion?
Tao Jin: To put this question a little further, first of all, let's talk about the world of faith in ancient China.
In fact, the ancient Chinese faith was based on sacrifice. The emperor sacrifices to the heavens, the princes to the mountains and rivers, and the common people to the land, these gods do not belong to any modern "religion", or he is not a "religion" in the Western sense, but they have completely penetrated into the daily life of the country and even ordinary people, which is much more influential than the so-called institutionalized religion: such as Buddhism and even the later introduction of Christianity. In the process of China's modernization, since the end of the Qing Dynasty, especially after May Fourth, the government has regarded all of these as superstitions, and the government's views come from the West, and their roots are missionaries since the Ming and Qing dynasties. French sinologist Professor Shi Zhouren has a profound reflection on this "misunderstanding" process. Therefore, under the Concept of the West, the sacrificial system that was originally a state body was swept away as feudal scum and continues to this day. Some of our current local grassroots cadres are still committed to demolishing the land temple.
But when we open the old county records of the past, the local shrines are arranged first, and the Buddhist temples are arranged last.
Taoism began in the Tang Dynasty, under the instruction of the emperor and the imperial court, began to take over the sacrifice of the Five Peaks, and in the Song Dynasty began to take over the local shrines. For example, the City God Temple, at first, had nothing to do with Taoism, and later under the infiltration of state power, the City God Temple was basically managed by Taoists, and the Yin soldiers under the jurisdiction of the City God also played an important part in the ritual of Leifa.
Between the classic Taoist beliefs and state sacrifices, the Shangqing Palace plays a connecting point. Compared with other Taoist temples, the Shangqing Palace was recognized by the imperial court as an important role in giving legitimacy to the beliefs of local gods from the perspective of Taoism. We know that "loyalty and filial piety, death becomes a god", in ancient China, a village sage died, the people gradually worshipped him as a god, and every New Year's Festival they had to worship him and pray for blessings. However, not every local sage can become a "righteous god" recognized by the local government, and these local governors, influenced by Confucian culture, often think that these are "obscene rituals" (referring to unseemly sacrifices, including both non-ceremonial sacrifices and sacrifices not included in the rituals), which must be prohibited. How to resolve this contradiction? According to the literature we can grasp, the Dragon Tiger Mountain Heavenly Master played the role of reconciling the official-people relationship, and he could use his official status (all the heavenly masters were sealed by the emperor) to hold ceremonies in the Shangqing Palace, and to teach this local god the Zhengyi Fa Gong, so that he could submit to the Dao, and thus become a righteous god who could benefit one party. After being "awarded the hoop", it is like entering the "list of canonized gods", because of the prestige of the Heavenly Master of Longhu Mountain and the legal status of the Shangqing Palace, the local governor also recognized it, and allowed the local people to build temples to worship and worship. As a result, the Qing Palace on Dragon and Tiger Mountain was called "the place where the hundred gods were appointed". As we just said, ancient Chinese society was largely cohesive by state and local sacrifices, that is, a society of ritual music. From the Song Dynasty onwards, Taoism began to merge with the sacrificial system of imperial China, and the Shangqing Palace played an important role in reconciling the contradictions between the Confucian-based group of scholars and masters and the "obscenity" worshipped by the common people.
According to the "Divine Basket" conferred in the name of the Fifty-third Heavenly Master Zhang Hongren, "Far away from the Blessed Land Dragon Tiger Mountain Zheng Ten Thousand Dharma Sect Altar Heir Han Fifty Generation Heavenly Master Zhang Zhenren Mansion, on behalf of the god worshiped the "Yuqing Three Caves Containing the True Body Dao Shengxian Sutra Basket" ... Clouds" (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art)
The Shangqing Palace was the concentrated carrier of The Taoist reform in the Tang and Song dynasties
The Paper: Has the teachings and organizational forms of Taoism undergone a relatively big change in the tang and Song dynasties?
Tao Jin: Yes, the traditional Chinese cosmology and the concept of the body have been systematically preserved in Taoism. Looking at the Taoism before the Tang Dynasty, it is actually very interesting. Taoism began in the Eastern Han Dynasty and became an institutionalized, so-called "higher religion." At that time, people were keen on Wei Wei, so according to Zhou Yi's deduction, they found that this universe was like the sixty-four gua, there were generations and destructions, and when it came to a season of "yang nine yin six", the entire time and space would fall into chaos. Therefore, in order to save the good people from chaos, Lao Jun descended and gave the Heavenly Master Zhang Daoling the "Three Days of Fa-rectification" and taught the common people the method of doing good deeds and apologizing for their sins. After many years in chaos, this universe will be re-incarnated from a point, that is, the so-called three lives of all things, and the Daoist people who practiced the teachings of the Dao in the previous life will be able to "return to the skeleton and die" in the Taiping world after the chaos and become the seeds of goodness in the new world. Simply put, the core of early Taoism was "salvation." Then Taoism, as a reformed religion, is firmly opposed to sacrifice, because the Tao Te Ching says: "The Tao Te Ching has no relatives and is often with good people", the Dao Dao will not bless a sinful person, and sacrifice alone cannot obtain the blessings of heaven, so the Taoist fasting ceremony is to thank sin as a method of blessing.
Longhu Mountain began precisely from the end of the Tang Dynasty, and gradually became the center of Taoism in the Southern Song Dynasty, and it was also the concentrated carrier of the Taoist reform in the Tang and Song Dynasties. Here are a few clues. First of all, the Northern Song Dynasty Huizong Dynasty equated the Haotian God sacrificed on the Altar of Heaven with the Taoist Jade Emperor God, that is, there was an emperor within Taoism, which provided a suzerain for the various local gods. Again, since the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhang Tianshi of LonghuShan unified the various Taoist sects that were active at that time, each of which had its own divine lineage, and through the establishment of the "Ten Thousand Dharma Sect Altar" through the imperial court, these Daoist laws were officially integrated. In addition, at the national and social levels, Zhang Tianshi was in charge of Taoism in Longhu Mountain, while the Beijing teachers and local Taoists began to manage the ancestral temples and be responsible for sacrifices, and the Daoist priests transformed from the saviors of sentient beings into the bonds between local beliefs and the state, and now there are so-called "scattered Taoists" or "Mr. Daoists" at the grass-roots level in various places, who are often the main bearers of the local context, mastering all the knowledge of local life etiquette, and sometimes even local non-hereditary people.