During the Northern Song Dynasty, with the development of the temple, the Buddhist music of Dasuoguo Temple reached its peak: on the one hand, the temple organized a huge professional band of national musical instruments; On the other hand, a professional "theater" Vimo Academy for playing Buddhist music and a "music shed" for ordinary tourists and pilgrims have been built in the temple. At the request of the royal family, the arrangement and collection of Buddhist music in temples has become a tradition. Today, Dasuoguo Temple still preserves a large number of relatively complete ancient music scores, which are widely represented in traditional music and become a typical representative of traditional Buddhist music in the whole Central Plains.

The activities of the royal family in Suoguo Temple in the Northern Song Dynasty were the most frequent and pious prayers. Prayer is prayer, and the reward is gratitude. First, there is purposeful prayer, and then there is the reward after it is realized.

Praying for rain in Guan Gong Temple was quite common in Tang Dynasty (106, 446 pages). As for the Five Dynasties, with Bianzhou rising to the capital, Suoguo Temple became one of the important places for the royal family to pray for rain and snow. On the first day of the first month of the second year of Tianfu, Jin Gaozu went to Suoguo Temple to pray for snow (1009 page). On the third day of May in the eighth year of Tianfu, Emperor Jin went to Suoguo Temple twice to pray for rain (1077, 1 165438).

Since the establishment of the Song Dynasty, praying for rain and sunshine in Suoguo Temple has become more and more frequent. According to the relevant information, I tabulated it in the table below to get a rough idea-the actual situation should be worse than this, which can be proved by a large number of prayers in the Song Dynasty. In particular, it is not uncommon to pray for sunny days more than once, because "rainstorm is the disaster of Mid-Autumn Festival" (page A of volume 76, 12). At the same time, the situation of Hui and Qin is also lacking in records. As for the way of praying, Su Song mentioned many times in his "Zhai Wen" that "the emperor sent officials to invite monks to open a Dojo in the main hall of a temple for seven days and nights" (Volume 27, 13, page a- 14, page b), indicating that it was still similar to the Tang Dynasty-making monks set up a prayer Dojo in the temple. Slightly different, Shi Jing monasteries generally require the emperor to pay tribute in person, and the ci minister plans to write a parallel prose to pray for fasting, but sometimes the emperor will send a trusted minister to pay tribute on his behalf.

It is said that in Suoguo Temple, praying for newspapers is the most pious activity of the royal family in the Northern Song Dynasty, because they often have no choice but to turn to the spiritual power of religion after being troubled by drought or rain and waterlogging. Therefore, in line with this, they often take measures such as withdrawing music, fasting, supervision and self-punishment. For example, in the second year of Stegosaurus, Taizu prayed for rain, and at the same time, "the imperial edict withdrew music and the official went to eat food" (page 2092). For six years, I prayed for rain and said, "If you have doubts, you will be judged." (page 186). During the three years of drought in Li Qing, Injong also "ate food in the palace, secretly prayed to heaven, and blamed himself" (p. 737). Therefore, after being accepted, they are always in heaven. Xian Ping's four-year prayer for rain has been answered, and he really lives in Lin Xuan. "The royal clothes are wet, and the left and right are covered, which is not royal" (page 735). After praying for rain in Li Qing for three years, Injong has gone to bed. "Suddenly, I heard a slight thunder, my crown was exposed, and soon my clothes were wet" (Volume 52, page 24 b). In addition to thanking the monks in the temple, they will also give meritorious service to the monks' temple officials, "feast the prime minister's near ministers" (volume 30, page 8 b) and "give money, silk and tea to the monks" (page 735). Even under the highly centralized imperial politics, disasters that affect the national economy and people's livelihood, such as droughts and floods, are still the sincere concern of rational kings. Of course, in the fulfilled prayer activities, they get not only metaphysical benefits, but also metaphysical benefits-their identity as the only thrill can be certified.

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