The earliest temple of earth in Beijing is called Fang Zetan, which was founded in the ninth year of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty (1530 AD), which is the place where the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties and the Ming Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty worship the "Emperor Di God" every summer solstice after Ming Shizong, that is, the place where the land god is sacrificed, and it is also the largest existing altar of ancient emperors in China.
Originally, the Ming Dynasty had already built the Temple of Heaven after the Ming Dynasty Ancestor Zhu Di moved the capital to Beijing in the eighteenth year of Yongle (1420), and it was enough to use it as a place for the emperor to worship the heavens and pray for blessings.
Moreover, for more than 150 years before the construction of the Temple of Earth, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty had been following the ritual of sacrificing heaven and earth together.
Since they are sacrificed together, it means that only one altar is enough, so why build another altar in the middle of the Ming Dynasty?
In fact, the emergence of the Temple of Earth is not so much a change in the liturgical system as a long-planned political event.
It turned out that Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty was a cousin of the previous emperor Emperor Mingwuzong Zhengde, because the Zhengde Emperor died suddenly and there was no prince, and his birth mother Empress Zhang and the first assistant of the cabinet, Yang Tinghe, decided that Zhu Houxi, the royal family of the near branch and cousin of Emperor Wuzong, would inherit the throne.
However, because the Jiajing Emperor was forcibly pulled over to become emperor, and the ministers at the imperial court also demanded that the Jiajing Emperor recognize his uncle as his father, that is, let the Jiajing Emperor inherit the throne in the way of "brother and brother" in the "Imperial Ming Ancestral Training" (the Ming Dynasty classics compiled by Zhu Yuanzhang), which made the Jiajing Emperor, who was originally very polite and assertive, very angry.
The Jiajing Emperor hoped that his birth mother would live with him in the imperial palace, and also wanted to posthumously appoint his own father, Zhu Youfu the Prince of Xingxian, as emperor to inherit the throne, and this idea was strongly opposed by the courtiers.
As a result, there was a three-and-a-half-year dispute between the Jiajing Emperor and the former ministers of emperor Mingwu, led by Yang Tinghe and Mao Cheng, over who to examine as emperor of Jiajing (that is, the father in the patriarchal sense) and the title of the father of the Jiajing Emperor, and this struggle was known in history as the "Great Ritual Discussion".
Finally, Zhang Xuan, a scholar of the Government of The Ming Dynasty, quoted the scriptures, used ancient books such as the Zhou Li to refute the views of the Qunchen, and put forward the theory of "succession", and in the end, this great political debate in the middle of the Ming Dynasty ended with the realization of the wishes of the Jiajing Emperor.
After this incident, the Jiajing Emperor tasted the sweetness of establishing his own prestige and consolidating centralized rule by changing the etiquette system.
Therefore, the Jiajing Emperor found an opportunity to show that the "heaven and earth joint sacrifice" in the sacrifice violated the ancient ritual system and needed to be separated from the meaning of sacrifice.
In the ninth year of Jiajing (1530 AD), the Jiajing Emperor restored the ritual system of "dividing heaven and earth" in the early days of Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, and built a special altar of Fang Ze, which was later repaired and eventually became the altar where the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties sacrificed the "Emperor Di Zhi Shen".
As a place for the royal sacrifice of the "Emperor and the God", the design of the Temple of Earth should not only reflect the majesty of the royal family, but also reflect the ultimate idea of "the unity of heaven and man", it can be said that the location, scale, design style of the temple of earth, and even where a brick, where a tile, all reflect the ancient yin and yang theory and the ancient people's reverence for nature.
As the main building of the Temple of Earth, Fang ZeTan is a place of grand royal sacrifice and ceremony, and there is a circle of water channels around the altar, symbolizing the idea of "Zezhong Zhongqiu" of classical Chinese geography.
At the same time, the ancients also believed that yin and yang were a pair of opposites that existed in all things in the world, and the temple of earth, as a place to worship the god of the land, was designed to concretize abstract problems, so as to achieve the unity of the form and function of the altar.
Therefore, there are three main theoretical bases for the design of the Temple of Earth:
First of all, "the altar is from north to south, from the position of yin and yang." The north side belongs to the yin, so the place of worship is on the northern outskirts of the capital, and the layout sits south to north, from north to south.
Secondly, "make a different square circle, to take the image of yin and yang", according to the "heavenly circle place", the general plane of the temple of earth and the plane of the altar of FangZe are square.
Third, according to the requirements of the Zhou Li, "the east is called green, the south is called red, the west is called white, the north is called black, the sky is called Xuan, and the earth is called yellow", yellow is used to symbolize the land, so Fang Zetan uses yellow glass components.
Not only that, the temple of earth also needs to express the concept of the earth and the concept of the territory, "the round place of the sky" and "the yellow of the earth" belong to the concept of the earth, and the concept of the territory is reflected in the upper layer of the Fangze altar paved with four squares and four corners, indicating "under the whole world, can not be the royal land, the coast of the land, can not be the king's subject." ”
When the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties sacrificed, in addition to placing the emperor's ancestral tablets on the upper level of the altar, the lower level also set up the four altars representing the famous mountains and rivers in the world, indicating the concept of unity centered on imperial power.
In addition to building a new earth temple, the Jiajing Emperor also built a sun altar and a moon altar dedicated to the sun and moon in the ninth year of Jiajing (1530).
This article is referenced from: "Memories of Old Beijing"