Liang dynasty

The Liang dynasty belonged to the quartet of Southern Dynasties and held Jiankang, the site of modern Nanjing, from 502 until its overthrow in 557; a small Western Liang rump survived until 587. Its founder, Xiao Yan, was a Southern Qi prince and general who seized the throne and reigned for nearly five decades as Emperor Wu, a devout Buddhist patron of monasteries and scholarship. The court received Persian envoys and produced an exceptional literary harvest, including the Wenxuan anthology, the Wenxin diaolong and the Shi pin; the surviving tombs of the Xiao family near Nanjing, with their great stone beasts, rank among the finest monuments of the age. The state's later years were dominated by the rebellion of the general Hou Jing, whose capture of Jiankang in 549 left Emperor Wu a prisoner and triggered a savage succession struggle among his sons. Xiao Yi, ruling from Jiangling as Emperor Yuan, restored a fragment of Liang power with Western Wei support, but in 555 the Western Wei army sacked Jiangling and installed the puppet state of Western Liang. Chen Baxian then took Jiankang and founded the Chen dynasty in 557, while the Western Liang rump survived under northern protection until the Sui destroyed it in 587. The Liang period is remembered less for military strength than for the cultural and religious vitality that made Jiankang one of the great Buddhist capitals of medieval Asia.