This study is the result of researching the political, social, cultural, and religious roles of Chen-Wei-Shuo(讖緯說) and its effectiveness to prove how the Chen-Wei-Shuo, a mystical idea, was accepted and consumed in Wei, Jin Kingdoms and Northern and S ...
This study is the result of researching the political, social, cultural, and religious roles of Chen-Wei-Shuo(讖緯說) and its effectiveness to prove how the Chen-Wei-Shuo, a mystical idea, was accepted and consumed in Wei, Jin Kingdoms and Northern and Southern Dynasties. The specific details are as follows; First, concerning the political effectiveness of Chen-Wei, I tried to identify how extraordinary phenomena of the Wei, Jin Kingdoms and Northern and Southern Dynasties had been interpreted by Chan-Wei by analyzing by ① Book of the Five Elements(「五行志」) from Continued Book of Han(續漢書). From the above research, I was able to prove the difference in the translation of the extraordinary phenomena between the Book of the Five Elements from the Book of Han and the Book of the Five Elements from the Continued Book of Han and to find how Sima Biao(司馬彪) and Liu Shao(劉昭) had seen Chen-Wei differently. Next, I studied how ② Sun-Wu(孫吳) Regime in the period of the Three States had used the mystical idea to secure its legitimacy in its founding process and collapse. The Sun-Wu Regime, which struggled the most to procure its authenticity among the three states, used the mystical idea for securing the authenticity of the regime. Second, this study also includes the social and cultural usefulness of Chen-Wei. I studied how Chen-Wei was related to the appearance and prevalence of Zhi-guai Stories (志怪書) in the Wei, Jin Kingdoms and Northern and Southern Dynasties. The role of the first Chen-Wei was to mystify the establishment of the Later Han. The Chen-Wei, therefore, was destined to have its authority destroyed seriously as the Later Han fell. However, the Book of Wei(緯書) continued to be produced in the Wei, Jin Kingdoms and Northern and Southern Dynasties. Freed from Confucianism after the Wei and Jin Kingdoms, the intellectuals of the Six Dynasties, who were aware of different fields of studies, ideas, and religions, had their own world of expanded recognition which could not be translated by the Confucian classics. At the moment the horizon of their recognition widened, the Book of Wei was used. The last study about the Chen-Wei was to prove that it was a religious idea that actively reflected the feelings and hopes of the common people and the ruled class. For that matter, I studied how the Great Bear(北斗) had been explained with which kind of divinity in the Book of Wei.