Empire: World History - 182. The Lady Macbeth of China

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

Having garnered absolute power through bloody means, Empress Wu Zetian begins seeing apparitions, haunted by her violent schemes. With her husband incapacitated, the Empress at first held counsel on his behalf from behind a curtain. But she soon officially proclaimed herself a divine ruler. Working alongside a prominent Buddhist monk, she built temples and universities in China, creating a new holy land. Yet as the formidable leader enters her seventies, the guilt about how she got to this position begins to play on her conscience… Listen as Anita and William discuss how Empress Wu Zetian grew 7th century China into a Buddhist powerhouse.  survey.empirepoduk.com Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producers: Anouska Lewis and Evan Green Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand. And me, William Duremple. And we are doing our favourite thing, we're just talking about characters covered in blood from head to toe from history. It's funny how often we seem to circle round to these characters. They are interesting though, aren't they?

They are interesting. And Empress Wu Zetian is among the most interesting. So if you were listening to the last episode, you will know here is a woman of middle class origin who rises through the ranks, grade five concubine, first of all, rising up, that's not good enough because, you know, who wants to clean the emperor's smelly sheets forever?

And she catches the eye of the emperor's son before the emperor dies and then becomes his concubine. upgraded, grade two, under his watch. And then she challenges the power of the two most powerful women in the realm, that is the chief concubine who in turn hates the Empress. The Empress hates the chief concubine. She decides they both have to go, and she does it in the most blood-curdling way. She has their hands and feet cut off. She may have strangled her own child at birth and blamed it on the pair of them and their witchery. Poor Empress has her father dug up and desecrated and her family execute, and then she too meets a grisly, grisly end.

The chief concubine, I mean, I just love this fact so much, just screams her innocence right to the end and says, you know what, I'm going to come back as a cat in the many lives that we have, Uzetti-an, and you're going to be the mouse, and I'm going to slash your throat. It's a brilliant image, isn't it? Proper Lady Macbeth style. Instead of saying out-dam spot, she says, out-dam cats and bans cats from the palace completely just in case.

And then moves palace. This is an unequivocal historical fact that the court moves from Cheyenne to Loyang. Right. So to Loyang. And it's her guilt. It says a thousand years before Beth is written, we have an empress with blood on her hands who is seeing gory apparitions at night. Right. So she's haunted. So she can't live there anymore. And she is with the emperor, who you said was expressing some degree of quite impotent and useless sorrow. two favourite women are being dismembered and dunked into fats of wine. I mean, fat lot of use, your tears are, mate. But he then has a stroke, perhaps, from all the stress. And tell us more about the stroke.

What does it do to Wuzetian's husband, the emperor? So the emperor, Gao Zong, is this already, I mean, he's famously a rather weak character. He's not at all the kind of Superman that Tausong, his father, had been. And the suggestion in the sources is that he's under the foot of Wuzetian. And then mysteriously, he has this stroke. He complains of feeling dizzy and disoriented and retires to bed. And of course, who takes charge? It's Wu Zetian.

And she begins to attend public audiences initially from behind a curtain. There's this nice little quote from a court historian of the period. From this event onwards, whenever the emperor attended to business, the empress then hung a curtain and listened behind it. There was no matter of government, great or small, which she did not hear. The whole power of the empire passed into her hands. Reward and punishment, life and death, she decided. The emperor just folded his hands and that is all.

In the court and country, they were called the two sages. Wow, okay. But the one little tiny little tantalizing thing that we mentioned is that she is a Buddhist. And this is not a Buddhist country because her father-in-law, stroke, forever he was, whose sheets she was cleaning as a grade five. He was about to, we think, make China Buddhist, but he dies before he can. The weakling son doesn't do that. But for Wu Zetian to prevail, she needs her faith and her faithful to be behind her.

And she's got Dares and she's got those who follow, what do you call Confuci? I want to call them Confucian Eastern. What do you call people who follow? I think that's a very nice. Confucianisters. It's good, isn't it? I just thought of that. But she needs to deal with them.

And that is what we're going to be talking about a lot, is how she remolds China to her convenience. So this is where we go back to our old friend, Shwan Zhang. Now, those of you who have been our regular Empire listeners will remember the story of this extraordinary monk. He's one of the most famous figures in Chinese history. And in fact, we know more about this one man. we do about almost any other figure from the period, because not only did he write his own memoir

of his journey to India and to bring these tantric Buddhist texts back from the University Library of Nalanda, but he also was the subject of a surviving, very detailed contemporary biography, which is published about five years after his death. So we have his own account and his pupil's account, and we know all about him. And this guy, who's been working all his life for the promotion of Buddhism does not hesitate to ally with this new rising star. Yeah, but most importantly, we know that because he's Tripitaka in Monkey Magic. Can we not forget that in popular culture, this young monk has filtered into series that many of us listening to this will have grown up with.

So that's who we're talking about. So he is joyful that he has got somebody who understands him, understands what he's offering to humanity, you know, that Buddhism is the way to enlightenment. He supports her, he tells everybody that she, does he say, does he pronounce her divine or does she do that to herself? He doesn't actually pronounce a divine, but he does provide the text that later figures will use to declare the Empress a goddess. It's interesting. I mean, this guy who, you know, we regard as this very saintly Buddhist figure clearly must have had some indication that Wu was not innocence and...

She's a slightly murderous madwoman, yes. A murderous psycho. But he, certainly from the biography of his pupil, Huli, comes into the palace and takes the opportunity to promote Buddhism. And what you're finding now, this is a period of huge cultural richness and vitality in Chinese history. It's regarded as one of the great golden ages of China. There's huge amount of money because now there's a huge amount of money because now there's

enormous trade coming in and out, both maritime and overland. It's a very cosmopolitan world, both Cheyenne and Loyang are full of merchants, many particularly from Central Asia, the Sogdians, this is the age of the Sogdian traders, and you get a lot in Tang poetry about Sogdian dancing girls. Who are the Sogdhtyans? We need to understand who the Sogdians are. They are, let's use Game of Thrones as our palette again. It's a very Game of Thrones world, yeah. There are dragons. So are we talking about the merchants of Marine? Are we talking about the Iron Bank of Esau? So what are we talking about here? It's those two together. It's sort of a mixture of the two. The Sogdians are based in what's now Samakand and Tashkent, and they are the intermediaries moving stuff backwards and forwards between China and Persia,

and to some extent, India. The Sogdians are also largely Buddhist at this point, so the Empress Wu is very keen to invite them into court. You get at this point, the Empress Wu, starting her enormous cultural patronage. And this is another very important part of Wu's legacy. She's not just a person who seizes absolute power. She's someone who patronizes an extraordinary number of monasteries and temples. She donates to the famous Buddhist pilgrimage sound of Mout, Wu Tai and Chansi, several monasteries, esoteric images. 150 huge monasteries, my friend. That's nothing to be sneezed at. Nothing to be sneezed at. And what she also does, there is a series of Buddhist caves just outside the capital at a place called Long Men. And she not only gives huge amounts of money for these to be excavated, for Buddhist temples to be fill the mountain side. There is this image of the supreme Lord, Varukana Buddha, who was unknown in China until Shwan Zhang brings back this incarnation of the Buddha from Nalanda and puts him center stage. And there's this. this image at the centre of long men of this enormous face of Varacana Buddha.

And art historians have long noticed that it has rather feminine features. And there's a theory that this is the face of the Empress Wu. She has herself sculpted as the all-powerful Buddha in this cave complex. Now, again, it's important to remember that this is not just a spiritual imperative to have these monasteries, these huge monasteries set up. Because as we learned last time we spoke of this, William, monasteries were great, centers of commerce. They were money lenders. They sold goods. They sold wares. They were trading centers. So if you create these little hubs that are going to be richer than creases at the

end of the day because they have monopolies on what comes in and what goes out, they export their Buddhism on the back of truckloads of precious metals and goods that are sought after elsewhere. What she's building up is a nice little power base, which has a cash flow. Exactly that. And she's spending a lot of the money. In Longman, she excavates 380 vast, larger than life-size images around these cave temples. At the same time, she's pouring money into Shwan Zang's translation project. And he now has an enormous sort of university full of copyists, scribes, translators. And they're going through this enormous pile of manuscripts that Shwan Zang has brought back. from India. And in 10 years in her reign, between 660 and 670, Suanzang and his enormous team translate no fewer than 670 scrolls from Nalanda, often very complex stuff, including the most famous of all, the great perfection of wisdom sutra, which is one of the sort of classic texts of Mahayana Buddhism.

While the monk is busy and the monk is happy, translating all of his wisdom, because he's doing it from a religious perspective. He wants people to have this knowledge that he travelled from one corner, as far as he's concerned of the earth to the other, to go and collect it from India and bring it back. What's the emperor doing? Because he's had a stroke. Is he just in bed the whole time while she's doing all these things?

At this point, he's fading away. And again, of course, there is gossip going around that she's putting something in his tea or spiking his food because he's becoming less and less coherent. He's spending longer and longer in bed. And she's taking over. So is it at that point that she decides that she needs a title to match the power that she's, or the flexing? So does she give herself the name Heavenly Empress? She, I think, is given it allegedly by him, but now, you know, people are seeing less and less of him around.

So she's upgrading herself and Suan Zang is thrilled by this, but he now is very old. And we have this lovely description of the last days of Shwan Zang, triumphant. He's gone to. India, he's brought back all this stuff. Most of it is now translated. The Empress has enlarged and refurbished the library, which is built for his translations, which is still there in Cheyenne today, the wild goose pagoda, which rises up with this fantastic pagoda, the towers still over Cheyenne. And in his 70s, Shwan Zhang has a fall. He trips over a drainage ditch, I think going to the loo in the night, like an old man. He has this final period and he lays down his calligraphy brush. Determined while he still could, he writes, to practice meditation, to clarify my mind and still its waves, and this is a sentence I really love, to control the untamed ape of my emotions and restrain the charging

elephant of my will. Lovely. It's beautiful, wasn't it? So he has in his life, translated 1,300 Buddhist scrolls. He puts down his brush. He makes a last sermon, exhorting his followers, and this is important for what's going to come, to pray to the bodhisattva matria, particularly the bodhisattva matria, and to submit to his protection. And he makes a final confession. He vows to be reborn in Tussetre heaven, and then he gives away all his robes and all his possessions. He dies soon. After midnight, on the 5th of September 664, and his disciples report seeing four fiery auroras shooting across the stars at the moment of his death. Knowing that the greatest proponent of Buddhism has faded and disappeared, the Empress decides

to make a very political decision, which is to put Buddhism, the religion that he embodied, and an equal footing with the Taoist, now that is quite something. It's never happened before in Chinese history. This is completely new. It's revolutionary. And of course, there's huge grumblings in the palace. Well, yeah, how dare you? This is just a new thing. What is this new fad that you're suddenly putting on an equal footing with us? The Empress needs to consolidate her position. She's aware how vulnerable she is, how many enemies she's making. And rather like sort of Boris Johnson bringing in Dominic Cummings and someone from completely outside the establishment, the empress gathers around her, a kind of loyal think tag, or even a kind of shadow cabinet. who are known as the scholars of the Northern Gate. And these guys are given an area of the palace

and they basically plot how she can seize complete power of China. She's already got almost everything she wants. The emperor is nearly dead. She is in effective control, but she's ambitious for more than that. She wants total power. And it's these scholars who plot the path that we'll be seeing in the years to come. How does her family figure in this? Because, you know, the rumours are that she killed a newborn to get rid of her rivals in the court. She has sons, though. There are other children, aren't there? There are six children in all, I think, that she has. She is, according to these very biased sources, and again, we don't know how much is true, that she is using her family very ruthlessly. She has a very ambitious mother, who is of aristocratic birth. She is around,

but then I think the two fall out and the mother dies apparently of poison. at an imperial feast. And again, the charges against her is that she's murdered not only her ministers and the former concubine, but also her mother, because she's stepped out of line and isn't doing what she's told. And what we see over the years to come is the Empress Wu picking between her different sons for those most pliant. And the first crown prince is packed off to exile because he shows too much will of his own.

And she ends up with one who seems to be some sort of deaf-mute. who's basically unable to speak. Speech impediment is what I had heard about him before, but you think it was even more than that. Yeah, he can barely communicate. And he's the one that's eventually elevated as he's considered to be no threat to his mother. What happens next is that the emperor finally dies.

And Wu initially rules through this in the name as the regent of this puppet. This poor child who can't communicate and has some serious learning, what we'd call today, learning difficulties. And this is the puppet that's put. but he's not even given a formal coronation. Wu is ruling in his stead. And all the time now, she is gathering a bunch of very bright monks

who are part of Shwan Zhang's elite, who are coming in from India, from Nalanda, who are ambitious, courtly, and Buddhist. And she's finding a way to have a coup d'etat, which will put her completely in control. But just let me read. this is my favorite quote from the whole period. The Confucian establishment is now absolutely hopping mad.

They know that they've got, in their eyes, a psychopath on the throne, who's undoing centuries of work, who's breaking every established rule. And this is what one of them writes in 6-8-4. Again, we should say straight up, we don't know how accurate this is, but it gives certainly a view of how unpopular she is with the old guard. This woman, Wu, who had falsely usurped the throne, is by nature obdurate and unyielding, by origin truly obscure. Formerly, she served the Emperor Taizong with her body,

then made use of an occasion when Gao Zong, the Crown Prince, was changing his clothes to commit fornication with him. Later, she brought disturbance to the parish, and concealing her intimacy with the late emperor, secretly contrived to become the favourite of the sovereign. She plotted the ruin of the original Empress, the Lady Wang, and entrapped our emperor into incest. She slew her own sister, murdered her brother,

assassinated her lord, and poisoned her own mother. Her heart is like a serpent, her nature like a wolf. Gods and men have cast her out. Heaven and earth have no room for her. She has harboured in her evil heart thoughts aiming at the mastery of the state. She has imprisoned the beloved son of our emperor in a side passage and raised up her own thieving kin to places of honour and authority. The earth on the emperor's grave is not yet dry.

But where is his full-grown adult son? When you look at the world today, which family possesses the empire? God, that is brutal. It's quite something, isn't it? That is a brutal thing. She's a terrific. I'm longing to see the Chinese soap opera about this. Yeah, no, we should definitely watch that.

Okay, so the Confucians, or the Confucian Easter, as I prefer to call them, they are not happy. So they're putting up poison pen letters about her. But that can't be all that they're doing because they're going to have to fight. They do have to fight. And there is now a full-blown rebellion in the 680s. And there is a revolt that begins in the South.

But amazingly, the Empress manages to crush it in less than three months. He successfully mobilizes 300,000 troops, which is an unprecedented army at this period of history. And the rebel leaders are not just defeated, they're captured, publicly tortured and executed. So all the resistance is wiped out. And this is the point at which she also gathers all the tongue princes and executes them. So all potential rivals. What is it some sort of great?

I mean, I just want to envisage this. I want to picture it. So she just brings them all in as what, honoured guests. No, her secret police go out at night and bring them. And just lift them in the night. Yeah, it's a godfather scene. and she wipes out the tongue. Wow, right.

Other than those of her own children that she thinks will do her will. Well, I mean, she's crushed the rebellion. She's got rid of the tangs, but she needs to cement her position among the doubters because, you know, you're still going to have the people who, you know, who didn't like her to begin with, who don't like her newfangled religion, who see that, you know, the brave men rebelled against her and were crushed. These things are like whack-a-mole. You get rid of one and five other people. can spring up in their place. So she has to do something to be bigger than any challenge.

And this is where her divinity story comes in, isn't it? Eddie, you're absolutely right. She has been working with this group of scholars, the scholars of the Northern Gate. Many of who are, not their names by the way. It's so great. Scholars of the Northern Gate. This is kind of this little thing. And it's full of Indians. It's full of Indian Buddhists. And this, again, is a sort of extraordinary period of history that we just don't know. is effectively an Indian Buddhist coup d'ata in the heart of Confucian China in this period. And it's an extraordinary moment in Chinese history. And 10 Indian Buddhist monks arrive at the palace in the

680s with exactly the text that the empress had hoped for. And it's actually an old Buddhist text that's been known for a while called the Great Cloud Sutra. But it's come in a new commentary and interpretation. And according to the commentary, the sutra clearly identifies the empress as the divine August one and no lesser figure than Zhuang Sang's preferred spiritual guide, the bodhisattva matria. Well, there we are. That's a rubber stamp that you're looking for, isn't it? And the idea is that, you know, she may be a woman, she may be a Buddhist, but you can't argue with her because she is the divinely prophesied saviour who's come. to save the world. And this is really, you know, her top trumps. There's nothing that they can do

after this. And it's a very, very clever move. She manages to have herself proclaimed the empress. There's this lovely moment when she puts out that she wants people to report celestial signs and wonders to mark this extraordinary occasion. So everyone, you know, turns up at the palace saying, oh, I saw, you've no idea what I saw yesterday. And people from all over the empire, begin to compete with each other to inform her of these auspicious omens. So the Empress staff are busy jotting down reports from all these people that are walking in talking about auspicious divine rocks, strange white magpies, three-legged fowls, chickens that mysteriously change sex into cockrels, a phoenix is seen perching on the roof of

the palace, a red crow with vermilion feathers on a cinnabre body, which is a kind of symbol of prosperity, is seen flying through the hall of audience. Someone else trumps that with a whole flock of red birds, reportedly flying through the hall. And any officials who call out such omens as frauds or outright forgeries are quickly demoted and sent off to the provinces. It's a court. Well, it's mass hysteria. But this is great. This is mass hysteria, because if you come to the court and you say, you know what I saw? I saw a flock of phoenixes. And it's very good. That's funny because I just seen a flock of magpies.

It's fantastic. So just sign here, and here's a little bit of gold for your trouble, and we'll see you soon. And then, of course, that begets more and more hysteria about it. And the story spread. Word of mouth is so very powerful. These stories are so compelling. So the monks have found this prophecy in this old Buddhist text, which describes a goddess, a Davy named Vimala Prabha, or the heavenly lady, pure and radiant.

And this is someone who's been around in Buddhist scriptures for a while now. She's one of the Buddha's female disciples who's kept her female identity. But in actual fact, if you look at the text of the prophecy, none of it actually works because it says she's going to appear 700 years after the death of the Buddha. This isn't right. It says that she's going to appear in South India. And this is clearly not right. As we know, the Empress was born in Sichuan.

But none of this is allowed to matter. The text is edited, copied and sent out across the nation, and the bit that's important is this line in the sutra. The prophecy of the Devi is that she should rule over the land in the body of a woman. I will send the Devi with rods of gold to punish any arrogant and recalcitrant men that refuse her. She will obtain one quarter of the realm of the chakravartin. the all-conquering emperor. Harvests will be bountiful, joy without limit, the people will flourish, secure from desolation and illness of worry, fear and disaster. And one thing that should be said is that

for all this murder, for all this forced hysteria, for all the assassinations, China's doing very well at this time. This is a period of unique economic prosperity. The armies are conquering the Tibetans and the Turks, the boundaries of China are expanding. And one thing that really rattles the Confucians is that this is looking a bit like a golden age. Yeah, and so they all lived happily ever after. Or did they? Join us after the break to find out how this auspicious and full of signs and symbols start carries on. Listen, welcome back.

Just before the break, people were coming with their miracles to the court, which just tickles me senseless, to be honest. And she seems to have commerce, the economy, a golden age seems to be coinciding with her reign. I mean, some of it she has a lot to do with because she's allowing merchants in and Buddhist monasteries and centres of commerce to develop around China that weren't there before. Others, she's just damn lucky. She's come up on an uptick, you know, as they would say, in political economic terms. I'm a little bit worried about her disabled son, though, because he is now, you know, he was a puppet. But if you do want ultimate power, you want to sit on the chair, don't you?

And she's put her son on the chair and her kids don't fare very well if they get in the way. What happens to? That's exactly right. So in 6.95, there is this moment when she finally breaks away with the illusion that she's ruling as regent to her son. The son is bundled off to the provinces along with all the previous chief ministers who've survived the purges. And she is declared the first and only female emperor in Chinese history. There's been no other sense. There have been dowager empresses, there have been all sorts of powerful women.

People have been mothers or wives, sure. But she is the only emperor who's a woman in Chinese history. But does she give a reason? Because she's God. She just says, because I am God. And all these miracles say I should take the throne. Hop it, son. She does two things.

695, there's this big moment. And she declares a new dynasty, her own dynasty, the Zhao, who are now in charge, she says. and she builds a heavenly city outside Loyang. And it's an extraordinary moment. This is one of the great building projects of Chinese history. At the centre is something called a Ming Tang, which is a Taoist idea originally. It's not a Buddhist idea.

A vast bright hall of illumination intended as an architectural symbol of virtuous government. There are sacred towers. There's a university building. There's an enormous observatory with planetariums that circle. round powered by water. There's a what they call a firmament piercing tower called a Tian Tang or Hall of Heaven, which is the tallest man-made structure in the world, a five-story octagonal wooden pagoda containing a lacquer statue of the Matria Buddha 880 feet high, with a head alone measuring 100 feet. So it's a kind of huge, it's like Augustus's Rome being built, but with all

these Buddhist and Taoist references focusing on the fact that this is not a usurper, this is not a woman from obscure origins who's used her sexuality and ruthlessness to seize the power. Instead, the narrative being put out is that this is the goddess. Goddess made flesh. The goddess made flesh who's somehow a female incarnation of matria and who is ruling over a golden age and that everyone should be enormously grateful. And I started her own new dynasty, Although, you know, who comes next, man? She's been really mean to her kids for the zoo dynasty.

Her new, brand new dynasty is going to, I mean, every time anyone starts a dynasty, they assume it's going to rule for a thousand years. But the way she treats her family, hmm. Yeah, well, they're not dead. They are exiled. They're put out to grasp, but we will hear more of them in the episodes to come. But what happens now is that this is the moment that all these Indians basically take control of China. And you get this extraordinary bunch of Indian Buddhist monks, most of them

trained at Nalanda or connected to that clique, who take charge of her court and keep coming up with new omens and with new prophecies that cement her in power. But it's also a period of great Buddhist scholarship. And she builds around her. She's still got this amazing translation mission going, although Shwan Zhang himself is dead, many other scholars have come in, and one of them is this extraordinary character, Yi Jing, who's her kind of replacement for Shwan Zang. He's also been to Nalanda, he's gone all the way, in his time, Varsie, stopping off on the island of Sumatra, which is now itself a major centre of Buddhist learning. And like Shwan Zang before him, he brings back images, relics, and texts from China. And when he appears back, as Shwan Zhang had before him,

The Empress Wu personally goes out the gates of Lung Yang to meet him. And he produces even more prophecies that he say shows that she is a goddess. So, Yijing is kind of a boomerang Buddhist like Shantang before him. You know, he goes from China to India comes back. Correct. But I wonder, William, if the influx of these powerful Indian Buddhists to China, who are only too happy to come and serve this new Empress goddess, is because Hinduism is being revived in India itself.

and Buddhism, although it's growing in China, is declining in India. That's absolutely right. And this is why all these Indian Buddhist monks are taking this opportunity. Because what's happening in India at the same time is this extraordinary moment of the growth of devotional Hinduism. This has been going on for two or three hundred years. It started with the Gupta dynasty in the fourth and fifth centuries. We've now got harsha ruling North India. We've got the Palava dynasty who will be talking about in future episodes. emerging in Tamil Nad, in the south, extraordinary dynasty full of amazing kings who compose plays and poets and esthetes. But Buddhism, which had been certainly the most powerful political force in India since the reign of Ashoka, is now getting smaller and smaller and diminishing.

And the focus is now moving to partly Tibet, partly Central Asia, but mainly China. So this is a very, very important thing because it's not bringing two countries together, if anything, you know, so India will be appalled by the spread of Buddhism and China and see it, you know, other it even more if it's declining in their own country. It's not that simple because remember that Hinduism and Buddhism have a lot in common. They come out of a similar culture. It's simply not the case that Buddhism and Hinduism are irreconcilable. There are moments when they're in competition and there are moments when they're in conflict. bring the countries together. I mean, it's not one of these sort of lingua franques where you'll say, all these Indian scholars who are coming over and are in China and running the show pretty much

for the Empress. It does not mean that there are good or tight diplomatic ties between these two countries. It absolutely is not that India has got her back. But what is the case is that you've got a lot of Buddhist monks who feel slightly that their back is against the wall. There are still very pro-Buddhist monarchs ruling in the Pala dynasty, in Bengal, ERISA, and Eastern India. There are some very pro-Buddhist monarchs ruling in Kashmir, but in general, there's a strong awareness that Buddhism is in heavy decline in India. And China is the new Buddhist holy land. And what you find is new Buddhist shrines, like Mount Wutai, which is the home of the Bodhisattva matri, are growing. These are major centres of pilgrimage.

And you start getting what you'd never had before, which is Indian Buddhist monks coming on pilgrimage to China. Previously, we'd seen Suanzan coming from China to the Buddhist holy sites in Gaia and Nalanda. But now that's reversed. And these Buddhist monks are taking the opportunity of the rise of Wu Zetian to turn China into a Buddhist holy land. So with all of these Indians who are now making that trip from India to the New Holy Land, which is in China, do you have an influx of Indian art, Sanskrit, the kind of poetry that has come from India? Do you see that mingling or taking over from Chinese traditional art? Very much so. And what's interesting is there are many different types of Indian influence from different areas of India. So in some Chinese Buddhist art, we see the influence of earlier God. sculpture, which had been flourishing in northern India a century of two earlier. These images are brought to China and copied. We see influence from South India. Now, there's this whole world

of South Indian Buddhist art that scholars are really only waking up to now with new archaeological discoveries. Recently, there have been a lot of articles published spotting South Indian influence in the murals of major Buddhist sites in China, like Dunhuan. Do you describe what that might look like those tamales. Well, these very long, elegant Buddhist murals in some of the caves in Dunhung on the edge of the Gobi Desert have been shown to be modelled on Palava originals from South India. Holy books, metal statuettes, bronzes, sculptures, the images in the long men cave that these 380 larger than life-sized figures that the Empress is carving. This is all based on different sorts of Indian art.

But also chairs. Hello, chairs. I was really tickled to read that in your book that, you know, before Chinese monks would sit on mats. But after the Indians come in, because, you know, their knees, they bring with them the culture of sitting on low chairs, which then becomes a Chinese thing. As well as all the art, as well as all these ambitious monks producing their, you know, their religious prophecies and translating sutras, you get straightforward Indian

science arriving in China at this point. And Wu appoints as her senior astrologer royal in the court, a man with the very auspicious name of Gautama Siddhartha, the name of the Buddha. Yeah. And he's appointed to the supervisor of the Bureau of Astronomy in 665. So you've got an Indian astronomer elevated to interpret astral omens and other phenomena for the emperor. What you've got to remember is that there's no distinction at this point anywhere in the world between astronomy and astrology. We regard them as two totally different sciences. There is astronomy, which is legit, which involves science, and then there's astrology, which, you know, is the daily male horoscope. At this time, the science of Jotisa,

as it's known in Sanskrit, is something which combines the two. And the point of astronomy is to be able to interpret the future using astrology. So Gatama is there. to predict eclipses, to find auspicious days, and to bring the whole brilliance of the sort of astronomy that have been developed in India under the Guptas to China. The other crucial thing that's happening at this point is that the centre of Buddhist learning that Wu is patronising in Loyang, the great wild goose pagoda full of these scrolls brought from Nalanda and translated into Chinese, this becomes a centre of study for monks from Japan and Korea. And this is the moment that Buddhism is now arriving in its full Mahayana form in Japan and Korea.

And these monks are often not going to Nalanda, instead they're coming to Loyang to Wu Zetian's court, which is itself now a new centre of Buddhist patron. learning. So just like Shwan Zhang had to go all the way to Nalanda to learn about the scriptures he couldn't get in China. So monks like Ennin from Japan and other pilgrims and scholars from Korea are gathering in Wu Zetian's capital. So you're getting this enormous centre of learning in China itself. Just like you've got now pilgrimates sites which are in China and no one's bothering to go to Gaia and the Buddhist holy sites where the Buddha lived. Equally, no one needs to go. as far as Nalanda, because the same texts are available in Loyang and also even in Sumatra,

in the islands of Indonesia. So one would think that, you know, she's had her cloud scripture proclaim her a goddess. She has all power. She's got her imported Indians who are doing all the work for her, which is growing the religion that she needs for stability. Is she happy? I mean, is she secure? And how long may she reign?

Well, as you have guessed, it's all reaching a moment of. climax after which there's a steep decline. The first sign of this decline in her power and things going wrong is in the year 6-9-6. The year after the completion of this new heavenly city with the Ming-Tang complex on the outskirts of Loyang, this enormous sort of scriptural city that she's built with all these extraordinary buildings, a fire breaks out in the five-story Matria Tower, and it quickly spreads engulfing the entire bright hall complex and lighting up the capital as brightly as if it were day. And the following morning, the capital wakes to find that the entire complex

built of lacquer and wood has been burnt in a single night. Is this Confucian arson or is this just an Indian incense that's gone wild? Well, you can guess there's a lot of gossip about this. And certainly the Confucian gossips that have commented so negatively on the rule of the Empress Wu, point the culprit at her alleged lover, who is a monk called Hui Yi. Wait a minute. She's got an alleged monk lover.

She's got a monk lover. Again, this is gossip. You're springing this on us. Right, okay. The chief architect who built this heavenly city is believed by the Confucian establishment to be her lover. They have some sort of tiff. And again, according to the gossips, because she has taken another lover,

who's the imperial physician called Shennanqui. So poor Master Hui, the architect of this extraordinary complex, takes revenge by burning down the city that he's built as a protest. But I mean, we're talking about a woman in her 70s, so actually, may I stick up for her and say this is probably Confucius propaganda? Because, I mean, who's got the time? I don't know. You know, for one lover after another in your 70s.

I don't know. I mean, we just don't know. There is this huge library of allegations against her by the Confucian establishment. She's a slut. She's taking lovers. I actually hope it's true. I hope it in her 70s she was having lover after lover. Good on you. Good on you. Yeah. But anyway, again, according to the gossip, and this I think is probably true, Huay is blamed for burning down the heavenly city she's built. And the palace women, Harim Gar. Gar. who are these big burly women, capture the monk, tie him to a tree, beat him and strangle him. And then he's sent back to his monastery, the White Horse Monastery,

on a common farmer's cart. His corpse is dispatched. This is the beginning of the end. She's now 17. She's showing her rage. In 699, she goes on a pilgrimage and she has a fall. The next year, she spends as much

as she's spent on the entire heavenly city, she commissions a Taoist doctor to make her a longevity elixia that's said to take three years to prepare and cost almost as much as the Ming Tang, the heavenly city. Wow. And she claims to feel restored, but nevertheless, she's clearly spending longer and longer in her mountain retreat up in the mountains of Shanxi, where she came from. Can I just say this Taoist snake oil salesman is a lot of? laughing his head off somewhere. That's extraordinary. I wonder what he put in it. There's mercury and all sorts of things which clearly would not actually be good for her.

And the administrations at this point is in the hands of her latest favourites who are two much-hated playboys called the Brother Zhang. And they're celebrated for their musical talents, their exquisite robes and their lavish use of makeup. So these two brothers are running the government. She's off in the mountains getting old and things are going wrong. What's wonderful is a few years ago, a farmer was wandering around the mountains and he saw something sparkling in the rocks of the mountain. He goes up and he finds a gold tablet, 14 inches long, hidden in a crevice at the top of the mountain on the top of Mount Song. What it is is it is a document of the Empress's sins that she's written out. in gold and told this longevity snake oil salesman, who she now is clearly looking to for

help. For everything, yeah. To take up to the gods on Mount Song. Oh, God, it's a confession. What does she confess to? And it's just been discovered recently. So what does she confess to? What are the conditions? All her murderous deeds, all the things she's done wrong. She killed everybody. She did do those things. And these things are all named in this tablet, which went on an exhibition in the States, quite recently, in an exhibition in the Met. That's amazing. And it records her prayers to the three ministers and nine treasures of nature. Having been this great champion of Buddhism, as she sees things slipping,

she's trying everything else. She goes back to the doubt of anyone, anyone and anything. And there are other attempts to expiate her sins in her 70s. She has another giant Buddha carved outside Luoyang on the slopes above the White Horse Monastery where the beaten Hewinn is interred. She has the Wild Goose Pagoda, again magnificently repaired and enlarged. She raised one last extraordinary monument, which is the Kibow Tower of the seven jewels, full of esoteric Buddhist scriptures, commissioned in this new sort of ultra-realistic style that she's developed for her artworks. But she's old and she knows it.

So in 699, she gathers all her children from exile. And they still talking to her? And, well, I mean, they haven't got much choice, I think, but to obey her. Right. Okay. And they get her to swear a solemn oath. to live in harmony after she dies. And two years later, she gathers them again

and makes them swear to respect the succession or other the restoration of the deposed crown prince. Remember the guy who'd initially ruled? Oh, the one she sent off first. And he's still alive, Prince Li Shian. And he's Xuanzang's godson. Kwan Zhang had given him his name and he's been living in the far distant provinces,

allowed to get on with his life, and he's summoned back. and after more than a decade of estrangement, there's this extraordinary meeting of mother and son on a wintry day on the road between Chang'an and Loyang. And it's a thick snowstorm. And Li Shan sinks to the ground and touches his mother's feet and is brought back to the palace and put effectively in charge of the administration. He moves very quickly. He sees the weakness in his mother. He's not going to let himself be exiled again. So in 705, when Wu is laid low with a spell of illness, there's a midnight coup. The empress awakes at night to find a huge crowd standing in torchlight outside her bedroom. And among them are her elite Ulin palace guards. And she goes out, this amazing old woman, still age 75 now.

goes out to berate them in her bedclothes, disheveled and enraged. And there at the centre of the courtyard, she sees in horror, the beheaded bodies of her two favourites, the Zhang brothers, still in their robes and makeup. Who is making this disturbance, she says in fury? And the plotters meekly answer that the Zhang brothers have been plotting rebellion so they'd executed them before they could act. And then the Empress seized the crown prince,

nervously from foot to foot at the back of the crowd. God, he did it. He did it. And she says, so you are here too. She says, well, the two boys have now been killed. You can all go back to where you come from. And she dismisses the rebels. And they're all, you know, they're so frightened of her still. She still has this extraordinary charisma, even in her bedclothes, even at 75. And she turns and goes to bed. But the following morning, the bubble has been popped. She realizes that it's all over. and she's effectively deposed. For the remaining months of her life, she becomes a sort of specter on the political scene.

And she died shortly afterwards on the 16th of December in the seclusion of her favourite Shangyang Palace, 67 years after she first arrived in the palace as a fifth-ranking concubine. And she's now 81. And she's held the reins of power, the only woman emperor in all 3,000 years of Chinese dynastic, history. She's held the reins of power for half a century. It is such an extraordinary story. What

an amazing story this is. I actually love her. I mean, she's awful mother. Do you like other aspects of her I like very much? I'd prefer you to her as a co-host of a podcast. I don't think I'd last very long. She wouldn't put up with any of your nonsense. Let me tell you. You'd be stuffed and mounted in those boxes like those animals behind you. My goodness. I've got some horrible stuff Williams broadcasting from not his own home, that's all what it looks like, but from what seems to be a, well, a mortuary for Noah's Ark, all sorts of animals stuffed and mounted behind you. This is in the highlands of Scotland where such things are very much de rigour. Yeah, yeah.

Look, where are we going next with this wonderful tour of the Golden Road? So what we're going to deal with next is we're going to South India, to the Palava dynasty, who are contemporaries of the Empress Wuzetti, at the same time as she's doing all this, an extraordinary figure who will be dealing in the next episode with Mahendra Vaman Palava. His ships are going to be sailing out to conquer Sri Lanka, and the learning of the Palova court

is going to flow over the waters across the Bay of Bengal, and it is at Angkorwat, the largest Hindu temple of the world, that we see this process reach its culmination. Can't wait. Until the next time, we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Duremberg.