The Tang Dynasty’s World Empire and Its Spiritual Foundations

For nearly three centuries, the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) stood as one of history’s most remarkable cosmopolitan empires, where diverse religious traditions flourished under imperial patronage. The capital Chang’an became a global crossroads where Zoroastrian priests, Nestorian Christian missionaries, Manichaean elect, and Buddhist monks from across Asia mingled in what historian Denis Twitchett characterized as a truly “worldist” civilization.

Buddhism in particular reached unprecedented heights during the Tang golden age. Monumental temple complexes like the Great Ci’en Temple and Daxingshan Temple dominated Chang’an’s skyline, their towering pagodas visible for miles across the Wei River valley. The translation bureaus at these institutions produced Chinese versions of hundreds of Indian Buddhist texts, while pilgrim-monks like Xuanzang and Yijing brought back sacred scriptures from their arduous journeys to the subcontinent. By the mid-Tang period, Buddhist monasteries controlled vast agricultural estates, operated mills and oil presses, and maintained extensive lending libraries that made them centers of both spiritual and economic power.

The Confucian Revival and Its Challenge to Buddhism

This Buddhist ascendancy provoked growing resistance from Confucian literati who viewed the foreign religion as a threat to social order and traditional values. The anti-Buddhist rhetoric that emerged in the late eighth century marked a significant shift from earlier criticisms. While Tang officials like Yao Chong had previously objected to Buddhist institutions on practical grounds—complaining about tax evasion and economic burdens—a new generation of Confucian thinkers led by Han Yu (768-824) launched a fundamental ideological assault.

Han Yu’s famous “Memorial on the Bone of Buddha” (819) encapsulated this hardening attitude. When Emperor Xianzong planned to welcome a sacred Buddha relic from Famen Temple into the palace, Han Yu delivered a blistering critique that framed Buddhism as fundamentally incompatible with Chinese civilization:

“The Buddha was a barbarian who did not speak the language of China and wore clothes of a different fashion… He knew nothing of the duties of sovereign and subject or the affections of father and son.”

This memorial cost Han Yu his political position—he was exiled to the southern frontier—but his ideas gained increasing traction among scholar-officials. The Confucian revival movement he championed sought to construct an alternative spiritual framework through what scholars now call the “invention of the Dao-tong” (道统), a supposed transmission line of orthodox Confucian teachings from the ancient sage-kings through Mencius. This conceptual borrowing from Buddhist lineage systems represented both competition with and imitation of the very tradition Confucians sought to displace.

Emperor Wuzong’s Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution

The ideological currents against Buddhism found their most violent expression during the reign of Emperor Wuzong (r. 840-846). Between 842-845, the Tang court implemented what became known as the Huichang Suppression (会昌灭佛), the most devastating persecution in Chinese Buddhist history. Japanese monk Ennin’s firsthand account in his “Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law” paints a harrowing picture of the crackdown’s progression:

– 842: Foreign monks ordered to leave; those remaining placed under surveillance
– 843: Systematic defrocking of monks begins; temple properties confiscated
– 844: Destruction of smaller monasteries and rural shrines commences
– 845: Final edict orders all but a handful of major temples destroyed

The numbers stunned contemporaries: over 4,600 monasteries dismantled, 260,500 monks and nuns forcibly returned to lay life, and countless bronze statues melted down for coinage. The economic motivations blended with ideological fervor—Buddhist institutions had accumulated vast landholdings that now replenished state coffers drained by years of military crises.

The Ripple Effects Across Tang Religious Life

Wuzong’s persecution extended beyond Buddhism to other foreign faiths that had flourished under earlier Tang rulers:

Zoroastrianism: The Sogdian merchant communities’ temples in Chang’an and Luoyang were destroyed, severing a religious tradition that had thrived in China since Northern Wei times.

Manichaeism: Already weakened after the Uyghur Empire’s collapse (840), Manichaean temples were ransacked and their clergy executed—72 Manichaean women were killed in Chang’an alone according to Ennin.

Nestorian Christianity: After two centuries of tolerated existence evidenced by the Xi’an Stele (781), China’s Christian communities disappeared from historical records until the Mongol era.

Even traditional Chinese religious practices faced new scrutiny. The government suppressed popular millenarian movements and attempted to purge “superstitious” elements from state Confucianism, foreshadowing the more rationalist orientation of Neo-Confucianism.

The East Asian Spiritual Reconfiguration

The Tang collapse initiated a dramatic reorientation of East Asia’s religious geography. Japan, which had long looked to China as the source of Buddhist authority, began developing more autonomous traditions. Tendai and Shingon Buddhism, introduced by monks like Saichō and Kūkai in the early ninth century, took root in Japanese soil just as their Chinese parent institutions faced destruction. By the Heian period (794-1185), Japanese Buddhism had developed distinctive characteristics that reflected its new independence from the mainland.

Meanwhile in Tibet, the collapse of the Tibetan Empire after King Langdarma’s anti-Buddhist reign (838-842) gave way to Buddhism’s gradual resurgence. The eventual emergence of Vajrayana Buddhism as Tibet’s dominant tradition marked another major shift in Asia’s spiritual landscape—one that would have profound historical consequences.

The Neo-Confucian Transformation

The post-Tang intellectual world witnessed Confucianism’s remarkable resurgence in forms that absorbed while rejecting Buddhist influences. Northern Song thinkers like Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073) and the Cheng brothers (1032-1085, 1033-1107) developed metaphysical systems that addressed spiritual questions which had previously been Buddhism’s domain. By the time of Zhu Xi (1130-1200), this synthesis crystallized into the comprehensive Neo-Confucian philosophy that would dominate East Asian thought for centuries.

This transformation carried profound cultural consequences. The martial frontier ethos celebrated in Tang poetry gave way to the scholar-gentleman ideal of Song literati painting. The cosmopolitanism of the Silk Road yielded to a more introspective civilization that prized antiquity and textual scholarship. As the great Tang monasteries crumbled into ruins, their grandeur survived only in Japanese replicas like Tōdai-ji’s Daibutsuden—ironic monuments to a lost world where China stood at the center of a vast Buddhist ecumene.

The events of ninth-century China thus represent one of history’s great cultural turning points—when an empire’s spiritual reorientation reshaped not just its own civilization, but the entire religious geography of Asia. The echoes of this transformation would reverberate through Song examination halls, Ming academies, and even the modern East Asian world.