Child Death and Funerary Culture in the MidLate Tang Period: A Study Centered on Epitaphs

The Tang dynastys culture surrounding death was shaped by multiple factors including religious belief, social attitudes, and economic conditions giving rise to a distinctive set of practices and a particular cultural atmosphere. In the late Tang period, parents responses to the premature death of children were varied: those with religious beliefs tended to bury their children near religious sites, while those without such beliefs more often interred them in family cemeteries. If a child who died young had already reached marriageable age, parents might arrange a posthumous marriage for them, which in the Tang was regarded as a normal form of marriage. This mortuary culture not only embodied the livings mourning and blessings for the deceased, but also reflected contemporary societys religious beliefs, notions of family, and understandings of death. Studying late Tang mortuary culture helps deepen our understanding of peoples spiritual world at the time and its underlying socio-cultural background, and enables exploration of the cultural forms and connotations that appear in cases of child premature death.