mujie 墓碣, grave tablets

Mujie 墓碣 were grave tablets erected at the tombs of low- and mid-ranking officials. Persons who had held an office of rank 6 or 7 were entitled to a memorial stele (mubei 墓碑) at their tombs. Individuals without an official role were only permitted to be commemorated by simple tomb inscriptions (mubiao 墓表). The distinction in rank was introduced during the Tang period 唐 (618-907), whereas the two terms had been interchangeable in antiquity.

Another difference between mubei and mujie was the shape. While the high-ranking memorial stele (mubei) had square corners, the lower memorial tablets (mujie) had a round top, and could thus be compared to mountain tops (jie 嵑).

The inscriptions on all types of commemorative stones praised the virtues and accomplishments of the tomb owners and were often composed by renowned writers. As a result, many inscriptions have been preserved even if the objects themselves are no longer extant. Famous inscriptions (mujie wen 墓碣文, mujie ming 墓碣銘) on mujie grave tablets include Pan Ni's 潘尼 (c. 250-c. 311) Pan Huangmen jie 潘黃門碣 or Chen Zi'ang's 陳子昂 (661-702) Zhaoyizi Zhao shi jie song bing xu 昭夷子趙氏碣頌并序. From the latter example, it is evident that grave tablets served a laudatory purpose (song 頌) and might contain an introduction (xu 序) before the literary part.

Whether an epitaph is a mujie or a mubei can often only be determined from the title of the inscription, but even then, the designation might be technically uncertain.

Figure 1. Mujie 墓碣 tomb inscription

Rubbing of a large jie stele with a long inscription from the Jin period 金 (1115-1234). The inscription is incised on a pointed stone stele, bears a title in a variant of chancery script and a text in standard kaishu script. It consists of a long prose text, and a final eulogy (ming 銘) in poetical shape. From Wang 2014.