From Tribal Regime to Imperial Dictatorship:The Concrete Expression of Buddhist Politics in the Northern Wei Dynasty
Tuoba Xianbei is a tribal community formed by the union of various tribes.The rulers of Northern Wei basically completed the political transformation from tribal power to imperial dictatorship when Pingcheng was estab-lished as the capital.In the process of exploring political transformation,the adoption of Confucianism yielded little success and the concept of Taoist governance ended with the killing of Cui Hao.Due to the similar political back-ground with the Kusana dynasty,the rulers of Northern Wei began to use Buddhist political ideas to strengthen im-perial power and maintain their rule.The Yungang Grottoes were an important place for the implementation of Bud-dhist politics during the Northern Wei dynasty.The mainstream ideology of the first phase of the Yungang Grottoes was"the emperor is the Tathagata".In addition to continuing the ideology of the first phase,the second phase of the Yungang Grottoes also incorporated the idea of"one Buddha and one Wheel of life"into the construction of the grottoes,using a set of double grottoes(one for Buddha and the other for Wheel King)to symbolize a meritorious and virtuous master.The success of this measure also provided a model for the political transformation of ethnic mi-nority regimes that later took over the Central Plains.The Yungang Grottoes,as a product of the integration of mul-tiple ethnic groups,have strong reference significance for today's society to strengthen the sense of Chinese nation-al community.
political transformationYungang Phase Ⅱdouble grottoesBuddhist politics
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