EMPEROR
WU ZHAO AND HER
PANTHEON OF
DEVIS, DIVINITIES, AND
DYNASTIC
MOTHERS N. HARRY ROTHSCHILD
INTRODUCTION
Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Female Political Ancestors And who are my ancestors? Are they only my biological ones . . . or do I have political ancestors as well? I am proud and grateful to be an American. I cherish the values of democracy and the freedoms I enjoy in this land, and I appreciate these more every time I remember how my biological ancestors in Europe and elsewhere were oppressed. . . . In a certain sense, I have been adopted by the “fathers” of this country. Thomas Je erson and Abraham Lincoln are my political ancestors. I imbibed their values from childhood and passed them on to my children. —SOLOMON SCHIMMEL, WO UN DS N O T HE ALE D B Y TI ME
of her remarkable political career, China’s rst and only female emperor, Wu Zhao 㬎㙴 (624–705; r. 690– 705),1 better known as Wu Zetian 㬎⇯⣑ġor Empress Wu (Wu hou 㬎⎶), faced daunting cultural obstacles and erce opposition.2 Although “China did not have a written Salic Law,” remarked Zhao Fengjie nearly a century ago, “nevertheless there was a prohibition, silently observed through dynasties, that a woman was not to become emperor.”3 Given these deeply entrenched cultural attitudes, Wu Zhao clearly could not and did not construct her political authority in a conventional fashion. Wu Zhao’s power was constantly challenged, forcing this historical anomaly to deploy language, symbolism, and ideology in a unique and creative manner. “Liminality, marginality and structural inferiority,” anthropologist Victor Turner observed, “are conditions in which are frequently generated myths, symbols, ritual, philosophical systems and works of art.” Less fettered by conventional conceptions, such borderlands “are open to the play of thought, feeling and will; in them are generated new models . . . some of which may have su cient power and plausibility to replace eventually the forcebacked political and jural models that control the centers of a society’s ongoing life.”4 With the keen intuition of an outsider, Wu Zhao displayed IN THE TORTUOUS HALF CENTURY
2 INTRODUCTION
an uncanny knack for sensing the plasticity of tradition, for discerning and capitalizing on subtle gaps in structures and institutions. While male emperors like Tang Taizong (r. 626–649) paid scrupulous homage to widely acknowledged culture heroes like ood-queller Yu the Great, dynastyfounding rulers like Kings Wen and Wu of Zhou, and sage advisors like the Duke of Zhou and Confucius, Wu Zhao necessarily sought alternative sources of legitimacy both within and beyond the con nes of the Confucian tradition.5 Even as she continued to honor this canonical lineage of ideal rulers, sages, and worthies, she constructed a parallel pantheon of female divinities and paragons drawn from every ideological persuasion— including Buddhist devis, Confucian exemplars (like the mother of Mencius), and Daoist goddesses, such as the Queen Mother of the West. In 676, when Empress Wu’s ailing husband Tang Gaozong (r. 649–683) o ered to abdicate in her favor, o cial censure was swift. “It is said in the classics that the Son of Heaven administers the path of the male yang essence and the empress oversees the virtues of female yin,” a minister bluntly remonstrated. “The relationship of the empress to emperor is like that of the moon to the sun—each has its place and role.”6 Simply put, she belonged to the inner, private, familial sphere and not the outer, public, and political world of men. At di erent stages of her ascent to power, Wu Zhao repeatedly heard variations of this message. Some in Wu Zhao’s court and realm objected to her rule on the grounds that female authority was unnatural, aberrant, and intrinsically at odds with both human and cosmic order. When as grand dowager she seized control of the court in 684, rebels took an oath to “expunge the shedemon scourge” (qing yao nie 㶭⤾⬥).7 Disgruntled scholar-poet Luo Binwang (640–684) wrote a scathing polemic that anticipated centuries of disparaging Confucian judgment,8 vigorously attacking her subversion of traditional gender norms and the perceived frailties and aws associated with her sex: Miss Wu, who has falsely usurped authority to run the court, is by nature cold and unyielding, by birth lowly and obscure. . . . Innately jealous, her mothlike eyebrows allow other women no quarter. All embroidered sleeves and artful slander, her vulpine glamour beguiled the ruler. Beneath her pheasant’s plumage, the former Empress Wang was trampled. This musky doe once plunged my true Sovereign into rutting frenzy,
3 INTRODUCTION
vying with his own father. Her heart is half viper and half chameleon. Her disposition is that of a ravenous jackal or wolf. . . . She is hated by men and spirits alike! Neither heaven nor earth can stand her!9
Luo Binwang employed graphic animal imagery to show that she was monstrous, unfettered by human conventions, and utterly un t to govern. Likewise, those critical of her rule interpreted upheaval in the natural world as a re ection of her unnatural position of power. Several years later, when a sudden terrestrial upthrust resulted in the birth of a mountain, the grand dowager–regent, then dominating the court and making decisions of state, received an ominous warning: “Presently your majesty is a female ruler situated in the yang role. This opposes the principle of hard and soft in the Book of Changes. For this reason the terrestrial ethers were obstructed and the earth sundered.”10 Hens were rumored to grotesquely transform into roosters.11 The reported appearance of these “chicken abominations” ( ji huo 暆䤵) can be understood as a powerful negative Confucian commentary on the grand dowager’s ascendancy: the ubiquitous sightings of gender-confused fowl were manifestations of Wu Zhao’s contravention of the proper social and political hierarchy. In a “predominantly patriarchal and patrilineal society,”12 in which the Confucian prescription sequestered women almost exclusively to the inner, domestic sphere, Wu Zhao’s burgeoning political involvement was judged harshly; she was routinely cast as a lewd and extravagant counterpoint to virtuous, austere male rulers, including her rst husband Taizong. Yet despite being repeatedly maligned and stigmatized, Wu Zhao would not be deterred. The ninth day of the ninth lunar month in 690 marked the culmination of her long, meticulously orchestrated political and ideological campaign. Echoing the name of a past golden age, Wu Zhao inaugurated a new Zhou dynasty (690–705), ascending to the throne as emperor.13 An iconoclast with unprecedented ambitions, she had immediately recognized that she could not a ord to ignore or casually out tradition. Indeed, three decades of immersion in the political process had given her a keen appreciation of the power and compass of tradition. Acutely aware of the breadth of resistance to her public political engagement, Wu Zhao capably de ected much of the virulent criticism. Overcoming these ponderous obstacles to become the sole female emperor in China’s long historical pageant took tremendous originality, cold-blooded
4 INTRODUCTION
Figure I.1 Though late-ďŹ fteenth-century Ming portrait artist Zheng Zhenduo included Wu Zetian among eighty-eight images in a collection of ancient rulers, cultural heroes, philosophers, poets, and statesmen, he did not hold her in high regard. Consistent with the Confucian historiography, his accompanying commentary remarks upon the illicit nature of her power, her salaciousness, her lascivious character, and her toxic effect upon the loyal and worthy. (From Portraits and Eulogies of the Ancients)
audacity, and staggering political genius. She not only warded o this barrage of negativity but also deftly fostered an empowered female identity. To realign her culture’s mythic, symbolic, and linguistic concepts in ways that sanctioned her authority was a complex undertaking that included an adroit campaign to position herself as the scion of a powerful and virtuous female pantheon. Meticulously, she developed and embraced a lineage of culturally revered female ancestors, goddesses, and paragons from di erent traditions, all of whom were closely associated with her person and her political power. At di erent junctures and to varying degrees, she drew
5 INTRODUCTION
upon each of the “three faiths” (san jiao ᶱ㔁)—Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. Elegantly rendered with her deft aesthetic touch, these a liations signi cantly bolstered Wu Zhao’s political authority, providing both a divine aura and tremendous normative charisma. Wu Zhao’s endorsement of these various cults waxed and waned with shifting ideological climes and political circumstances. This work will trace the timing, nature, and purpose of her connections to this eclectic assemblage of past in uential women and female divinities, exploring the purposeful ties promulgated in carefully scripted political rhetoric, reinforced through poetry, celebrated theatrically in her court, and graven upon monumental steles for all to behold. BEYOND BLOOD AND KINSHIP: FROM FAMILY TO EMPIRE
Though a wider pantheon of nature deities and gods were worshipped in ancient China,14 K. C. Chang identi es a ruler’s “individual status within a kinship system of agnatic clans and segmentary lineages”15 as the foundation of political power in the Xia (2205–1766 . .), Shang (1766–1045 . .), and Zhou (1045–221 . .) dynasties. From this early juncture, ancestor worship was, in the words of sociologist C. K. Yang, “by far the most vital religious element in family life . . . a cult that contributed substantially to the integration and perpetuation of the family as a basic unit of Chinese society.”16 Oracle bone records attest to the reverent spirit with which Shang people o ered sacri ces to royal ancestors.17 Western Zhou (1045–771 . .) bronze inscriptions, writes Wang Aihe, “provide abundant evidence of the central position of ancestor worship,” though tellingly the Zhou founders sacri ced to Shang ancestors as well as their own.18 Even then, the primacy of ancestral authority was already beginning to atrophy. As Richard Bendix has noted, by the end of the Western Zhou “ancestor worship had done nothing to ensure peace and prosperity,” occasioning “a rise in skepticism among the Chinese aristocracy.”19 No longer did exclusive access to knowledge, ritual, and religious paraphernalia of a narrow, familial cult confer su cient right to govern. While ancestor worship remained signi cant, by the Warring States era (481–221 . .), as the Zhou weakened and fragmented, Constance Cook observes that the practice “lost its political saliency, and ancestral spirits were subsumed back into a larger pantheon of natural forces
6 INTRODUCTION
that could interfere with an individual’s life mandate.”20 From the Han dynasty (206 . . to . . 220) onward, the centrality of these narrower consanguine ancestral cults diminished, having been supplanted by a broader vision of sovereignty. Culture heroes from a wider political tradition progressively came into clearer resolution and were often exalted as cultic divinities. One of the means the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty (Qinshihuang 䦎⥳䘯; r. 221–210 . .) used to stake claim to his empire was the strategic erection of steles to stand testimony to his unmatched power and demark his vast territory. Hoping to establish a shared political tradition with conquered states, and seeking thereby to validate his authority beyond raw martial conquest, the First Emperor paired the erection of his steles with sacri ces to past leaders who were emblematic of bene cent governance: Shun, paragon of laissez-faire rule from a simpler era, and Yu the Great, altruistic establisher of the Xia dynasty, whose brilliant hydroengineering had saved China from the ravages of interminable ooding.21 Wang Aihe has illustrated that as early as the Han dynasty, the emperor was “the axis of the cosmos and the pivot of the empire,” a gure who “claimed his legitimacy not as the descendant of the royal ancestors, but as the single moral exemplary gure representing the cosmic order in the human world.”22 This adoption of an expansive public mandate pushed ideas of rulership further from the secretive, familial notion of political authority in ancient China. Increasingly, rulers sought to embody the grand tradition of illustrious political ancestors through reconstituting rites, resuscitating institutions, and echoing dynastic names of past eras. “Even a hundred generations hence,” Confucius reputedly remarked, “the name of the heir and successor to the Zhou will be known.”23 Many aspiring dynasts chose the Zhou name. In the mid-sixth century, seeking an aura of legitimacy for his fragile regional kingdom, Western Wei ruler Yuwen Tai promulgated the Rites of Zhou, ordering ministers to revive Zhou institutions. In 558, his son Yuwen Yu announced the inauguration of the Zhou dynasty, calculated to evoke the pageant of virtuous kings and sage advisors of the original Zhou.24 Howard Wechsler has persuasively argued that by the cosmopolitan early Tang (618–907) this new, inclusive ruling philosophy—a conception
7 INTRODUCTION
succinctly expressed in the phrase “the empire is open to all” (tianxia wei gong ⣑ᶳ䁢℔)—had fully matured. Through public rites, sacri ces, and inspection tours, renowned Tang emperor Taizong reshaped conceptions of rulership and legitimation. A new vision of political validation had gradually evolved: authority depended more on association with a great tradition of virtuous political ancestors than blood succession. Rather than simply honoring their own ancestors within family temples, emperors like Taizong solemnly recognized popular paragons like Yu the Great, King Wen, the Duke of Zhou, and Confucius. A liation with this lineage of kings and sages conferred the gravity of their precursors’ authority upon Tang emperors. By ceremoniously revering these exemplars, the emperor became heir to their mantle of virtue. Through a public political theater that glori ed culture heroes and built political ancestors into cultic icons, Tang rulers essentially fashioned a broad-based vision of sovereignty—one congruent with the diverse and pluralistic empire they governed.25 In his writings, Taizong emphatically extols this lineage of political ancestors. To gloss over the ugliness of the Xuanwu Gate Incident of 626 (in which he seized the throne from his father and eliminated several brotherly rivals), Taizong recast himself several years later as a staunch champion of tradition rather than an upstart fratricide in the Golden Mirror ( Jinjing 慹掉).26 With a ourish of humility, he looked to the exemplars of the past: “Whenever We contemplate the government by non-action of the Yellow Emperor or Shaohao, or the perfection of good government by Tang and Yu, We always pause to sigh with admiration, unable to stop Ourself.”27 Sinologist Denis Twitchett remarks that “Golden Mirror” “refers to the past, to the rich body of historical experience that is at the disposal of a monarch wishing to see his own policies in the actions of past rulers and the ideal models of antiquity.” In short, in the process of imperial self-fashioning, of altering his ugly early image, Taizong strove to situate himself as the worthy heir, replete with studied obeisance, to this glorious lineage of political ancestors.28 As Jack Chen observed of putative imperial authorship of poetry in medieval China, “Emperors who sought to emulate sage-kings of legendary antiquity represented themselves in accordance with received tropes and commonplaces.”29 In Taizong’s poetry, Chen sees an e ort to “reiterate the familiar themes of dynasty founding, orthodox lineage and sagely
8 INTRODUCTION
rulership.”30 In one of many such poetic e orts, “On Visiting Qingshan Palace at Wugong,” the ever image-conscious Taizong versi es, At Longlife Hill, I think upon former traces, The city of Feng was indeed the ancestor’s base. Oh, I have inherited the legacies of the sages!31
Wugong was the site where Emperor Shun bequeathed territory to the rst Zhou ancestor, Hou Ji, Lord Millet.32 Longlife Hill was the Yellow Emperor’s birthplace. King Wen established Feng, not far to the west of Chang’an, as the Western Zhou capital. By reconsecrating this sacred geography, Taizong connected his person to a grand lineage of sage-kings, framing himself as their duly reverent heir. For Wu Zhao, poetry—both her own and that produced by her talented coterie of propagandists—served as a similarly important vehicle to de ne or rede ne sovereignty, a medium that could “help mold a lasting favorable image” of her person and her rule.33 Written in 648, the Preface to Taizong’s Plan for an Emperor (Difan ⷅ䭬), a valedictory manual of advice for his son and heir Li Zhi (the future Gaozong), similarly claimed their Li clan as descendants to a worthy political bloodline of virtue and good governance. Taizong declared himself the inevitable culmination of a lineage of impressive male political ancestors who had received both terrestrial and heavenly endorsement: The power of Yao was offered him at the spring of Cuigui. The black gem was presented to Yu of Xia to announce the accomplishment of his tasks. The vermilion sparrow presented its auspicious omen and the Zhou began its 700 years of auspicious rule. The spirit of the White Emperor manifested its joyful potent and Han began the foundation of its double dynastic tenure.
Then, in the wake of these two great eras, the Zhou and the Han, he establishes his own ascendancy: I hacked away the great leviathans, and made clear the four seas. Having already received the felicities conferred by boundless heaven, I recklessly ascended the Great Dipper.
9 INTRODUCTION
Having inherited the everlasting enterprise of the glorious virtue displayed by successive sovereigns, I continue to erect the abundant grand foundation of the precious register.34
With a characteristic blend of hubris and humility, Taizong mythologizes his political rise and dominion. Unbeknownst to him as he bequeathed these principles of rulership to his son, another benefactor of this eleventhhour political tutelage—albeit an inadvertent one—was Wu Zhao herself. Far better than his intended student Li Zhi, she gleaned these lessons. Contemporary scholar Jiang Yonglin termed these highly regarded ancestors (whose reputations endured throughout imperial China) “political and spiritual models,” part of an o cial pantheon worthy of emulation.35 Further remarking on the “public, universal nature” of the Tang dynasty, Mark Lewis has observed that “instead of being the realm of the ruling house, the empire was viewed as a public good that transcended and negated the parochialism of family ties.”36 In the ideologically pluralistic, multiethnic, and cosmopolitan early Tang, coexisting and competing Daoist and Buddhist deities surfaced alongside the familiar, deep-rooted political ancestors from folklore, myth, and Confucianism. Consequently, tremendous normative power became vested in a ruler’s political and religious connection with ancestors from each of the three faiths. By Wu Zhao’s time, sovereignty had become intertwined with a far more expansive conception of the state—one based on a cult of political ancestry rather than actual consanguinity. This understanding a orded Wu Zhao the opportunity to mold a supple consensus, one capable of changing to meet her shifting ideological needs. WITHIN THE CONFUCIAN AMBIT: WU ZHAO AND THE GOLDEN AGE
“What happened ab origine,” suggests historian of religion Mircea Eliade, “can be repeated by the power of rites.” Those possessing access to the esoteric knowledge necessary to perform these rites, Eliade asserts, hold a “magico-religious power” enabling them to recollect and reenact the powerful mythic acts of the gods, the heroes, or the ancestors.37 Certainly, a massive political authority can accrue to such a calculated, eminently political act of recollection. From antiquity to the present day, from emperors
10 INTRODUCTION
and pharaohs to presidents and prime ministers, leaders have sought to connect their present government to an ideal golden age. A liation with ancient gods, heroes, and ancestors played a vital role in establishing political legitimation. Implicit in such association is the claim that the present ruler—staging the rite and evoking the ancestral political name—is its legitimate heir and will usher in the restoration of that lost golden age. In summoning the power of the golden age, the rite provides the sense that a new prosperous era is imminent. Indeed, through such ceremonies the temporal disjuncture between the halcyon epoch of the past and the dawning era of new prosperity is suspended and blurred, creating a mythic time situated in the now. Despite paying tribute to past mythic glory, the public focus, the political limelight of such ceremonies, is squarely xed in all its refulgence not upon the past incarnation but on the present avatar. What Eliade omits to mention (perhaps because he nds it self-evident) is that the act of staging the rite, reenacting the “mythico-ritual scenario of periodic renewal of the world,” serves to consolidate the social and political ends of the host-ruler. In the very performance of the myth, what is presented as a humble genu ection to tradition is actually a calculated and purposeful retro tting of tradition to the present moment, and as such, most often a conscious act of staggering self-aggrandizement. Seen in this light, for a female emperor in seventh-century China, tradition—in particular, this grand tradition of time-honored political ancestors—held great potential opportunity. Though this tradition contained principles that repudiated Wu Zhao simply on the basis of her sex, it also held tremendous latent power that, if wielded in timely fashion with delicacy, skill, and rhetorical virtuosity, could be tactically marshaled to her advantage. The ruling myth-maker orchestrating the rite, according to Eliade, seeks to collapse past and present, joining the assemblage of past gods and heroes in “a sacred Time at once primordial and in nitely recoverable.”38 Wu Zhao accomplished this di cult feat in late 689. Less than a year before she inaugurated her Zhou dynasty, she introduced a new era, tellingly called Origin of Records, simultaneously reorienting the state calendar to follow the Zhou chronometry of antiquity.39 As emperor, she later resuscitated the imperial practice of announcing the new month (gao shuo ⏲㚼) to continue, as a minister put it, “the practice of the hundred kings, and to solidify the profound regulations of past aeons.”40 “A new power which
11 INTRODUCTION
wants to assert itself must enforce a new chronology,” claims Elias Canetti, for “it must make it seem as though time had begun with it.”41 Wu Zhao went further: she reset “primordial” time, situating herself at a new beginning while aligning the origin of her empire with the timeless and timehonored horological cadence of King Wen, King Wu, and the Duke of Zhou. She worked to establish herself as the reverent heir and conscientious keeper of the enduring, glorious Confucian lineage of sage rulers. In an age in which kinship remained important, a ruler needed a worthy genealogy. She created a ctive lineage, taking King Wen of Zhou as her clan’s rst ancestor,42 concocting blood ties to one of the brightest cultural luminaries in Chinese tradition. In so doing, she honored the seminal Confucian worthies while grafting herself onto their lineage. While previous Tang rulers wistfully lauded the golden age, Wu Zhao used bureaucratic nomenclature from the Rites of Zhou43 and created new characters drawn from the ornate Zhou script.44 She realigned time to follow the original Zhou calendar45 and greeted the new lunar year in 689 by donning ceremonial caps and vestments drawn from ancient Zhou ritual codes.46 Ultimately, like the Yuwen, the Xianbei clan that seized control of north China and proclaimed their dynasty the Zhou (557–581), Wu Zhao’s chosen dynastic epithet “Zhou” intentionally hearkened back to the halcyon days of celebrated sage rulers long honored for their morality, virtue, and perfect administration.47 Just after Wu Zhao established her Zhou dynasty, the Duke of Zhou was posthumously invested as Prince of Meritorious Virtue and Confucius as Duke of the Reverent Way.48 All of these measures were designed to publicly display that Wu Zhao was a worthy successor to and renovator of the golden age in both blood and spirit. From the outset, Wu Zhao’s authority was thereby intertwined with this time-honored lineage of Confucian political ancestors. Time and again, she deftly manipulated the exibility of tradition, strategically situating herself as a champion of, rather than an opponent to, Confucian values. She was keenly aware that there was still no greater source of legitimacy and authority. Nonetheless, she knew that Chinese tradition had no provision for a female ruler and that she could never rely exclusively on this patriarchal, largely Confucian lineage of virtuous kings and sagacious ministers to valorize her person and support her sovereignty. Necessarily, she sought alternative sources of legitimacy both within and beyond the con nes of the Confucian tradition.
12 INTRODUCTION
POLITICAL ANCESTORS IN A PLURALISTIC SOCIETY: BEYOND THE SAGE
Much as Wang Aihe describes the emperor in the Han, the ruler in the far- ung, pluralistic Tang was at the center of a “net of entangled power relations.”49 With the arrival, integration, and domestication of Buddhism, and the in ux of Central Asian peoples, customs, and ideas, the number of political and ideological variables proliferated. The Tang emperor necessarily possessed a keen awareness of, and sensitivity toward, the diverse constituencies of her empire: men and women; Han and non-Han; Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian; and newly risen families and long-established clans. Howard Wechsler’s excellent study, 2ϸHULQJV RI -DGH DQG 6LON, is almost exclusively focused on Han Chinese and Confucian categories and modes of legitimation—including ancestor cults, suburban sacri ces, imperial tours of inspection, and the feng and shan rites. Wechsler illustrates that during the early Tang these traditions underwent marked transformations, becoming ever more public, open, and universal. Rulers of that era like Taizong “drew upon the newer legitimating values of Buddhism and Taoism in order to expand the conventional body of philosophicoreligious legitimation that had previously been centered on Confucianism.”50 In his study on the Tang ritual code, David McMullen endorses this understanding of this increasingly multidenominational and complex era, remarking that the “the transcendental faiths of Buddhism and Daoism also exerted claims on the emperor’s commitment, time and resources.”51 Naturally, as cults developed around eminent Buddhist and Daoist gures (both under and outside of state control in this pluralistic, multiethnic empire), a new collection of gods and goddesses came to be worshipped in court and country. These developments began to evolve well before the Tang. New ideologies and the in ux of non-Chinese constituencies engendered innovative models of kingship. John Lagerway has remarked that beginning in the Han, Huang-Lao Daoism (centered around the Yellow Emperor and Laozi) began “to interest the state as the key to successful government and, hence, to dynastic legitimacy.”52 A central gure in the developing Daoist pantheon, the apotheosized Laozi, Lord Lao (Laojun 侩⏃), became one of the foremost Daoist cultic divinities.53 Anna Seidel traces the emergence of
13 INTRODUCTION
the divine Laozi as “the supreme deity of the Daoist pantheon,” a “politicoreligious savior” or “messiah,” to the millennial movements of the waning Eastern Han ( . . 24–220).54 This development marked the beginnings of a novel conception of Daoist emperorship. During the Northern and Southern dynasties (220–581), Lord Lao emerged as a full- edged cosmic divinity. After being blessed by the divine manifestation of Laozi on a retreat to Mount Song, Daoist master Kou Qianzhi invested Tabgach Emperor Taiwu (r. 424–452) of the Northern Wei as a Daoist priest and conferred upon him a talisman con rming his mandate, and e ectively creating a “Taoist theocracy.”55 At the same time, in the south, founder Liu Yu (420–422), Emperor Wu of the Liu Song dynasty (420–478), drew sanction from the divine Laozi.56 In the late sixth century, a Daoist master formally initiated Northern Zhou Emperor Wu (560–578) as a Daoist, gifted him a special talisman, and conferred divine blessing upon his rule.57 The Li family who established and ruled during the Tang dynasty claimed descent from Laozi, Li Er, whose surname they shared.58 Franciscus Verellen remarks that “owing to the genealogical a liation of the T’ang ruling house with Laozi, the imperial ancestor cult had become largely assimilated with the o cial cult of Lord Lao,”59 or, as Timothy Barrett concludes, “Deeming themselves descendants of the sage, the T’ang emperors supported Taoism on family grounds.”60 Stories circulated at the dawn of the Tang that divine Lord Lao had revealed himself, claiming that the imperial family would last for a millennium.61 Tang founder Gaozu (r. 618–626) honored Laozi as “Sage Ancestor.”62 Accordingly, Laozi was both a blood forebear and a political ancestor of the Tang imperial clan. As Buddhism’s popularity burgeoned in China, nding imperial patrons and sponsors, the faith came to play an important part in political legitimation. The long-existing tradition of cakravartin kingship emerged in China. In the cakravartin ideal, with deep roots in India and Central Asia, the ruler styled himself a champion of the Buddhist faith and even an incarnation or avatar of Buddhist divinities.63 In his study on Buddhist (or HinduBuddhist) “galactic polity” in Southeast Asia, Stanley Tambiah remarks that in this tradition of sovereignty, the ruler, a “wielder of dharma (the moral law), chakravartin (universal emperor) and bodhisattva (Buddha-tobe), was seen as the pivot of the polity and as the mediating link between the upper regions of the cosmos, composed of the gods and their heavens, and the lower planes of humans and lesser beings.”64 Scott Pearce has also
14 INTRODUCTION
shown that by the reign of Taiwu’s grandson Wenchengdi (r. 452–465) in the Northern Wei, Buddhism had become a decisive element of political legitimation. In Buddhist temples, and later in the famous statuary at Yungang, the young boy-emperor was depicted as Tathagata—so that “Buddhas became emperors and emperors Buddhas.”65 Erik Zürcher has shown that at the same time in south China, rulers of the Liu Song also styled themselves cakravartin kings.66 In order to purge the blood-soaked path of treachery by which he rose to power, Liang Wudi (r. 502–549) emulated political ancestor A oka, the legendary Buddhist cakravartin of third-century . . Mauryan India. He established (or renovated) Buddhist monasteries bearing A oka’s name as sites to stage relic veneration ceremonies. Repeatedly, he held SDxFDYčUߙLND assemblies (wuzhe dahui 䃉怖⣏㚫), massive festal events “open to the public, regardless of gender, ethnicity, age, social status, or religious a liation” that combined dharma lectures and vegetarian feasts.67 On these occasions, he pro ered himself and an immense hoard of gold to the Buddhist clergy, undergoing both a spiritual and a material redemption (he was redeemed, bought back from the sangha by the court).68 Kathy Cheng-mei Ku persuasively argues that Liang Wudi cast himself in the image of a Buddhar ja (fowang ἃ䌳), “a Buddha who is also a cakravartin,” as sovereign of the human realm and Maitreya incarnate.69 This conception of Buddhist kingship, with earlier roots in the Southern dynasties, the Liu Song and the Qi (479–502), had a profound impact on Wu Zhao’s own vision of sovereignty. Reversing the Northern Zhou policy of persecution, Sui Wendi (r. 581– 605) was an ardent patron and champion of the Buddhist faith, which played an integral role in his e orts to unify long-divided north and south China.70 Like Liang Wudi, Sui Wendi styled himself a cakravartin and “claimed his legitimation by directly referring to A oka: repenting the bad deeds of the past,” venerating Buddhist relics, and staging SDxFDYčUߙLND feasts.71 When, in an imperial edict in 601, Sui Wendi initiated an empirewide relic veneration campaign, he framed the move in the following terms: “We contemplate with awe the perfect wisdom, the great mercy, the great compassion of the Buddha that would save and protect all living creatures, that would carry across to blessed deliverance all living things.”72 He enshrined Buddhist relics in 107 di erent prefectures, an e ort designed to emulate A oka’s legendary erection of 84,000 reliquary VWࡃSDV all around
15 INTRODUCTION
his vast empire.73 Clearly, Sui Wendi was not merely broadcasting to his newly uni ed realm the virtues of the Buddha, but also proclaiming his own political authority. In a patent case of his e ort to style himself a Buddhist sovereign, he ordered the Indian monk Narendraya as to modify a Buddhist sutra to include a passage that prophesied that the Moonlight Child, Candraprabha, a Buddhist divinity, would be reborn in China, serve as king of the Great Sui, and ultimately preside as a cakravartin.74 Sui Wendi’s kingship in this fashion thus became linked to the Buddha through the dispersal of sacred relics connected with the Buddha’s body. These Buddhist and Daoist deities did not belong to the hoary lineage of political ancestors of past Confucian great-grandfathers. By the seventh century, not only did Wu Zhao have a range of male Daoist divinities like Lord Lao (the dei ed form of Laozi) and the Yellow Emperor to draw upon, but there were also Buddhist political ancestors like King A oka; furthermore, a growing cluster of Buddhist deities had developed—among whom Amit bha, Avalokite vara, kyamuni, and Maitreya were most popular.75 Augmenting the grand lineage of Confucian political ancestors, these Daoist and Buddhist patriarchs created an impressive pantheon of male culture heroes from the “three faiths,” all linked in various capacities to Chinese emperorship. WU ZHAO’S PANTHEON OF FEMALE POLITICAL ANCESTORS
According to Sarah Milledge Nelson, in the eld of archaeology the misguided assumption of the permanent and inherent androcentric nature of social and political authority has obscured the more complex reality of “negotiated power and conditional prestige.”76 To investigate the peculiar nature of Wu Zhao’s political authority solely through the established lineage of male political ancestors at the heart of the Confucian matrix would fail to take into account the dynamics of ideological negotiations and shifting gender conditions in early Tang China. Although Confucian tradition carried tremendous weight in the seventh century, it was neither immanent nor all-encompassing. With great skill, Wu Zhao fashioned a skein of relations to past women of eminence as well as a range of female divinities, complementing the traditional cult of male ancestors with a pantheon of female divinities and culture heroes. With the assistance of a talented array of propagandists
16 INTRODUCTION
and rhetoricians, she discovered in these women both deep cultural signi cance and great latent political power. As Stephen Bokenkamp has observed, “To be convincing her construction of legitimacy had to draw upon accepted paradigms of the medieval religious orthodoxies of the day—Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist alike—but in a way diametrically opposed to traditional interpretations, which held that a woman, by virtue of her gender, could not properly rule.”77 Naturally, her pantheon incorporated women from each of the “three faiths.” The exploration that follows is not a broad comparative study of rulership and gender; rather, it is an investigation of the cults of female political ancestors that a single, inimitable personage, Wu Zhao, developed initially as empress, then as regent, and ultimately as emperor. In her half century of political involvement (from her emergence as empress in 655 to her deposal and the restoration of the Tang in 705), she devised and elaborated upon di erent roles of these forebears that enabled and enhanced the various stages of her political ascendancy. One of the aims of this study is to delineate the modi cations within the cults of these female political ancestors during the turbulent arc of Wu Zhao’s political career. This work separates into four categories Wu Zhao’s assemblage of divinities and eminent women: Part I. Goddesses of Antiquity Part II. Dynastic Mothers, Exemplary Mothers Part III. Drawing on the Numinous Energies of Female Daoist Divinities Part IV. Buddhist Devis and Goddesses In each case, the study examines the di erent stages of Wu Zhao’s lengthy political career: as empress and coruler with husband Gaozong (r. 650–683), grand dowager (684–690), and nally emperor of her own Zhou dynasty (r. 690–705). In each of these stations, the roles of these female ancestors underwent purposeful and calculated evolutions in keeping with changing political circumstances and necessities. In part I, “The Goddesses of Antiquity,” the opening chapter describes Wu Zhao’s e orts to resuscitate primordial goddess Nüwa. In The Divine Woman, an exploration of China’s wide and varied collection of female divinities, Edward Schafer muses, “Nü Kua had once ruled over all men it was thought, just as did the Empress Wu later. Mythology had become
17 INTRODUCTION
history.”78 Mythology, of course, does not simply become history. The agency of Wu Zhao reanimated the dormant cult of this goddess, shaping her mythic image much like Nüwa reputedly molded mankind from rough clay. With the help of Wu Zhao’s propagandists, the shadowy creator and mender of the heavens reemerged as a signi cant cultic gure who played an important role in helping legitimate and magnify the late seventhcentury female sovereign. Schafer further observes that in early and medieval China “women represented metaphysical water in human form . . . the fertile, moist, receptive principle in nature. They appeared in mythology and literature as visible forms of moist soil and the watercourses that make it wet.”79 Wu Zhao’s pantheon could not be without a river goddess embodying the water element and the female yin principle. The second chapter, “Sanctifying Luoyang: The Luo River Goddess and Wu Zhao,” examines the substantial roles this riverine divinity played in the ascent of Wu Zhao and the related elevation of Luoyang. As the Luo River ows through Luoyang, so in currents of poetry and calibrated streams of rhetoric, its lovely tutelary goddess moved with uid grace through Wu Zhao’s constructions of power. Most signi cantly, several years before her accession to emperor in 690, an inscribed augural stone was reportedly discovered in the Luo River. The inscription told of the advent of a “Sage Mother.” The grand dowager ceremoniously thanked the goddess of the Luo River for revealing and disgorging this auspicious token; she bestowed a title upon the riparian deity and took a new, grander title for herself. Chapter 3 investigates the role that the silk goddess, Leizu, played in the female sovereign’s rhetoric, particularly during the earlier years of Wu Zhao’s rise. Simultaneously honoring and symbolically assuming the guise of Leizu, Empress Wu Zhao repeatedly performed vernal sericulture rites to encourage a bumper crop of silkworms and thus abundant production of silk cloth. In early and medieval China, weaving and sericulture were closely connected with female virtue. Thus, Wu Zhao’s a liation with Leizu helped project the image of a model wife and an ideal of womanly comportment to the wider empire. The rst three chapters in part II, “Dynastic Mothers, Exemplary Mothers,” examine the connections between Wu Zhao’s political rise and a trio of eminent women from distant antiquity who were connected with the founding of the Three Dynasties—the Xia, the Shang, and the Zhou—at the
18 INTRODUCTION
very origins of Chinese civilization. Chapter 4, “The Mother of Qi and Wu Zhao: Connecting to Antiquity, Elevating Mount Song,” investigates the role of the Tushan Girl, wife of ood-queller Yu the Great, legendary founder of the Xia dynasty. Associated with Mount Song, the Central Marchmount near to Luoyang, this little-known ancestor emerged as a signi cant designation among Wu Zhao’s wider pantheon of female deities. Chapter 5, “Ur-Mothers Birthing the Zhou Line: Jiang Yuan and Wu Zhao,” explores the role in Wu Zhao’s pantheon of Jiang Yuan, who divinely bore Lord Millet, the founding ancestor of the Zhou dynasty of antiquity. The consonance between Wu Zhao and sagacious Mother Wen, the spouse of Zhou dynasty founder King Wen, occupies chapter 6. Mother Wen helped anchor Wu Zhao’s Zhou dynasty to its glorious past’s namesake. To justify her own political involvement, especially as empress and grand dowager, Wu Zhao and her propagandists reminded court and country that Mother Wen had assisted King Wen in administering the newly established dynasty. Most signi cantly, Wu Zhao, as ascending female sovereign, recrafted her genealogy so that this earlier Zhou mother became not just a political ancestor, but her blood ancestress. As grand dowager and emperor of a vast empire, Wu Zhao worked to broadcast a vision of motherhood that reached beyond her esh-andblood sons, to embrace her ministers and all of her subjects. To this end, she drew on the authority that accrues to Confucian motherhood and widowhood. Chapter 7, the nal chapter in part II, analyzes Wu Zhao’s penchant for upholding idealized Confucian mothers from Liu Xiang’s Han dynasty manual of womanly behavior, Biographies of Exemplary Women, to valorize her own role as mother of empire. She associated herself with Lady Ji of Lu and the mother of Confucian sage Mencius, two paragons whose timely moral guidance not only steered wayward sons toward paths of rectitude, but also provided them with keen insights into the art of governance. Finally, the chapter charts the female emperor’s e orts to utilize the strong-willed martial mothers of Generals Zifa of Chu and Kuo of Zhao. Through moral suasion, one of these prescient widows of the late Warring States era (third century . .) instilled in her injudicious son principles of good generalship; the other saved her entire clan by remonstrating with the Zhao king, urging him not to appoint her incapable o spring. As a female ruler of a nascent dynasty surrounded by powerful non-Chinese states like the Turks, the Tibetans, and the Khitan, Wu Zhao could ill a ord
19 INTRODUCTION
to appear weak in foreign relations. These strong martial matriarchs helped her project an aura of moral force and rectitude. Part III looks at Wu Zhao’s e ort to incorporate a range of female Daoist divinities into her pantheon of forebears. Foremost among these deities was the Queen Mother of the West. Chapter 8 investigates the repertoire of symbols and ceremonies the female ruler developed in connection with this divinity. The Queen Mother of the West was prominently featured in poetry and rhetoric written for and about the earthly ruler. In her later years, Wu Zhao even theatrically styled herself a living incarnation of the Daoist goddess. Chapter 9 analyzes the connection Wu Zhao contrived between herself and Mother Li, the mother of Laozi. As Gaozong’s coruler and grand dowager–regent, Wu Zhao utilized Mother Li’s identity as progenitor (of the Li clan, the ruling family of the Tang dynasty) to situate herself symbolically as queen mother of the imperial house. During these stages, Wu Zhao’s association with this Daoist divinity helped mute criticisms of her burgeoning public presence and political role. The nal section of the third part, chapter 10, explores the con icted relationship between Wu Zhao and Wei Huacun, the Lady of the Southern Marchmount. Apotheosized as a Daoist deity, Wei Huacun was a transmitter and revealer of sacred texts. While Wu Zhao was certainly not averse to exalting this female divinity, she was keenly attuned to shifting ideological climes. At the very height of her campaign to de ne herself as a universal Buddhist monarch, Wu Zhao rejected an opportunity to link herself to this Daoist goddess, choosing to suppress rather than promote Lady Wei’s cult. Buddhism played a vital role in the complex machinations of Wu Zhao’s legitimation. Part IV, “Buddhist Devis and Goddesses,” examines the nature and political utility of her carefully scripted connections with several Buddhist divinities. Chapter 11 traces the development, under Wu Zhao, of the cult of M y , the mother of the historical Buddha. As empress, Wu Zhao utilized idealized images of motherhood associated with M y to cast herself as a latter-day “Buddha mother” ( fomu ἃ㭵). In the Buddhist art of Wu Zhao’s era, familiar images of M y , scenes of the Buddha’s conception, birth, and SDUDQLUYčؾD, appeared with increasing frequency. And symbols from M y ’s life—like the white elephant connected with her miraculous conception—became emblematic of Wu Zhao’s court.
20 INTRODUCTION
Chapter 12 investigates the e orts of propagandists to illustrate how the female ruler was the avatar of Buddhist devi Jingguang (Sanskrit: Vimalaprabh ). In a sutra that reached China in the sixth century, the Buddha prophesies that this goddess will “obtain great sovereignty” and “be a bodhisattva who will show and receive a female body in order to convert beings.”80 Buddhist propagandists produced a commentary based on this sutra that they circulated on the eve of the inauguration of Wu Zhao’s Zhou dynasty. This text meticulously cataloged proofs that Wu Zhao was the avatar of the devi, which helped exalt the female ruler and legitimize her rule as a Buddhist sovereign. Collectively, these female divinities, dynastic mothers, and eminent women of di erent ideological backgrounds—complementing rather than replacing a time-honored congregation of male political ancestors—played an important role in the construction of Wu Zhao’s political authority. With the help of her talented rhetoricians, Wu Zhao situated herself at the con uence of these ideological streams, a human vessel into which the collective energies and charisma of these eminent women and divinities might ow. From the outset, it is important to be cognizant of the parameters of this study. This is not a comprehensive investigation of Wu Zhao’s unprecedented and unrepeated rise to emperorship. Her creation of an assemblage of female political ancestors is but one major approach among a much wider political, religious, and ideological repertoire of stratagems. This pantheon of women was not the sole armature upon which Wu Zhao constructed her authority or maintained her power.81 To truly comprehend Wu Zhao’s unique ascent to emperorship would require a meticulous study of gender politics in the seventh century,82 a careful examination of the in uence of Central Asian and Indian culture on Chinese gender relations and sexuality,83 and a thorough investigation of the impact that free- owing Silk Road tra c into cosmopolitan centers like Chang’an and Luoyang had on social norms and cultural behaviors.84 Furthermore, Wu Zhao’s political authority was a construction of dazzling complexity. A short list of some of the integral political, ideological, cultural, and religious components of the intricate edi ce of her sovereignty might include: fundamental economic and agrarian practices;85 the role of Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist ceremony;86 the related iconography, art, and monumental architecture that justi ed and enlarged
21 INTRODUCTION
her authority;87 the manipulation of the calendar;88 the propagation of the Buddhist faith through the new technology of printing;89 the creation of new characters as distinctive signets of authority;90 the political machinations underlying frequent reign era changes;91 the strategic patronage of literature and arts;92 the motivation behind frequent reforms of names, titles, and o ces;93 the ongoing e ort to elevate and preserve her natal Wu family;94 the instrumental use of auspicious omens;95 the handling of military a airs and relations with martial leaders;96 the formulation of foreign policy, including handling of embassies, raising funds from foreign sources, appointment of non-Han generals, and resettlement of nonChinese populations within the borders of her realm;97 the management of relations with the Confucian court, including her personal involvement in the selection and assessment process to recruit o cials;98 the orchestration of rivalries and factions at court;99 and the instrumental use of intelligence services, torture, and violence to thwart political threats.100 Moreover, a parallel exploration of the extent to which Wu Zhao was able to harness the powerful regulating force of traditional male political ancestors would be necessary, a study that investigated not only her links to patriarchs of the great tradition like Yao, Shun, Yu, and King Wen, but her connections to male Daoist divinities like Laozi and the Yellow Emperor, and Buddhist deities like Maitreya, Ma ju r , and Vairocana. Taken in their mind-boggling collective scope, the vast and diverse parts of this program of rulership fail to do justice to the staggering political genius of its author, Wu Zhao. No single part of this whole can come close to serving as an exhaustive explanation of her unique achievement. Many of these measures were closely intertwined. While this study mentions a large number of these strategies in their connection to Wu Zhao’s pantheon of female ancestors, it does not attempt a comprehensive investigation of these interrelated elements. In isolation, no number of prophecies auguring the advent of a Buddhist divinity in female guise, no volume of eloquent verse presenting her as a latter-day incarnation of the Queen Mother of the West, and no rhapsodic celebration of her as a throwback to the revered Confucian dynastic mothers of old can explain her dazzling, unparalleled ascent. Wu Zhao’s unique status as China’s rst and only female emperor rested on her keen political acumen and administrative virtuosity. She exhibited a profound understanding of the di erent constituencies within the far- ung empire
22 INTRODUCTION
she governed. Deftly, she manipulated ceremony and symbol. Skillfully and steadily, she managed civil and military a airs. Indeed, her ideologically diverse pantheon of women is perhaps best appreciated only when situated as an original, even revolutionary, variable in a far more vast and complex political, religious, and administrative calculus.
“This is a fascinating study of the only female emperor in the whole of Chinese history. By delving deeply into the religious underpinnings of Wu Zetian’s power in a way that not even the most dedicated approach to her utilization of Buddhist scriptures and doctrines alone could manage, this investigation illuminates the unique quality of Wu Zetian’s reign far more effectively than previous studies. Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers is a solid piece of well-documented scholarship, yet it is vibrant and entertaining throughout.� —Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania
“Wu Zhao is one of world history’s most fascinating ďŹ gures and the most powerful woman in China’s long past. N. Harry Rothschild sheds new light on the ideological underpinnings of Wu Zhao’s rise to power and unprecedented female dynasty. The Buddhist prophecies justifying her rule are well known, but Rothschild uncovers a more complex story that includes wise mothers and potent goddesses drawn from the Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions. In lively prose, Rothschild reveals an ever-evolving pantheon of female paragons that Wu Zhao deployed strategically before and after claiming the throne.â€? —Jonathan Karam Skaff, author of Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors
“With painstaking research, unerring insights, rich prose, and a sense of humor, Rothschild lavishly illustrates the political genius of Wu Zhao, China’s only female emperor. Indicating her keen political instincts and expansive knowledge of China’s cultural traditions, Rothschild adeptly delineates how, over the span of her ďŹ fty-year rule, Wu Zhao selectively made use of different goddesses and heroines to match the speciďŹ c circumstances of her career’s twists and turns.â€? —Keith N. Knapp, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina
“A tour de force of textual analysis and historical detective work that leaves previous sensationalistic accounts of Wu Zhao’s rise to power in the dust.� —Suzanne Cahill, University of California, San Diego
THE SHENG YEN SERIES IN CHINESE BUDDHIST STUDIES
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