Huichang Persecution of Buddhism
- Date
- 845 CE
- Category
- Religion & ideology
- Region
- China (Tang dynasty), East Asia
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
The Huichang Persecution was a state-directed suppression of Buddhism in Tang China that reached its peak in 845 CE under Emperor Wuzong, named for his Huichang reign era (841-846).
A devoted Daoist guided by the priest Zhao Guizhen, Wuzong combined ideological hostility toward Buddhism as a "foreign" creed with an urgent fiscal motive: monasteries held vast tax-exempt lands and wealth, and a costly 843 war against the Uyghurs had strained the treasury. Imperial edicts culminating in 845 ordered the demolition of some 4,600 monasteries and 40,000 smaller shrines, the forced laicisation of around 260,500 monks and nuns, the freeing of roughly 150,000 monastic dependents, and the confiscation of monastic lands, with bronze statues and bells melted down for coinage. The campaign also struck other religions of foreign origin, including Nestorian Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Manichaeism, the last linked to the recently defeated Uyghurs. The persecution was largely reversed after Wuzong died in 846 and his successor Emperor Xuanzong proclaimed an amnesty, but it permanently crippled the wealth and institutional power of Chinese Buddhism, leaving the more self-sufficient Chan and Pure Land schools to predominate thereafter.
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Empires active in 845 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Samanid Empire819 CE – 999 CE
- Tang Dynasty618 CE – 907 CE
- Abbasid Caliphate750 CE – 1258 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Carolingian Empire800 CE – 888 CE
Related religion & ideology events
- Adi Shankara and the Revival of Advaita Vedantac. 700-750 CE
- Founding of Samye Monastery establishes Buddhism in Tibetc. 779 CE
- Satuq Bughra Khan and the Kara-Khanid Conversion to Islamc. 934 CE
- The Hijra: Muhammad's migration to Medina622 CE
- Muhammad's first revelation in the Cave of Hirac. 610 CE
- Onset of Byzantine Iconoclasm under Leo IIIc. 726–730 CE
Further reading
The wider story
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