Abstract
Because of the lack of the self-description of women, "epitaphs" have often been used as one kind of the materials for studying women in the Song Dynasty. The Song people’s preferences of the behaviors and appearances of women were usually shown in the stories recorded in epitaph, and these stories were linked to the ideas of the elite’s self-cultivation and achievement of a harmonious family. In the Song Dynasty, since the epitaph authors faced the situation of "women have nothing outside the family", they sometimes need to write more deeds of women to achieve the expected effects of the epitaphs. Therefore, some of the epitaph authors considered to write about the women’s “chanted Scriptures”. However, when the Song women’s life was linked to the elite’s self-cultivation and achievement of a harmonious family in the epitaphs, what kind of role the “chanted scriptures” plays, in order to form a triangle-link between the women’s chanted scriptures, the role of women, and the elite’s achievement of a harmonious family? The key to answer the question is to clarify the way of understanding women’s chanted scriptures of the epitaph authors and the bereaved family. Through collecting such epitaphs, this study will conduct in the following ways: First, I will propose the question “what are the characteristics or tendencies of these women’s chanted scriptures”, and, discuss what the epitaph authors think about women’s chanted scriptures. Second, I will observe in what kind of context the women’s chanted scriptures appeared in those epitaphs. Third, I will discuss how epitaph authors interpreted it, and made the connection between these three. Forth, I will analyze from epitaph the functions of women’s chanted scriptures which the Song epitaph authors considered, and conclude why the elites would adopt it, viz. women’s chanted scriptures, into the epitaphs. In the end, I will discuss the meaning of this connection, and what new insights it can provide for us into the understanding of the Song women.