中国古代婚姻制度 The Marriage System and Woman’s Position in Ancient China.docVIP

The Marriage System and Woman’s Position in Ancient China The marriage system in ancient China is an important issue of Chinese ancient culture history research. The ethics in Chinese feudal society thinks: faint (marriage), is the basis of etiquette,” considering that marriage as the beginning of interpersonal relationship. It is because marriage occupies an important position so called marriage affair or “lifetime affair”. In ancient China，the marriage system was monogamy. Even the emperor also just had one wife, at that time, as long as it was under certain conditions(mainly sufficient materia and high status), anyone could marry a lot of “wives”, but they were called concubines and could not say his wife. As was similar to the common people. Concerning the etiquette of ancient marriage, the process could said to be quite complicated and troublesome. Compared with “naked marriage”—the most fashionable and convenient type of marriage nowadays, in my opinion, ancient marriage was a headache stuff. The whole process mainly included six procedures, that is, 纳采[na cai] meant if a man wanted to marry a girl, he would send a matchmaker to propose a marriage, if the girl permitted, then the man would send some gifts; 问名[wen ming] meant the man sent the matchmaker to ask the girl’s name and her birthday to cast a horoscope; 纳吉[na ji] meant if the horoscope was well-matched, then the matchmaker would inform the news to the girl, and sent her gifts as engagement; 纳征[na zheng] meant the man side would send betrothal gift the girl side; 请期[qing qi] meant the man side would send someone to inform the girl side the day that they would get married; 亲迎[qin ying] meant the man went to the girl’s home to marry his bride on his own. Among the six procedures, wild goose was considered the most important gift. [《礼》曰：女子十五许嫁，纳采、问名、纳吉、请期、亲迎，以雁为贽。纳征用玄熏，故不用雁也。] Why wild goose in ancient China was so important? First, wild goose was a kind of migratory birds, whenever north to sout