A Textual Research On The Family Of The Northern Wei Dynasty

Aristocratic families constitute a major feature of the society Northern Dynasties. The aristocrats have been a mainstream in society since the establishment of the "Nine-grade System" in Cao Wei. The system of dominant family of the Northern Dynasties was basically defined until the sinicization reform was conducted in Northern Wei Dynasties by Emperor Xiaowen, which makes some aristocratic families have steady political positions. Although since the late of the Northern Wei Dynasty, under the Xianbei aristocrats in "Six Towns" rebel and strong collisions of local magnates (including poor families), political and social status general declined in the Eastern Wei & Northern Qi Dynasties, are still an important political force in this period.This article conducts a complement study on the aristocratic families and pedigrees in the Eastern Wei & Northern Qi Dynasty. Currently this period has only two family lineage stave:Prime minister genealogical table of New Tangshu and North & South History genealogical table of Twenty-five Histories Supplement, and the datas derived from official and private repaired lineage genealogy. However, due to historical reasons and wars, the presences of these two tables exist wrong names, incomplete lineages, vacant official posts, reverse pedigrees and other problems. Although some scholars made textual researches and supplied deficiencies, which are focus mainly on the Sui and Tang dynasties, and the aristocratic families and pedigrees in Eastern Wei & Northern Qi are rarely presented.Epitaphs as an unearthed literature, have original property as stone materials reliable contents. The inscriptions describe some important information including tomb owners’names, official posts and family lineages etc., which can be confirmed one another and make textual researches and supplied deficiencies the vacant and mistakes in the two tables. This article centers on these unearths epitaphs of the Eastern Wei & Northern Qi Dynasties in nearly two decades, based on the previous researches about two tables and make textual researches and supplied deficiencies the pedigrees of grandfather, father, son, sun, his wife and his wife’s pedigrees and official titles in two tables, which provides accurate, reliable and adequate materials to the research on the History of the Northern Dynasties.This article is divided into four chapters:The general chapter is presented the significance and methods of the ancestry complement and make a research summary of senior scholars. The first chapter studies contents of the pedigrees and features of writing forms in Eastern Wei & Northern Qi. The second chapter is presented features of the family lineages in Eastern Wei & Northern Qi, and some problems in the literature handed down. The third chapter mainly based on the Prime minister genealogical table of New Tangshu and North & South History genealogical table of Twenty-five Histories Supplement, centered on epitaphs and combined with literature handed down, makes textual researches and supplied deficiencies the vacant and mistakes of the aristocratic families, such as the Boling Cui family, Qinghe Cui family, Longxi Li family, Zhaojun Li family, Hedong Pei family,Henan Mu family, Fanyang Lu family, etc..