A Comparative Study On The Phenomenon Of Female And Male Monks In The Tang Dynasty

Epitaphs are important materials for the study of the phenomenon of monasticism between women and men in the Tang Dynasty.It has a supplementary effect on the handed down literature.In recent years,with the increase of unearthed epitaphs,the phenomenon of the female monks is investigated further.However,the comparison between male and female monks is still insufficient.Based on the epitaph of the Tang Dynasty,this paper proposes a comparative study of the female and male monastics in the Tang Dynasty from three aspects.In the Tang Dynasty,there were many reasons for people to worship Buddhism,including active and passive Buddhism,religious factors and practical factors.And the reasons for female and male Buddhism were not the same.Under the influence of the traditional social gender system,marriage was significance to almost all the adult women and was their final destination,which makes the changes and misfortunes of marriage especially heavy for women,and many women will become buddhists or even nuns because of widowing.Only women became nuns for this reason.There was no mention in the male epitaphs of monks who became buddhists due to their widowed spouses.Men became monks inspired by the experience of going out or being an official,but women did not.This was because in the division of labor in the traditional society,"men focus on working outside the home while women focus on working inside".Women were more confined to private space.In addition,people in the Tang Dynasty would become buddhists in order to pray for their families or eliminate diseases.They were also influenced by their families to become monks or nuns.They would also become monks in order to cope with other misfortunes in the secular world,to seek spiritual relief or to make a living.There was relatively little relationship between the above reasons and gender,and both men and women tended to become monks or nuns for these reasons.According to the statistics of epitaphs,most of the nuns in the Tang Dynasty came from middle and upper class families,and the number of unmarried women was much higher than that of married women.Among these nuns,the majority of them became nuns in their childhood.Although the epitaphs often described their buddhist talents and yearning for Buddhism,it was highly likely that the nuns were sent to the temple by their families to worship Buddhism from the perspective of their age.Among the married women who became a nun,the number of women who became a nun after widowhide takes an absolute advantage.Almost all the women who became nuns,while their husbands were still alive,have their own particularity,which indicated that marriage had a great constraint on the female practitioners.In the Tang Dynasty,the male monks had the characteristics of non-eldest son monks,the male monks were mostly from ordinary families,and there was no significant difference in the number of young and adult monks.Comparing the characteristics of nuns and monks,it can be concluded that especially the upper-middle class families in Tang Dynasty had a gender tendency of "valuing women over men" when they sent their children to monasticism,and they were more hesitant and cautious towards the monasticism of men,especially the eldest son.This was caused by the patriarchal society's concept of inheritance and the society's gender expectations of male achievement and procreation.At the same time,because of traditional social women in a subsidiary position,the constraints of marriage and family on the women are far greater than those on men.Only when married women completing their duty to take care of husbands and children or the people who control them lose the ability,they can become nuns.While married men who become monks rarely consider their wives and families.The epitaphs also rarely mention whether they were married or not,when they became monks.In the Tang Dynasty,the monks and nuns generally maintained close ties with secular families after becoming monks and nuns.Their religious status was also influenced by their family background to some extent,but the degree of influence was different between men and women.According to the epitaph,nuns' promotion was more closely related to his family background.Secular families could not only provide good education for nuns,lay a foundation for them to interpret buddhist scriptures and make speeches on altars,but also provide them with certain financial support,thus making them more likely to win the favor of temples.Compared with nuns,monks were in a dominant position,and they were more likely to gain a place and prominence in religious circles by their own efforts.