The ancients talked about marriage: "marriage" and "faintness" are of great significance.

When the ancients talked about marriage, they often wrote the word "marry" as the word "faint". At first, they mistakenly thought that the words "marriage" and "faint" were universal, but they actually had profound meanings.

The ancients had many explanations for the word marriage:

First of all, it refers to the wedding ceremony. For example, Xu Shen explained the word "marriage" in Shuo Wen Jie Zi: "Rite, marry an unconscious woman." Zheng Xuan in the Han Dynasty explained: "The way of marriage is to adjust the ceremony of marriage." In the Tang Dynasty, Kong Ying Da said: "It takes a long time to marry a wife, because of its name." The ancient society paid special attention to the wedding ceremony, thinking that it would be illegal not to hold a wedding.

Secondly, marriage refers to the title of husband and wife. Zheng Xuan said: "A husband has a wife, and a wife has a wife."

Thirdly, I think marriage is about in-laws relationship. There is a saying in Er Ya Qin Shi: "The husband's father is married, the wife's father is married, the wife's parents are married to her husband's parents, one wife is married, and the other husband is married."

Fourth, it refers to the wedding time. "White Tiger Yi Tong?" Marriage explains the unconscious choice of holding a wedding in ancient times: "What is a married person? Salute when you are unconscious, so it is called marriage. A woman marries her husband, so it is called marriage. The poem says,' not only the old cause', but also the husband. He also said:' Yaner is newly married', which means a woman. So what is a salute when you are in a coma? It is also a sign of yin and yang, and marriage is also a time of yin and yang. "This shows that most weddings were held in the dark before the Han Dynasty. These explanations can be summarized as follows: the husband married his wife unconsciously, and the wife came because of the husband, and then determined the title of husband and wife and established the relationship between the two in-laws, all of which should be realized through the wedding ceremony.

Later, the custom of getting married in a daze was no longer popular, and most people chose to get married by divination and consulting auspicious books.

When the ancients mentioned marriage, they often involved "Six Rites". For example, the book "Etiquette and Lady's Letter" records: "A gentleman is faint, and his actions will be faint, and his actions will be sincere." Zheng Xuan commented: "Use Xin, the messenger; It's embarrassing to faint. "That is, the first five rituals in the process of six rituals are all sent from the male family to the female family, and the time must be at dawn; The last kiss must be at night. The so-called six rites are actually the whole etiquette process of recruiting people and getting married. After the Warring States period, some literati collected local customs and predecessors' records and compiled six rites, which gradually became a unified form of employment marriage.

The six gifts are: first, "accepting gifts", that is, the man lets people accept the gifts and gives them to the woman's family to express his intention to propose to her family. If the woman accepts, proceed to the second step.

The second is "asking the name", that is, the man's master has a book and asks the matchmaker to go to the woman's house to ask the date, time and name of her birth.

The third is "Naji", that is, after the man's parents ask about the woman's birth year, according to the birth years of both men and women, after divination or ancestral inquiry, it is determined whether the combination of the two surnames is fierce or auspicious. If divination is unlucky, the marriage will end. If the divination is auspicious, please ask the matchmaker to inform the woman and confirm the engagement.

The fourth way is to "recruit relatives", that is, after giving a good omen, the matchmaker formally sends a bride price to the woman's family on behalf of the man's family. At this point, men and women are officially engaged, and the woman can no longer be betrothed to others.

The fifth is "please date", that is, both men and women determine the wedding date.

The sixth is "pro-welcoming", that is, the groom marries the bride. When the traditional "Six Rites" progressed to the "Welcome" stage, the whole wedding process reached * * *, and the related etiquette procedures were also the most complicated. On the wedding day, the man went to the woman's house first according to his father's orders, and the woman's father obeyed the door. At this time, the son-in-law obeyed the woman's father. After the wedding, the groom welcomed the woman on the bus and went back to her home together. No matter the imperial clan or the common people, this cumbersome procedure can not be ignored.

During the Zhenguan period, Princess Chengyang married Du He. Emperor Taizong ordered Bujiri, and the fortune teller said, "When two fires share the same food, there will be the same glory at the beginning and the same happiness at the end. Please be dizzy during the day and be lucky. " Ma Zhou exhorted, "Look at the imperial court and think about it." Practice during the day and think about each other; Gulp down and think about each other; Get married at night, thinking about blind date. Therefore, there are ups and downs, relatives and outsiders, and sometimes luck is good and bad. It's impossible to mess up the beginning now. So, Fu Cha decided, slow ceremony, sage need not. "Emperor Taizong took his advice and held the wedding of Princess Chengyang in the evening.

The specific contents and procedures of engagement and marriage have changed throughout the dynasties, but they are all the same, and the nature of the form is similar.

At the beginning of "Six Rites", parents' orders and matchmakers' words were the important foundation and the iron law that ancient marriages must abide by. The so-called "foreign words don't enter the beam, and internal words don't come out." But there are exceptions. There is an interesting story about Li in Kaiyuan Tianbao Biography. As the book says, "Li has six women, each with its own beauty. Rain and dew house, please don't allow it. Between the walls of Fu Lin Hall, there is a horizontal window decorated with miscellaneous treasures and crimson yarn. Every day, there are six women playing in the window. Whenever there are aristocratic children visiting, Fu Lin will do whatever he wants in the window. " Obviously, Li's marriage with her daughter broke the vulgar custom of forbearing others. Is it a tradition that the Tang Dynasty did not attach importance to the ancients? Don't parents in the Tang Dynasty have authority? Neither. It's just that the society in the Tang Dynasty was relatively strong, and the people who were fathers and mothers were more enlightened.