Recent scholarship has made significant progress in examining the relationship between Buddhist monks and poetry in middle-period China. Jason Protass’s The Poetry Demon (2021) explores the tension between religious practice and literary creation among Song Dynasty (960–1279) Buddhist monks, while Thomas Mazanec’s Poet-Monks (2024) highlights their efforts to forge a new concept of Buddhist poetry that blurs the boundary between religious devotion and literary composition.
Building on this scholarship, this paper investigates an understudied aspect of Buddhist poetry: its imperial appropriation and transformation. Focusing on Emperor Taizong’s (r. 976–997) Mizang quan 秘藏詮 (Explanation of the Secret Treasure), completed in 988 and later incorporated into the Song Buddhist canon, I analyze how imperial engagement with Buddhist poetry shaped religious discourse at court. Preserved in the Korean Buddhist Canon, this twenty-juan text presents a fusion of styles—including Buddhist gāthā, fu 賦 (rhapsody), and gexing 歌行 (lyric poem)—resulting in a unique syncretic form.
The Mizang quan emerged within the broader context of the Song court’s Buddhist translation project, initiated in 982 with a particular focus on Esoteric Buddhist texts. While ostensibly engaging with these newly translated scriptures, Emperor Taizong’s verses reflect not their doctrinal content but rather their representation within courtly discourse. More significantly, in its final three juan, the text integrates Daoist and Confucian elements, asserting that Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism ultimately converge on the same "ultimate truth" (diyi yi 第一義, Skt. paramārtha-satya). This move strategically positions Buddhism as the highest authority among the Three Teachings (sanjiao 三教). Given Taizong's concurrent interest in and reliance on Daoism, his "Buddhist verses" underscores the emperor’s instrumental use of the Three Teachings.
Through a detailed examination of the Mizang quan and its influence on subsequent Song emperors, I argue that this text played a pivotal role in shaping the imperial discourse on the Three Teachings. Song rulers, acting as arbiters and harmonizers of these traditions, rearranged and reinterpreted their hierarchy to serve political ends, legitimizing their authority while advocating for a harmonious coexistence of the Three Teachings under imperial oversight.
This moment of poiesis—the reconfiguration of the Three Teachings in response to imperial needs—was first accomplished through a syncretic poetic style that merged Buddhist gāthā with Sinitic poetic and commentarial traditions. The Mizang quan thus exemplifies the complex cultural and religious dynamics at the Song court in the 980s, illustrating how poetry functioned as a medium for imperial religious discourse and ideological negotiation.
This paper investigates the poiesis of language in Song Emperor Taizong’s 宋太宗 (r. 976–997) poetic compositions—Mizang quan 祕藏詮 (Explanation of the Secret Treasure) and Xiaoyao yong 逍遥詠 (Chants of the Unfettered)—completed around 988 and preserved in the Korean Buddhist Canon. Blending Buddhist gāthā, Daoist chant, and Sinitic poetic and commentarial forms, these works exemplify a syncretic style that allowed the emperor to shape new religious meanings through poetic expression. The texts’ flexible form, interlinear commentary, and rhetorical ambiguity enabled the integration of Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian elements while advancing esoterism as a central theme. This paper argues that it was through the poiesis of language—the creative shaping of meaning via hybrid poetic form—that Taizong articulated his role as interpreter and harmonizer of the Three Teachings, utilizing poetry as a powerful medium of imperial ideology and religious synthesis.