Buddhism ranked above Daoism
The Zizhi tongjian records a Zhou court decree ranking Buddhism above Daoism.
What this does and does not establish
Juan 204, revision 1553956, lines 249–253. The decree follows the fourth-month r enyin new moon; guimao is the following day. This records an official ranking, not its implementation throughout the realm.
- Read through an AI working translation.
- Region
- East Asia
- Theme
- Culture and knowledge
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- Zhou, Tianshou 2, summer, fourth month, guimao
- How we use it
- Year-level placement is limited to the dated source entry.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
Read zztj204.wikitext lines 221–261 and both calendar files, lines 31–65. Julian 690-12-31 is labeled 唐武后天授2年1月26日; 691-12-31 is 唐武后天授3年2月7日. The explicit summer fourth month lies between these anchors, in Julian 691. Lines 159 and 197 establish the altered calendar and actual Zhou dynasty: 正月 replaced the former eleventh month, while 一月 denoted the traditional first month. The calendar's 唐武后 label is retained as a table label, not adopted as the dynasty.
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
Zizhi tongjian
Sima Guang and collaborators
Quoted text (Classical Chinese)
癸卯，制以釋教開革命之階，升於道教之上。AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
On guimao, a decree, on the grounds that Buddhism had opened the way for the change of dynasty, elevated it above Daoism.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Zizhi tongjian, juan 204; Wikisource contributors https://zh.wikisource.org/w/index.php?oldid=1553956, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/); project translation, adapted and share alike where applicable.
Exact source version
5d82061f68bf6344587a5bb718a767dd82c488e04ad0acc3d10dc9433e767e72Checks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-05. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
No correction has been made to this record’s statement or limits.
Revision s601_east_691_695_691_0
Exact revision fingerprint
cd654a448ea34ac0d5b93f10e8b39aabb8679cc7a1c04caa8a31e72ea3145722