A Study On The Bath Of The Song Dynasty

Song Dynasty is the period in which the social culture highly develops, people’s bath activities have gotten a long-term development during this period. The types of Song Dynasty bath could be divided into two major categories of secular and religious bath. Secular bath activities mainly includes ceremonial bath, political bath, the daily and judicial bath. Ceremonial bath is endowed with rich connotation of etiquette, mainly embodies in the ritual birth bath, wedding and funeral ritual bath. Bath is also included in political sacrifices such as Mount Tai Offering Sacrifices to Heaven, Fen Yin and Northern Suburb Sacrifices, Hall Sacrifice, Rain Sacrifice and so on. Officials who are in receiving visitors, going to court, having audience, and submitting reports to the emperor take baths with piety to embody the respect for each other. In daily life, Song people always take showers in the evening, and bath habits vary from people, there are some people who are extremely fond of bath, also some people who seldom bath. The rulers of Song Dynasty attach importance to the benevolence thought of “obligation and commutation”, the prisoners could bath regularly. People in Song time often use bath resin method to find the cause of death in some judicial cases. Religious bath activities includes Buddhism, Taoism and Islam bath. Buddhism bath mainly embodies in the Buddhist daily bath, the festival of Buddhism bath activity, Buddhist "setting bath", the ceremony of translation of the Buddhist classics bath activity and Buddhist bath before they pass away. Taoism takes bath before they Xiuzhai, practice Taoism, ZhaiJiao ceremony, to show the worship to the God and meet the matter of the impurity, meanwhile, they say the incantation for the dead in order to make it into the next reincarnation of life. The Muslim of Islam clean body and it is divided into small net, large net before they go to church, in addition to religious activities, the Muslim need bath strictly when they pass away. Although the Buddhism, Taoism and Islam all have abundant bath activities, in aspect of cleaning heart, they have many characters in common.Along with the development of the Song Dynasty cities and commercial prosperity, the density of citizen is becoming dense and the merchants, travelers to do business and travel from one place to another, exchanges, this phenomenon leads to the appearance of the commercial public bathroom. There are a large number of commercial bathrooms, in which some offer the service of wiping back and others in the cities of the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties, especially Dongjing, capital of Northern Song Dynasty and Lin’an, capital of Southern Song Dynasty. The water of bath includes cold and hot use and this can satisfy the need of different customers in some way. Families build the private bathroom in cities and towns. Public education places such as schools and academies’ bathrooms which can guarantee the health of the students. Religious places of Buddhist monasteries, bathroom or the monasteries of Taoism, and the bathroom of Islam that are carrying the rich religious culture. The Song Court builds the bathrooms for the officials who can take a bath when they are tired in the FuZhi, XianZhi, ZhenZhi, even the DaZongZhengSi. The bathrooms of the stages can provide the place for rest and bath for the officers. In An Lao Fang, An Yang Yuan, Guang Hui Fang and other relief agencies, as well as prisons’ bathrooms could improve the sanitary condition of public places. The natural bath places of Song Dynasty such as hot springs and rivers have been widely used. According to the statistics of the extant historical records, there are 55 suitable hot spring bath places. On the spatial distribution, the South is suitable for the hot spring bath with a total of 43, occupying 78% of the total number; the North is with a total of 12 and occupying 22% of the total number. The southern hot spring bath places are mainly distributed in Fujian Lu, the western Jiangnan Lu and the eastern Jiangnan Lu, The northern places are mainly distributed in the northern Jingxi Lu, Yongxing Jun, Lizhou Lu, the western Hebei Lu. In some parts of the hot spring, there is the difference called "Officer" and "People" hot spring. In addition, some rivers in the middle part and lower reaches of the Yangtze River are suitable for bathing.The bath products which are on the basis of inheriting predecessors have their own characteristics: using the plants, animal, minerals that are more beneficial to the body, or using alone, or using the mixed products. According to the statistics of the extant historical records, Plants bath products have 48 species of herbaceous plants bath products, woody plants bath products have 21 kinds, the bath products mixed by herbaceous and woody plants have 32 kinds; Animal bath products have bone products which have 4 kinds, waste bath products have 8 kinds, it still contains the eggs, swallow’s nest, Liu Zhong powder, honey comb and pig bile, bath products, a total of 5 kinds of; Mixed bath products include the products, which are mixed by the animals and plants, have 10 kinds and there are 7 kinds of bath products mixed by animals, plants and minerals. People in Song time boil the bath products into soup, then take baths. These products are absorbed through the skin, then it can achieve the results such as removing scurf, moisturizing hair, whitening skin, cleaning body, dredging channels and treating some diseases such as skin diseases. It fully plays the role of health care and medical functions. People in Song time usually use bath appliances mainly include bath Hu, bath bucket and tub, and so on.In the Song Dynasty, bath has five characteristics: firstly, it shows the new era characteristics; secondly, it forms the new bath consumption fashion; thirdly, it has a new understanding of bath; fourthly, a new bath taboo takes place; fifthly, it is different from the surrounding areas. Bath has many influences on the life of the people in Song Dynasty. Bath not only decontaminates descaling, keeps the body’s clean, regulates spirit, eliminates fatigue, but also can promote the body metabolism, improve the body’s immune ability. The ceremonial bath, commercial bathrooms and bath products, etc, have important influence on later age, especially in the inheritance and development of the commercial public bathrooms which begins in the towns in Song Dynasty and lay the foundation for the development of the bath culture for the Yuan-Ming-Qing time.