The Systematic Studies On The Funeral Rewards Of The Northern Wei Dynasty

The funeral rewards are an important part of the ancient funeral custom, whichalso reflect the social realities on the aspects of the politics, economy and society. Notonly inherit the relevant regulations of the funeral rewards in the Han Dynasty and JinDynasty, the funeral rewards in the Northern Wei Dynasty also have its owncharacteristics and features, which significantly impact on the funeral rewards in theSui Dynasty and Tang Dynasty. We can deduce that the funeral rewards in theNorthern Wei Dynasty play an important role in bridging the preceding and thefollowing within the development of the funeral reward development history. Thispaper aims to study the qualifications of the reward acceptors, the categories of items,the characteristics and the effect of the rewards to reveal the influences of the funeralrewards in the Northern Wei Dynasty. In accordance with the word order, the maincontent and arguments are summarized as follows:The introduction explains the significance of choosing subject and researchvalue, then summarized the research before related to this subject of the paper fromfour aspects. On this basis, it shows the problems which this paper tries to resolve,and expounds the research approach and the writing thought.As the highlights of the paper, Chapter Two discusses the qualifications ofaccepting the funeral rewards in the Northern Wei Dynasty. In the Northern WeiDynasty, the funeral system externally represented the national custom. In this study,the Northern Wei Dynasty funeral reward acceptors are generally divided into threekinds of people, termed as officers，concubines and female officers. Additionally thispaper addresses the discussion of the rank on the acceptors. Chapter Three discusses the good types of the funeral rewards, which weredivided into six sorts: the reward of the funeral articles, the reward of LuBu, thereward of money, the reward of the corns’ product, the reward of the textile, thereward of the others such as the wax and the ice.Chapter Four mainly addresses the funeral feature of the rewards, and divided itinto the prior period and last period. First of all, the good categories significantlyincrease than before. Secondly，the quantity of the reward depends on the economicdevelopment of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Moreover，there is a great diversity of thereward forms. Finally, the ‘stories’ are regarded as the basis of the reward.Chapter Five, the influences of the funeral rewards in the Northern WeiDynasty developed into the positive aspect and the negative aspect. As the positiveaspect, the reward is a commendableness and reorganization of the dead based on hislifetime behavior and contributions, at the same time it relieves the economic pressureas to the family of the dead in some way. In term of the negative aspect, the greatnumber of funeral reward behaviors indulged the luxury custom on burials andexpanded the abuse of envious comparison with others.