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After declaring herself Emperor of China, Wu Zetian left inscriptions across the kingdom proclaiming her power and commemorating her ancestors. This carved stone, still protected by the fiercesome Shaolin monks, as it was in whose own day, is a poem praising her dead mother. The majority of the poem is actually rather melancholic is a very beautiful descriptions of the landscape around here. But then you find a couple of lines that really explain what it is that matters to Wu. “Truly, it falls to those of benevolent means to aid the Almighty to perfect the world.” Basically, what she’s saying is that Buddhism needs her as much as she needs it.

Shaolin Monks

Wu’s pragmatic devotion to Buddhism had an unexpected consequence, a kind of side-effect that would change the course of civilisation.

At the height of her power, a new technology was emerging in China. 700 years before the first Bible was printed in Europe, Wu realised the printed word could help her gain ever more religious and political influence.

Timothy Barrett from the University of London is an expert on Wu and early printing.

I’m right in thinking, aren’t I, that this is the oldest printed book in the world?

Professor Barrett “Yes, it’s certainly complete. It stated in 868, quite clearly at the end. This is the first real book where you can see the whole thing printed from end to end. This is a Buddhist text, as you can see from the Buddha being right up at the front there.”

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And why does she need to print things? How is it part of being a good Buddhist to sponsor printing?

Professor Barrett “If Buddhist scripture like this, a sutra, is taken as a word of the Buddha and in a sense, it is the Buddha himself. It’s part of him, so it has the power of the Buddha inhering in it.”

Wu Zetian’s sponsorship of printing ushered in the modern world and her support for Buddhism gave a solid base in the Far East, at a time when it was waning across the Indian sub-continent. She deserves to be a household name. How ironic that she’s been consistently written out of history. But Buddhism never forgot Wu Zetian. Every morning at 5 AM for the last 1300 years, monks of Famen Si monastery in central China have gathered for prayers and the opening words to their chants were written by Wu herself.

Master Wisdom is a Buddhist monk, scholar and historian. “Wu Zetian promoted Buddhism throughout the Empire and she basically ruled the country on the basis of the Buddhist law.

So the Tang Empire was a period of great harmony and peace.”

Wu Zetian was determined to change the face of the country that she ruled over 1300 years ago and, precisely because of that, after her death her name was slandered and her memory was damned.

But her legacy does survive. Thanks to her promotion both of Buddhism and of the written word, her influence is no writ large in an ever-burgeoning 21st-century China.