The Study About The Marriage System Of Zhou Dynasty

The aims of this thesis are to study the marriage system of Zhou Dynasty, as well as the contents and characteristics of the marriage ceremonies and proprieties in This period, to explore the causes of their formations, developments and changes, to analyze the relationship between the marriage system of Zhou Dynasty and its social political system, and to give a brief account of the characteristics of the moral principles of marriage.The whole Thesis is made up of four chapters:On the basis of tracing the marriage system of Shang Dynasty, the first chapter mainly concerns about the marriage system at that time which is characterized by the fact that those people who shared the same family name cannot get married among themselves. and the degree of the development of the royal family's wife-and–concubines ranks marriage system as well as the system of the accompanying concubinage of the Western Zhou period In the Shang Period, the royal family had already had the differences of wife and concubines, but because the patriarchal clan system didn't formed, the wife's eldest son wasn't able to succeed to the throne or the rest ones couldn't be granted titles and territories through the wife-and-concubines ranks marriage system. To some extent, the royal family of Shang Dynasty actually took the marrige system in his own clan. The Book of Songs reflected both that there was matriarchal marriage system in Former Zhou Dynasty and the transform into the patriarchy marriage system. The reasons why Zhounese didn't avoid to marry the opposite-sex relatives are that the cousinship marriage is invisible and it could sustain the marriage resource of its own family. The wife-and–the concubines ranks marriage system established before the Zhou Dynasty couldn't neither send the wife's eldest son to the throne nor to confer titles and territories on the other sons. The system in which the wife's eldest son succeed to the throne and the system of enfeoffment formed at the beginning of Zhou Dynasty developed the function of wife-and –concubines ranks marriage system of the royal family and the dukes' families as well. We can conclude from more than fifty examples in the inscriptions on the dowry of the Western Zhou Dynasty that the dowry makers of that time made dowry for daughters who would marriage in seven names respectively. Among the kingdoms it had been mainly in the name of intermarriage.The second chapter mainly concerns about e characteristics of the marriage pattern, the marriage system, together with the marriage ceremony and Propriety, and its own characteristics. in the spring and Autumn period, In this period, the monarchical power had fierce interference, in the intermarriages between different generations. And the political alliances by marriage changed with the alteration of the objective situations and the subjective needs. In this period, primitive marriage custom was still in existence. While virgins and women who could die to preserve their chastises appeared, it emphasized the differences between men and women and condemned the phenomenon of the extramarital sexual-relationship etc.The social contradiction of the Spring and Autumn Period and its characteristics induced the appearance of the marriage-in –exile. The marriage between Han and Rong nationality, which was first taken by manatees, and their subjects of Jin is the result of the infusion of different nationalities. The marriage system of Accompanying concubinage in The Spring and Autumn Period is the continuance and development of that in Western –Zhou Dynasty. The marriage system of accompanying concubinage was more popular in dukes and princesses. And the alliances by marriage among several countries had emerged. The most innate character of this marriage system are the dowry and the social ranks. In the spring and Autumn Period the marriage ceremonies and proprieties were mainly taken in the rank of nobles. Its main contents included the tentative marriage the formal marriage by receiving betrothal gift, the we...