>>180189232Yeah
Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei, a devout Taoist who followed the Northern Celestial Masters, was fighting the Xiongnu rebel Gai Wu. During the campaign, weapons were located in Buddhist temples, and he therefore believed that Buddhists were against him. With encouragement from his also devoutly Taoist prime minister Cui Hao, Emperor Taiwu ordered Buddhism abolished under penalty of death, and slaughtered the Buddhists in the Guanzhong region, the center of Gai's rebellion.
In 574 and again in 577, Emperor Wu had Buddhist images destroyed and their clergy returned to lay life. He believed the temples had become too rich and powerful, so he confiscated their land and gave it to his own soldiers.
In 845, Taoist Emperor Wuzong of the Tang Dynasty initiated the "Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution" in an effort to appropriate war funds by stripping Buddhism of its financial wealth and to drive "foreign" influences from China. Wuzong forced all Buddhist clergy into lay life or into hiding and confiscated their property.
A report from the late 920s, on heretical Buddhist believers, comments that “sometimes Buddhist clergy and laity are ignorant and thoughtless. Men and women live together illicitly, forming themselves into groups, gathering at night and dispersing at dawn, speciously proclaiming and handing down a ‘Buddhist law society’ [fa-huai], clandestinely being loose in their morals.” An edict in 1035 offered a substantial reward, thirty strings of cash, to anyone who was able to seize such sectaries or who informed on them leading to their capture. The Huichang Persecution of Buddhism.
