Правовое положение женщин в истории средневекового Китая

316 Yulia Mylnikova . Legal status of women in the history of medieval China… crossroads of such science disciplines as history, ethnography, law, soci- ology, psychology, archeology and anthropology. It is perfectly obvious that there exists a necessity to rethink some of the one-sided views and perceptions, and to try to envision a new interpretation of the position of a woman in China’s history. In this context an appeal to this problem appears important and timely for modern Sinology. Unfortunately, Russian Sinology still underestimates the significance and perspective of the study of the history of a woman’s position. The backlog of this trend of native sci- ence, the lack of specific studies in various aspects of social and legal position of a woman in China’s centuries-old history also determine the timeliness of the present study. The first chapter, “Main Primary Sources and Historiography of the Subject,” gives classification and an overview of the most im- portant Chinese legal sources of the VII–XIII century and secondary scholarship related to the topic. The second chapter, “Legal Status of a Woman,” contains four sec- tions and attempts to analyze the position of a woman in the family and her main roles and functions during her life cycle (positions of a daugh- ter, a wife, a mother and a stepmother), institution of concubinage, types of divorces in the Tang and Song eras, and a woman’s right to conclude the subsequent marriage as well as women’s property rights. The third chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the position of Buddhist and Taoist nuns, entertainers and courtesans, government and private dependent women and slaves. Chapter 4 is entitled “Woman as the Victim of Sex Crimes and the Subject of Responsibility in Interfamilial Offenses”. This chap- ter attempts to analyze the specifics of the position of a woman