Song Dynasty Funeral Ritual Research

The funeral ritual of Song Dynasty plays an important role in the development history of Chinese funeral ceremony. Generating from Han and Tang dynasties, the funeral ritual of Song Dynasty becomes more grand systematic and standardized. On the other hand, influenced by the folk culture and foreign culture, such as Buddhism, funeral ritual of Song Dynasty developed some new characters in order to meet the demand of the society. Meanwhile Funeral rituals of this period have important influences on dynasties afterwards.The whole article includes two main parts. The first part collects files as detailed as possible from history literatures on this period and attempts to take a general and systemic research on the funeral ceremony, in order to restore its original face. It also referred to the research of predecessors. It researches the specific funeral rituals and discusses the differences of different social stratum funeral ceremony, and draws conclusion that the historical records of Song funeral ceremony etiquette programs are in line with those contained in Sima Guang’s SHUYI. The second part summarizes characters of Song’s funeral ceremony as the creation of new etiquette programs, the ritual of common people found in the records and the crazy pursuit of auspicious days and auspicious places.