What are the characteristics of funeral culture in Central Plains?

(A) the pursuit of Confucian filial piety, things die like things happen.

Confucius advocated: "in life, everything is courtesy;" Death, burial with ceremony, sacrifice with ceremony "("The Analects of Confucius for politics "), Confucianism strongly advocates filial piety, especially attaches importance to the ceremony of death. Influenced by Confucian filial piety, funeral etiquette has increasingly formed complex funeral customs such as mourning before burial, five-service system, mourning and mourning. In addition, dominated by the concept of immortality of the soul, the ancients had two worlds in their minds, namely, the real society where the living lived and the friend Cao Fu where the ghost lived. Therefore, the ancients always arranged the funeral affairs for the deceased according to the lifestyle before his death, and moved everything in the real society to the ghost world intact. "Death is like life" is one of the basic principles of funeral etiquette in China, including the Central Plains.

(2) The wind of long sacrifice and heavy burial prevailed.

Funeral is an important part of the traditional funeral in the Central Plains. As early as the pre-Qin period, the system of "five clothes" was formed, and its purpose was to determine the closeness of mourning according to the kinship so as to maintain the feudal patriarchal clan system. There are not only many taboos in mourning period, but also seven-day sacrifice, one-hundred-day sacrifice, Zhou Nianji, and the long-term ritual system of sweeping graves in Tomb-Sweeping Day, the vernal equinox, the Central Plains (July of the lunar calendar 15) and winter solstice. The wind of reburial has always been one of the important features of traditional funeral customs in the Central Plains. "Civil security", "reburial" and "extravagance and waste" are its important manifestations. Burial began in primitive society. At that time, the people in the Central Plains buried their bodies with earth burial, so earth burial became the traditional burial method of Han people all over the Central Plains. The concept of "reburial" has far-reaching influence. "Coffins must be heavy, clothes must be rich, embroidery must be complicated, and hills must be huge" and "parents dare not harm their bodies and skins" and the trend of extravagance and extravagance has intensified, leading to a long history.

(C) hierarchical, feudal superstition prevalent

As early as the Zhou Dynasty in China's slave society, a funeral system of "high and low, high and low" was formed. Different social status before death leads to different treatment after death. The ancients transplanted the hierarchical relationship of real society to the underworld where ghosts lived through funerals. Feudal superstitious activities prevail in funerals, which is another feature of traditional funeral customs in Henan Province. They mainly include: building a coffin shed, making a Dojo, watching geomantic omen, choosing auspicious days, chanting Buddhist scriptures, evoking souls, riding a horse to Dai Xiao, burning paper to make money, kowtowing, sending a funeral procession, holding a funeral ceremony, matching relatives, marrying a ghost wife and so on.

Human beings have experienced the cultural process of death, such as "abandoning the corpse", "wild burial" and "entering the grave". Burial utensils refer to utensils for holding the remains or ashes of the deceased. In view of these two points, this paper mainly describes the choice of graves and burial utensils in funeral.

(1) The owner of the tomb did not intend to sink or bury it. The concept of kinship in early humans was based on clans. Therefore, it doesn't matter if there is no grave. Everyone is buried in one place, which is easy to find. After the emergence of private ownership, the family relationship narrowed, people needed to be buried and commemorated separately, and the tomb began.

In class society, people are divided into three classes, and graves naturally have grades. The big grades are: the tombs of saints are called "forests", the tombs of emperors are called "tombs", the tombs of nobles are called "tombs", the tombs of ordinary officials or rich people are called "tombs", and the tombs of ordinary people are called "graves". Within the same level, there are differences in the size, height, arrangement, direction and decoration of graves, and future generations cannot surpass their ancestors, and small officials cannot surpass big officials.

Cemetery can be divided into cemetery, family tomb, clan tomb, righteous land and mass grave. Cemetery is generally purchased by the government, mostly for the poor. In order to promote burial and prohibit cremation, the Ming and Qing governments once opened cemeteries. A family tomb is a family graveyard. After a long time, it became a family grave. Righteousness is the righteous act and kindness of the rich, and it is a cemetery for the poor who have little land and no land. Mass graves are the poorest cemeteries. Land is a wasteland without owners, and graves are the poorest people or people without owners. There is a Shinto in the cemetery, which is the main road of the cemetery. There are stone men, stone beasts and pines and cypresses on both sides of the road. There is a tombstone on the tomb, engraved with an epitaph. The tombstone sits on the tomb platform, and there are tomb beasts and pines and cypresses on both sides of the tomb platform.

China people attach great importance to death, not only in thought, but also in operation and body shape. From the day he ascended the throne, the emperor paid attention to two things, one was to live forever, and the other was to repair the tomb. What is done in the world is effective, and it can be seen everywhere in the tombs of the living dead, and the specifications are perfect. Why do people in China value graves so much?

The first is a sense of belonging. China people pay special attention to their own homes, and they recognize their ancestors at birth; Look for organizations, people or units on which to live. When you die, you must return to your roots, and you must have a family tomb, a family tomb, and a joint burial. This strong sense of belonging is a manifestation of the weakening of individual consciousness under authoritarian politics. The crisis and instability in life are reflected in the culture of death, that is, strengthening the stability after death, which is reflected in various regulations of the cemetery.

The second is the eternal demand. Longing for eternity in life, wealth and getting rid of poverty are selfish and instinctive desires of human beings, but eternity is unrealistic. Isn't it eternal to transform it? Therefore, life extends to death and wealth extends to the grave.

The third is the need of ethics. China's Confucian ethics plays a limited role in maintaining the life world. Therefore, the feudal rulers of China should strengthen this function on the dead, and measure their attitude towards the living with their attitude towards the dead, that is, "things die like things happen".

The fourth is the need of the patriarchal hierarchy. Patriarchal hierarchy is an effective means for feudal rulers to maintain feudal order, and it should also be reflected in major events of death.

(2) Tombs include coffins, coffins, boxes, urns and altars. In the traditional funeral custom, the burial instruments are also different according to the identity of the deceased before his death.

Coffin. A device for directly holding a body. There are wooden, metal, crystal, glass, silver and so on. Wooden coffins pay attention to a lot. It is said that nanmu and sandalwood coffins can protect the body from decay. Wooden coffins are also very particular about materials, three inches, seven inches, and even feet away, so heavy that dozens of people can't move them. .

Guo. A set of coffins outside the coffin. In feudal society, the use of coffins was strictly different. There are seven emperors, five kings, three doctors and two scholars, and civilians are coffins. Coffin lid. A temple-style lid used to cover coffins. The higher the rank, the more exquisite the coffin cover. Box. Most of them are underage dead, used to bury bodies. It is also used for secondary bone burial. Shaped like a coffin, but small. Urn. The containers for holding ashes are mostly wood or bakelite. The urn is used for modern cremation. Urn. Popular in ancient cremation, mainly influenced by Buddhist culture.

Burial objects are objects buried with the dead. There are many forms such as burning, burial and carrying the dead. Burial objects include people, objects, symbols and imitations. The funerary objects are strictly graded, which is a symbol of the identity and status of the deceased before his death. In modern society, funerary objects just become a symbol, which is still popular in backward areas such as rural areas. The appearance of funerary objects is related to social consciousness and religious belief, and the consciousness of "filial piety" plays a role in fueling the situation. In slave society, people are often buried with them, which is very terrible. Later, pottery people were buried with him, which was a little progress. Ancient emperors often buried objects with them, which led to the wind of grave robbery. Emperors suspected it with fake tombs, and some emperors had more than a dozen tombs. Generally, people usually bury them with symbolic objects. One is that their economic strength is not enough, and the other is that they are afraid of the anxiety of the deceased who robbed the tomb.

After choosing the cemetery and burial tools, it is the burial method of reburial. This is the way people deal with the remains of the dead, that is, how to bury the dead. In ancient times, there was no reliable record of how to deal with the remains after death. According to legends and archaeological and anthropological research results, it is found that there is no fixed custom for ancient humans to deal with the remains of the deceased. After human ancestors appeared on the earth 2 million years ago, the remains of the deceased were treated almost like mammals.

The earliest conscious funeral activity in China was the Neanderthals in the late Stone Age, 654.38+07,000 years ago. The deceased had a certain ceremony. Hematite powder was scattered around the body of the deceased, as well as stone tools and other funerary objects. Funeral custom is accompanied by the concept of "ghost". At that time, due to the limited level of people's understanding, people had all kinds of mysteries about nature, and gradually developed all kinds of consciousness according to their own experiences and dreams, which further affected the formation and development of funeral customs, especially the handling of the dead bodies. Since the concept of soul came into being, human beings have dealt with human remains in various ways. According to the burial methods, there are earth burial, cremation, celestial burial, wind burial, water burial, cliff burial, tower burial, exposed burial, belly burial, naked burial, road burial, tree burial, cave burial, sea burial, wild burial, hanging burial, ship coffin burial, copper coffin burial, hanging coffin burial, sarcophagus burial, jar coffin burial and so on. According to the types of burial, there are upward burial, curved burial, side burial, curved burial, direct burial, dismembered burial, primary burial and secondary burial. The above burial methods and burial methods can be summarized as follows: First, the body preservation method holds that the soul must depend on the body and its destination, so the body should be preserved as much as possible, such as burial, hanging coffin burial, antiseptic burial and so on. The second method is the elimination of remains, which holds that the soul should leave the body to ascend to heaven as soon as possible, so it is necessary to eliminate the remains as soon as possible and let the soul rest in peace, such as cremation, water burial and celestial burial.

After entering the class society, the burial method appeared obvious stages, and gradually formed the traditional funeral custom based on soil burial. With the development of history, social progress and the restriction and influence of many factors, some burial methods created by people in their lives are constantly updated and given new contents, such as cremation; Some were eliminated because they were bulky and harmful to the environment, such as hanging coffin burial, elevated burial, urn burial, water burial and so on. The formation and selection of ancient burial methods and burial styles are often closely related to people's living environment and geographical factors. For example, tree burial, wind burial and open-air burial are mostly ethnic groups living in forests, such as the ancient Qidan people in China, who hang their bodies on trees and burn their bones three years later; For example, people who practice water burial generally live on the banks of rivers. For example, Tibetans and Dulong people in China throw their bodies into the river and let them wander. Another example is cremation, because they live in a cold area, and the fire has a particularly prominent impact on life, which in turn affects the funeral. For example, cremation was popular among frontier strongmen in the northwest of China in ancient times.

China is a multi-ethnic country. Due to the differences in geographical environment, production activities, psychological quality and religious beliefs, different burial methods and customs have been formed. In addition, due to the influence of thousands of years of feudal traditional culture, the imbalance of various ethnic groups and the differences in religious beliefs, the burial methods are also different.