Buddhist Legends About Emperor Wu of Liang

Buddhist Legends About Emperor Wu Of Liang

During his reign as emperor of China, Emperor Wu of Liang (r. 502–549) embraced and promoted Buddhism. Several times he became a monk and forced his court to purchase him back with substantial offerings to the Buddhist clergy. In 517 he ordered the destruction of Taoist temples and forced Taoist adepts to return to lay life. Some of his other reforms, such as the disallowing of capital punishment and of the animal sacrifices during ancestral ceremonies, conformed with his Buddhist convictions. Because of his constant support for Buddhism he came to be seen as the Chinese counterpart of king Ashoka, the great Indian patron of that religion. Later writers who saw Emperor Wu's reign as a golden age of Chinese Buddhism compiled stories on the emperor's role in creating or sponsoring important Buddhist institutions or rituals. A cycle of stories developed around Bao Zhi, the emperor's favorite monk, and around Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of Zen Buddhism, who was alleged to have met the emperor in the 520s.