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Medieval Buddhist of the Day: Quan Daonu 權道奴, who with his family dedicated a stele in 563, near Tianshui in Gansu. It's an odd stele in that the front is all text, so I'm showing you the back instead, which is more interesting. 1/14
According to inscription, this stele accompanied his donation of a Maitreya figure, which is unidentified. The inscriptions on this stele contain the largest collection of kinship terms I've yet seen on a single stele, plus an interesting separation between living and dead. 2/14
On the front, in the dedication, Quan identifies himself humbly as 佛弟子權道奴 "the Buddhist disciple Quan Daonu." He dedicates the stele to a long list of deceased relatives, including (some appearing more than once): 父、伯、叔、兄、弟、侄、母、姊、嫂、侄女、姊母、姊弟 3/14
I'd have to check up on kinship terms in the Northern Zhou, but broadly this reads as: father, elder uncle, younger uncle, elder brother, younger brother, brother's son, mother, elder sister, elder brother's wife, brother's daughter, and two I'm not quite clear on. 4/14
Those two seem to read as "elder sister's mother" 姊母 and "elder sister's younger brother" 姊弟 - the 1st might work if your elder sister's mother was different from your own, as in a polygynous household, but the 2nd doesn't work that way, so it must be something else. 5/14
On the back, where his donor portrait appears, Quan claims his full titles: 蕩難殿中二將軍、都督渭州南安郡守、陽縣開國伯、權道奴供養佛時 Without translating all this, he's claiming a military generalship, a prefectural magistracy, and a very minor noble title. 6/14
Now we're in the realm of the living. Quan names a whole bunch of relatives who joined him in sponsoring this stele (though oddly I can find no mention of his wife, even though she appears with her oxcart on the stele). The kinship terms for the living donors are: 7/14
息、侄兒、清信姊、孫女、清信嫂、女、息姊、侄姊、外生、孫、姊侄、從侄、妻、息姊侄 These are trickier and contain more puzzling uses of 姊 "elder sister": son, nephew, "the pure and faithful elder sister," granddaughter, "the pure and faithful sister-in-law," daughter... 8/14
two unclear terms, then sister's son, grandson, another unclear one, then nephew in the maternal line, wife, and a fourth unclear term. The four I'm calling unclear here are 息姊、侄姊、姊侄、息姊侄. I wonder if 姊 here isn't being used to indicate a relative by marriage 9/14
The 息姊 and 侄姊 are all apparently women with surnames different from Quan; the 姊侄 is a man surnamed Wang. (I should note that the gender of personal names is never a sure thing, but these seem pretty gendered.) 息姊侄 is a woman surnamed Wang. 10/14
The different surnames would seem to point to an affinal relationship. It's a little tricky because the kinship terms that use 姊 for the deceased, i.e. 姊弟 and 姊母, don't give surnames for the people thus commemorated. But without further research, that's my best guess. 11/14
Since stelae like this one were often set up in public, we'd expect there to be some effort to accuracy in things like kinship terms and official titles, though there's no way to check now. But it's really interesting to see how all these people were apparently connected 12/14
...in a kinship network, and also how the main donor presented himself in multiple contexts within a single stele. I wish I knew where it had once been set up. I'd love to know which side the viewer approached first! 13/14
And I'm still thinking about "the pure and faithful elder sister" and "the pure and faithful sister-in-law." I imagine they must have been characters in their own right to insist on such titles on the family stele. @StephBalkwill this may be one of your 法號 situations? 14/14 fin
