Development Of Confucianism, Buddhism And Taoism In Southern And Northern Dynasties

In Chinese history, the Southern and Northern Dynasties are a period in which the social orders and the ideology are reprogrammed. Influenced by the abruption and chaos caused by war, this period has its particular features. And the most outstanding one is that the dominators in that period took a tendency of multi-ideology in the process of managing the state affairs. By combining with the aboriginal religion and the necromancy, Taoism became the indigenous religion with extensive adherents, numerous juntas and cockamamie ceremonials. Buddhism turned into one of the main religions in the process of transmission and interpretation. Therefore, with the Confucianism, the Chinese ancient ideology and culture formed a new structure with the struggle and amalgamation between Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. For the Wei Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties taking the most intricate conflict between the ranks and peoples in Chinese history, the situation of the Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism also are different in diverse dynasties, races and regions.Owing to the Confucianism could theoretically provide a systemic framework for the state forms, social orders, power distribution between dominators, and even the national relations, and also have abundant experiences, the idea of Confucianism is more important than Buddhism and Taoism. Moreover, the flourish of metaphysics, Buddhism and Taoism could not replace Confucianism totally, but break the unitary situation and shape a new structure with Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.During the development, each government constantly discussed thedifferent social cultural functions of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. On one hand, they canonized Buddhism;on the other hand, most of them have tried to reconstruct Confucianism for the consideration of national political interest. Until Northern Zhou Dynasty, based on the former dominators' success and failure, Emperor Zhouwu claimed that Confucianism should be the primary one other than Buddhism and Taoism. And he announced that Confucianism should be in the first place, and then Taoism, the last is Buddhism. Centered on the historical data and Buddhist data, this thesis tries to describe the development of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism from Southern Dynasty to Northern Dynasty in six chapters. We discuss the development of ideology in Chapter One to Chapter Four, and then Chapter Five and Chapter Six expound the extinguishing of Buddhism by Emperor zhouw^ and make the conclusion from it.One thing needs to make clear is that the terms—Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism—in this research are not the ones with original meaning, but the ones which absorb the other school's ideas and form their own features as the history developing.