Study On The Vassals’religious Believes In The Ming Dynasty

Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, on the basis that a summary of the success and failure of the earlier dynastyies’,than intended to establish the Ming dynasty suzerain-vassal system, which could have protected the sovereignty of the royal family, and led vassal kings hold armies but avoid them grow up be too strong gradually that can be threaten the rule of Ming dynasty emperor. So the suzerain-vassal system of Ming dynasty:give the vassal kings certificate and seal, the salary-rice nearly ten thousand dan, give vassal guards and soldiers, from dukes to Feng Guo lieutenants, different treatment for different level vassal, the given salary-rice is different too, every vassal will request the emperor given name when they were born, and request the emperor given the wedding when they got to the age of marriage, enjoy the life-long salary-rice, even though when they dead the Ming court would pay the funeral expenses for them. But, from Emperor Jianwen (the second emperor of Ming dynasty) weaken the vassal kings’forces, and when the Emperor Yongle ascended the throne, bans on vassal state management were more and more, the vassal kings were gradually trapped in the city, vassal kings were forbidden to do anything that other social classes’occupation like scholar, farmer, artisan and merchant, they just wait for the court to pay salary-rice for them. Religion became the one that vassal kings’spirit rely on.The vassal kings of Ming dynasty through those behavior and activities to express their religious experience and feelings, like building monasteries, religious almsgiving, making friends with the religious people even writing poems back and forth between each other, and other religious activities even like building tombs with religious colour. In this paper, author colllected and ananlyzed the relevant historical materials that found from the historical documents and inscriptions, expored the vassals’ religious belief state about Buddhism, Taoism, patriarchal religion, folk religion in the Ming dynasty, and then discussed the characteristics and the causes of these religion beliefs’characteristcs, and analyzed the effects that Ming vassals believe in a particular religion.This paper consists of six parts:The first part, introduction. It is mainly clear the topic selection reasons of this article, review the academic history, card the present research situation about this field, summary the research content and the main study method of this paper, finally clear the definiton of the related concepts like the vassals(ZongFan), religion and try to define the related time.The second part, the vassal kings’Buddhism beliefs in the Ming dynasty.This part mainly analysis vassal kings’ activities like the construction of Buddhist temple, Buddhist almsgiving, making friends with the Buddhist even writing poems back and forth between each other, traveling to the Buddhist temple and writting poems, other Buddhist activities and building tombs with Buddhist colour, through these five aspects, this part try to discussed vassals’Buddhist religion in the Ming dynasty.The third part, the vassal kings’Taoism beliefs in the Ming dynasty. This part mainly explore the vassal kings’activities like building Taoist temple and Taoist almsgiving, trying to make pills of immortality and cultivate vital energy and Taoist rituals, treating Taoist well and making friends with them, traveling to the Taoist temple and writting poems and other Taoist writtings, and discuss the tombs with Taoism color of the vassal-king ZhuQuan who called NingWang and the Yi vassal kings in the JiangXi provence.The fourth part, the vassal kings’religion outside of Buddism and Taoism in the Ming dynasty. This part mainly from two aspects to discuss:one is the vassal kings’ patriarchal religion situation about SheJi(the gods of the land and grain), the religious belief in gods of Wind, cloud, rain, mountain, river, even including the City God(Chenghuang). The other one is discussion the vassal kings’folk religion through these activities, which including building the temple, pray, communication with the people that look like with extraodinary talents, and the magicians.The fifth part, the characteristics of the vassal kings’religion beliefs and the causes of these characteristics in the Ming dynasty. This part mainly discuss the characteristics of the Ming vassal kings’religious beliefs, which include the multiple-complex religious beliefs, utilitarian, regionalism and contemporaneity, familial inheritance etc, and then analysis the reasons include the policies, environment, community identity etc, which lead to the characteristics that mentioned above.The sixth part, the effects of the vassal kings’religion beliefs in the Ming dynasty. This part from the vassal kings’spirit rely on and the real asylum for the vassals, the social order, as well as the literary and artistic creation, and the destruction of legal system, resuorce loss, five aspects to investigate the effects of the vassal kings’religious beliefs in the Ming dynasty to this group itself, and to the society and politics, econimic, culture and so on.