The Sumptuary Law And The Expenditure Of Luxury In Song Dynasty

There is a greatness contrast between the expenditure of luxury in rich people who are the small class and the general people' s compulsory expenditure in feudal society. As waste of material resources, the expenditure of luxury that base on exploitation sharply divided between the immensely wealthy and the very poor, corrupted social ethos, and caused bad effect on class conflict etc. People should denounce it. However, People who have this opinion only saw one part of this project. We should analyze it ideographically with historic analysis that how the treat with the expenditure of luxury in feudal society.Between Tang and Song Dynasty, there is an important change in the social economic relation. The expenditure of luxury is an important composes in the social economics. Lots of new characters were appeared during this period. Depend on the above reasons; the Sumptuary Law of forbidding the expenditure of luxury in Song Dynasty was studied as a special project.Through the investigation of the Sumptuary Law of forbidding the expenditure of luxury in Song Dynasty as a whole , and the individual analysis of the sumptuary law of woven gold which is nearly one-third of it in quantity , we know that the wide area mentioned, the detailed item developed and the stern tools of punishment were the characters of it. However, these sumptuary Law were found not carried out very well in all Song Dynasty, and the facts of the luxury expenditure in each realm in Song Dynasty had proved this point. In addition, because of the concrete differents of social economy, political environment and customs and habits, obvious differents of the luxury expenditure in Song Dynasty appeared in both time and space.The main cause of "the fact of luxury expenditure still exist though the Sumptuary Law of forbidding the expenditure of luxury published again and again" appearing in Song Dynasty is that much more many important changes of song' s expenditure of luxury have been taken place than previous dynasty. It is conspicuously presented on one hand, compared with previous dynasty, that stratum range of luxury expenditure has obviously expanded with the characteristics of popularization .On the other hand, different from previous dynasty' s luxury expenditure which mainly depends on material consumptions consuming of tribute and tax and manor' s self-sufficiency,the Proportion of Song' s luxury expenditure that realized by means of market increased with the characteristics of market. On the basis of the above two aspects, Song' s expenditure system has begun the important shift from hierarchical expenditure to wealth expenditure sequence. The series of changes in the field of luxury expenditure is just the inevitable result of production mode and class strength based on the background of Tang and Song Dynasty' s reform. Effective wants derived from luxury expenditure took vigorous action to move forward the prosperity of Song' s commodity economy, reformation of excitation mechanism and the expansion of employment. While, at the same time, after luxury consumption exceeds a certain extent, its passive function would obviously emerge.