The Hall of Prayer for the New Year is a scenic spot in Beijing, which was built in the Ming Dynasty. What role did the Temple of Heaven play in the Ming and Qing Dynasties?

The Temple of Heaven is the largest shrine in the world, and its total area is four times larger than the Forbidden City. Located in the southeast of the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven has its own architectural system and a central axis. The wall at the southern end is square, and the wall at the northern end is semicircular, symbolizing "a round place". This is China's ancient view of heaven and earth. The vault altar, the imperial vault and the Hall of Prayer for the New Year on the central axis are the core of the Temple of Heaven complex. The Hall of Prayer for the New Year is the most magnificent building in the Temple of Heaven. This is an rotunda with a gilded roof and three double eaves. The sapphire glazed tile roof symbolizes the sky. It adopts the structural form of upper courtyard and lower altar, and is built on a pedestal about 4 meters high; The altar is divided into three layers, surrounded by a white marble fence. The Hall of Prayer for the New Year is a temple where the emperor worships and burns incense when offering sacrifices to heaven, praying that the God of Heaven will give the world good weather. Its position is the highest, so it is extremely ingenious in construction and has become an immortal masterpiece in China's wooden buildings.

Before Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity and other religions came into being and were introduced into China, there was a long-standing religious belief, with two cores: one was the worship of God developed from the worship of nature; First, ancestor worship evolved from ghost worship. In primitive times, nature had a great influence on human life, so nature became the object of human worship very early. Among these objects of nature worship, the sun, rain, land and the main grain crop "millet" are most valued because they are directly related to people's survival. (1) Sun worship: Sun worship has always been valued by ancient people all over the world, and China is no exception. Decorative patterns of the sun can often be seen on pottery unearthed from ancient cultural sites such as Yangshao. From Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty, we can also know that people had a religious ceremony to greet the sun god. Since the Zhou Dynasty, a higher-level god, Heaven or Heaven Emperor, has been created, and the sun god has become one of the gods, so the worship of the sun god has declined. (2) Worship of rain: Among the ancient meteorological gods in China, the rain god was valued by our ancestors because it was related to various production activities such as gathering, hunting, farming and animal husbandry. In Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Shang Dynasty, there are many records of praying for rain, divining rain and offering sacrifices to rain gods, which can illustrate this fact. But like the worship of the sun god, in the Zhou Dynasty, the rain god retired to the position of sacrifice because of his belief in the Emperor of Heaven. (3) Land worship: In primitive times, the worship of the land god regarded it as a natural god. The land gods of Shang Dynasty were divided into four aspects: east, west, north and south. In this way, the land god has become an abstract god who rules a region. This regional worship of land gods was further graded in the Zhou Dynasty, when the emperor established a large society to worship the gods of the mainland. The vassal established a country and a society, offering sacrifices to the god of a country; Below the doctor, sacrifice to the land god. After the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, social sacrifices developed again, and all social classes had social sacrifices. The divinity of social gods became more socialized and became a god related to many social affairs. (4) Worship of the millet god: According to archaeological findings and existing historical data, it is speculated that the earliest dry land plant cultivated by ancient Chinese people is millet, so it may also be the earliest deified cereal plant by people in northern China. At that time, people's worship of millet god was not the natural worship of individual plant gods, but the worship of Hou Ji or Shennong, who was in charge of crop growth. In addition, at that time, people knew that the reason for the bumper harvest of crops was not only the crops themselves, but also the land. Therefore, the millet god and the country god are usually sacrificed together, collectively known as the country god. Because the quality of agricultural production determines the fate of the country, the god of society has become synonymous with state power. The early worship of nature believed that there was a higher god who dominated all things, and the highest god, God, had taken shape in the Shang Dynasty. However, the divinity of the gods in Shang Dynasty was not regarded as the central force that actively dominated the social destiny. After the Zhou Dynasty, God developed into the decider of the fate of the whole society, which resulted in the concept of destiny, which became an important basis for the thoughts of pre-Qin philosophers. Ghost worship and ancestor worship in China's early religious beliefs, another important religious belief coexisting with nature worship is ghost worship. At that time, people thought that the ghosts of their relatives or tribal leaders could best protect themselves, so the worship of ghosts and gods gradually evolved into ancestor worship. The early ancestor worship was mainly to commemorate the achievements of ancestors, or to strengthen the concept of common blood relationship and consolidate internal unity through ancestor worship. Subsequently, with the establishment of the family system, in addition to the common ancestor worship of tribes, ancestor worship of each family or several families also emerged, with the aim of maintaining the blood relationship of close relatives and distinguishing the closeness between people as the basis for property sharing. Ancestor worship can consolidate family unity, which is closely related to private property and social inheritance system. Therefore, ancestor worship has become the most common religious ceremony in China. The influence of religious belief of polytheism China has maintained the religious belief of polytheism for thousands of years, and its influence is far-reaching and enormous, among which there are two major ones: (1) Political guidance religion: the history of all nationalities in the world has generally experienced the stage of theocracy or the integration of politics and religion. Since China's own written records, it has shown the characteristics of politics guiding religion. The formation of this feature is related to the religious organizations that have never had monotheism in China. Monotheism did not appear because the worship of God stood with the worship of ancestors from the beginning and blended with each other. Ancestor worship is pluralistic in nature. (2) The religious sentiment is not strong: China has maintained the polytheistic religious belief for thousands of years, so that the complex emotions in China people can be resolved anytime and anywhere. At the same time, due to the existence of polytheism, all gods can get their due position in the religious life of China people, so their characteristics are weak religious feelings and rich religious tolerance, which leads to fewer religious conflicts than other ethnic groups.

Reference: Lin, editor-in-chief, Chapter 7 Religious Belief in China Cultural History (Senior High School) (Tainan: Nanyi Bookstore, 2006), p. 142- 146.

Sacrifice/index? File = Theme _ Content & This great building stands in Cheng Nan. It was founded in the 18th year of Yongle in Ming Dynasty (1420). When it was first built, it was called "Heaven and Earth Altar", that is to say, it was originally a place where the emperor sacrificed heaven and earth at the same time. It was not until the ninth year of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty (1530) that an altar dedicated to the gods of the afterlife was set up in the northern suburb of Beijing, and the "Heaven and Earth Altar" was renamed as the "Temple of Heaven", which became a holy place for emperors in the Ming and Qing Dynasties to fast and pray for a bumper harvest. The Temple of Heaven, as its name implies, is a place to worship heaven. What is the position of heaven in the eyes of China people? When and where did ancient China people hold the ceremony of offering sacrifices to heaven? In Confucian culture, "heaven" is a supreme existence. The right of the son of heaven on earth is given by heaven. In order to ensure that this power can last for a long time, an important duty of the emperor on earth is to sacrifice and worship the emperor's heaven every year in order to obtain the emperor's forgiveness and blessing. Moreover, China is an agricultural society, and the favorable weather in agricultural production is entirely an act of God. Only when emperors of past dynasties bow before God and repent of their actions in daily life can God lower the favor of the country and the people. This is also one of the main reasons why ancient emperors regarded offering sacrifices to heaven as so important. Since heaven has such supreme power, why did Zhu Yuanzhang, the great ancestor of the early Ming Dynasty, arrange the Temple of Heaven and the Ditan together, hold a ceremony to worship heaven and earth, and build a big temple for this purpose? This introduced another important concept of ancient China people. Although heaven has the supreme status as a god in western Christianity, or as a * * * in * * religion, China people always hold a dichotomy thinking, thinking that everything has its opposite side, and the harmonious coexistence of the two can reflect the essence of things, such as Yin and Yang, Gan Kun and Profit and Loss. Heaven and earth in natural or supernatural consciousness are also included in this kind of thinking. Therefore, people in ancient China adopted a respectful attitude towards heaven and earth. In addition to heaven and earth, mountains, rivers, moons, stars, winds, rain, thunder and lightning, ghosts and gods are all objects worshipped by ancient emperors, so there are altars for mountains, rivers, thunder and wind in many places.