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Enactment of fundamental features in the imperial ancestral cult

Among the most expensive features of the government were the
imperial ancestral temples. Emperor Kao had ordered his vassal kings
each to establish a Temple of the Grand Emperor (his father) at
their capitals. The commanderies and kingdoms which Emperor Kao
(entitled the Eminent Founder), Emperor Hsiao-wen (entitled the Grand
Exemplar), and Emperor Hsiao-wu (entitled the Epochal Exemplar)
had visited, each established temples to those emperors, so that there
were 167 imperial ancestral temples in the commanderies and kingdoms.
In the capital commanderies, nine emperors (including the Grand
Emperor and the Deceased Imperial Father Tao, the father of Emperor
Hsüan) were worshipped. Each one had his funerary chamber (in which
food was offered four times a day), his temple (in which sacrifices were
made 25 times a year), and his side-hall (in which sacrifices were made
at each of the four seasons). There were also thirty other places of
worship for imperial personages, such as the Kao-tsu's mother, his eldest
brother and elder sister, the Empress Dowagers, the grandfather of
Emperor Hsüan, etc. The cost of the food used in this worship was

24,455 cash per year; 45,129 guards were employed in addition to 12,417
intercessors, butchers, and musicians, without counting those who
reared and cared for prospective sacrificial victims. Kung Yü memorialized
that anciently the Son of Heaven maintained only seven shrines:
those of the six immediately preceding ancestors and of the founder of
the house. The tablets of other remote ancestors were removed to the
temple of the founder of the house and worshipped along with his tablet.
Kung Yü also said that the imperial ancestral temples in the commanderies
and kingdoms were not in accordance with ancient ritual
practises. He proposed disestablishing them, discontinuing the separate
sacrifices to Emperors Hsiao-hui and Hsiao-ching at the imperial
capital, and combining these sacrifices with those to Emperor Kao.
Thus the Confucian exaltation of ancient practises meant a great simplification
and economy in Han times.

Emperor Yüan agreed with the suggestion, but Kung Yü died in 43
B.C., before the matter could be discussed and enacted. In 40 B.C.,
Emperor Yüan ordered a discussion by Wei Hsüan-ch'eng and sixty-nine
other eminent Confucians. They approved Kung Yü's suggestions, and
the changes were made. Thereafter only the five immediately preceding
generations of imperial ancestors were worshipped separately, except
that the separate worship of the Founder and the two Exemplars was
continued.

Such drastic abolition of almost two hundred ancestral shrines could
not but arouse doubt in an age when even Confucians were superstitious.
After the death of Wei Hsüan-ch'eng in 36 B.C., Emperor Yüan was
seriously ill and dreamed that his ancestors blamed him for having abolished
their temples in the commanderies and kingdoms. When his
younger brother dreamed the same thing, Emperor Yüan asked his
Confucian Lieutenant Chancellor, K'uang Heng, whether the temples
had not better be restored. K'uang Heng, true to the Confucian
exaltation of ancient practises, replied that they should not. But when
Emperor Yüan had been ill for a long time and did not recover, K'uang
Heng became afraid, took the blame upon himself, and prayed to the
emperors whose temples had been abolished. In 34 B.C., after Emperor
Yüan had been ill for successive years, the abolished temples were
restored. Immediately after Emperor Yüan's death in 33 B.C., K'uang
Heng, however, memorialized that these temples should be again abolished,
and it was done. The custom of worshipping only the five immediately
preceding ancestors began its popularity at this time. Thus

the Confucian veneration of ancient practises proved a great boon to
the people and government.