| Abstract:Epitaph has been a very important accessory in tomb since Qin and Han Dynasties. Mainly made of stone and deeply buried in tomb, epitaph records the pedigree, introduction, burial place, date and some other information of the tomb owner. Epitaph becomes a very important part of Chinese ancient funeral customs and culture. Because of the timeliness of all records on epitaphs, we can understand the lifetime and social environment of the tomb owner by study of the records of epitaphs from another angle. All of this information on epitaph and the related historical records can be confirmed and supplemented each. So epitaph has a very high historical value.With some present historical records, the dissertation includes an initial textual research of 105 epitaph rubbings of Ming Dynasty which were all unearthed from Nanjing and sorts out the life experience of tomb owners, the author and writing information of epitaphs by comparing the persons and events presenting on epitaphs with historical records.According to different identities of the tomb owners, all 105 epitaphs are divided into government officials, businessmen and women, these three parts. All of them are text analyzed and group studied separately in order to describe the intercourse between government officials and business men, the status changes of business men and women, the migration resources and "Zhanji" of the rich and powerful families in Nanjing during Ming Dynasty. Generally speaking, some basic points are as follows:1. In the early Ming Dynasty, the social intercourse circle of the government officials is unitary by their social interaction between each other. Military officials made friends with civil officials initiatively, studied and valued Confucianism. The epitaphs of military officials are mainly written by civil officials. All of these make us realize that the literati group which is mainly composed by the civil officials occupied the leading position in the social structure in the early Ming Dynasty. So civil officials became the targets whom other classes are keen to associate with.2. In the early Ming Dynasty, according to the stability of the society, the Emperor ZHU Yuanzhang pressed the businessmen sever, therefore the social position of businessmen in that period was lower than before.Beyond the middle Ming Dynasty, with the recovery and quick development of business and handicraft industry, the central finance depended on the business and industry more and more due to plenty of business tax created with the market prosperity. The government had to change the economy policy to satisfy the new economic development. So the businessmen integrated into the society actively as the leaders and operators of business activities and brought unprecedented impact to the social life. There was essential breakthrough in the relationship between the officials and the businessmen with the new tendency of integration.3. The origin of the upper class of Nanjing in Ming Dynasty was directly influenced by the uprising of ZHU Yuanzhang, the movement of reich and powerful families in the early Ming Dyanasty and the war of 1402 between the successors of the first Ming Emperor, which shows the obvious political feature of the population in Nanjing.4. There were few epitaphs of the officials and the businessmen during ZHUANG Yuangzhang and ZHU Di periods, and the authors of the few epitaphs were rarely presented. This is related to the tough governance of ZHU Yuanzhang. The intercourse inner and between the different classes became careful under the slaughter policy of ZHU Yuanzhang.5. Due to the Neo-Confucianism of Cheng-Zhu, the mainstream value of Ming treated the women with extreme attitude comparing with the former dynasties. So the subject of the epitaphs for women were mainly about the filial lady, the idea wife (chaste woman) and the strict mother, these three status of women, which become the elementary standards to justify whether the women behave as all-well or not and were corresponded with filial piety for parents, helping husband and teaching children, there three requirements.But with the new ideological trend of the Neo-Confucianism of Wang and the monogamy concept of equality spread by western missionary, a thought emerged in the society, which bravely denied the Asceticism, "Cun Tian Li, Mie Ren Yu", presented by ZHU Xi. This provided the theoretical foundation for the liberation of humanity including the emancipation of women and had great impact on the traditional social attitudes. In this case, the lifetime of women and the social attitude for women had some changes and the position of women was certainly improved. Nevertheless it didn’t mean that the status of women had revolutionary changes. The traditional concept was still powerful which was proven by those monuments of virtue erected in the country in Ming Dynasty.6. The movement of the rich and powerful families in the early Ming Dynasty has also been recorded in the epitaphs. These families not only moved out from Taihu district such as Suzhou and Hangzhou, but also from the district which is west or north of the Yangtze river such as Xiuning and Huaian. Most of the "Zhanjidi" of these emigrants is Shangyuan County, which is because that Shangyuan is the foremost county of the capital.7. According to the information of the burial places in the epitaphs, the dissertation researches the distribution of the burial places. Including the officials and businessmen, most of the upper class chose the south of Nanjing (Jiangning and Yuhua areas of Nanjing now) as their burial places because of the geographical environment of Nanjing, the tradition started from the early Ming Dynasty and the ban of the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum. |
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