An Analysis Of Inscriptions On The Epitaph Of Monks And Squares In The Northern Dynasties

In the period of Southern and Northern Dynasties, China split into up to 400 years of war. Buddhism was wildly spread since the rulers was taking Buddhism as a way of salvation gradually. Buddhist monks and nuns as communicators, during this period has its own peculiarities. The monks and nuns would use epitaphs, establishing tombstone, or taming when they die, which had been forming a special kind of funeral.The family backgrounds of the monks or nuns in Northern Dynasties are very complicated, according to their epitaph inscriptions. In the front of family background, the monks and nuns in Northern Dynasties could be divided into 3 categories:Namely the royals, such as the Queen, the concubines and etc; the family member of courtiers; and the civilian. These 3 different family backgrounds led directly to different reasons of ones conversion to Buddhism. And this difference also shows the different views of the Buddhism between different social positions.The rating of monks and nuns, the differences of their monasteries and the political life of Buksuni, recording on the epitaphs inscriptions, reflects the living conditions of Buddhism monks and nuns at that period. The monks’ official positions record on the epitaphs has no difference to the record in the official history books, while the Buksuni’s does not. According to the epitaphs of the Buksuni, they were also holding the official positions at that time, and began to participate in the political affairs, directly or indirectly. Most of the record monasteries are trackable. They are high-level and normally in the capital. This indicates that in Northern Dynasties, the Buddhism’s development was capital-centered, and it also indicates the Buddhism is not just religion but more relevant to the politics.The epitaph-record funeral ceremony, funeral time selection and the burial site of the monks and nuns were quite different to the ordinary people’s in that period. There was no comprehensive regulations yet. In general, the funeral of them would be arranged by his or her disciples, but there was also individual instance which was arranged by one’s family. There was a similarity of the monks or nuns’choice of their burial sites. In Northern Wei Dynasty, they were normally buried around the Mt. Mang in Luoyang. As well as buried in the cemetery areas in Yecheng in Eastern Wei Dynasty and in Northern Qi Dynasty. None of the monks or nuns was buried in their hometown, indicating the special nature of the Buddhist funeral, disconnecting to the secular world.Taming, carved on or hidden inside the pagodas, was appeared in Northern Dynasty. The Taming’s owner should be the Buddhist monks or the layman Buddhist. This is the distinguished feature of the Taming and make it different to the epigraphs or the tombstone. From the case of Salmonella systems and nuns system, they all used the epitaphs. On one side, it shows that the epitaph was the most major option for the monks or nuns in Northern Dynasties; On the other side, it also indicates choice of epitaph was more secularized for the monks in the monk official system, involved by the royals and the bureaucracy.