Research On Buddhists' Epitaph During The Tang Dynasty

Inscription written for monks is the buddhists'epitaph,which is provided with the unique characteristics of Chinese culture.Chinese buddhists'epitaph appeared very early.About in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the prototype emerged,and after this, buddhists'epitaph evolved continuously.The Tang Dynasty is the prosperous period of epitaph creation. There are numerous astronomers who participated in epitaph creation,such as Li Yong ,Wang Wei,Li Hua,Du Guji,Liang Su,Liu Zongyuan,Liu Yuxi,Bai Juyi,Jiao Ran etc.Because of these famous astronomers'participation,the epitaph of the Tang Dynasty became perfect,and possessed more provocation and appreciation values. We consulted many literature collections,and finally collected 421 pieces of buddhists'epitaph as the research foundation.Discerning on the geographical distribution of epitaph,we can find the epitaph of the Tang Dynasty mainly scattered on Chang'an Luoyang and these two cities'suburban areas.Otherwise,there were two distribution zones of epitaph——the Yangtze river basin and southeast coast. In addition ,the Xiang Zhou ,Sha Zhou and Shao Zhou were the centers of the northern,western and southern distribution of the epitaph. However, the changes of valley,erosion of rain and damages by people during more than a thousand years, only a handful of epitaph retained today,which became the precious stone material.This article mainly from the angle of literature, social cultural science and buddhistic history, do introduced overview on the epitaph materials of the Tang Dynasty.The epitaph materials of this period mainly introduced to us the birth and death day,birthplace, buddhistic thought, inheriting lineage and the honour of the monk. Sometimes,the epitaph recorded the Buddhist events which the monk experienced. From these contents,we can find out that the buddhists'survival philosophy.On the spiritual level,they pursuited the Buddhism belief of Nothing;but on the realistic level,they secularly wanted the better survival conditions. The writing characteristics of epitaph during the Tang Dynasty were two respects .The first is the stylistic structure,which includes preface and verse.The preface is a piece of biography,and the verse is a piece of eulogy.The second characteristic is the writing skills——the epitaph authors of the Tang Dynasty tended to comment and use many sorts of descriptive methods to portray the monk.According to identity of the epitaph authors,we divided them into Buddhists, bureaucrats and astronomers. Generally speaking,the epitaph written by Buddhists revealed the secular consciousness. Usually they emphasized status and glory of the monk,or boosted the paranormal abilities to confuse people,or mourned the friend's death. In brief,we cannot find the buddhistic belief of Nothing. During the Tang Dynasty, bureaucrats usually composed epitaph for Buddhists.Perhaps they wrote for their relatives,who tonsured ,perhaps they did it only because of superficial belief in buddhistic paranormal abilities,and maybe they really comprehended the truth of the Buddhism.In one word,the bureaucrats'writing motives differed greatly. As for the epitaph written by astronomers,such as the works of Wang Wei,Li Hua,Du Guji,Liang Su,Liu Zongyuan,Liu Yuxi,Bai Juyi,can show their different buddhistic sectarian tendencies.In the last part of this dissertation ,first,we discuss the process and reason of the sixth generation of Jacksons'competition for status,which is the famous incident in Zen history.Second,we discuss the epitaph of Korean Peninsular during this period,and come to a conclusion that the epitaph of the Tang Dynasty deeply impacted the Korean epitaph.In brief, the epitaph of the Tang Dynasty really came to the mature period.The structure, writing characteristics and buddhistic conception implied in the articles, all made profound influence to the subsequent epitaph creation.