Read Aloud of Emperor Liangwu’s Military Coup
读 梁 武 帝 事
眼 见 台 城 作 劫 灰
一 声 荷 荷 可 怜 哉。
梵 王 岂 是 无 甘 露
不 为 君 王 致 蜜 来。
Du Liang Wu Di Shi
Yan jian tai cheng zuo jie hui
Yi sheng he he ke lian zai.
Fan wang qi shi wu gan lu
Bu wei jun wang zhi mi lai.
Read Aloud of Emperor Liangwu’s Military Coup
City people and their eyes were turned into dust
Alas, the emperor uttered one raspy sound before dying.
Why didn’t his support for the Buddhist luminaries bring to us their sweet dew?
Not once did they make a good things happen for our country.
Notes:
Emperor Liangwu (personal name: Xiaoyan) (464-549 AD) (r. 502-549): Founder of the Liang Dynasty (502-557 AD) during the Northern and Southern Dynasties period of Chinese history (386-589). He is famous for being emperor during one of the most stable and prosperous periods in this era. Liangwu established universities, the Confucian imperial exams, wrote poetry and was a patron of the arts. He also embraced Buddhism to the extent that he acquired the nickname “The Bodhisattva Emperor”. He suffered a military coup and then died shortly thereafter in 549.