In ancient China, the highest god of national belief was Tiandi, and the highest god of folk belief was Jade Emperor. The name of the Jade Emperor God comes from the Taoist Jade Emperor and the original God of Heaven, and it is a replica of the story of Sakyamuni's becoming a Buddha.
The Jade Emperor believes in everything and surpasses the gods
Many people know that the most influential and highest-ranking god in China's civil society is neither the heavenly emperor worshipped by the imperial courts in past dynasties, nor the Tathagata of Buddhism and the Sanqing of Taoism, but the Jade Emperor Zhang who appeared in the Journey to the West.
When it comes to qualifications, the Jade Emperor is naturally inferior to Heaven, Tathagata and Sanqing, and can be said to be just a subordinate. Since the Yin and Zhou Dynasties and even earlier in China, there has been the concept of God. The Buddha was born more than 6 BC and was introduced to China in the Eastern Han Dynasty. The Taiwanese businessman Laojun in Sanqing was a figure in the Spring and Autumn Period, and the combination of Sanqing was completed in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. The official appearance of the Jade Emperor God was in the Tang and Song Dynasties.
As a young jade emperor, why can he surpass the gods in folk beliefs and become the emperor in heaven? This is because the folk belief in the Jade Emperor God focuses on national belief, Buddhist belief and Taoist belief, and is eclectic in name and life experience, making him the king of the gods.
The name of the Jade Emperor is elegant and often used in poetry.
From the name of the Jade Emperor God, we can see the blood relationship between this highest folk god and the primitive Heaven Emperor and Taoist God. In the eyes of ancient China people, heaven and God are one, and God is the name of heaven. In pre-Qin literature, heaven is often called emperor, god, emperor, god of heaven, god of heaven and so on. In ancient times, emperors offered sacrifices to God. In fact, they offered sacrifices to heaven. However, the early Emperor of Heaven was only an abstract concept. Since the Han Dynasty, with the increasing complexity of social organization and the refinement of social division of labor, the image and name of the son of heaven have also changed. For example, the Five Emperors Taiyi God in the Western Han Dynasty and the Imperial Capital with Five Senses in the Eastern Han Dynasty have the function of gods. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Polaris was regarded as the emperor, who always led the five emperors and the gods of heaven and earth. However, the worship ceremony of heaven in all previous dynasties still centered on worshipping the emperor and God. One of the archetypes of the Jade Emperor in folk belief is the Emperor of Heaven.
The jade emperor and the title of the jade emperor originated from Taoism, which was first seen in Liang Tao Hongjing's real spiritual position industry map. However, the Jade Emperor and the Jade Emperor are not in a very high position in the real map of gods' industries, but they are only listed as gods under the Buddha of yuanshi county in the field of jade qing. The Jade Emperor Daojun is the 11th God on the right, and the Jade Emperor is the 19th God on the right. Perhaps it is because the titles of Jade Emperor and Jade Emperor sound elegant. In the Tang Dynasty, people liked to use these two names to address the Emperor of Heaven. Literati, in particular, often regard the Jade Emperor and the Jade Emperor as poets and call them Heaven Emperor. For example, in Wei's poetic immortal, there is a saying that saving Tao and dying, the jade emperor ascended to heaven. Bai Juyi sang in the poem Dream Fairy: If you want to admire the Jade Emperor, you must be sincere first. Poets such as Li Bai, Du Fu, Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan often sing the Jade Emperor in their poems, depicting his magnificent heavenly palace and accompanying gods. With the passage of time, people are used to combining the Heaven Emperor in traditional belief with the Jade Emperor in Taoism. Although the name of the Jade Emperor God has not officially appeared in the Tang Dynasty, the Jade Emperor in the eyes of the Tang Dynasty is no different from the Jade Emperor God described in later generations.
Song Huizong's belief in the Jade Emperor is just a flash in the pan.
The royal family in the Tang Dynasty took Laozi as their ancestor and advocated Taoism. Taoism worship in Song Dynasty was no less than that in Tang Dynasty, especially in Song Zhenzong and Song Huizong. In order to cover up He Yuan's shame, he forged a gobbledygook at the instigation of Wang Qinruo and others, and claimed that he dreamed that there was a man of God who acted on the orders of the jade emperor, so that he was conducive to the upbringing of the whole people. So he officially listed the jade emperor as the object of national sacrifice, and said in the holy name of the jade emperor that the jade emperor's real body and great emperor were the beginning of the world, and there was no room for Fu. Song Huizong simply combined the Jade Emperor with the traditional Heaven Emperor. The title above said that Li Yu, the mansion of Taishang Tiankai, contained the real Heaven Emperor and the Jade Emperor. At this point, the integration of Taoist belief and national belief has produced another supreme god-Jade Emperor God.
however, at the level of national belief, this integration is only a flash in the pan. Since Song Huizong, most emperors have not recognized the Jade Emperor. Except for some emperors who set up statues of jade emperors in palaces, the Emperor of Heaven is the only supreme god in the national worship ceremony. However, the Jade Emperor, who is untenable on the level of national belief, has taken root in folk beliefs, and the people think that he is the king in charge of the three realms and ten parties and the world of ghosts and gods. In the Journey to the West, the title of the Jade Emperor is that the Great Sage of the Jade Emperor is Xuan the king of world, and Tathagata, Sanqing, Four Tianshi, Queen Mother of the West and Donghua Imperial Capital are subordinate to the Jade Emperor. Folks also call the Jade Emperor the golden god in heaven and the wise jade emperor.
Many people ask: What is the basis of the surname Zhang of the Jade Emperor? In fact, in the early folk beliefs, Zhang was originally the surname of Tiandi. In ancient times, people called Heaven Emperor the Lord or Weng in the sky. As early as the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there was a saying by Zhang Tiandi. The fourteenth volume of Youyang Zahua, a collection of strange novels in the Tang Dynasty, records that Tian Weng's surname is thirsty. Before him, Tian Weng's surname was Liu. Zhang Jian went down to heaven, stole his car, took Bailong into heaven, became the Emperor of Heaven, and demoted Liu Weng as the Taishou of Mount Tai. In addition, there are many folklore about the name of Emperor Zhang. Since the Emperor of Heaven became the Jade Emperor, the Jade Emperor is naturally surnamed Zhang.
Get rid of the shackles of Taoism and become the king of the gods
Since the people replaced the Emperor of Heaven with the Jade Emperor, Taoism has promoted the status of the Jade Emperor, ranking it as one of the Three Qing Dynasties, second only to the yuanshi county Giant Buddha, and ranking above the old gentleman. It can be said that it is below one god and above all gods. However, the people don't buy Taoism's account, only recognize the Jade Emperor as the supreme God, and Taoism can do nothing about it.
in order to improve the status of the jade emperor, Taoism also fabricated the story of the jade emperor from birth to becoming a monk to deify the origin of the jade emperor. The main idea of this story is that in the past, there was a bright and beautiful country. The king was famous for his virtue and the queen was famous for her moonlight. The king and queen govern the country kindly, which makes the people live in peace and prosperity, but the disaster is not prosperous. However, when the king reached 5 years old, he still had no children, so he was very depressed. He ordered Taoist priests to build altars to hang their graves, provided extensive support, prayed day and night, and asked real saints to give them to their children. One night, the queen suddenly dreamed that Taishang Daojun descended from the sky in a colorful dragon with a baby in his hand, and the baby's pores shone with billions of lights on the palace. The queen was filled with joy and knelt down to meet her. After waking up, she felt pregnant for one year and gave birth to a prince at noon on the ninth day of the first month.
The prince was young, kind and lived a long life, and gave all the treasures on the land to the working people. After the death of the old king, the prince succeeded to the throne, because he wanted to seek immortality. He gave the throne to a virtuous minister, lived in seclusion in the mountains and devoted himself to monasticism. After the 8-year disaster, medicine was used to treat diseases and save all living things. After 32 years of disaster, Jin Xian was certified, nicknamed the pure and natural feeling Wang Tathagata, which taught the Bodhisattva that Mahayana was true. Then, after 1 million robberies, he became the Jade Emperor.
This story is a complete replica of the story of Sakyamuni's becoming a Buddha. There is nothing new, but it is widely circulated among the people. The stories of the Jade Emperor described in the immortals of past dynasties are similar. The difference is that the sender was changed to yuanshi county Tianzun and Huang Lao, saying that it was blown into jasper with true qi, turned into a baby, and sent to Yuefu as king. In the seventh chapter of Journey to the West, when the Buddha scolded Sun Wu for not knowing this small place, he told the origin of the Jade Emperor: your partner was a monkey and became a sperm. How dare you cheat your heart to seize the throne of the Jade Emperor? He started practicing at an early age and endured 175 robberies in 129,6 years. How many years can he enjoy this endless road? According to this statement, the Jade Emperor was born more than 2 million years ago.
Different versions of the Jade Emperor's stills
From this perspective, the highest god of folk belief, the Jade Emperor God, was actually created by someone who stole the name and surname of the Heavenly Emperor and was called the Jade Emperor, and then fabricated a story similar to the Buddha's revelation to deify its origin. From the evolution of the jade emperor, we can also see the subtle influence of traditional jade culture on Chinese immortal culture, which can almost equate jade with immortality and supremacy.