Hunping Burial Custom And Eastern Zhejiang Society

In the initial stage of the Six Dynasties,a kind of Hunping burial custom which took Hunping as a funeral celadon bacame popular in areas centred at East Zhejiang.This Hunping burial custom can not be seen in historical records,but was only found in the modern archaeological excavation.On the Yue kiln celadon Hunping,there are ornaments with complex forms and rich contents.From the date when Hunping was found,the academia has studied on Hunping itself and the funeral customs.Scholars have disputes over the name,function and cultural connotation.This thesis studies the Hunping burial custom which was popular in East Zhejiang from the perspective of regional social history,compares rich images of ornaments with historical materials on the gentry class in East Zhejiang,explains the cultural background and reality resources of Hunping burial custom,and tries to find the influence of attitude from the gentry class on the life cycle of Huping burial custom comparing with its regional cultural meaning.Previous researchers usually use comprehensive big angle of view to look at southern and northern dynasties in Chinese civilization,compares politics,culture,history and traditions with southern and northern dynasties.For East Zhejiang society,this broad vision makes scholars to emphasize the connectivity of East Zhejiang with the central plains culture and ignore its own characteristics in historical development.Hunping funeral customs in East Zhejiang may be able to reflect the historical reality that East Zhejiang society is part of the Chinese civilization.However,if we consider the resource of subject,cultural meaning and ideological background in a cultural context of great unity and only focus on horizontal communication,it will be lack attention to the vertical inherit,historical background,national identity and regional characteristics.Moreover,the interpretation of historical phenomena tends to result in the fragmentation of cultural symbols,cultural phenomena and regional historical traditions.This thesis takes the Hunping burial custom as the research focus.In terms of regional factors,the thesis researches on the shape,production,circulation,use and bury of the Hunping as a utensil,shows the social,economic,cultural and traditional aspects of East Zhejiang region in the early stage of the Six Dynasties,presents the regional social forms and features that were not recorded in historical records.In terms of time,the thesis studies on the life cycle of Hunping burial custom,including creation,development and death and reveals the relationship between Hunping burial custom and social development in East Zhejiang.This paper aims at the study of regional social history.Regional social history is not only the goal of this study,but also the methodology to guide the research.As a methodology,we should pay more attention to the factors of "human" in the study of East Zhejiang regional society.As the users of the main social forces and funeral customs in the region,the cultural gentry class had a great influence on the social aspects of the society.Based on the historical records on the cultural gentries,the author analyzes the attitudes of the cultural gentries to the funeral rites and their thinking about death,and reveals the cultural meaning of vessel and the burial customs in the regional society.The entire society of East Zhejiang presented the characteristics of the open and contain.In the context of rapid regional progress in the Six Dynasties,all classes and all elements in the social life were pushed forward in the big flood.In the end,the region of East Zhejiang gradually became the core area of Chinese culture from the fringe of culture.At the same time,the Hunping burial custom also went through its life cycle of emergence,development and extinction in this great historical process.