Han And Tang Inscriptions’ Filial Piety Thought

The epitaph is a decorative script to eulogize the departed, it stems from thefuneral system, and it’s an extension of Confucians piety culture. In ancient China,filial piety culture was widely accepted， establish epitaphs are not only aneffective method for the offspring to show their filial obedience, but also the bestway to reflect their parental condolence and promote themselves. This paperconcentrated on the epitaph culture from Han to Tang dynasty, mainly researchthis special carrier of filial piety culture, in which the rising, norm of genderdifference and character of epitaph filial piety culture are included. Also in thispaper, the development of filial piety culture is also discussed within the mainconstruction of epitaph literary form, in order to reveal filial meaning of theepitaph existence, and to provide more real and direct materials for theinvestigation of conventional filial piety culture.The detailed analysis of epitaph culture from Han to Tang dynasty will becarried out from four aspects. Firstly, from the aspect of the epitaph developmentof Han to Tang dynasty, analyze the definition of epitaph and characters of epitaphin each dynasty. Secondly, from the aspect of how the epitaph rise to prosperous,and the great influence of filial piety culture to the rise of epitaph. Specialattention would be paid to five aspects as follow, the Filial sentiment, parentalcondolence and compliment, observe mourning for departed parents, electionsystem of government officers from filial people and deified filial spirit. Thirdly,from the aspect of gender difference, analyze the normative system of epitaphfilial piety culture. On male aspect, the norms like self-respect, support parents,sorrow for parent’s sickness and death, strict memorial ceremony and transferenceof filial piety to loyalty for the emperor are introduced; on female aspect, norms ofsupporting husband, educating offspring, and relationship with sister-in-law areintroduced. At last, from the content and format of epitaph, ceremonial andintelligential aspects of epitaph culture will be introduced. Based on all theanalysis above, at the end of the paper the value of researching epitaph filial pietyculture will be discussed, in which sentimental value, histo rical data value andeducative value are included.Throughout the paper we could find that the epitaph filial piety culture has its special character, but meanwhile it also truly and directly reflects the commonconcept of filial piety ideas, the epitaph culture has its unification andcommonality with filial piety culture, but it also has its specialty. Therefore, theresearch of conventional filial piety culture should be focus on special carrier andforms, thus exploring the overall development process of filial piety culture.