永樂四年十一月の醴泉湧出 --瑞祥發生をめぐる稱賀文書と金籙齋--

Abstract

In the 11th month of the 4th year of Yongle, the emperor held a Taoist ritual called Jinluzhai 金籙齋at the three Daoist Temples in the capital, Nanjing. Today, at least four documents written by the bureaucrats of the Hanlin Academy to commemorate the ceremony remain. They all agree that sacred water sprang out as the result of the ritual, and the phenomenon was a heavenly good omen, ruixiang 瑞祥, which Confucianism recognized as evidence of an emperorʼs legitimacy. But, from the Confucian point of view, Taoism was a heretical religion. Why then did the authors write that the orthodox Confucian miracle occurred as a result of a Taoist ritual, even though they were all genuine Confucians? The four extant documents can be classified into two types. Two documents are Type A. Interestingly, they do not describe the ceremony as Taoist. One document never mentions what religion was the basis of the performance at all, and the other describes the ceremony as if it were Confucian. The other two documents are Type B. Both clearly describe the ritual as Taoist. But they explain the miracle itself as that of heavenly sacred Confucianist ruixiang. Needless to say, this explanation is not rational. However，it should be noted that the two people who wrote the contradictory reports were not only Hanlin bureaucrats, but also the members of the Yongle Government’s newly established Cabinet. In short, the core people of the government insisted that their emperor could be given a heavenly omen even if based on a heretical ritual. It declared that the emperor had universal or all-inclusive holiness, which was apart from the Confucian framework. Thus, central people in the Yongle Government tried to legitimize the emperor by unorthodox means. Consecutively, in the spring of the 5th year of Yongle, the government held a famous Tibetan Buddhist ceremony, inviting the 5th Karmapa. On this occasion they also issued similar documents reporting ruixiang. Apparently, the two projects were different parts of the same political strategy. This strategy aimed to legitimize the emperor by claiming that the Confucian orthodox miracles had occurred even as a result of the heretical rituals because of the sovereign’s ultra- holiness.