Arrangement And Research Of Steles In Wei,Jin,Southern And Northern Dynasties

Stone tablet is a kind of vertical stone used for commemoration or marking.It is mostly engraved with words or pictures.It is intended to survive for a long time.It is mainly erected in mausoleums,palaces,temples and other places for recording events.In shape,it is composed of three parts: the head,the body and the base.The earliest stone steles can be traced back to the stone pillars used in the pre Qin period to observe the sun and shadow,or to tie livestock.They are used in etiquette system and are less written.In the Qin Dynasty,this kind of vertical stone was called carved stone.It began to engrave characters,and its function changed from a part of the ritual system to a special way of recording events and praising morality.It was not until the Han Dynasty that this kind of carved stone was called a stele.The dissemination of Steles in the Wei,Jin,southern and Northern Dynasties experienced the process that the ban on steles gradually relaxed and was eventually abolished,accompanied by the spread and prosperity of Buddhism.In the Three Kingdoms period,the number of official memorials and official tombstones increased.In the two Jin Dynasties,the number and types of tombstones finally reached a prosperous state in the northern and Southern Dynasties,not only many new tombstones,but also a large number of tombstones related to tombs and religions,such as temple steles,Songde steles,monk steles,Shinto steles,and so on.Before the Song Dynasty,there was no monograph on stone steles,but it began to appear in the Song Dynasty.After a downturn in the yuan and Ming Dynasties,it flourished in the Qing Dynasty.With the development of the times,a large number of Monographs on stone steles were published in the new China period,which greatly enriched the literature of stone steles.There are three problems in the collection of Steles in Wei,Jin,southern and Northern Dynasties: first,the number of Steles is not comprehensive enough;second,the information is not rich enough;third,the way of collection is not systematic enough.In view of this situation,this paper makes a systematic and comprehensive collection of the steles before 2021 and index it,tries to solve the above problems.