Family instructions,given by ancestors to their descendants,typically occur among family members based on blood relations and marital ties and are only binding on those family members.However,the socialization of family mottos since the Song Dynasty has made the traditional family mottos move out of the narrow circle of families and gradually become the common principle that all members of the society follow and abide by. They are,then,no longer the private property of a family,but the common cultural wealth of the whole society. Since the Song Dynasty,there have been three ways for the socialization of family instructions:the collection of family instructions and the change of their object,the mutual use of different family instruc-tions and the intersection and integration with other didactic and admonitory texts.
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