Study On The Economic Ideas Of Family Instructions In Ming Dynasty

Family instructions, also called domestic commandments, domestic models, domestic disciplines, domestic rules, domestic instructions, deceased instructions, deceased warns, public norms, admonishment and so on. They were mainly the instructions that the elders taught their descendants to manage the family and adapt to the society. The family ethics and moral norms were more than other contents in the ancient family instructions. However, economic activities were the basic problem in family life. It was vital importance for the family to deal with the economic affairs. Therefore, it was the major content for the writers of family instructions to teach their descendants to manage family and domestic finance.The history of family instructions went back to ancient time. There were some representative works in each dynasty, especially the Yanshijiaxun,which was written by Yan Zhitui of Northern Qi Dynasty. It promoted the systemization and socialization of family instructions. It opened a real training for family instructions. Song and Yuan Dynasties, the writing of family instructions became common practice and many works emerged, which was the traditional family instructions'ripe stage. The family instructions culture went into a new period in Ming Dynasty. The family instructions went into genealogy and were edited from generation to generation. The amount of family instructions was increasing, the contents were richer and richer. The merchants' family instructions rised. So it was the family instructions' full blooming stage in Ming Dynasty, which provided us rich materials on studying the familys' economic ideas in this dynasty.Ming Dynasty was an important turn in Chinese history, particularly in the field of social economy. Many new development and changes arose. We explored family' life style and financial management from family instructions of Ming Dynasty. We could discover some features of Ming's economic development and some new tendencies. By summarizing and analyzing the economic ideas, we could get concrete and true understanding about Ming's society development.This essay only discussed and analyzed the economic ideas in the range of Ming's family instructions, such as family economic management, land and rent, commodity and currency, consumption, the property while living together or apart. It focused on the changes and features and analysed the reasons of economic ideas from politics, economy, culture and so on. It revealed the collection between the economic ideas and traditional culture, studied the characteristic and historical development of Ming's economy, which helped us deepen our knowledge of the history prceeding. It was very meaningful for us to draw the useful nutrient from the family instructions .At the same time, it gave a salutary lesson for morden family education.