Communications in Humanities Research ISSN: 2753-7072
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Research Article

Complaint from Wife --A Comparative Study Between Sogdian and Chinese Ancient Letters

Ruochen XuNanjing Foreign Language School*

* Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract

Previous research has studied Sogdian Ancient Letter No.3 discovered in Dunhuang to show that Sogdian women share a considerably high social status. However, there is still a lack of research on the reason behind this phenomenon. Therefore, this study aims to find out what caused differences in women’s social status in different ancient civilizations. By comparing Sogdian Ancient Letters No.3 to Husband Joined the Army, a letter from the Qin Dynasty in ancient China, we discovered that the main difference between the two letters is the writers’ attitude towards their husbands. Subsequently, we searched for and compared the restrictions for women in the two civilizations, and the results showed that the writers’ attitude is largely correlated with the restrictions. While the restrictions in the Qin Dynasty were much stricter than those in Sogdian society, the writer from the Qin Dynasty showed relative cowardice towards her husband. This result reflected how restriction on women affected their status in marriage and in the whole society.

Keywords: Sogdian Ancient Letters; Women’s Social Status; Comparative Study
Published: October 23, 2025
DOI: 10.54254/2753-7064/2025.HT28068
Volume: CHR Vol.85
pp. 21-25
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