The "Belief Change" of Hengshan Beiyue

In the fifteenth year of Hongzhi in the Ming Dynasty (1502), Ma Wensheng, the minister of the Ministry of War, proposed to change Beiyue from Quyang to Hunyuan for the following reasons: first, Quyang was south of Kyoto; 2. The Beiyue Temple in Quyang is 0/40 Li away from Hengshan Mountain in Beiyue; Third, the Song Dynasty lost Yunzhou and began to offer sacrifices to Hengshan Mountain in Quyang. This third reason is pure fabrication, which was refuted by Ni Yue, then the minister of rites, and the memorial did not take effect. In the twenty-fifth year of Jiajing (1546), Chen Gong, a minister of the Ministry of Housing, issued a letter to sacrifice Quyang Temple to Hunyuan, but it was still sacrificed to Quyang. In the seventeenth year of Shunzhi in Qing Dynasty (1660), the emperor allowed the punishments to give this matter a request to stick to the essence, and later turned to Hunyuan. The dispute of "Byzantium" lasted 150 years.

The direct reasons for offering sacrifices to Beiyue in Tianfengling, Hunyuan, Shanxi Province are as follows: First, there were frequent wars in Hebei at the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, and the population decreased greatly. At the same time, the temple originally built on the damao mountain was seriously damaged, which can be proved by the immigration of Hongdong County to Hebei in the Ming Dynasty. However, when entering Hengshan Mountain, the traffic was blocked, so I had to go to Quyang for sacrifice, and I couldn't climb the mountain myself. At the same time, Shanxi suffered relatively little losses in the war in the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties, and its population, history and culture were preserved more. So the school of changing the position of Baoding Hengshan Mountain to Hunyuan Tianfengling gradually formed. Until the early Qing dynasty, during the Shunzhi period, Manchu people entered the customs and did not understand the reality. Chao Zhongzong gained the upper hand and finally changed to worship Hengshan Mountain in Beiyue, Hunyuan, Shanxi. Secondly, Hunyuan people pay attention to the propaganda, excavation and cultivation of famous mountain culture, especially the hanging temple built at the foot of Tianfengling (built in 490 AD at the end of the Northern Wei Dynasty), and many temples and shrines have been built on Tianfengling, which has also increased the weight of worship here.

However, many people in Ming and Qing dynasties opposed "changing to worship". For example, Gu, a famous scholar in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, wrote On Beiyue, arguing that the reason why Beiyue was south of Kyoto could not be established. "The capital is impermanent, and the five mountains are fixed", and the system of all previous dynasties is "changing all the mountains". As for the statement that "the Song Dynasty lost Yunzhou and began to worship Quyang", it is even more wrong, and it also refutes Ma Wensheng's statement with a large number of historical inscriptions. From the natural landscape alone, the ancient Hengshan Mountain in Baoding is above Tianfengling in Hunyuan. In terms of human landscape and convenient transportation, Guhengshan is inferior. It is speculated that the reason why the Qing emperor "changed to worship" may have a lot to do with advocating Buddhism and paying attention to human landscape and convenient transportation.