About Chapter 69 Story Introduction: After the siege of Guzang's Houqin army retreated to Guanzhong, the lord of the Northern Liang Kingdom, Fuqu Mengxun, wanted to take the opportunity to destroy Houliang and occupy Guzang, but was subject to the attack of the Xiliang regime behind him and never succeeded, after the bald Li Lu, the lord of the Southern Liang Kingdom, died of illness, his younger brother Bald Wei Tan succeeded to the throne, through the mutual attack of the Northern Liang and the West Liang, the bald Wei Tan personally led a large army to attack Guzang, the Hou Liang lord Lu Long had no choice but to surrender to Hou Qin, Hou Liang has since perished, and the Later Qin Emperor Yao Xing occupied Gu Zang, Taking advantage of the rebellion of Huan Xuan of the Eastern Jin Dynasty to occupy the twelve counties of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the national strength of the Later Qin Dynasty reached its peak, and the Later Qin Emperor Yao Xing was also proud and complacent, and began to favor the Buddha and the Buddha, ignoring the government and politics, and the Later Qin also began to decline.

In this story, the Houliang regime that once ruled the Liangzhou region finally perished after seventeen years of founding, and the four Liang states in the Liangzhou region became three, among which the Northern Liang regime and the Southern Liang regime revolved around the competition for Guzang, the capital of Liangzhou, With the surrender of the Houliang regime, the Qin Empire temporarily came to an end, and Guzang also became the bag of the Later Qin Empire. However, the Southern Liang regime and the Northern Liang regime naturally would not be willing to accept the Later Qin Empire's control of Guzang, an important town in Liangzhou, and they would inevitably try their best to capture Guzang in order to achieve their strategic goal of dominating the northwest region. At this time, the Later Qin Empire has been in its heyday to pride and complacency, driven by Emperor Yao Xing, its internal up to the princes and ministers, down to the common people are intoxicated with the sound of Amitabha Buddha's chanting, the Later Qin Empire is also abolished, the military equipment is lax, and the whole country is full of the spirit of the country. And Guzang is too far away from the Guanzhong region, the core area of the Later Qin Empire, and the loss of Guzang is inevitable.

We have talked about the decadence of the country caused by the Later Qin Emperor Yao Xing's favor of the Buddha and the Buddha, and we will take this opportunity to talk about the spread, development and influence of Buddhism in China during the period of the Sixteen Kingdoms.

In fact, as early as the early period of the Sixteen Kingdoms, Buddhism began to make great progress by taking advantage of the turmoil and wars in northern China at that time. As we all know, Buddhism was introduced into China during the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the White Horse Temple in Luoyang was the first temple in the history of our country. Before this, the religion of our country has always been dominated by the local religion Taoism, and even the Yellow Turban Rebellion in the late Eastern Han Dynasty was the common people who could not survive in the name of Taoism. It can be seen that Buddhism did not gain widespread popularity and rapid development in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and even in the Three Kingdoms period, the development of Buddhism in China was still tepid. In the famous Romance of the Three Kingdoms, we hardly see a figure about Buddhism. However, at the end of the Three Kingdoms period, it was difficult to find Buddhism in the short-lived Western Jin Dynasty, but only a few years after the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty, we found a large number of records in the early history books of the Sixteen Kingdoms about the Buddhist monks of the Western Regions entering the Central Plains to preach and serve as high-ranking officials.

From the beginning of the Later Zhao Empire, the first of the sixteen countries to occupy the Central Plains, the deeds of Buddhism are endless, and the Buddhist culture at this time began to combine with the Confucian culture in the Central Plains of China, and gradually formed a Buddhist culture with Chinese characteristics, which has been spread to this day, and spread to Japan and South Korea in East Asia, because Buddhism with Chinese characteristics has become a world religion, this Buddhism is also called Mahayana Buddhism, and our country has also become the center of Buddhism in the world. If we want to know why Buddhism, which originally originated in India, became one of the three major religions in the world after passing through our country, we still have to start with the period of the Sixteen Kingdoms in the history of our country.

In the early period of the Sixteen Kingdoms, Buddhism was able to develop rapidly, which has a lot to do with the fact that the rulers of the Central Plains Dynasty at that time were nomads. Nowadays, many people believe that Buddhism was able to achieve great development during the period of the Sixteen Kingdoms because there were tragedies in the northern region one after another, the rebellion of the Eight Kings and the Five Hu Rebellion, frequent wars, and the displacement of the people, and the people at that time needed to seek spiritual sustenance in the precarious life, so the people of the Sixteen Kingdoms period chose Buddhism. But I don't think this statement is entirely accurate.

In the era of frequent wars, it is necessary for the people who cannot see a peaceful life to seek spiritual sustenance, but our local religion Taoism can give people spiritual comfort at that time, and how can foreign religions be so quickly integrated into the lives of the people? Therefore, I believe that Buddhism was able to achieve wide spread and rapid development during the period of the Sixteen Kingdoms, and later had a far-reaching influence, which has a lot to do with the nomadic peoples who came to dominate the Central Plains at that time.

Because the living conditions of the nomads are very simple and primitive, they only believe in the more primitive religion shamanism on the grassland, which makes them incompatible with the Central Plains culture in terms of cultural inheritance after entering the Central Plains, and the nomadic rulers in order to maintain the rule of their own dynasty and shape themselves to be the orthodox image of the Central Plains culture, they need a new cultural support, this cultural support must not be the native Central Plains culture, must have a foreign taste of the culture, but can not have too much deviation from the Central Plains cultureThe Buddhist culture from India is just the perfect fit with the core Confucian culture of our Central Plains culture, and even the core ideas of the two cultures are highly similar, both advocating the theory of benevolence, Confucian culture is more of ideological guiding significance, and Buddhist culture is more like an extension of Confucian culture, so the rulers of the nomadic people in the Central Plains at that time spared no effort to promote Buddhist culture. This not only found spiritual sustenance for the people of the Central Plains who suffered from the war, but also demonstrated that the culture admired by their tribes could complement the culture of the Central Plains.

After the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty, from the first Later Zhao Empire to rule the Central Plains, until the end of the Northern Dynasties, the nomadic rulers in the Central Plains were basically promoting Buddhist culture, and even the situation of favoring the Buddha and the Buddha appeared, so it led to a large number of manpower and material resources of the country invested in the development of Buddhism, the increasing number of monks and the continuous growth of monastic assets, seriously threatened the fundamental interests of the rulers of the current dynasty, so, in the Northern Dynasties, there were two more famous extermination movements, One is the Northern Wei Dynasty Taiwu Emperor Tuoba Tao's Buddha extermination movement, and the other is the Northern Zhou Dynasty Wu Emperor Yuwen Yong's Buddha extermination movement, plus the Tang Dynasty Wuzong extermination of Buddha and the Five Dynasties period of the Later Zhou Shizong Chai Rong Buddha extermination, known as the three martial arts and one sect in the history of Buddhism in China.

In fact, we can see from these four extermination campaigns that the promotion and spread of Buddhist culture is actually deliberately done by the rulers of the current dynasty in order to maintain their rule, the Northern Wei Dynasty and the Northern Zhou Dynasty are all dynasties created by nomadic peoples, and their favor to Buddha is also due to national characteristics, and the later Tang Dynasty and the Later Zhou Dynasty are all dynasties established by the ancestors of the Han people.

In fact, the Tang Dynasty is the first dynasty that has just ended the bloody period of the Sixteen Kingdoms period and the Northern Dynasties, the culture of the Tang Dynasty has both nomadic culture and traditional Central Plains culture, this period is also an important period for the formation of new Chinese culture after the bloody period of ethnic integration, so Buddhism is also a very ideal tool for the rulers of the Tang Dynasty to maintain their rule, and the Five Dynasties period is of course a short era of cultural continuation of the Tang Dynasty, and wars are frequent. In the Central Plains, there are also frequent cases of nomadic people founding the country and claiming the emperor, and the situation of Chong Buddha and Buddha is equally serious. However, when China's history entered the period of the reign of the Northern Song Dynasty, Chinese culture also entered the formative period, and the development of Buddhism began to stabilize.

From this, we can also see that the development of Buddhist culture during the Sixteen Kingdoms period was entirely due to the fact that the rulers of the nomadic people at that time found tools to combine with the Central Plains culture in culture to maintain their feudal rule over the Central Plains, and at the same time, the war environment at that time also provided a good social environment foundation for the spread and development of Buddhist culture. Eventually, Buddhism began to flourish in our country during this period, and the Later Zhao Empire, established by the Qiang people, became the first Central Plains dynasty to help the rapid development of Buddhist culture. The monks we know now all have the Buddha Shakyamuni's surname as their surname, which began during the Later Zhao Empire. Moreover, many of the cultural relics left over from the 16th period and the Northern Dynasties period have the characteristics of Buddhist culture, and they are the national treasures of our Chinese nation, and we can also get a glimpse of the whole picture of the great development of Buddhist culture at that time from these cultural relics.

Compared with the spread of Buddhist culture in the northern region during the Sixteen Kingdoms period, the development and spread of Buddhist culture was significantly slower because the Jiangnan region was still under the rule of the Eastern Jin Dynasty constructed by the Han ancestors. Until the fall of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the influence of Buddhist culture on the Jiangnan region was not great, with the unification of the Northern Wei Dynasty in the north, and the continuous political, cultural and economic exchanges with the Jiangnan region, Buddhist culture was accepted by the people in the Jiangnan region, to the middle and late Southern Dynasties, Buddhist culture was widely popularized in the southern region, and because the Buddhist culture is very consistent with the core idea of our traditional Central Plains culture, therefore, the Southern Dynasties also appeared in the style of favoring the Buddha and the Buddha, The most famous is the Buddha of Xiao Yan, Emperor Wu of Southern Liang, which led to the Hou Jing Rebellion. When we look at the 480 temples of the Southern Dynasty by the Tang Dynasty poet Du Mu, how many verses in the smoke and rain of the towers, we can also imagine the prosperity of Buddhist culture in the Jiangnan region at that time. We know that today's monks must strictly abide by the rules and precepts, not to eat meat and drink alcohol, these rules and precepts were formulated by Emperor Xiao Yan of the Southern Liang Dynasty, Xiao Yan is to issue an edict to the world in the form of an edict, these rules and precepts have been used by Buddhist disciples to this day after thousands of years of evolution and circulation.

With the rapid development and widespread popularity of Buddhist culture in China during the period of the Sixteen Kingdoms. Our country has become the core area of Buddhist culture. On the other hand, in India, where Buddhist culture originated, there are very few Buddhist cultures to be seen, and today's Indians basically believe in Hinduism rather than Buddhism.

It can be seen from this that the influence of the Sixteen Kingdoms period on our Chinese culture is extremely important and far-reaching, and it is by no means a retrogressive, ignorant and barbaric era.