Text | Historic Exploration
Edit | Historic Exploration
As a unified multi-ethnic country with a long history of 5,000 years, China has a profound cultural heritage, a complete institutional system and rich historical experience.
As an important part of human social relations, the emergence and development of marriage has been influenced by social systems and history.
The ancient Chinese system of marriage
The establishment of a marriage relationship in ancient China generally required two procedures: engagement and marriage. Betrothal is the procedure through which the qualifications and willingness of a man and a woman to enter into marriage are confirmed. Marriage refers to the process of marriage in general, or directly called "faint cause".
In the engagement procedure, ritual is the main part, but also the mandatory part, which is ultimately the externalization of the principle of etiquette, so the "six rites" are especially important in this process.
The "six rites" are Natsai, Asking Name, Najib, Nazheng, Invitation, and Greeting.
Ancient Basic Principles of Marriage: Clans follow principles
As a unique product of human society, marriage has social attributes. In ancient China, the major social attribute that marriage was given was the patriarchal attribute.
From a small micro level, ancient Chinese society was a patriarchal society linked by blood relations, and the conclusion of marriage was not only a matter for the two families of the man and woman, but also related to the union of the two clans.
The blood ties between the two clans were established through marriage, which realized the expansion of the clans' sphere of influence and the consolidation of the hierarchy and inferiority within the clan.
From a macro perspective, marriage also has the role of maintaining political blood ties, stabilizing rule, and maintaining unity.
The concept of the unity of family and country has made the macro whole of the state and the micro whole of the family linked. Therefore, the formation of national political structures based on blood ties was also a distinctive feature of early politics.
Therefore, from the beginning of early politics, successive rulers attached great importance to the basic role of marriage, and used marriage in the name of ritual law to strengthen their rule.
Later dynasties, such as "Zhaojun went out of the country" and "Princess Wencheng entered Tibet", showed the role of strengthening the rule of frontiers or ethnic minorities under political unification.
Etiquette follows principles
The principle of marriage following etiquette is first reflected in the choice of marriage partner, and China has also had corresponding etiquette regulations since ancient times, the most common is not to marry with the same surname.
The so-called "men and women with the same surname, their birth is not born". For the avoidance of families with the same surname, there are both genetic reasons and reasons stipulated by etiquette law, and marriage between the same surname is easy to lead to confusion in name, which will lead to the problem of distinguishing between elder and inferior.
In the process of marriage, ancient Chinese marriage needs to be realized according to the established process, which also leads to the characteristics of "formalism" in marriage.
"Formalism" here does not refer to the one-sided pursuit of superficial kung fu and ignores its core meaning, but emphasizes the orderly and etiquette of Chinese marriage.
In the Zhou Dynasty, the form of "six gifts" was already established, and it had a profound impact on future generations.
Early Institution of Marriage: The Primitive Stage
The ontology of the ancient Chinese marriage system occupies an extremely important position in history, lasting for about 4,000 years, while the early type of marriage originated in the Xia Dynasty, developed in the Yin Shang period, completed in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and wavered in the Spring and Autumn Period.
Since China had not yet established an authoritarian centralized unified system during this period, the marriage system was stained with slavery and early mythology.
In "The History of Chinese Marriage", Wang Yingling roughly divided the early forms of marriage into five types according to the development process of family marriage, namely primitive mixed marriage, blood marriage, polygamous marriage, couple marriage and monogamy.
At the same time, according to the process of productivity and social development, these forms of marriage can be classified into three periods, namely matrilineal society (mixed marriage, blood marriage), matrilineal transition to patrilineal society (polygamous marriage, couple marriage) and patrilineal society (monogamy).
According to this classification, the characteristics of marriage at different stages are described below.
The more prominent characteristics of marriage in the matrilineal period were mixed marriage and blood marriage. Among them, mixed marriage is the most primitive form of marriage, and it is not even related to marriage, emphasizing the messy sexual relationship between animals.
This kind of mixed marriage did not establish the so-called contractual relationship of the civilization period, and dominated the animal instinct, that is, sex.
In the process of transformation from matrilineal clan society to patrilineal clan society, polygamous marriage and couple marriage gradually emerged. Polygamous marriage is still a type of group marriage, but it is more advanced and orderly than blood marriage.
The development of productive forces affects the relations of production, and when traditional agriculture and animal husbandry develop and tools emerge, the status of men in production is enhanced because men are better able to play a productive role than women.
When the means of production and other power are further in the hands of men, society further establishes patriarchy.
Absolutism, that is, monogamy, has effectively become a system for women. It is important to note that monogamy here still cannot be considered monogamy in the strict sense.
At this point, the original stage of marriage system has evolved and influenced the marriage system of future generations.
Xia Shang Zhou's marriage system
From 2070 BC to 1600 BC, it was the first dynasty of China's 5,000-year-old civilization. Different from the primitive barbarian civilization mentioned above, the Xia Dynasty is the product of the development of productive forces to a certain stage, and private ownership has appeared.
As mentioned in the previous section, primitive society has completed its evolution to a patrilineal society, and theoretical monogamy has been established, but the marriage system did not practice strict monogamy in the Xia Dynasty.
At the beginning of the Xia Dynasty, tribal leaders occupied social resources and became slave owners, making society form two major classes: slaves and slave owners. For the slave-owning class, monogamy alone could not satisfy its desires.
As a result, the Xia Dynasty practiced polygamy, and the slave-owning class expanded its partner reserve by purchasing female slaves.
Polygamy is a political effort to unite the four tribes and consolidate their position of authority in tribal alliances. Xia dynasty marriages have obvious characteristics of political marriage and slavery.
In the early Shang Dynasty, there was a system of extra-ethnic group marriage, which was reflected in the phenomenon of relative titles because of the common wife, so uncles, fathers, and uncles were not separated, but were commonly called fathers; There is no distinction between sons and nephews, but are commonly called sons. Because of the common husband, the aunt, mother, and uncle are not separated, but are commonly called mothers.
It is worth mentioning that although there were extra-ethnic group marriages in the marriage system of the early Shang Dynasty, in the entire Shang Dynasty sacrifice system, the hierarchical marriage system of concubines and wives was reflected.
In contrast to the Xia and Shang dynasties, the Western Zhou Dynasty ruled in a new political style. The system of separate seals and patriarchal systems was clearly established.
At this stage, new elements of the marriage model also emerge. The introduction of the concept of the unity of the family and the state established the primogeniture system, and men became the rulers of the country and the family, which also led to the emergence of the idea of male superiority and female inferiority and son preference.
The impact of clan marriages
The political system of ancient China was complete and mature earlier, and was influenced by obvious clan kinship.
In the marriage system, the patriarchal system is also the core institution that affects its development. In terms of gender, men and women are in a relative position and are affected differently under the patriarchal system.
4.1. Men in clan marriages
The most famous manifestation of the patriarchal system in politics is the division of princes by the Prince of Zhou.
Men, as the subject of political power, distributed political power according to blood clan relations, maintained political ties, divided the princes of Zhou Tianzi, and each prince was in a position of dependence, the Son of Heaven was the great sect, and the princes were small sects to the Son of Heaven.
But when the princes became large in their own country, power could continue to be divided.
4.2. Women in clan marriages
In a patriarchal society and a society in which men are inferior to women, women's social status is not high. In addition to the above-mentioned rule of "seven to three no" for women and to reproduce heirs for men, there was a special system during the Spring and Autumn period: concubinage.
Sun Xiao's "History of Chinese Marriage" has the following explanation of the concubine system: At that time, princes wanted to marry a woman of a country as a wife, the woman wanted the daughter of the brother and the sister to marry together, in addition to two countries with the same surname as the woman to send daughters to marry, also subordinate, these are collectively called concubines.
epilogue
Looking at thousands of years of Chinese civilization, the influence of the patriarchal system is extensive and far-reaching, and the evolution of the marriage system embodied in the patriarchal system in later generations is more complicated.
This article expounds on the early marriage system, including the primitive stage and the marriage model of the Xia Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and briefly analyzes the embodiment of the two core principles of marriage in China, clan observance and etiquette observance.
The innovation of this article is that the clan and ritual are the main thread of the early marriage system throughout the text, highlighting the main characteristics of early marriage.
In addition, the quantitative analysis method was adopted to compare different marriage patterns in the early stage, and visually showed the performance of different models at relevant scales.
bibliography
[1] (Han) Xu Shen. Speaking and interpreting words[M]. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Co., 2013.
[2] Guan Xihua, trans. Erya[M]. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Co., 2014.
[3] (Finland) E. A. Westermarck. History of human marriage[M]. Beijing: Commercial Press, 2002.
[4] Xu Huiting, Su Dan. Analysis on the Influence of Western Zhou Marriage System on Traditional Chinese Marriage Customs[J]. Zhejiang Social Sciences, 2012(10): 58-64+157.
[5] GUO Chengwei, CUI Lanqin. Balance and Equity: Systemic Characteristics of Ancient Chinese Divorce System[J]. Journal of China University of Political Science and Law, 2010(4): 92-99+159-160.
[6] CHEN Guyuan. History of marriage in China[M]. Beijing: Commercial Press, 2014.