Marriage Customs in Ancient China

The marriage system in ancient China was monogamy and polygamy. Even the emperor had only one wife, but at that time, as long as conditions allowed, he could marry many wives, but that was called a concubine, not a wife. I have a maid under my concubine. Only the maid who has gone through the formalities can be called a concubine.

The ancient marriage system in China is an important topic in the study of ancient cultural history in China. Among the three major productions of human society, marriage is the only way to realize human production and the entity of social ethical relations. Due to the production of human beings, the life span of human beings has been extended, thus forming various interpersonal relationships, social and cultural psychology and customs. In order to survive and develop, human beings must engage in the production of means of production and daily necessities, and some of these products have become the materialized results of culture; Social ideology and values formed by human spiritual production, as a kind of spiritual culture, react to material production and human production.

Because marriage plays an important role in the above three productions, it is called "marriage event". China feudal ethics regards marriage as the beginning of interpersonal relationship. Easy Cohesion: "Heaven and earth, everything is mellow. Both men and women are fine, and everything is transformed. " Nature is produced by the interaction of yin and yang, and human beings are produced by the intersection of men and women. The hieroglyphics of Dongba Sutra of Naxi nationality have a concept of human nature similar to that in the Book of Changes. Gas is generated between heaven and earth, gas becomes frog, and frog becomes human (men are born from heaven, women are born from earth, and heaven and earth produce people). This is the original human point of view.

The ethical standard of feudal society in China holds that "confusing (marriage) is the essence of ceremony." "Men and women are different, and then husband and wife are righteous; Husband and wife are righteous, and then father and son are relatives; Father and son are related, and then the monarch and the minister have politics "(1). It holds that marriage and family are embryos that constitute social organisms.