The Study Of Female Education Of Northern Wei Dynasty As Seen From Epitaph

The Northern Wei Dynasty(386 ～ 557)was a feudal regime established by Xianbei nomads.In 493,Tuoba Hong,the Emperor Xiaowen moved his capital to Luoyang and implemented the famous Xiaowen’s Reformation,which enabled the Dynasty to learn and imitate the Han culture while retaining the nomadic characteristics.During this dynasty,under the influence of nomadic culture,the social constraints on women were relatively reduced influenced by the culture of nomadic peoples and meanwhile the rising of private schools and family-homeschooling offers opportunities for women education.Since the last century,a great number of epitaphs in this dynasty were unearthed,which contained a wealth of information with significant research values and have received extensive attention in the academics.The female epitaphs are the first-hand materials describing the women social life,as well as learning customs and religious beliefs at that time from the side view.This thesis mainly studies the education of noble women through the collations and researches in the Northern Wei Dynasty combined with historical books and biographies.Referring the epitaph during this period,this thesis takes the noble women group as the research object,and focuses on the analysis and investigation of their education.The thesis summarizes the content of noble women’s education including Confucianism,Buddhist knowledge and literary talents,from which the characteristics of the female education of the Northern Wei Dynasty are further discussed.This paper is mainly composed of introduction,text and conclusion.The main body is divided into three chapters.The first chapter is an overview of the epitaph of Northern Wei women.First of all,it introduces the summary of the epitaph of women of the nobles in the Northern Wei Dynasty,collects and organizes the epitaph of women in the epitaph materials used in the paper,summarizes the number of the epitaph of women,and calculates the origin and time of the epitaph of women.Secondly,according to the arrangement of epitaph,summarize and summarize the characteristics of the epitaph of the literati women in the Northern Wei period.The number and size of noblewomen reflected the status of women in the society at that time.The social status of noblewomen in Northern Wei was manifested by their family status and husband status,which summarized the formatting of the epitaph writing of noblewomen in Northern Wei.The second chapter is the women education from the epitaphs in the dynasty.First,this chapter outlines how the gentry women received education in the epitaph,which are educated by elders,female family teachers and family precepts.Secondly,this chapter summarizes and excerpts the contents of the epitaph about the education of the women of the Northern Wei Dynasty,and demonstrates the historical facts of their education,including female virtue,Buddhist knowledge and literary talent,using epitaph and formal history of the combination of the way to explain the situation of their education.The third chapter is the characteristics of the noble female education in the epitaph.According to the way and contents of the education in this Dynasty,it is concluded that the characteristics of noble women’s education in this period are: active participation of women in family education,influenced by ethnic fusion and emphasizing on the education but neglecting talents.The education of women in the Northern Wei Dynasty belongs to the private or family education.The four virtues,which are the focus of female education,mainly includes language,appearance and merit,and also the education of cultural knowledge.Among them,the education of female virtue is valued most.The education of women in the Northern Wei Dynasty was responsible for the rise and fall of the family and related with social stability.Therefore,the education of women in the Northern Wei Dynasty was very important at that time,and it also brought inspiration to the development of education in China today.