At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 637: The Development of Han Religion
On June 47, the 6th year of the Han calendar, in Wu County, Kuaiji Prefecture, Religious Street.

This is one of the most lively and prosperous neighborhoods in the entire Han Dynasty. There are dozens of temples of all sizes on the street. The people of the Han Dynasty who want to pray to the gods and find psychological sustenance usually come here to worship the gods. The festivals of the gods also make this street lively and prosperous.

The Xiongnu Zhang Mu led the members of his country who were participating in the Global Datong Association into a local Zoroastrian temple. The Zoroastrian temple was extremely large, with a large square inside and a seven-story temple. On the square was a god with flames all over his body driving a chariot. This god was Ahura, the benevolent god of Zoroastrianism, but he looked a bit like Confucius. This made Zhang Mu feel a little guilty.

In the Xiongnu Kingdom, Confucianism had been alienated into a sect, and Confucius became the creator who made all the rules. Confucianism then unified the hundreds of native religions in the Xiongnu Kingdom and established a system similar to the heavenly court in later generations, accommodating all religions into one system. In this way, the hundreds of Xiongnu tribes could both worship their own local gods and minimize religious conflicts.

Confucianism could explain its actions in the Xiongnu Kingdom as expanding the civilizational space of the Han Dynasty and educating all ethnic groups in the world.

But if Confucianism also engaged in religious worship within the Han Dynasty, it would be ridiculed by the various schools of thought, and it might even be directly kicked out of the academic world. This is a place for studying knowledge. If you Confucianists like to engage in religious worship, then go and become a charlatan.

Therefore, Confucian scholars also understood that temples could be built in the Xiongnu, but it was absolutely forbidden in the Han Dynasty. Even in the desert, the birthplace of Confucianism, the original Confucian temples were converted into primary schools one by one, and the knowledge taught was not limited to Confucian classics, but also involved all schools of thought.

But the Xiongnu Kingdom had a real need for missionary work. The Han Dynasty was now at the center of world civilization and had created most of the world's wealth. Such a wealthy place with a population of over 100 million had become a paradise for all religions in the world. Therefore, Brahmanism and Buddhism from India, Zoroastrianism from the Xiongnu, Nestorianism from Daqinzhou, and the Ptolemaic Sun God Cult, Cat God Cult, Dog God Cult, Crocodile God Cult, and Ram God Cult all flocked to the Han Dynasty.

Faced with the conflicts brought about by this great voyage, the Han court did not let things go on their own, but instead established a Department of Religion, which stipulated the levels of various religions, the number of temples allowed to be built in each county, and the maximum number of clergy each temple could accommodate. This is almost equivalent to the ordination certificate of later generations.

At the same time, the functions of these religions were restricted. No religious financial industry could be developed in the Han Dynasty. Intimidation-based education was not allowed. Buying land to become a local landlord was even more prohibited.

The Han Dynasty only allows those doctrines that guide people to be good and soothe people's hearts. The Han Dynasty's definition of these religions is similar to the psychological clinics of later generations. They comfort those unfortunate people who are not satisfied with their lives and become a part of maintaining the harmonious development of society. In the Han Dynasty, even gods have to have a role. If you can't even soothe people's hearts, I'm sorry, the Han Dynasty does not welcome such a useless religion.

Donations from believers to these temples in the Han Dynasty are also strictly monitored. They can be used for good deeds, but they are not allowed to be embezzled. The clergy at all levels have set salaries, ranging from 5000 coins a month to coins a month (but this is performance-based, and this salary comes from your own believers. If you don’t have so many donations, you can only be a clergyman with a simple job.) Therefore, becoming a monk in the Han Dynasty is also a good job choice. You work from to , and have two days off a week. Once you take off your robes, you can live an ordinary life.

At this time, the Zoroastrian church was full of old men and women from Kuaiji County. The Zoroastrian bishop told the group of people with a serious expression how the creator god Ahura created the world. Becoming a believer of Ahura would bless the soul and make it immortal. Death is just a reincarnation. The creator god Ahura would judge whether the believer would go to heaven or hell, or reincarnate again in the world, based on the good and evil deeds of the believer throughout his life.

Zhang Mu was extremely surprised to hear this new version of Zoroastrian doctrine. This seemed to be the six realms of reincarnation in Buddhism. How come Zoroastrianism has only been developing in the Han Dynasty for more than 10 years, but the version has been updated?
What surprised him even more was that Zoroastrianism was clearly a native sect of the Xiongnu, originating in the ancient Persian Empire, but what did he say afterwards? The god of fire helped the Yellow Emperor defeat Chiyou, and when Dayu controlled the flood, he sent the god of fire to assist Dayu. Even the credit for excavating the Longmen Mountains was taken by the god of fire. What about the god of fire burning Longmen Mountain with supreme magic power, and then Dayu poured water on the mountain, and Longmen Mountain suddenly collapsed.

Bishop, since you have tampered with the doctrine like this, aren't you afraid that you will be burned to death when you return to the Xiongnu Kingdom?

After listening to the story of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, a group of old men and women applauded and cheered, saying, "Bishop, your story is much better than the story of Master Hui Pu. We will come again next time."

These old men and women did not listen to the stories in vain. Before leaving, they threw some copper coins into the Zoroastrian merit box.

"Ding Dong, Ding Dong." Judging from the sound, there are quite a few coins inside.

The Han Dynasty had a relatively complete pension welfare system, and Kuaiji County was one of the richest regions in the entire Han Dynasty. In addition to the pensions given to them by the Han court, these elderly people also received pensions from local factories. Not counting the various food and drink expenses each month, the direct pension alone exceeded a thousand yuan. Of course, Xu Fan learned the lessons of later generations. Regarding the pension system, on the one hand, the Han court provided a bottom line to ensure that the elderly across the country would not starve to death; on the other hand, the elderly in various places were paid pensions based on the actual local economic conditions and the pensions paid by local factories. Basically, it was the money they saved when they were young, plus a certain amount of interest. Therefore, these elderly people had a lot of money in their hands. They were the few rich and free people in the entire Kuaiji County.

As for the young people of the Han Dynasty, they are so busy working to make money that they have no time to visit temples.

The apprentice who was carrying the merit box weighed it and said with a smile: "Bishop, I see there are several silver coins. I'm afraid today's profit is over ten thousand."

The bishop just smiled and said, "We will continue to work hard to make the influence of Zoroastrianism surpass those damn bald donkeys as soon as possible!"

Colleagues are enemies, and the same applies to missionary work. At the end of the Qin Dynasty, the First Emperor burned books and buried scholars, and severely struck a group of alchemists, witches and other charlatans. When the Han Dynasty was founded, Xu Fan took advantage of the war to continue to hit the alchemists and charlatans. For a long time, the Han Dynasty did not have any influential religious factions.

But after the Han Dynasty's sphere of influence affected India, Hu Hai, in order to compete with the Indian monk group for financial hegemony, joined forces with Brahmanism and other small sects in India to attack Buddhism. Buddhism was forced to start looking for a way out hundreds of years in advance.

Then these Buddhists came to Han Dynasty. At this time, these monks were pleasantly surprised to find that Han Dynasty not only had a larger population than India and was more prosperous, but there was no influential religion in such a large country. This was simply the foundation given to them by the Buddha.

Thus, Buddhism began to spread throughout the Han Dynasty starting from Kuaiji County, followed by other sects in India. After Confucianism began to integrate all religions in the Xiongnu Kingdom, various Xiongnu sects, led by Zoroastrianism, also began to appear in the Han Dynasty. Later, there was the Nestorianism of Daqinzhou, the Sun God Cult of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, the Cat God Cult, the Dog God Cult, and the Ram God Cult.

These religions that have flooded into the Han Dynasty have existed for some long and some short periods of time, and their sects may be large or small. Among them, Buddhism is the oldest and largest.

The Buddhist doctrine is highly speculative and is one of the few religious sects in the world with rich philosophical thoughts. The outstanding manifestation of the Buddhist ideology is that it has a rigorous theoretical system and logical argumentative thinking.

Therefore, Buddhism had the upper hand in debates with other sects. Generally speaking, no sect could win over Buddhists. At the same time, after they suffered a blow in India, Buddhism became very soft after it penetrated into the Han Dynasty. Buddhists would change those outdated hierarchical systems and dogmas according to the situation in the Han Dynasty when they were preaching.

Knowing that Han society is more concerned with equality and justice, the Buddhists who came to Han emphasized the concept of equality of all beings and the concept of guiding people to do good, in order to integrate into the Han society.

Of course, if it were just this, it would not be enough to make Buddhism the leader of the Han Dynasty's religious world. The key point is that when Buddhism was introduced to the Han Dynasty, the alchemists, who had been attacked by the Han Dynasty for more than ten years, suddenly found that being a Buddhist was a good identity. By becoming a Buddhist, no one would say that they used the elixir of immortality to deceive the First Emperor, and they could also get rid of the bad reputation brought by the marriage of the River God and the Mountain God for hundreds of years.

The Han Dynasty mainly cracked down on these acts of disregarding human life. As long as such customs dared to appear somewhere, the first people to be arrested would be the alchemists. Other organizers would also be arrested without mercy and then hanged.

After further education and propaganda, the villagers learned that the so-called weddings of the River God and the Mountain God were nothing more than the alchemists joining forces with local tyrants to extort money from the people at the cost of human life. As a result, the reputations of those alchemists were completely ruined, and it would be difficult for them to survive in the Han Dynasty for at least a few decades.

Buddhists were different, because it was a brand new religion, and there was no stain on them in the Han Dynasty. In addition, their teachings emphasized the equality of all beings and guiding people to be good, which was easily accepted by ordinary people in the Han Dynasty. Therefore, a large number of local alchemists in the Han Dynasty shaved their heads and became devout Buddhists, and began to spread Sakyamuni's ideas of equality of all beings and guiding people to be good.

As for the spread of Buddhism, the participation of local Han alchemists would be like adding wings to a tiger. However, these methods soon found one of the biggest weaknesses of Buddhist missionary work, that is, it is not a native religion of the Han Dynasty. The people of the Han Dynasty are extremely arrogant. If you are not one of them, then the spread of Buddhism will be restricted.

This made the monks feel embarrassed, because Sakyamuni's missionary work had always been around India, and they had no way of establishing a relationship with the Han people.

But this is nothing to those alchemists. These days, when you go out, you have to find your own relationships. The current emperor has set a very good example.

These local monks searched for Han Dynasty classics and finally found a good breakthrough. That is, Laozi, the founder of all schools of thought, wrote the "Tao Te Ching" at Hangu Pass and then went west and disappeared. To the west of Han Dynasty was India, and what's more, the time when Laozi appeared was the same time as the founder of Buddhism, Sakyamuni.

Before Sakyamuni became a monk, he was a prince. Why did such a prince who was not interested in worldly affairs suddenly realize the need to become a monk and acquire such profound wisdom?
"Is there such a thing?" The monks who came out these days hesitated. Considering the experience of Sakyamuni, this is indeed possible.

"Then there must be a scholar with greater wisdom to teach Sakyamuni. Don't you see that this makes sense? Sakyamuni was taught by Laozi, and Buddhism is a branch of Taoism."

“But the philosophy of Buddhism is different from that of Taoism, right?”

"Four or five hundred years have passed, so there are naturally some differences. Not to mention that Laozi taught Confucius. Is there any correlation between Confucianism and Taoism? But Confucius was still taught by Laozi."

"We will go find novelists and compile another story about Laozi's transformation into a barbarian. No, we will publicize this period of history in a more realistic way. From now on, the foundation of our Buddhism will be in the Han Dynasty. In this way, Buddhism will be our own."

With the support of the locals and the story of Laozi's conversion to Buddhism, the influence of Buddhism reached a new level. When Xu Fan discovered all this, there were already Buddhist temples in dozens of counties and prefectures in the Han Dynasty.

Thinking of the Three Wu and One Zong anti-Buddhist movements in history, in order to prevent Buddhism from developing as wildly as in history, Xu Fan set up the Department of Religion to specifically manage religious figures in the Han Dynasty. The historical ordination certificate system was also abolished to restrict the development of religion in terms of economy and land.

Zoroastrianism relied on Confucianism. After so many years, Confucianism was still the top school of thought in the Han Dynasty. Most of the teachers in primary schools were Confucian scholars, and even half of them were Confucian scholars in middle schools. Therefore, Confucianism had a huge influence in the Han Dynasty. Now Zoroastrianism is a small branch of Confucianism. Their missionary work in the Han Dynasty was supported by Confucianism. It quickly surpassed many sects, but was always suppressed by Buddhism.

It was at this time that the bishop saw Zhang Mu and his group of fellow villagers. He was a little stunned at first, but quickly recovered.

Zhang Mu smiled and asked, "It seems that Zoroastrianism has spread well in the Han Dynasty. Such a large temple cannot be seen in the Xiongnu."

The bishop asked, "Why are you here in Dahan?"

Zhang Mu said: "Of course I am here to attend the Global Great Harmony Conference. You should know that the Great Harmony comes from the Book of Rites, and the Book of Rites is a classic of Confucianism."

Then Zhang Mu hesitated and asked, "Why have the Zoroastrian scriptures changed so much?"

The bishop said helplessly, "All this is for the purpose of preaching. At the beginning, the Buddhist sect didn't follow the rules. Everyone was preaching, but they actually asked novelists to make up stories to attract believers. They also made up a story about Laozi converting to Buddhism, saying that the source of his Buddhism was Taoism and Laozi. In order to compete with Buddhism, we can only make up stories so that Zoroastrianism can be integrated into the Han Dynasty."

"Those novelists are so greedy. They don't have the integrity of a scholar at all. If you ask them to write a story, the minimum price is more than ten thousand yuan. The best stories can be sold for hundreds of thousands of yuan."

The bishop looked distressed. The court would not reimburse such extra expenses, so he could only use his own salary to buy them. Although he had an annual salary of one million, he could not afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a story.

After listening to the amazing story, Zhang Mu could only say that they were truly worthy of being called the Han people. Even something as sacred as preaching had become vulgar, and they even had to spend money to hire someone to make up stories. It made him feel that the status of Zoroastrianism had dropped a lot.

"So Bishop, you plagiarized the story of the six realms of reincarnation in Buddhism."

At this point, the bishop was furious and said, "Buddhism copied this from our Zoroastrianism. The immortality of the soul and reincarnation were first proposed by our Zoroastrianism. This can be found in the ancient books of the Xiongnu. Those damn Buddhists copied our immortality of the soul and reincarnation, and changed it to say the six realms of reincarnation."

In order to determine which religion the concepts of the immortality of the soul and reincarnation belonged to, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism debated three times, and Zoroastrianism was defeated every time.

What made the Zoroastrian head coach even more angry was that those bald donkeys innovated on their concepts. Originally, the reincarnation of Zoroastrianism was that the good went to heaven and the evil went to hell. As a result, Buddhism innovated and came up with the concept of six reincarnations, which was more perfect than the Zoroastrianism. They also transformed their concept of heaven into the Western Paradise. It would be fine if these bald donkeys plagiarized, but they also did not respect the original concept of Zoroastrianism at all. This was only in the Han Dynasty. If it was in the Xiongnu Kingdom, the headmaster would have to start a war of gods and use a sword to teach these bald donkeys some truth.

Even Zhang Mu didn't know this. The first time he heard the concept of reincarnation was the Buddhist six realms of reincarnation, so he thought that the concepts of the immortality of the human soul and reincarnation were proposed by Buddhism.

But in fact, this is a confusing account. Zoroastrianism evolved from primitive religions, and then in the 6th century BC, the prophet Zoroastrianism sorted out the doctrines of Zoroastrianism, which became a more formal religion. Among them, Zoroastrianism proposed many concepts in later religions, such as the binary opposition of good and evil, the concept of the creator god, the concept of guiding people to do good, the concept of the savior and the last judgment, and the concept of the immortality of the soul and reincarnation.

The three famous religions in later generations have absorbed these concepts to a certain extent. Among them, Buddhism has many concepts that are the same as Zoroastrianism. More importantly, Buddhism is also constantly innovating. The key is that Buddhism was founded a very long time ago, roughly around the 6th century BC, and the civilizations of these two regions have no recorded history.

This led to the Zoroastrians saying that the Buddhist ideas were plagiarized from them, and the Buddhists saying that the Zoroastrian ideas were plagiarized from them. Buddhism had a greater influence in the Han Dynasty, and they were also the first to be introduced to the Han Dynasty, so most of the people in the Han Dynasty believed that Zoroastrianism plagiarized the Buddhist ideas.

This is also the reason why Zoroastrianism has always been unable to surpass Buddhism in the Han Dynasty. The philosophies of both sides are too similar. On the same track, the strong will naturally suppress the weak, so the Zoroastrianism in the Han Dynasty hates Buddhism to the core.

(End of this chapter)