Study On Grave Robbery From Han To Tang Dynasty

The grave is the last home of human body and spirit, in which there are abundant cultural information on society, history and religious belief. Building materials of graves including stone relief, portrait bricks and funeral objects including tomb-guard figurines, swords and mirrors are materialized forms of these cultural information. Excepting the direct contact with these material things, there are also connections between grave robbery and spiritual belief.During Han and Tang Dynasties, on the base of the status of grave-robbers, the historical events of grave robbery could be classified into three parts including grave robbery done by governments, troops and the folks. The classification contributes to investigation of the motivation and counter-measures of grave robbery.On the base of specifically historical background, we analyzed motivation of grave robbery from Han to Tang Dynasty on the levels of practical driving force which shows on the pursuit of economic interests, psychological motivation which shows on abnormal psychology of grave-robbers and mysterious belief which mainly shows on Taoist belief to ghosts and gods. The three motivations interact and intermotivate with each other.Counter-measures are parallel to grave robbery, which mainly includes preventive measures in tombs and encouraging people to do good through Taoist scriptures.