釋氏稽古略 2.14

2.14

衍。明帝長子。太寧三年八月即帝位。年五歲。庾太后臨朝。咸和二年冠軍蘇峻拒命謀逆。三年四月蘇峻劫帝幸石頭。京城宮室悉皆煨燼。獨太寧殿壁明帝手畫佛像屹然不壞。人皆嗟美稱其神異。陶侃溫嶠攻石頭。峻戰墜馬。斬首臠割之焚其骨。峻餘眾立峻弟逸為王。閉門自守。四年二月諸軍攻石頭。建威長史騰含擊蘇逸大破之。西軍獲逸斬之。滕含部將曹據抱帝奔溫嶠船。群臣見帝號泣請罪。是時宮闕灰燼。以建平園為宮。溫嶠欲遷都豫章。三吳之豪欲遷會稽。二論紛紜未決。司徒王導議之不復遷都。咸康元年正月庚午朔帝加元服。大赦改元。八年五月帝不豫。帝二子丕奕皆在襁褓。中書監庾氷自以兄弟秉權日久。恐易世有間。每說帝以國有強敵宜以長君。請以同母弟琅邪王岳為嗣。帝許之。六月帝崩。二十二歲。在位十七年。

Yan was the eldest son of Emperor Ming. In the eighth month of the third year of the Taining era (325 CE), he ascended the imperial throne at the age of five. Empress Dowager Yu held court [as regent]. In the second year of the Xianhe era (327 CE), Su Jun, General of the Champion Army, refused imperial orders and plotted rebellion. In the fourth month of the third year, Su Jun abducted the emperor and took him to Shitou. The palaces and halls in the capital were all reduced to ashes; only the Buddha image painted by Emperor Ming's own hand on the wall of the Taining Hall remained towering and undamaged. Everyone sighed in admiration, praising its divine wonder. Tao Kan and Wen Qiao attacked Shitou; Jun fell from his horse during battle, and they cut off his head, sliced his flesh into pieces, and burned his bones. Jun's remaining followers set up Jun's younger brother Yi as king, closed the gates, and defended themselves. In the second month of the fourth year, the various armies attacked Shitou; Teng Han, Chief Clerk of Jianwei, struck Su Yi and routed him completely. The Western Army captured Yi and beheaded him. Cao Ju, a subordinate general of Teng Han, embraced the emperor and ran to Wen Qiao's boat. The assembled ministers wept loudly upon seeing the emperor and asked for punishment. At this time the palace halls were in ashes, so the Jianping Garden was used as the palace. Wen Qiao wished to move the capital to Yuzhang; the magnates of the Sanwu region wished to move it to Kuaiji. The two arguments were tangled and unresolved. Minister of Works Wang Dao discussed the matter, and the capital was not moved again. On the first day, gengwu, of the first month of the first year of the Xiankang era (335 CE), the emperor took the cap of adulthood, granted a general amnesty, and changed the reign era. In the fifth month of the eighth year, the emperor was indisposed. The emperor's two sons, Pi and Yi, were both in swaddling clothes. The director of the Palace Secretariat Yu Bing, considering that he and his brothers had held power for a long time and fearing that an interregnum would arise if the generation changed, repeatedly persuaded the emperor that since the state faced strong enemies it was fitting to have an older monarch, requesting that his younger brother of the same mother, Yue, the Prince of Langya, be made heir. The emperor granted it. In the sixth month, the emperor died at the age of twenty-two, having been on the throne for seventeen years.