Chapter 4 Section 2 Marriage and Family System

In ancient China, the enactment and promulgation of written codes was relatively late, and marriage and family relations in slave society were mainly regulated by rituals to maintain the patriarchal hierarchy and habits recognized by the ruling class.The Zhou Dynasty was the founding era of etiquette. In order to consolidate the rule of the Zhou royal family, in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the nobles began to formulate a series of complete rules and regulations and ritual and music regulations from politics to culture. This is what people usually call "Zhou Li". . The first thing that Zhou Li paid attention to was the "benevolent couple", thinking that "wedding is the beginning of all ages" ("Book of Rites · Suburb Special Sacrifice").Therefore, the marriage system is regarded as the foundation of the social system, and all social relations are derived from it. "Yi Xu Gua" makes this very clear:

There are heaven and earth, and then there are all things; there are all things, and then there are men and women; there are men and women, and then there are couples; there are couples, and then there are fathers and sons; there are fathers and sons, and then there are monarchs; wrong. The marriage and family system occupies an important position in the etiquette system, and is closely related to the political and ethical views of the slave-owner nobles' "family and country as one" and the actual needs of using blood ties to maintain patriarchal rule.In addition to setting up media officials to manage the marriage affairs of Wanmin, Zhou Rites also emphasized the following aspects regarding marriage and family:

"Book of Rites · Hunyi" regards "combining the two surnames" and "serving the ancestral temple at the top, and inheriting the descendants at the bottom" as the highest purpose of marriage. These two sentences in the "Book of Rites" have clearly told people that the essence of marriage lies in the continuation of the clan, that is, the extreme emphasis on the reproductive function of marriage.From the utilitarian point of view of the clan, marrying a wife is for having descendants, taking concubines is for having more sons, having descendants is for successors in time of the clan, and having more sons is for the prosperity of the clan in space.The feudal society of later generations regarded "there are three kinds of unfilial piety, and having no offspring is the greatest" is regarded as a classic, and its origin is also here, and it has become the most profound revelation of the psychology of Chinese marriage and reproductive function.Since the gradual improvement of the Zhou rituals, the sacrificial rites and the ancestral temple system have also been elevated to an unrivaled position. In fact, what later generations admire is not the ancestors themselves, but the ancestors' success in reproduction.

In addition to emphasizing the reproductive function of marriage, Zhou Li also emphasized the political significance of marriage. "It's good to combine two surnames" shows that Zhou Li attached great importance to the status of spouse selection.Marriage between two surnames with similar social status can be used to get along with each other, support and rely on each other.In this way, the intertwined and cobweb-like marriage relationship between the emperor and the princes, the princes and the princes, the princes and the officials, and the scholar-bureaucrats constituted the family world of the emperor of Zhou.

In the Zhou Dynasty, due to the completeness of the patriarchal system, in each family, the relationship between family members was clearly regulated in the etiquette system.The great power rests in the hands of the parents, men and women, superiors and inferiors, elders and children are respected and orderly, each respects his or her position and must not overstep. Parents are in the highest position in the family and have absolute power, which is exclusive and indivisible. "Confucius Family Sayings Ben Ming Jie" said: "There are no two suns in the sky, no two monarchs in the country, and no two respects in the family." Whether it is the property in the family or the members of the family, they are all controlled by the parents, and disputes within the family are controlled by the parents. Parents judge right and wrong, and the family members who make mistakes will be punished by the parents according to the family rules.

The etiquette system requires children to abide by filial piety, to be absolutely obedient to their parents and parents, and not to own private property. Even in daily life, they are bound by many complicated and complicated rituals.The marriage right of the children is also in the hands of the elders of both men and women.Marriage is a major event related to the success of the family and the marriage of two surnames. Therefore, the power of officiate marriage can only be monopolized by the parties concerned and not determined by the parties to the marriage. Through the matchmaker to contact and match.Whether married couples are harmonious or not, the final decision on whether to dissolve the marriage rests with the parents. "Book of Rites Internal Rules" stipulates that even if a son loves his wife very much, if the parents don't like it, the son has to "bring out" his wife; Have to stay together for a lifetime.

Family etiquette binds women more than men. The "Book of Rites" stipulates that "men are handsome and women should follow men" and "marry from husbands". In addition, "three obediences and four virtues" also originated from Zhou rituals. The "three obediences" mean that a woman obeys her father and brother at home, her husband after marriage, and her son after her husband dies. The "four virtues" refer to "women's morality, women's speech, women's appearance, and women's work".That is to say, women are required to obey filial piety, loyalty and trustworthiness in terms of "morality", the key lies in "loyalty" and "obedience"; frivolous.At the same time, it is also required to be good at "female skills" such as spinning, embroidery, and sewing.

Family rituals also require women to unilaterally observe monogamy.Contrary to the system of male nobles marrying more, women can only marry one husband and cannot have more than two husbands at the same time. The rationality of social inequality, thus making this irrational phenomenon a legitimate institution. The head of the family, who is above all family members, is usually held by the grandfather or father. In this way, the power of the husband, father, and patriarch is in the hands of the man who acts as the head of the family. He has the supreme ruling authority over the family. The acquisition of patriarchal status is determined according to the patriarchal inheritance system.Strictly speaking, this system originated in the late Shang Dynasty and formed in the Western Zhou Dynasty.Prior to this, it was not considered natural for the son to inherit the father's position.Legend has it that Yu, the first king of Xia, asked his assistant Boyi to succeed him when he was critically ill, but Boyi felt that he was not as capable as Yu's son Qi, so Qicai became the second king of the Xia Dynasty.Until the Shang Dynasty, the phenomenon of brothers ending up with brothers was still very common.According to the research of Mr. Wang Guowei, a modern scholar, from the Shang Dynasty to Emperor Xin (Zhou), there were 14 emperors among the 31 emperors.In the late Shang Dynasty, the king married many concubines in addition to his main wife, and the princes competed for the throne from time to time.Therefore, starting from Wu Yi, a stricter system of succession from father to son was implemented, and there was a rule that the eldest son should succeed to the throne first.This provision is also based on the establishment of the first wife system.Zhou, the last king of the Shang Dynasty, was not the eldest son of his father, Emperor Yi, but he inherited the throne because he was the son of Emperor Yi's son.Judging from the inscriptions (Oracle bone inscriptions) unearthed from the Yin Ruins, the words concubine, concubine, concubine, and di have all appeared, which is a strong evidence for the implementation of the first wife system in the late Shang Dynasty.

The establishment of the first wife system ensured that a family can only have one husband and one first wife, which shows that in the Shang Dynasty, the monogamous family was already stable as a system. In Western Zhou society, the private ownership economy was more developed. In order to avoid the conflict of inheritance rights caused by many sons, the ruling class stipulated a stricter eldest son inheritance system.In order to ensure its implementation, the system was at the same time fixed by the patriarchal hierarchy. According to the Zhou system, the Son of Heaven is the Dazong of the world, and the younger brothers are named princes, that is, the Xiaozong;From the Son of Heaven to the Scholars, they are combined into a huge clan, and as far as each major and minor clan is concerned at the grassroots level, it is a big family with a patriarchal system. More small families.In this way, the big clan leads the small clan, and the small clan leads the group of disciples, just like a small branch attached to a big branch, and a big branch attached to a tree trunk, the emperor-vassals-qing (doctor)-scholar, forming a strict family ruling system, and each family becomes a family member. Cellular organization in patriarchal systems.The primogeniture system guarantees the implementation and succession of the patriarchal hierarchy system, and its main contents are:

First, the implementation of Zongzhen [tiao pick] inheritance.Zongzhen refers to the ancestral temple of the clan, which is called the ancestral temple in later generations.Ancestral inheritance is to clarify that the clan is the orthodox descendant of the ancestor, so that the descendant can obtain the name of the clan-the orthodox descendant of the ancestor and the right to worship the ancestor.Zongzheng inheritance is practiced in the whole society. For slave owners and nobles, they can obtain noble status, political power and material wealth; , still accepted the status of slavery and the same obligations as slaves as their parents.

Second, correctly determine the identity of the eldest son.The inheritance right of Zongyou belongs to the eldest son, so it is extremely important to correctly determine the identity of the eldest son.The criterion for determining the identity of the eldest son is: in the case of more than one son, the elder is the most important, which is the so-called "establishing a son is based on the elder and not the virtuous" ("Chunqiu Gongyang Zhuan Six Years of Yin Gong"); In the case of a concubine, the eldest son is the most precious, that is, the so-called "establishing a son is more expensive than an elder" (same as above); in the case of all concubines, sometimes the elder is established, and sometimes it is determined by divination. The legitimate son and the concubine are divided according to their mother's status.The status of a concubine in the family is very low, and cannot be compared with wives, and her status is slightly higher than that of slaves, but she is not regarded as a member of the family and is not eligible to participate in clan sacrifices. There are no titles of relatives.Unless the concubine has children, the husband's legitimate son reluctantly calls her concubine mother.As for the concubine, his status is higher than that of his mother. Because blood is counted according to the paternal line, he is naturally a member of the family, but his status is ultimately lower than that of the concubine, especially in terms of inheritance. Third, the exclusion of women's inheritance rights.In the inheritance system of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the heir with the most superior status was the eldest son, while women were not in the order of inheritance. "Women are those who follow others" ("Book of Rites·Jiao Te Sacrifice").Women do not have independent personalities, so they have no right to inherit. The establishment of the eldest son system made the various relationships among family members clearly regulated. At the same time, concubines favored the position of wife, and concubine sons competed for the right to establish a descendant frequently occurred, which shook the patriarchal inheritance system.After the Spring and Autumn Period, with the collapse of the patriarchal clan system, which integrated the clan organization, government organization, and economic structure, the social pattern of the noble being always noble and the humble always being humble was also broken. Many substantive contents of this system were partly absorbed by the ensuing feudal patriarchal inheritance system, which provided the foundation and basis for the formulation of laws in feudal society in later generations.