Author ｜
Huiyu Wang
Abstract ｜
During the reign of Emperor Huan and Emperor Ling of Eastern Han Dynasty, because of political corruption, the regime was on the verge of collapse; however, at the same time, a vast sum of money were spent on stone tablets erecting, which resulted in the explosive growth of tablet erecting in various local states and counties, forming a special phenomenon worthy of attention. In the past, lots of studies were made from the perspectives of economy and the custom of elaborate funeral, but they failed to explain the particularity of the time when the number of tablets suddenly increased. Based on the special concept of “unity of heaven and man” in the Han Dynasty, this paper examines the ideological impact and political chaos caused by frequent disasters in the middle of the Eastern Han Dynasty. In the absence of repair and reconstruction mechanism, the concept of political legitimacy gradually disintegrated, which intensified the destructive power of political corruption and local rebellion, and resulted in the fragmentation of regional political powers within the dynasty. The trend of stone tablets erecting in the middle and late Eastern Han Dynasty demonstrated that the object of filial piety and loyalty of the lower Confucian scholars was no longer the emperor, but was forced to move down to the local officials after the disintegration of the loyalty and filial concept and the political order. After the condensation and expansion of local forces, the Eastern Han Dynasty began to collapse from within, and the wave of stone tablets erecting has become the historical evidence of this trend.
keywords ｜
the trend of stone tablets erecting, correspondence between man and heaven, disaster impact, the loyalty and filial concept fractured, the transformation of the loyalty and filial concept