How cruel was the ancient process of meditative marriage?

Cruel in that the living are the dead.

Underworld marriages are not just limited to the dead and the dead, but even between the living and the dead. But an underworld marriage has very different requirements for a living woman versus a dead man versus a dead woman.

The late Qing Dynasty Liang Shaonan once said: "Today's men and women, has been hired unmarried and the dead, the woman or hold the Lord into marriage, the man or welcome the bier back to the burial. This is common sense, but also have the intention of etiquette." The meaning of this sentence is that, after the wedding, the woman must be for the dead man to keep the festival, life may not be remarried; men in the wedding after the wedding, but can be married to another.

While a marriage in the underworld is considered a happy event, it is often interspersed with red and white rituals, and the exact form depends on the proposition of the person in charge. Not only that, very often, the wedding is not only limited to the dead and the dead, and even includes the living and the dead. However, the requirements of a plutonic marriage for a living woman are very different from those of a dead man and a dead woman.

The so-called concept of chastity has done a lot of harm to women in feudal China. Not only that, even in some of the marriage in order to let the dead people underground is not lonely, in order to achieve the purpose of burial, and even forced the living one, for those who refused to die, and even buried alive means are used, it is outrageous. The good thing is that with the progress of the times, this kind of bad habits have disappeared.