The Stele Pavilion of Divine Merits and Sacred Virtues, an annex to every tomb, literally means a stele that records an emperor’s merits and virtues during his life. However, this stele in Dingling Tomb is blank. Why are the steles of the thirteen Ming tombs all blank except the one in the Changling Tomb? The same thing also happened to the Qianling Tomb, the joint tomb of Emperor Gaozong and his Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty. We may trace the reasons back to Taizu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang in the Ming Dynasty, who, according to Graphic Solution of Royal Mausoleum (Diling Tushuo), once said that all steles of the emperor tombs are kind of not objectively composed by learned officials and lose their value in inspiring the offspring. Thus, the task of writing inscriptions on the steles for departed emperors, once undertaken by academic officials in the Imperial Academy, was transferred to the succeeding emperors. For example, the inscriptions for the stele in the Xiaoling Tomb was authored by Chengzu Emperor whose Changling Tomb housed a stele with inscriptions by Renzong Emperor. When the early half of the construction of the Ming Tombs was completed, the seven tombs did not have steles, except the Changling Tomb. Until 1542, the 21th year during Emperor Jiajing’s reign, steles were erected for the six tombs without steles, and another stele was added to the first courtyard of the Changling Tomb. The number of the new steles totaled seven.
Stele Pavilion of Divine Merits and Sacred Virtues
Traditionally, the inscription on the seven stone tablets should all be written by Jiajing Emperor. However, the muddle-headed emperor, who was addicted to Taoism, never cared about state affairs, not to mention that he would set his mind on writing the inscriptions. Moreover, some emperors were indeed so mediocre that there was not much to tell of their merits. Hence though the steles had been erected, they were still blank. And if an emperor’s tomb stele had no inscriptions, it would definitely be rude for his successors to get extolled on a stele. Thus, all the thirteen steles had to be left without inscriptions, except the stele in the Changling Tomb and the one in the Siling Tomb of Chongzhen Emperor, which were erected and inscribed in the Qing Dynasty. The stele is also called the “Moon Stele” as there is a white moon pattern on the top right on the other side of the steles.
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