Zheng Xuan’s doctrine of “Six Heavens” consisted of the Heavens and Five Emperors and both of them were simply different forms of reference to the Heaven, the Heavens referring to its forms and the Emperors to morals in the world. Besides, the Five Emperors were again classified into the Supreme Emperor corresponding to a particular dynasty, who was actually the Heaveninherited Emperor and Heavenauthorized Emperor and thus superior to other four Emperors and worshipped in the south suburbs of the capital. As a result, the Heaven was divided into the Heavens, Supreme Emperor and Five Emperors. And the three classifications corresponded to three heavenly sacrifices, that is, the wintersolstice sacrifice to the Heavens, suburban sacrifice to the Supreme Emperor and general palace sacrifice to the Five Emperors. All these three sacrifices were mentioned as imperial sacrifices for the subject of sacrifices was the emperor, the sacrificed were heavenly emperors and the benefitted were the late noblemoral emperors. The three heavenly sacrifices were combined into an integrate system and became the ceremony symbolizing the political legitimacy of the divine heaveninherited and heavenauthorized family under the framework of family state. In addition, these sacrifices aimed to establish the internal relationship between current emperor, lords, and subjects by means of the external relationship between current emperor and Heavenly Emperors and current emperor and men and ghosts.

Zheng Xuan; the doctrine of “Six Heavens”; imperial sacrifice; wintersolstice sacrifice; suburban sacrifice; palace sacrifice