Wu Zetian, the Sutra That Cleared a Throne

By the late 680s Wu Zetian had already governed Tang China in practice for a generation, first easing an ailing husband's burdens and then ruling as regent for her own sons. What she had not done was claim the throne outright, a step no woman in Chinese history had taken and one that clashed openly with Confucian ideas about legitimate rule passing through a male imperial line. The obstacle was overcome, in part, through Buddhism rather than Confucian argument. In 690 a group of Buddhist monks presented a commentary on the Mahamegha Sutra, an existing scripture describing a goddess who receives a Buddhist teaching and a prophecy that she will be reborn as a ruler. The commentary, known as the Dayun Jing after the wider sutra collection it belonged to, was framed as showing that Wu Zetian was this figure's living fulfillment, a bodhisattva sovereign whose rule fulfilled scripture rather than defied custom. Copies were ordered distributed to a Dayun temple built in every prefecture of the empire, giving the claim an institutional presence reaching well beyond the court. Within months Wu Zetian deposed her son, declared the Zhou dynasty, and took the throne in her own name. Her patronage of Buddhism continued at a scale to match the claim, funding major works at the Longmen Grottoes near Luoyang, including a colossal Buddha figure some traditions link to her own likeness, and elevating Buddhist clergy at court. The dynasty she founded did not outlast her: forced to abdicate in 705 as she neared her death, she saw the Tang restored under the son she had once deposed, but the fifteen years of direct rule in between remain, in the plain historical record independent of the propaganda that helped secure them, unmatched by any other woman to hold the Chinese throne.