Family Inheritance Of Farming-reading And Calligraphy Inheritance

Through literature arrangement and case analysis,the thesis is aimed at exploring the historical origin of farming-reading and analyzing the changes of the attitudes held by scholars of the past generations towards farming-reading.Combining with the family tradition of farming-reading,the author discusses the characteristics of family education on calligraphy from the patriarchy clan system.Meanwhile,the author also aims to find out the connections between farming-reading and the family education on calligraphy in Confucian thinking and make a comparative research between farming-reading and calligraphy inheritance.The farming-reading tradition enjoys a long history.However,the living means of combining farming and reading was not accepted by Confucians in the early phase.The Confucian scholars represented by Confucius thought scholars were supposed to take building a Utopian society of “the world is for all” as their task and should not spent too much energy on farming.For this reason,farming-reading thinking remained hidden and low-profile in the mainstream society before Tang and Song dynasties.However,the emergence of the imperial examination system allowed an increasing number of scholars from humble families to rise above the farmland and enter officialdom.Such a demonstration effect popularized the living means of combining farming and reading among common scholars from humble families and eventually formed the cultural phenomenon that emphasized farming-reading.Along with such popularity,this phenomenon also influenced the flow between and the integration of scholars and peasant classes.In this social context,an increasing number of Confucian scholars began to think of the possibility and necessity of combining thinking and reading and advocated the inheritance of farming-reading as a family tradition and family education.On this basis,the thesis thinks the tradition of farming-reading did not become prevalent until the Song Dynasty.The second chapter expounds on the influences exerted by the characteristics of farming economy on the family inheritance of calligraphy from the perspective that farming economy paid attention to inheriting and accumulating experience.Under the patriarchy system,the pedigree formed by calligraphy inheritance was essentially the patriarchy pedigree that took calligraphy as its contents.For other families,this pedigree was secret and closed.Such an inheritance means eventually formed the calligraphy styles and characteristics of reputed calligraphy families.In the family education on calligraphy,the private schooling phase was an important period that cultivated the foundation and moral personality of a family's descendants.On the one hand,it combined the studying of characters with the practice of writing characters and took calligraphy training as the basis of studying characters and reading books.On the other hand,it combined Confucian classics with calligraphy education and incorporated personality shaping into calligraphy training.Influenced by the Confucian concept of “paying equal emphasis over arts and principle”,the families of traditional scholars paid an emphasis over the study of Confucian classics and neglected the calligraphy inheritance at the technique level.Instead,they were oriented on practical calligraphy education.Meanwhile,some families also warn their descendants of “not taking calligraphy as their life” and should not cover their main righteousness with minor techniques.Instead,they were encouraged to treat calligraphy with the attitude of “making fun in arts” and take delight in learning calligraphy.The third chapter mainly discusses the connections between the family tradition of family-reading and calligraphy inheritance.It makes detailed descriptions from several aspects: “only elaborate the theories of the predecessors and do not have original ideas of one's own”,“inner cultivation and exterior action”,moral cultivation and cultural connotations.For aristocratic families and big clans,their family traditions and family education increased from nothing and eventually reached the present scale due to the accumulation of former generations and the inheritance of descendants.”In this context,the emphasis over inheriting and promoting the family tradition and education became the main content of educating descendants in the family,which was consistent with the Confucian concept of“only elaborate the theories of the predecessors and do not have original ideas of one's own”.As the descendants of the family,offspring should implement filial piety and continue their fathers' ambitions,namely elaborate the undertaking of their fathers.On the other hand,family members were capable of achieving “inner cultivation and exterior action”through farming-reading and calligraphy and set on the path towards self cultivation,family harmony,country management and world peace.During the process,the education on cultivating morality and personality and forming cultural connotations was always implemented.The last chapter describes how the family tradition of farming-reading and the family education on calligraphy influence families from three levels: imperial families,aristocratic families and common humble families.By arranging historical materials,it represents the cultural phenomenon that ancient families valued the family tradition of farming-reading and inheriting the family education on calligraphy.For imperial families,the symbolic meaning of farming by oneself is bigger than its practical significance.However,the emperors of Tang and Song dynasties all paid high attention to farming.Meanwhile,imperial families also paid a high emphasis over the agricultural education for imperial descendants.This aspect was similar to aristocratic families which worried that the descendants in the families may not know the difficulty of farming because they were living at a comfortable home.Therefore,they required descendants in the families to “think of farmers when having each meal”.Moreover,they even advocated the farming-reading thinking of “bringing along with classics when farming and compiling bamboo scripts when herding.” Although the humble families represented by the Su family in Meishan had to adopt farming-reading,their descendants still took living on their own as the way of seeking inner peace and took delight in farming-reading.In the meantime,they warned their descendants to enhance their physical conditions through farming and inherit the farming-reading culture.Regarding the calligraphy inheritance,there are wide differences between imperial families,aristocratic families and humble families.Due to their love for calligraphy,emperors wished their descendants to be good at calligraphy and achieve the function of ruling the country through calligraphy.However,the families that enjoyed a profound family learning and produced generations of calligraphers paid a higher emphasis over the inheritance of Confucian knowledge in family education.Meanwhile,they feared that their descendants may take calligraphy as their life and cover great righteousness with minor techniques.Conversely,humble families did not have such fears.They took entering officialdom through reading as their aim,treated calligraphy with the attitude of “playing with arts”.It was just with such casualness that they obtained unexpectedly excellent outcomes in calligraphy.