唐代在室女出家墓志内容探析

An Analysis of the Epitaphs of Unmarried Female Who Chose to be a Nun in the Tang Dynasty

自从周绍良、赵超主编的《唐代墓志汇编》和《唐代墓志汇编续集》公开发行以来,截至2016年,相继有30余种墓志著录图书被整理出版。在这些墓志著录图书里,著录的唐代比丘尼,包括挂籍寺庙和私度居家的比丘尼非常之多。关于她们出家的原因,现有的研究成果大体认为,除了受社会大趋势影响之外,就个人情况而言,大致可分为受家人影响、追求佛教的精神世界、寻求精神安慰、因病祈福和不想婚嫁等[1]。但是在比丘尼队伍中,既有成年的已婚妇女或丧偶妇女,还有很多是未婚的在室女。

By 2016,more than 30 kinds of epitaph descriptions had been sorted and published.About 96 epitaphs described unmarried girls who became Buddhist nuns,and there are about 66 epitaphs that could be used for research because of more information.Some of these girls were 18 or 19 years old,while some others were only 3 or 4 years old.In short,most of them were underage.Compared with married or widowed women,there were two unique reasons why these girls chose to be nuns:one was to pray for their dead elders,and the other was to refuse marriage.In terms of their age when they became nuns,with the exception of those who had illness,there were 33 underage girls,accounting for 34% of the 96 epitaphs.As for the reasons why they chose to become nuns,the explanations from these epitaphs included the following aspects:worship of religion,fatalistic connection with Buddhism from childhood,praying for others,etc.In addition,11 epitaphs did not mention the reasons.However,no matter how these epitaphs described this situation,their behavior must has been arranged by their families,because it happened when these girls were very young.In fact,many of these girls have a Buddhist family background.Obviously,in the Tang Dynasty,it was common to send young daughters to Buddist temples.