Death and mourning in China, 1550-1800

This dissertation is a study of funerary rituals, mourning, and attitudes towards death in China, from 1550-1800. Using bureaucratic documents, scholarly essays, local gazetteers, correspondence, belles lettres, and poetry, it argues that, contrary to what has been assumed, mourning rituals remained living and vibrant parts of the society long into the late imperial period. Far from being performed unthinkingly and by rote, they were the objects of heated controversy.; The primary focus of the dissertation is on the state's changing commitment to the system of mourning rituals. In the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), especially in the system established by Ming Taizu (r. 1368-1398), the state was willing to make substantial sacrifices of governmental efficiency so that its officials could observe full three-year mourning for their parents. But the Qing (1644-1911) drastically curtailed the mourning rights of its officials. By doing so they were breaking down the system of rule envisioned since antiquity, in which the state encouraged an official's filial obedience to his parents so that those bonds of devotion could be transferred to the ruler. Suspension of mourning, ordered on an ad hoc basis in the seventeenth century, by the eighteenth had become institutionalized.; As the state disengaged from the system of mourning, many scholars began using the tools of evidential scholarship (kaozhengxue) to build a more rationalized system of mourning. The dissertation emphasizes the life experiences and works of Yan Yuan (1635-1704), Mao Qiling (1623-1716), Zhang Boxing (1652-1725), and Zhu Shi (1665-1736) to show the effects of the Qing conquest on ideas about mourning.; Despite attempts at Confucian revival during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (1736-1795) policy remained unchanged. A scandal following the death of the Xiaoxian Empress (1711-1748), in which several officials received death penalties for violating national mourning, is discussed in detail. The events surrounding her death demonstrate how the ritual devotion owed the sovereign in the Ming had by the mid eighteenth century become mere decorum. By the end of the 150 years covered in the study the state had withdrawn completely from what the dissertation terms a "parallel" conception of society, and demanded that officials be more loyal to the state than to their parents.