Research On Official Dingyou System Of Northern Song Dynasty

Dingyou system refers to a kind of system that an official is in mourning for deathof his parents for three years. It is recorded in Etiquette:“To pay respect to those whomthey honoured; to love those who were dear to them－in fact, to serve them now dead asif they were living, and now departed as if they were dead－this is the highestachievement of true filial pity.” To put it simply, it means that one person shall serve forhis or her parents when they are alive and, what’s more important, keep mourning aftertheir death for his filial piety. The mourning for parents becomes a behavior respected inancient society; especially with continuous enhancing of influence of filial piety thoughtof Confucianism, the mourning behavior increasingly attracts more and more attention inancient society. As a national manager and model for common people, the official shallmore focus on filial piety. Therefore, the ancient society pays more attention to mourningbehavior of officials–Dingyou; the system is also continuous improved, and theimprovement work on Dingyou System in Northern Song Dynasty time is performed to anew height. In early days of Northern Song Dynasty, inspired by a cruel situation ofchaotic loyalty and filial piety and etiquette system almost corrupted since the FiveDynasties, the government formulated a series of measures consolidating its governancein order to maintain governing order, among which the most important measure was todetermine “filial piety-oriented governance” policy. Under the guidance of this policy,Northern Song government started to establish a general mood of loyalty and filial pietyof scholar officials, the official Dingyou system attracted the government’s attention andwas further improved and developed from etiquette order to reward and punishmentmeasures in reality with its unique characteristics. Besides, as a combination of rules ofritual system and official management system, the effect of Dingyou system of NorthernSong Dynasty on officials’ office holding also showed its characteristics different fromthat in other dynasties due to its unique bureaucratic establishment characteristics. Thispaper mainly starts from two aspects of official Dingyou system in Northern SongDynasty and its effect on officials’ official career, and combines with etiquette order andpractice to have a discussion on official Dingyou system in Northern Song Dynasty. This paper mainly gives a discussion on official Dingyou system in Northern SongDynasty from five parts:Part I: Representation of official Dingyou system in Northern Song Dynasty inetiquette literature and law. In Northern Song Dynasty, the filial piety-orientedgovernance thought was very outstanding, and this thought was represented via etiquetteliterature about official Dingyou and related rules stated in law. This part further explainsthat perfection of Dingyou system in Northern Song Dynasty via analysis on etiquetteliterature about Dingyou and administrative orders at different time.Part II: Actual performance of official Dingyou system. This part mainly aims atstudy on a series of behavior standards involved in official Dingyou period to carry out adiscussion on three aspects of leave, etiquette which shall be followed during mourning,and not abiding by etiquette and violating etiquette, for the purpose of obtaining a clearknowledge on actual performance of official Dingyou System in Northern Song Dynasty.Part III: Awards and punishments on official’s Dingyou behavior by Northern Songgovernment. During Dingyou period, in order to avoid the situation that the official hadinconsistent behavior, didn’t abide by etiquette and even violated the etiquette, thegovernment formulated a set of serious award and punishment measures. This part ismainly developed around awards and punishments.Part IV: Post conferring after termination of Dingyou period. After termination ofDingyou period, the official would confront a problem of returning to official career.How to confer the post, what is conferring procedure, what is change of post before andafter Dingyou will be problems discussed in this part.Part V: Official Duoqing (that is, the official continues to take office with whiteclothing). As a special system, Duoqing is an important part of Dingyou System. Thispart mainly gives a discussion on official Duoqing, and it mainly starts from related casesrecorded in historical book to investigate actual situation about official Duoqing inNorthern Song Dynasty for the purpose of knowing actual Duoqing situation in NorthernSong Dynasty, so as to get a more comprehensive knowledge on Dingyou system.Generally speaking, we will have a deeper knowledge on official Dingyou system inNorthern Song Dynasty through discussion in this paper. Although its Dingyou systemroughly inherits from previous generation, it really doesn’t blindly follow the ancient system during its development, but continuously carry out reformation on Dingyousystem with development of times and evolution of its own situation. Besides, in terms ofthe effect of Dingyou on official’s official career, Northern Song Dynasty also showsdifferent characteristics from other dynasties due to its unique official system.