The Study On The Writing Style Of The Zhao’s Epitaphs In Tang Dynasty

The case studies on the family of Tang Dynasty began to appear since1950s, and became a central issue in1990s, which was influenced by the scholars from Taiwan and other foreign countries. By collecting and analyzing concerning epitaphs and documents, and adopting statistical method, these studies are generally focused on the early history, geographic occurrence, rise and fall, family line, marriage and career of a certain family and the reasons of these changes as well as the historical role and influence. Although the scholars also researched the development of the family’s political and social status in mediaeval times, they could not escape from falling into the discussion of marriage and career.As for the use of materials, rather than analyzing thoroughly the writing style and structure of the inscriptions themselves, most of these studies tried to utilize the ancient inscriptions to rectify the mistakes in relevant historical documents as well completing the family lineage.Based on the discussions above, this paper makes a research on the writing style of the ancient inscription of a certain family. Through arranging the available materials in chronological order and comparing each structure, this thesis is attempted to discover some regularities of the interaction between writing standard/format and Cultural inheritance. In addition to the preface, this thesis comprised of two parts.The preface summarizes the status in quo of academia study on the family of Tang Dynasty, points out the inadequacy of the existing studies, and introduces the method, subject and range of this article.The first chapter provides the general situation of the ancient epitaphs of the Zhao Family in Tang Dynasty. Based on the relevant records in Old Tang Book(《旧唐书》)and New Tang Book(《新唐书》)as well as the inscription sorted out, it introduces the general situation of the Zhao Family and lists its eight major prefecture locations.The second chapter is concentrated on the analysis of the writing style of the epitaphs of the Zhao’s. It consists of studies on individual structure such as the distribution, the origin of the surname Zhao, and the office, marriage and cemetery of the family. What’s more, it also includes the general characteristics of the Zhao’s epitaphs, such as its layout and the change of its writing style.