A Study On Several Problems About Suburban Sacrifice In The Northern Sung Dynasty

Setting up at the end of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, the Northern Sung faced a series of problems in the early days of its founding. One of problems was that how to avoid being destroyed like Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. All measures taken to solve this problem including ritual aspect. One of measures involving ritual aspect is outskirts sacrifice.From the beginning, the founders of the Northern Sung increased the scale of outskirts sacrifice and beautified the ceremonial of outskirts in order to show people magnificent of the new dynasty.Emperor Sung Taizong once attempted to adjust the interior of the outskirts sacrifice to meet the demand about the legitimacy of his own succession to the throne. The value of outskirts sacrifice which had been considered as means of ruling was enhanced.With the establishment of the fact that rules from the ancestors mustn't be changed.The outskirts sacrifice was becoming measures of ruling and struggle in political field. The argument about offering sacrifices to gods and earth together or separately suggested the fact. The interior value of outskirts sacrifice tended to decline because of it.At the end of the Northern Sung, although Emperor Sung Huizong took various efforts to approaching the actions of the Confucian classics about the outskirts sacrifice, it was inevitable that the Northern Sung died out.