Huichang persecution of Buddhism

Rationale

Emperor Wuzong's economic, social, and religious reasons for persecuting Buddhist organizations and temples throughout China were as follows:

• Economic reasons: In 843, the emperor's armies won a decisive battle against the Uyghur tribes at the cost of almost bankrupting the country. Wuzong's solution to the financial crisis was to go after the wealth that had been accumulated in the Buddhist monasteries. Buddhism had flourished greatly during the Tang period, and its monasteries enjoyed tax-exempt status. In 845, Wuzong closed many Buddhist shrines, confiscated their property, and sent the monks and nuns home to lay life.
• Social reasons: Confucian intellectuals such as Han Yu railed against Buddhism for undermining the social structure of China. They claimed it eroded the loyalty of son to father, and subject to ruler, by encouraging people to leave their families and to become monks and nuns. Once they had been ordained, they stopped engaging in economic activity such as agriculture and weaving, and lived from the support of others. The persecution sought to return monks and nuns to the ranks of tax-paying commoners engaged in what was perceived to be more useful economic activity. Additionally, monastic money-lending, pawnbroking, and employment of slave labor were seen as inherently exploitative of the poor, with a decree in 713 stating, "it is claimed that the purpose of this generosity is to relieve the poor and orphans. But in fact, there is nothing to it but excess and fraud. This is not a legitimate business."
• Religious reasons: While Wuzong saw Buddhism as a foreign religion that was harmful to Chinese society, he became a zealous follower of Taoism, a faith native to China. Buddhism preached the attainment of non-birth or Nirvana, which its critics equated with death, while Taoism promised immortality, a notion that increasingly captured the attention of the emperor as he grew older.

An imperial edict of 845 stated the case against Buddhism as follows:

Buddhist monasteries daily grew higher. Men's strength was used up in work with plaster and wood. Men's gain was taken up in ornaments of gold and precious stones. Imperial and family relationships were forsaken for obedience to the fees of the priests. The marital relationship was opposed by the ascetic restraints. Destructive of law, injurious to mankind, nothing is worse than this way. Moreover, if one man does not plow, others feel hunger; if one woman does not tend the silkworms, others go cold. Now, in the Empire, there are monks and nuns innumerable. All depend on others to plow that they may eat, on others to raise silk that they may be clad. Monasteries and refuges (homes of ascetics) are beyond compute.

Beautifully ornamented; they take for themselves palaces as a dwelling.... We will repress this long-standing pestilence to its roots ... In all the Empire, more than four-thousand six-hundred monasteries are destroyed, two-hundred and sixty-thousand five-hundred monks and nuns are returning to the world, both (men and women) to be received as taxpaying householders. Refuges and hermitages which are destroyed number more than forty-thousand. We are resuming fertile land of the first grade, several tens of millions of Ch'ing (1 ching is 15.13 acres). We are receiving back as tax paying householders, male and female, one hundred and fifty thousand serfs. The aliens who hold jurisdiction over the monks and nuns show clearly that this is a foreign religion.

Ta Ch'in (Syrian) and Muh-hu-fo (Zoroastrian) monks to the number of more than three-thousand are compelled to return to the world, lest they confuse the customs of China. With simplified and regulated government, we will achieve a unification of our manners, that in future, all our youth may together return to the royal culture. We are now beginning this reformation; how long it will take we do not know.