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Prosopography in Medieval Chinese Studies

Prosopography in Medieval Chinese Studies. Information that are database friendly and otherwise — Literacracy as a Case Study Presented by Yang Lu • University of Kansas. Literacracy as a Distinctive Class.

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Prosopography in Medieval Chinese Studies

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  1. Prosopography in Medieval Chinese Studies Information that are database friendly and otherwise — Literacracy as a Case Study Presented by Yang Lu • University of Kansas

  2. Literacracy as a Distinctive Class • The Usefulness of Chinese Biographical Database (CBDB) in identifying Literacracy through • Unique career pattern • Examination record • Pure offices • Provincial appointments • Patronage network • Unique burial pattern • The co-burial of the husband and the primary wife (exclude the second and secondary wives) • The rule of primogeniture was observed • The accompanied burials included only the descendents, the primary spouses, their issues of this ancestral pair

  3. Literacracy and their family • They often had a career that took them zigzagging back and forth between the capital and province • They formed an extensive network of friends and colleagues as well as marital relations that spread throughout the realm • All of them traveled • The well known fact is that many of they died while they were away from home • The lesser known fact is what to do when that happened

  4. Tang Burial Practice • Tang people practiced multiple-burials based on the following principles: • They wanted to bury with the family • Following the primogeniture principle • Preferably at their ancestral home if possible • If not, they would be provisionally buried until the condition was ripe to relocate them • Many were left by the wayside leading to an edict in early Late Tang dynasty to demote those who failed to bring one’s dead parents back to family graveyard

  5. Tang Burial Practice • The Results of multiple burial practices: • An individual could be buried in more than one way (ex. cremated and then buried; buried and then being summoned and buried; buried alone then with a spouse, etc) and buried more than once. • Muzhi are amended each time to reflect the multiple arrangements and locations of burials • We have records of new family grave yards established around the two capitals, especially around Mt. Meng

  6. Harvestable Information • New Family Graveyard: • Location (database friendly) • Not always clearly spelled out or spell out in the same way; but cross referencing can help • Motivation (not so database friendly) • Not always spelled out; even does spell out, require interpretation • Burial methods (database friendly) • Tomb, pagoda, cremation, water, forest, spirit, mummified, etc • Number of Burial (database friendly) • Circumstance leading to Provisional burial(s) (database friendly) • Tour of duty, refugee of war, exile, travel/pilgrimage, ritual prohibition, destitute, etc

  7. Example 1: The Boling Anping Cui Family博陵安平崔氏

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