A Probe Into The Life Span Of The Scholars In Tang Dynasty

As a school appeared after the middle 20th century,the historical study of population can also be concluded into the historical study of human society.Taking the population,related principles and policies in human history as its research targets,the historical study of population tries to disclose relative historical facts,to study the internal relationgship between the changes of population and society,and to find out the regularities of different historical periods.And the mortality rate studied by modern population researchers is also a main concern for the historical study of population.Even though the span of life has something to do with people' s physical and genetic condition,yet the average life span of the mass public is influenced by the politics,environment,and economy of that time.Therefore,to study the life span of general public will help us better understand the politics and culture of a society.And from the above point of view,studies of historical population means much in both the field of history and population studies.In the past,population studies in China mainly focused on the distribution and migration and relatively less discussion went to theproblem of people' s gender and occupation.Systematic studies about the life span in Tang dynasty is still rare even though the book of Tang Ren Nian Shou Yan Jiu by Li Yanjie is available.However,due to the lack of relative research and references,we still can find many problems in this book for furthur discussion.And this is the reason why the author has taken up this topic as her research.Upon an intensive study of the historical documents,literary publications,and modern research findings as well,the author analysed and demonstrated the life span and death reason of the scholars in Tang dynasty.The thesis is constituted by 4 sections.The first is the introduction,explains the reason of choosing this topic and the value of the thesis,reviews current study in this field,and also illustrates the research method used in the thesis.The second is a list of life span of Tang dyansty.In this section,the author lists the life span of 777scholars carefully chosen from the historical discriptures in Tang and Song dyansty,such as SuiShu, JiuTangShu, XinTangShu, ZiZhiTongJian, JiuWuDaiShi,XinWuDaiShi, Qua nTangWen,JinShiCuiBian,JinShiXuBian and so on.The third is a calculation about the life span of the scholars in Tang dynasty.The author first studies the age of the research targets.After a respective comparison with the age of the dead male population of xi'anin 1981,and with that of Tianjin from 1957 to 1964 and 1975 to 1983,the author comes to the conclusion that the age distribution of the research objects basically represents the actual age distribution of the dead among the scholars in Tang dynasty.After the demonstration,the author tries to calculate the average life span of Tang scholars was about 60. And finally by taking the life span of Jinshi and Mingjing in Tang dynasty as examples,the author states that the average life span of Tang scholars is in conformity with previous research.The fourth section is an analysis of the death reason of the scholars in Tang dynasty,among which deaths caused by artificial reason occupy the largest proportion.To this abnormality,the author has made thorough explanation in the thesis.And the other reasons are respectively cerebral disease,epidemic,skin dieses,and taking elixirs.