Research Posthumous Law Han Officials

The law for posthumous title is not only an important part of the etiquette system in ancient China, butalso a characteristic of ancient Chinese politics. It originated from the practice of ancient Chinese to avoidmentioning certain words or names, which gradually evolved into posthumous titles and became popular inZhou dynasty. The law for posthumous title served as the instrument to propagate the feudal code of ethicsand maintain the rule of feudal emperors. Before Qin dynasty, the higher officials and thescholar-bureaucrats were granted the posthumous titles only if they gained the title of nobility. The westernand eastern Han dynasties followed Qin dynasty’s regulations, thus, the officials of all ranks were given theposthumous titles on condition that they had the title of nobility. This regulation put another barrier for theofficials to gain posthumous titles. No matter how many achievements one official had made to his credit,if he did not acquire the title of nobility during his lifetime, he would be unable to get the posthumous titleafter his death. However, for the official who inherited the title of nobility from his father, even if he was aman of no merits, he could get the posthumous title. In Western and Eastern Han dynasties, the governmentestablished a special institution to regulate the law for posthumous title——Minister Herald. The MinsterHerald was in charge of drawing up the posthumous title, lament and eulogy, and petitioned the emperor forapproval. In Western and Eastern Han dynastie, it was the Shu Guan Xing Ren or Tai Zhong Da Fu whowere in charge of reading out the posthumous title at the funeral, while the Wu Guan Zhong Lang Jiangwould attend the funeral if the dead was of higher status. Nevertheless, the concrete ritual of grantingposthumous title did not become formalized until the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang dynasty.Aside from the normal procedure, the phenomena of changing and superadding posthumous titles alsoappeared in Western and Eastern Han Dynasties. Changing and superadding posthumous titles were asupplement to the former ritual, which embodied the change of the ruling class’s policy.In the extant literature, there exist discrepancies as far as the records of the officials’ posthumous titlesin Western and Eastern Han dynasties are concerned. This phenomenon can be differentiated and analyzedthrough various methods, such as proofreading the records in different literatures, contrasting with theposthumous titles in the dictionary of posthumous titles and comparing with the life story of the dead. By means of these methods, we can analyze and correct the misleading records in the literatures. As for theofficials in Western and Eastern Han dynasties, there are three types of posthumous titles: good posthumoustitles, average posthumous titles and bad posthumous titles. The good posthumous titles held theoverwhelming majority, which occupied86.21%of all the posthumous titles. This illustrates that grantingthe posthumous titles to the officials in Western and Eastern Han dynasties is mainly for the purpose ofpraising the person concerned. In the good posthumous titles, loyalty, faithfulness and filial piety are mostwidely used characters, which displays the moralizing purpose of conferring posthumous titles in Westernand Eastern Han dynasties, while the popularity of filial piety in posthumous titles embodies the idea ofruling the country by filial piety in Western and Eastern Han dynasties.