The Establishment Of Taoism In The Eastern Han Dynasty

Based on Lun Heng and related documents,this paper attempts to analyze the establishment and existence of Taoism in the Eastern Han Dynasty from Treatise on Lun Heng,Records of the Shih Chi and Han Shu.In recent years,the academic circle has also had a rethink on the age of the emergence of Taoism.However,due to the lack of materials,the research on Taoism in the Eastern Han Dynasty before the Wudoumi Taosim and the Taiping Taoism is relatively weak,and there is no in-depth analysis on the age of the emergence of Taoism.At the same time,the precious description of Taoism in the early Eastern Han Dynasty is retained in the Lun Heng.However,the academic circle’s research on Lun Heng is often limited to its philosophical thoughts,literary style and other fields.This paper argues that Taoism is the religiosity of the belief in natural law.Then,by analyzing the Taoist materials in Lun Heng and other documents,this paper extracts the four major elements of Taoism in the Eastern Han Dynasty,namely,the connection between heaven and man,the belief in supernatural being,numerology and sacrifice,and takes this as the starting point to deepen the research on Taoism in the early Eastern Han Dynasty.It is helpful to deepen the understanding of the relevant situation of Taoism before Zhangling to a certain extent,at the same time,it can deepen the research of Lun Heng and expand the research ideas of Lun Heng.Firstly,the first chapter of this paper analyzes the principle of the induction between heaven and man mainly from the perspective of the induction between heaven and man,that is,the deputy days of man can be understood as the isomorphism between heaven and man to a certain extent.Then,it analyzes the induction between heaven and man in Lun Heng and the relationship between heaven and man and Taoism,and finds that the induction between heaven and man is not only inherited by Taoism,Moreover,Taoism provides the support of cosmology,and finally summarizes the inheritance of the thought of heaven and man in Taoism.The second chapter,starting from the supernatural being belief,makes a simple historical review of the fairy belief and the way of cultivation involved in Lun Heng,and finds that the supernatural being belief,as the core belief of Taoism and the way of cultivation,has been very mature in the Eastern Han Dynasty,and Confucianism is the main disseminator of the supernatural being belief.The third chapter,starting from the numerology and sacrifice,briefly analyzes the number of arts and the content of sacrifice involved in Lun Heng,and discusses it in combination with later Taoist literature.Through the above research,it can be concluded that the connection between heaven and man,the belief in isupernatural being,numerology and sacrifice all start from the belief in natural law.In the Eastern Han Dynasty,people had formed a systematic belief system around the belief in natural law.it is concluded that Taoism existed in the Eastern Han Dynasty.