User:PericlesofAthens/Sandbox

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SANDBOX1[edit]

I am User:PericlesofAthens, and this is my sandbox.

For the old version of my user page, see User:PericlesofAthens/Userpage Old

For the new draft of my user page, see User:PericlesofAthens/Userpage Draft.

Also, see my other sandboxes here:

Here are my article drafts:

UPDATE: I have requested that an administrator delete these drafts per Wikipedia policy at WP:STALEDRAFT. However, they are now full articles on Eng Wiki, so none of the content is actually missing!

For silly purposes of writing articles at Uncyclopedia.com, see:

Experimentation[edit]

Paper
Although it is recorded that the Han Dynasty (202 BC–220 AD) court eunuch Cai Lun (c. 50–121 AD) invented the papermaking process and established the use of new raw materials used in making paper, ancient padding and wrapping paper artifacts dating to the 2nd century BC have been found in China; by the 3rd century, paper as a writing medium was in widespread use, replacing traditional writing mediums such as strips of bamboo rolled into threaded scrolls, strips of silk, and wooden tablets which were more economically costly to produce.[1][2][3][4] In the papermaking process established by Cai in 105, a boiled mixture of mulberry tree bark, hemp, old linens, and fish nets created a pulp that was pounded into paste and stirred with water; a wooden frame sieve with a mat of sewn reeds was then dunked into the mixture, which was then shaken and then dried into sheets of paper that were bleached under the exposure of sunlight; K.S. Tom says this process was gradually improved through leaching, polishing and glazing to produce a smooth, strong paper.[3][4]

Jiezhang 節杖 is the Staff of Authority

VIII

(i.e. imperial bestowal of the Tiger Tally 虎符)

United Nations

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs2biz/2774258891/ Han Dynasty lacquer!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs2biz/2775113654/in/photostream/ Here's another!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs2biz/2774264405/in/photostream/ And another!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs2biz/2774270807/in/photostream/ And another!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs2biz/2774279693/in/photostream/ And another!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs2biz/2774283583/in/photostream/ And another!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs2biz/2774287231/in/photostream/ And another!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs2biz/2775138854/in/photostream/ And another!

New footnote style[edit]

Hey! This is a style of footnotes that I was unaware of (besides the "<ref></ref>" style); just click on the footnote, and it brings you to the reference used that you actually type in a different section, not in the present one.1

For instance, if I was to cite something for this statement: "Your mom is so fat you have to grease the door frame and hold a twinkie on the other side just to get her through."2

Footnotes section here[edit]

  • 1 See! This is where your footnote reference goes.
  • 2 Joe, Average. (1998). Your Mom is Pretty Damn Fat: Tips on How to Convince Your Mom to Lose Some Damn Weight, Jesus, She's like a Whale!. Boston: The Boston Tea Party Press. ISBN 666-420-911-XXXPORN-2008. Lol.

Standard Histories are not Primary Sources[edit]

Hello everyone. I think the heart of the matter here is whether or not China's Standard Twenty-Four Histories compiled in premodern times can be considered primary sources or secondary sources. Despite their age, they are in fact secondary sources. The definition of a primary source according to our very own Wiki is "a document, recording or other source of information (paper, picture,....etc) that was created at the time being studied, by an authoritative source, usually one with direct personal knowledge of the events being described. It serves as an original source of information about the topic." This definition simply does not describe the Book of Tang, or the other Standard Histories for that matter, which are more in line with Wiki's definition of a secondary source: "a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented." The Twenty-Four Histories are not memoirs. They are not diaries. They are not newspapers or pamphlets. They are not written talismans placed in tombs. They are not original photographs of events. They are not courier letters, travel logues, protest signs, or long-lost drafts of political speeches. They are in fact systematically-organized, peer-scrutinized, government-sponsored histories which utilize primary sources and sometimes other secondary sources. They were written by professional historians, albeit gentrymen writing for an original reading audience of other literate gentrymen. More often than not, they were written about a previous dynastic era, one that had just preceded the contemporaneous ruling house. This alone dispells any notion that they are primary sources. There are some problems with the Standard Histories. Sometimes information in them has been proven false due to modern research or archaeological finds. But the amount of claims proven false in modern times is marginal compared to the vast majority of events, people, places, and things described in the Standard Histories. Modern historians depend on the Standard Histories for much of what they know of premodern China. This fact is admitted as such by the renowned sinologist Denis C. Twitchett (The Writing of Official History Under the T'ang, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, ISBN 0521522935). If someone here wishes to make an argument that use of the Standard Histories somehow violates Wikipedia:Reliable sources, then I'm afraid that argument is going to have to be based on some other grounds than claims that they are primary sources and thus cannot be used. One could point out that The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire published in 1776 by Edward Gibbon may have some inaccuracies that modern scholarship has revealed, but does that make his source suddenly a primary one which we are unable to use or cite? No. Of course not. Edward Gibbon was no more an ancient Roman citizen than Song-era historian Sima Guang was a man of the Tang Dynasty. That's the end of my input. Good night.--Pericles of AthensTalk 03:41, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Images for Han article (not found at Han page in Wiki Commons)[edit]

Lelang Commandery[edit]

Pai's Article[edit]

Culture Contact and Culture Change: The Korean Peninsula and Its Relations with the Han Dynasty Commandery of Lelang

By Hyung Il Pai (NOTE: Pai is her last name)

World Archaeology, Vol. 23, No. 3, Archaeology of Empires (Feb., 1992), pp. 306-319

  • Page 306-309: Here Hyung gives a general overview of modern Korean and Japanese scholarship on Lelang and their interpretation of the commandery as an imperial arm of the Han Dynasty that dominated, colonized, oppressed, and interfered with native Koreans. Hyung labels these theories as simplistic on page 308, and states that his article will instead explore acculturation, culture contacts, and the ways in which Koreans played an active role in diplomatic affairs, not a passive one to some greater civilization that was supposedly dominating theirs.
  • Page 309: Wiman Joseon established by Wei Man from the Chinese Yan state in 194 BC. When his grandson Ugeo had a Han envoy killed at the border between Wiman Joseon and the Han Empire, Emperor Wu of Han ordered an invasion in 108 BC. He had one army of five thousand cross the Bohai Sea, and another army march to northern Korea from Liaodong Peninsula. The first year was a major setback for the Han armies, who lost battles and maintained poor communication. After a year's siege, the Wiman Joseon capital at Wanggeom was conquered due to internal treachery of ministers within the city. However, there is no archaeological evidence of any fortress built in this region during the time that could have withstood a year long siege; at most, it was probably just a small outpost fort with soldiers, traders, and administrators.
  • Page 309-310: In the 1930s, the Japanese discovered clay seals and bricks on an apparently burnt floor with the Han titles of "Lelang Liguan" and "Lelang Fugui" stamped onto them, located at the southern bank of the Taedong River facing Pyongyang. This was evidence for the location of the Han Dynasty's Lelang Commandery. A bronze vessel that was dated at the site confirmed written evidence of Lelang's existence in the 1st century BC. Within a 25 km radius of the site of the fortress are Han style burials with seals, jade items, gold items, and lacquerware items. The number of these grave items decline as one gets farther and farther away from the site.
  • Page 310: Hyung says that the only other archaeologically confirmed Han Dynasty site is at the Daifang Commandery, as any other commandery or district mentioned in historical records "are seen to be associated with earlier tribal territorial divisions" (here Hyung cites Yi, 1981, page 100), while their exact locations are still shaky and undetermined.
  • Page 311: the Han goods at Lelang were regionally unique in terms of style, just as Han goods in far away Yunnan would be regionally unique and different from Lelang goods. The Han tombs were of either wooden-walled or stone-and-brick construction, with architectural elements of eaves and tiled roofs. The goods within included stoneware items, glazed funerary pottery items, lacquerware items, bronze and iron equipment and weapons and agricultural tools, jade and gold ornaments, bronze mirrors, bronze chariot pieces, silk hats and other clothing items, as well as plenty of coins. Seals with family names on them were cast in gold, silver, bronze, or even wood.
  • Page 311-312: Native Korean graves at this point were mostly of the dolmen and stone cist grave types. Items in them included daggers with sheaths, geometric fine-lined bronze mirrors, flowerpot-shaped pottery, and red jars. The Koreans had small rice-growing settlements on river terraces with houses that were semi-subterranean. At this point, there is no evidence of Koreans having a higher stratified society (i.e. due to the lack of fortresses, walled towns, palaces, etc.)
  • Page 312: Despite initial violence in 108 BC, the Lelang Commandery upheld peaceful relations with the surrounding Korean tribes, who were most likely treated as "dependent states" (shuguo). The natives led their own way of life, administering their own tribes and continuing their own social customs, although they were subject to paying taxes to the Lelang Commandery and offering corvee labor service when it was needed. For submitting tribute to Han forces at Lelang, the latter granted the tribal chieftans proper Han titles and seals as well as silken hats, silk robes, gold, and grain that could be distributed to their followers. Korean tribute items sent to Lelang included fish, iron ore, and human slaves.
  • Page 312: Times could also be violent and hostile, though, as Goguryeo and Buyeo were known to raid the Xuantu Commandery and Lelang Commandery.
  • Page 313-314: Here Hyung provides a helpful table to measure levels of gradual acculturation of Korean tribes into the Han system. At first, Korean tribes simply supplemented their glass beads and ornaments with Han ones, which was an act of simply imitating Han forms. Then they acquired Han materials that required new skills and forms of technology, such as importing Han iron ploughs to replace their primitive ones, an act which demarks acceptance of acculturation. Han materials and techniques then appear, such as glazed and wheelmade pottery, which indicates adaptation of technology. Native forms were decorated in imitation of Han styles, such as on bronze mirrors, which indicates emulation of Han culture. Finally, Hyung states that Koreans changing their burial types to Han burial architecture represents the highest form of acceptance. This is because they finally borrow Han form, function, and socio-religious ideas.
  • Page 315: Hyung states that before Han Chinese contact and Korean acculturation to Han Chinese culture, Korean tribal settlements were fairly uniform and differed only in minor aspects such as pottery style variations. All of their settlements were simply small, socially egalitarian villages. Due to gradual acculturation to Han culture, by the 3rd century the Chinese Weizhi describes distinct kingdoms in Korea such as Buyeo, Goguryeo, Okjeo, Dongye, and Samhan, all of which had "distinctively different social organizations, subsistence systems, customs, and rituals."
  • Page 315: Lelang was the most prominent of the Chinese settlements in Korea, as the Wa people of Japan who sailed up the Taedong River mistook Lelang for Luoyang due to the Korean settlement's wealth, prestige, and prosperity at that point. Although no ancient foundries have been found, there were many iron artifacts found, even native Korean-made ones as they adopted Han metallurgic technology such as iron ploughs for greater rice cultivation. Lelang was also known for being a center of fine gold craftsmanship.
  • Page 317: The 'Lelang Interaction Sphere', as Hyung calls it, involved Lelang at the core of international interaction with other political entities in Korea and southwestern Japan. Hyung states that without this phase of the Han's elite distribution of seals, iron tools, and luxury items in a new network of trade, the next phase of Korean development with the mounded tomb states could not have come to fruition. Then the next phase was competition, warfare, and higher diplomacy amongst Korean states and Yamato Japan.

Western Han Government and Society[edit]

Wang's article[edit]

An Outline of The Central Government of The Former Han Dynasty

By Wang Yu-ch'uan

Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1/2 (Jun., 1949), pp. 134-187

Miscellaneous issues[edit]

  • Page 135: The Western Han reversed and modified Qin Dynasty policies of governance and administration. It abandoned central control in favor of the old Zhou Dynasty system of feudalism, or fengjian. Almost two-thirds of the entire Han Empire was carved into smaller semi-autonomous kingdoms, each handled by the emperor's brothers, sons, or meritorious assistants. Each of these kingdoms was organized the same way as the emperor's government and had complete authority over their respective domains. For many years the central government of the Western Han emperors really only had power over the area comprising modern Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, Sichuan, Hubei, and part of Gansu. These territories mentioned were ruled by the Western Han emperors with total control similar to Qin's bureaucratic and autocratic control over its whole empire.
  • Page 135: From 154 to 126 BC, there was a series of struggles between these semi-autonomous kingdoms and the central government, resulting in the loss of these kingdoms' loose sovereignty, their reduction in size, and the central government's new role of monitoring and supervising them. The central government of the Western Han reached its zenith in the last quarter of the 2nd century BC, but declined after the mid 1st century BC due to other reasons that were social and economic.
  • Page 136: The largest political units within the Han Empire were provinces and kingdoms, each of these divided into counties and districts. Stretching from northern Korea to northern Vietnam, the empire had 12,233,062 registered households with 59,594,978 people in 2 AD, which Wang says probably omitted children below the age of seven.
  • Page 136-137: an enormous territory with an enormous population necessitated a strong and able government. Wang says that there were at most 130,285 people employed in the central and provincial governments by the end of the 1st century BC. In 117 BC, there were 382 officials in the Chancellery, serviced by 282 clerks, bringing the total amount of people employed by the Chancellery to 644 in that year. In the year 110 BC, the Secretariat had 341 officials and many clerks which pushed the total number of people employed in the Secretariat to well over 500.
  • Page 137: Western Han officials were divided into 20 different ranks, which was reduced to 16 in the year 32 BC. An official's rank determined his status, salary, clothing, type of carriages that were acceptable to ride in, certain privileges (such as exemption from hard labor or military service), etc. In terms of salary paid in grain, the highest official rank was paid 10,000 bushels (shi) of grain, while the lowest was paid only 100 bushels of grain. However, the amount of bushels of grain did not always distinguish an official's rank, since he could be paid in both grain and cash at the same time.

Emperor[edit]

  • Page 137-138: The Emperor stood at the pinnacle of the social order and at the apex of the government, and was a more powerful figure to the wang, the predecessor kings of the Zhou era who claimed divine origin.
  • Page 139: In Zhou and Qin era China, a ruler legitimized his reign by claiming noble birth, by claiming the mandate of heaven willing him to rule, or a man of great virtue and wisdom (the latter influenced by Confucianism's emphasis on the wise and virtuous sage). Shang and Zhou rulers also claimed divine origin, while even the unpopular Qin was regarded as the descendant of the White God (Bodi). Liu Bang legitimized his rule of China by overthrowing Qin, bringing peace to the people, unselfishly sharing land with feudal lords who assisted him, and claimed divine status.
  • Page 139-140: There were funny myths to prove he was superhuman, such as Liu Bang's mother conceiving him by a dragon who visited her dreams, as a dragon was seen hovering over her at his birth. There was also a myth about a strange phenomenon that was always seen in the skies above him whereever he traveled. His contemporaries regarded him as the son of the Red God who battled against the son of the White God (the ruler of Qin). It is said that when he entered the Hangu Pass to take the Qin capital, five stars converged in the Gemini constellation.
  • Page 140: Despite these divine attributes, Liu Bang was not viewed as a living God and was not worshipped. The awe that commoners had for him was not shared by his companions who helped him gain the throne and then became his ministers. To elevate his position and retain his dignity as ruler, court ceremonies were adopted in 201 BC that would distance the emperor from the public and even his longtime friends and ministers, as continual intimate relations with the emperor could lead to a disillusionment and loss of awe in his power. He had his ancestral temples erected throughout the empire; there were 168 of them by 72 BC.
  • Page 141: However effective these myths were in legitimizing his reign, they merely strengthened his power that was already based on control of the military and political affairs.
  • Page 141: Unlike some other world empires, the Han emperors did not own their empires as private property; the most they actually owned were a few imperial parks and claims to products made in mountains and seas, but these were limited and separated from government revenues for the empire. Nonetheless, the emperor's power was enhanced through the government's collection of the land tax, the poll tax on adults, a tax on children, and forced labor. In 119 BC a new tax on merchants' property and handicrafts was introduced, while a tax on livestock was introduced in 114 BC. Government monopolies on salt and iron did not exist until 119 BC, while the tax on coinage currency was instituted in 115 BC.
  • Page 141-142: People who reached adulthood were forced to take one year of military training, one year of garrison duties, and one month annually military service in their local area. The emperor was commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
  • Page 142: The emperor appointed all central government officials who earned more than 600 bushels of grain. He also appointed all provincial governors (taishou), county prefects (xianling), and county chiefs (xianchang) in the local governments.
  • Page 142: The emperor was the sole legislator of the law, which consisted of a code, imperial decrees, precedents, and decisions of the Commandant of Justice. The Han law code was compiled by the Chancellor Xiao He (d. 193 BC). However, more laws were added later by Han ministers, with the sanction of their respective emperors. Decrees addressed specific matters and precedents had to be approved by the emperor.
  • Page 142-143: "Only the decisions of the Commandant of Justice did not emanate directly from the Emperor, but since he was appointed by the Emperor, his decisions could not contradict the Emperor's wishes."
  • Page 143: "In purely civil law cases the Emperor acted as the supreme judge. The lowest law court was the county (hsien) administration. Lawsuits which the County Prefect was unable to settle were sent to the Provincial Governor, who, in case of doubt, presented them to the Emperor." Wang states that to legitimate this supreme power, the Emperor was viewed as the Son of Heaven and the father of the people. "As father the Emperor should care for and govern, and as children the people had to respect and obey."

Chancellor[edit]

  • Page 143: The Imperial Cabinet in the Western Han was a direct descendant of the Zhou era court, although the old offices were granted some new functions.
  • Page 143-144: The Chancellor was the chief assistant to the Emperor, second in power and rank to him, and represented the pinnacle of the official hierarchy. There was only one Chancellor at the beginning of the dynasty, but from 196 to 180 BC there were two chancellors, the Right Chancellor ranking above the Left Chancellor. Yet after 179 BC only one Chancellor continued to hold power while for a little while two still continued to nominally exist.
  • Page 145: Each Chancellor was granted with the title of Marquis (Hou) and given privileges to recommend people to the Emperor for placement in the highest offices of state, as well as local government, and had the power to appoint officials from the 600 bushel rank down without consulting the Emperor at all. However, he was held responsible should they become inadequate for office and could be openly criticized. The Chancellor kept a record of officials he viewed as important, especially the provincial governors, and checked on them constantly. His subordinate official known as the "Director of Rectitude" investigated officials for any corruption or neglect of duties. Without consulting the Emperor, the Chancellor could mete out punishments to these misbehaving officials, even ones as high or higher than the provincial governor's post.
  • Page 145: One of the chief duties of the chancellor was overseeing the finances of the state. He was also responsible for military preparations and overseeing grain supplies for the frontier armies.
  • Page 145-146: The Chancellor was head of the Imperial Cabinet and directed the discussions of the Court Conference. He then summarized the discussions of this conference and handed this over to the throne for the Emperor to make a decision.
  • Page 146: The Chancellor had in his office registers for land, population, maps of the empire's territories, provincial reports on harvests and banditry, and financial accounts of the provinces. Every province sent a delegate to the court at the end of the year to report on provincial matters, with one copy of their report sent to the Secretariat and another to the Chancellor. The Chancellor would then grade the provincial administrators based on these reports and made recommendations for promotion or demotion of the Governors of these provinces. When lawsuits could not be resolved by provincial governors, they were sent to the Chancellor for a decision; when a provincial governor could not adequately suppress outlaws, the Chancellor sent his own assistants to deal with them in the province. Wang states that "All of these duties and powers were the logical result of the fact that the Chancellor was made responsible for the administration of the provinces."

Imperial Secretariat[edit]

  • Page 147: The Imperial Secretary was just below the Chancellor in terms of power and rank. His title was Yushi dafu, was changed to Dasikong in 8 BC, was reverted back to Yushi dafu in 4 BC, and again was reverted to Dasikong in 1 BC. These changes in title had nothing to do with change in authority or duties, though. He was considered as a Vice Chancellor, and had authority to discuss matters with the Chancellor; if the two disagreed, they presented their case to the Emperor for resolution, although the Emperor more often than not sided with the Chancellor on issues.
  • Page 147-148: the chief duty of the Imperial Secretariat was to supervise and check upon the administrative personnel of officialdom. Since he was in charge of investigating official neglect, he was granted the title "Great Minister in Charge of the Laws," these laws referring to those that governed high officialdom, not the common masses. Like the Chancellor, he too kept a record on all of the top officials and Provincial Governors, making sure they did not abuse authority or send inaccurate reports to the throne about their provinces' land, population, or taxes.
  • Page 148: Just like the Chancellor, he received the annual provincial delegates who forwarded provincial reports to the court. Like the Chancellor he also gave them instructions during their departure back to the provinces, only his differed in that they were focused on matters of disciplinary procedures. His authority to discipline extended not only over officials below him in rank, but also over the Chancellor and even the Emperor's attendants. For the latter, he inspected them through his subordinate known as the "Palace Assistant to the Imperial Secretary", who had an office within the imperial palace itself.
  • Page 148-149: In addition to his role as a disciplinary supervisor, he also had the power to receive and transmit some of the imperial edicts to the Chancellery (which were then dispatched to the provinces and kingdoms). These imperial edicts were mostly on affairs of state, such as proclamations on law or choices of a new heir apparent. He could also present to the Emperor memorials sent by high ministers.
  • Page 149: the Secretariat was not allowed inside the palace unless it was on official business, but he did have his subordinate inside man, the Palace Assistant of the Imperial Secretary, who maintained discipline among the attendants and eunuchs of the palace. He also handled maps, registers, and sacred books of the palace, and supervised the Attendant Secretaries who recorded all of the Emperor's daily activities (it is also said that they had some power in the execution of laws).
  • Page 149: The Imperial Secretary had other important subordinates as well, such as the Circuit Inspectors. These officials monitored and investigated the activities of provincial governors and impeached any governor who abused his authority. They were in charge of memorials written by ministers to be presented to the Emperor, as well as handling Imperial edicts sent out to the provinces.
  • Page 149-150: During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the emperors came to distrust their civil officials and the Imperial Secretary, while they became more intimate with the Palace Assistant of the Imperial Secretary. As a result, the latter became more powerful than his boss, the Imperial Secretary, and even became independent of him, performing his own disciplinary procedures without consulting the Imperial Secretary on these matters.

Ranking Ministers[edit]

  • Page 150: The Three Lords and Nine Ministers were the highest offices of state. The Three Excellencies, or Lords, formed a triumvirate of the three highest ministers of state, those being the Chancellor, Imperial Secretary, and Grand Commandant. The Grand Commandant was in charge of military affairs, but this office was always temporarily drawn up when it was needed and then disbanded again when his services were no longer needed. After 139 BC, the office was completely abolished.
  • Page 150-151: the Nine Ministers were, in ranking order: (1) Minister of Ceremonies, (2) Supervisor of Attendants, (3) Commandant of Guards, (4) Grand Servant, (5) Commandant of Justice, (6) Grand Herald, (7) Director of the Imperial Clan, (8) Grand Minister of Agriculture, (9) Small Treasurer.
  • Page 151: Each of these ministers held the salary rank of 2,000 bushels and maintained offices with various departments. These ministers were always present in the Court Conferences that discussed the welfare of the empire.
  • Page 151: The Minister of Ceremonies was the chief priest of state in charge of religious ceremonies and Imperial ancestral temples. However, his authority extended into other areas of astronomy, astrology, imperial physicians, and recoding daily activities of the Emperor. The Minister of Ceremonies also judged through written tests the candidates for office that were recommended by Provincial Governors. The Minister of Ceremonies then presented the results to the Emperor, and the Emperor would then decide whether or not to reject or accept these recommended men as high officials.
  • Page 152: The Minister of Ceremonies also supervised the affairs of the Imperial Academy (Taixue). The Erudites (Boshi) under the Minister of Ceremonies were highly learned men, advisors to the Emperor, and participants in the Court Conference. In 124 BC, fifty students were placed under their instruction, hence the Imperial Academy was born. These students were selected by the Minister of Ceremonies and could be recommendees from Provincial Governors. The Minister of Ceremonies maintained their examinations and "reported their eligibility for office to the Emperor." Under Emperor Zhao of Han (86–74 BC), the number of students was expanded from 50 to 100. Under Emperor Xuan of Han (73–49 BC), the number of students was expanded to 200. Under Emperor Yuan of Han (48–33 BC), the number of students was expanded to 1,000. Under Emperor Cheng of Han (32–7 BC), the number of students was increased to 3,000.
  • Page 152-153: the Supervisor of Attendants supervised the Court Gentlemen who were put in charge of guarding the doors of the palaces and halls. However, these Court Gentlemen were also potential candidates for office, and were often related as sons or brothers to 2,000 bushel salary officials already in office. They could also be men recommended by the Provincial Governors, graduates of the Imperial Academy, simply wealthy men, people who had submitted an impressive memorial, or even those who had made financial contributions to the government. The Supervisor of Attendants inspected and rated these Court Gentlemen on measures of simplicity, generosity, modesty, and virtue. If they scored well in these merits, they were recommended for office.
  • Page 153: The Supervisor of Attendants also had as his subordinates the Grandee Attendants who stayed within the palace as advisors to the Emperor. Also, the Qimen Guard established in 138 BC and the Yulin Guard established in 104 BC were both subordinate guard units under the Supervisor of Attendants.
  • Page 153: However, it was the Commandant of the Guards was the chief of the Imperial Guards, who were drafted from among the people and were required to serve for one year. Before 140 BC, the Imperial Guard numbered 20,000 but in that year they were reduced to 10,000.
  • Page 153-154: the Grand Servant was in charge of Emperor's chariots and horses. He was in charge of making sure that proper numbers of chariots and horses were used for certain occasions. One of his other major duties was to supervise the government-designated pastures where horses were raised. Due to the Sino-Xiongnu War beginning in the middle of the 2nd century BC, the Grand Servant of the Han government maintained 36 pastures in the north and west that supported 300,000 steeds. Wang says this might have been reduced in later years, but only slightly.
  • Page 154: The Commandant of Justice was in charge of the laws of state and "accepted and decided all the lawsuits that the Provincial Governors failed to dispose of." If he was unable to come to a decision on these, he passed it on to the Emperor and advised the Emperor on which parts of the law code were suitable for dealing with the case. His powers of executing justice were quite similar to that of the Chancellor.
  • Page 154-155: The Grand Herald was commissioned to deal with foreign barbarians who submitted to Han rule, and had an interpreter as one of his subordinates. However, he also presided over ritual ceremonies with offerings to Heaven and the Imperial ancestral temples. He was also the master of ceremonies when the Emperor received an audience of guests. He also dealt with the affairs of enfeoffed marquises who had been of some merit and assistance to the state.
  • Page 155: the "Director of the Imperial Clan was in charge of members of the Imperial house. He kept a record of them and received the registers of Imperial relatives and handed up by the provincial authorities."
  • Page 155: Wang says that the remaining two Nine Ministers' jobs were focused on financial affairs. "The Grand Minister of Agriculture was in charge of state revenue and disbursement, and the Small Treasurer was manager of the private finances of the Imperial house." Thus, the revenues meant for the government were clearly distinguished from those of the Imperial household, each managed by two different people. The treasury of state gathered the revenues of the poll tax on adults, the land tax, the commutation of labor service into cash payment, the profits garnered from the monopolies on salt and iron, the income from public land, and the profit made from the government's sale of wine. Any taxes gained from mountains, seas, and lakes, which were deemed as the emperor's property, were forwarded to the Palace treasury instead of the state treasury.
  • Page 155-156: The Grand Minister of Agriculture made sure that there was appropriate disbursement of funds to officials' salaries, supplies for the armies, etc. He also oversaw the administration of the government's monopolies on salt, iron, and wine, as well as the sale of these items which the government produced. The Office of Tax Substitutes was also supervised by the Grand Minister, as it was an office designated to receive special local products from taxpayers that could substitute for conventional tax items of grain or coinage. The Grand Minister also was head of the Office for Equalization, which instituted standard prices for all the commodities sold by the state monopolies. He also maintained the granaries in both the provinces and the Imperial capital.
  • Page 156: The Small Treasurer, on the other hand, was simply a personal servant of the Emperor. The Small Treasurer's subordinates included the Master of Documents, the Prefect of Tallies and Staffs of Authority, and the palace eunuchs. By the end of the Han Dynasty, the emperors trusted their close palace aides more than the civil government, and so elevated the authority of the Master of Documents over that of the Chancellor, which allowed the eunuchs to control the Empire. Wang will discuss this more below.

Colonel of Censure and Circuit Inspectors[edit]

  • Page 156: Although these two types of officials did not belong directly to any body of the central government, they were nonetheless important figures charged with disciplinary procedures. The Imperial Secretary and the Director of Rectitude under the Chancellor already dealt with matters of disciplinary procedures, but these officials were of the Imperial Cabinet outside the sphere of the Palace. Hence, the palatial office of the Colonel of Censure was born from the Emperor's need to administer discipline outside of the official government.
  • Page 156-157: If literally translated, the title Sili xiaowei means "Colonel Director of Convict-Laborers" and was preceded by the Sili (Director of Convict-Laborers) whose job was to simply have imprisoned convicts construct roads and canals for the Empire. There was a massive witch-hunt in 91 BC when even the heir apparent was accused of witchcraft and led an unsuccessful rebellion against his father Emperor Wu of Han because of it. After this fiasco, the Sili was granted unusual authority with his 1,200 convict-laborers in order to arrest suspected witches working against the Han Dynasty. However, his power was extended greatly, so much so that not even the Chancellor could give him orders, and he could investigate all the high ministers of state, regardless of rank.
  • Page 157-158: In 45 BC, the symbolic Staff of Authority was taken away from the Colonel of Censure, which then limited his authority to inspecting, investigating, and impeaching. His office was abolished in 9 BC, but it was reinstated in 7 BC as the limited title Sili once more, without the Xiaowei (Colonel) designation.
  • Page 158: Wang says that the Colonel of Censure had duplicated duties and powers as the Imperial Secretary and Chancellor, in that he was able to discipline the whole of officialdom. However, the key difference was his proximity to the Emperor, who used the Colonel as a means to control the civil bureaucracy. The Chancellor and Imperial Secretariat could at times disobey the wishes of the Emperor, but the Colonel of Censure was the personal servant of the Emperor and answered only to him. Wang says that "The Imperial staff of authority which he carried on his missions was the symbol of his power to arrest and punish criminals on the spot just as the Emperor could himself. The Colonel thus represented a partial transfer of the Chancellery and Secretariat's disciplinary powers to the Emperor himself.
  • Page 158: The Han inherited the system of disciplinary officials inspecting Provincial Governors from the Qin Dynasty model. The Imperial Secretariat had Secretaries of Inspection move to the provinces and return to the capital annually in the tenth month of every year to submit reports on the provincial personnel's affairs and if they were corrupt or not. However, in 167 BC light was shed on a scandal of corruption propagated by none other than the Secretaries of Inspection. To remedy this fault in the system, the Chancellery established its own Clerks who did their own inspections of the provinces and supervised the Secretaries of Inspection at the same time.
  • Page 158-159: "In 106 BC the Empire, except for the areas around the Imperial capital, was divided into thirteen pu (circuits). In each of these a disciplinary official was installed with the title Pu-tz'u-shih, or Circuit Inspector. The old system of Secretaries of Inspection was abolished." Since this article is in Wade-Giles, the actual name for circuit should be bu in pinyin.
  • Page 159-160: The Circuit Inspectors had a great amount of authority in inspection, as they were tasked to inspect wealthy regional magnates and clans who might be oppressing the little people in an area, to inspect the Provincial Governors to find any signs of corruption, abuse of authority, or malfeasance, and to inspect whether or not the relatives of the Provincial Governors have abused the common people by using their relative's authority as their excuse.
  • Page 160: These new Circuit Inspectors were supervised by the Palace Assistant of the Imperial Secretary, who was himself a subordinate of the Imperial Secretary, although he had closer ties to the Emperor being in the palace. This indicates that Emperor Wu, who established the circuits and Circuit Inspectors, desired to have greater control over the provinces, as he did not trust the Chancellor or the Imperial Secretary to directly supervise these Circuit Inspectors.
  • Page 160: Of great significance regarding the Circuit Inspectors was their ability not only to inspect the provinces of the empire, but also the kingdoms that were ruled as fiefs by the Emperor's relatives. After 154 BC the rulers of these kingdoms lost much of their authority as the Imperial court stepped in to amass more responsibility and power over them. The Circuit Inspectors can be seen as a culmination of this increasing of the Imperial power over the kingdoms, as well as a means for the Emperor to rein in over the civil administration of the central government.
  • Page 161: Wang compares the Circuit Inspector to the Roman office of the Procurator and the French provincial official of the Intendant. He says that "the similarity between these phenomena is not accidental" and that an autocrat's authority can be measured in the ways he is able to lord over various local governments under him, as the Circuit Inspectors were great examples of the Emperor's power to rule over local governments.

Emperor and Cabinet relations[edit]

  • Page 161: Members of the Imperial household were barred from becoming ministers of state, with one exception, that being the post of Director of the Imperial Clan. The Emperor did not want to have to contend with anyone for authority who was already in a privileged position.
  • Page 161: Although the Emperor had supreme authority, he could not break the laws set forth in the law code of the first emperor and his chancellor. He was also expected to obey the precedents and imperial edicts issued by previous emperors.
  • Page 162-163: There was also the obstacle of the Emperor's cabinet, as the stance on issues and drive for power caused the Emperor and his cabinet to be at odds with one another at times. Han Xin, one of the Founding Emperor's most able generals, was dismissed and eventually executed in 196 BC due to the Emperor's suspicion of his loyalty. Emperor Wu deposed five of his chancellors on grounds of suspicion and in some cases simply because they had taken independent actions he did not like, while these chancellors committed suicide in prison or were executed.
  • Page 163-164: At times there were attempts by ministers to treat the Emperor as a mere figurehead. "From 194 BC to 141 BC, the empire was ruled by sons and grandsons of the founder of the dynasty with the latter's assistants and friends as their chief ministers. The old ministers treated the rulers as a man's trusted friends treat his children." Wang states that this was a mutual affair, as the emperors in this period did not show much enthusiasm for making their own initiatives about state decisions.
  • Page 164: After about 140 BC, this old generation of ministers began to be replaced by a new brand of Confucian scholars, who emphasized the moral and upright leader who set an example for all, and who selected "wise and virtuous men" for government service that would take care of state affairs for him. Dong Zhongshu (179–104 BC) expounded upon this, stating that the wise emperor will choose the course of non-action and let others do everything for him in managing the state and even dealing with guests. Wang says "How much influence this theory ever actually did exert on Han politics is hard to judge. But its validity has never been questioned either by the rulers or by court ministers."
  • Page 164-165: Dong also propagated the idea of the Heaven interacting with Earth in regards to the activities of the ruler, as strange phenomena were signs that a ruler had done wrong. Any natural disaster could thus be interpreted as a ruler's abuse of power. The emperors were absolutely convinced and terrified of this cosmological theory, and sometimes would retire to their palace chambers to sulk and ponder over their faults, then sending out edicts asking ministers what faults the emperor might have committed. Some emperors even asked Provincial Governors to recommend to them men who were most candid and willing to criticize the central or royal administration.
  • Page 165-166: Dong also wrote that when an emperor behaved accordingly, yin and yang were in harmony and nature was on the right course without calamities. Therefore, the Emperor's main duty was to cultivate himself to become the perfect man, and as such, he expected others to criticize him and his personal conduct.

Transfer of power from Outer to Inner Court[edit]

  • Page 166: Note that the Outer Court is the Imperial Cabinet.
  • Page 166-167: Conflict between the Emperor and his ministers led to the creation of a regency during Emperor Wu's reign that became a semi-permanent institution. This regency was led by a military officer, such as the Grand General, the General of the Left, the General of the Chariot and Mount, or the General of Protection. In addition to his military title, the regent was granted with the more significant title of Da Sima, or Grand Minister of Mount. As the Grand Minister of Mount, he not only had military authority, but also political authority, as he maintained his own office and large staff of personnel. These men could have unlimited authority as regent to the emperor, although their position in the official hierarchy was below the Chancellor. This is because the Chancellor remained the head of the Cabinet, while the regent was merely a personal official directly subordinate to the Emperor.
  • Page 167-168: Wang says that an autocrat who distrusts his ministers will turn to men who advance themselves only through their master's favor, men such as foreign aliens, men of lowly means, or relatives through marriage. The regents of Han followed this pattern of personalities. The first two regents were He Guang (d. 68 BC) and Jin Midi (134–86 BC), the former being a lowly commoner who advanced due to his stepsister born of the same mother as Empress Wei Zifu (d. 91 BC), the latter being a prince of Xiongnu ethnicity who was captured in 121 BC and made a palace slave to Emperor Wu, gaining his trust after foiling an assassination attempt.
  • Page 168-169: Most of the regents to follow were Imperial relatives-in-law to the Emperor.
  • Page 169: Wang says "The creation of the regency produced the following significant results: First, the Chancellor and the Imperial Secretary were both relegated to the post of mere administrators and lost their power to influence decisions regarding major state affairs. Second, replacing the Chancellor, an official close to the Emperor was now at the helm of the state. Third, Imperial Cabinet, or the Outer Court (Waiting) as it was also called, was replaced by the Inner Court (Neiting), and the government was transferred into the Palace."
  • Page 169-170: the status of the Master of Documents and the eunuchs were now greatly enhanced as well. The Master of Documents was originally a lesser official under the Small Treasurer who handled the Imperial household's funds. The Master of Documents kept and prepared state documents. Emperor Wu expanded their authority to receiving memorials handed into the palace by officials. The Master of Documents slowly gained political importance as they prepared decrees and rescripts, the Emperor asking them advice on political issues. When the Chancellor was found to be misbehaving, the Prefect of the Master of Documents was sent to question him. When the office of the Imperial Secretary was vacant, the Master of Documents examined the records of officials who were at the 2,000 bushel level salary as potential people to fill his post.
  • Page 170: For some unknown reason, the Circuit Inspectors who came to the capital to report on provincial affairs had to visit the office of the Prefect of the Masters of Documents, the head official of the Masters of Documents office. The Prefect of the Masters of Documents also had a list of meritorious officials from the provinces that were eligible for promotion.
  • Page 170-171: The office of the Masters of Documents brought the Chancellery and Secretariat under their control and superseded them in authority, yet it was the regents, or Grand Ministers of Mount, who supervised the affairs of the Masters of Documents.
  • Page 171: Before the year 29 BC, there were four departments under the Masters of Documents, those being the (1) Department of Regular Attendance, (2) the Department of the Two-thousand-bushels, (3) the Department of Civil Affairs, and (4) the Department of Guests. In 29 BC, Emperor Cheng added the (5) Department of the Three Lords. The Department of Regular Attendance was charged with supervising the affairs of the Chancellery and Imperial Secretariat. The Department of Two-thousand-bushels were in charge of affairs dealing with the Circuit Inspectors and the Two-thousand-bushels (i.e. the Provincial Governors). The Department of Civil Affairs dealt with the presentation of memorials by the people. The Department of Guests were in charge of foreign affairs. Finally, the Department of the Three Lords were in charge of justice.
  • Page 171: Wang says "The organization of the office of the Master of Documents clearly shows that it was in itself a complete governmental setup, superseding the regular organization. The Chancellor remained the chief executive of the regular government, and the super-government was the Prefect of the Masters of Documents."
  • Page 171-172: The eunuchs slowly gained power at court as well. Emperor Wu first had them transmit documents as Palace Masters of Documents from outside the palace into the Inner Court. They were supervised by a Prefect of the Palace Master of Documents. These eunuchs continued this job throughout the reigns of Zhao and Xuan, but during Xuan's reign a certain eunuch named Hong Gong (d. 47 BC) was made the Prefect, and with him the powers of his office were changed, as he was quite adept at dealing with politics of court. His successor Shi Xian was given a great amount of authority by Emperor Yuan, the latter who was more interested in music and was also in poor health. As a result, Shi Xian began making huge policy decisions and was well-respected by officials. Wang writes that "a eunuch official had become the actual head of the government, and his office had become the 'key office' at the Court. In fact, he was so powerful that Xiao Wangzhi, the former Grand Guardian of Emperor Yuan and now the General of the Front supervising the affairs of the Masters of Documents, was outmaneuvered by Shi Xian, and in the struggle with him Xiao Wangzhi was compelled to take his own life. The acquisition of political power by officials close to the Emperor, whether they were the Masters of Documents or eunuch attendants, could mean only one thing: the concentration of power in the Palace or the transfer of power to a faction inside the Palace."
  • Page 173: There is a difference between these eunuchs and the Masters of Documents. The Masters of Documents ascended to power by handling documents and building a personal relationship with the Emperor. However, Shi Xian gained power by earning a reputation of loyalty to the Emperor only to build for himself a veritable factional clique outside the palace. Emperor Yuan regarded these partisan activities at court with little concern, since factional partisan politics could be used in the Emperor's favor.
  • Page 173: Shi Xian was deposed and expelled from the palace by the succeeding Emperor Cheng in 32 BC, while the office of the Palace Masters of Documents was abolished in 29 BC. On the difference between Emperors Yuan and Cheng, Wang writes: "As in the Later Roman Empire, the eunuchs gained power only under weak emperors."

Court Conference[edit]

  • Page 173-174: The Emperor was the sole policy-maker and legislator, but he would rarely proclaim a law or new policy without first consulting a minister or a group of ministers collectively. Hence, the importance of the Court Conference, or Tingyi, which discussed problems of enthronement of new emperors, enfeoffment of the Emperor's children, the system of Imperial ancestral temples, the state religion, the government monopoly on salt and iron, the tax system, the monetary system, the introduction of new laws, decisions on difficult lawsuits, as well as war and peace with foreign countries. Note, when using this passage here for the Han Dynasty article, do not word it exactly like above, since it is almost quoted word-for-word.
  • Page 174: Wang says that the enthronement of Emperor Wen (179–157 BC) in 180 BC and Emperor Xuan in 74 BC were "the outcome of debates by the Han nobles and ministers. Following a decision reached by a Court Conference, an edict was promulgated in 40 BC ordering all Imperial ancestral temples in the provinces and kingdoms to be abolished. A decision by a later Court Conference compelled Emepror Yuan to eliminate a number of the Imperial ancestral temples in the capital. In 121 BC Emperor Wu ordered his ministers to discuss whether the God of Earth (Houtu) should be worshipped; he accepted the affirmative solution arrived at by a Court Conference. The Shrine of the God of Earth was then erected in Ho-tung province. Following the majority opinion of fifty to eight at a Court Conference, Emperor Cheng in 32 BC moved the shrine of the God of Earth from Ho-tung province to the northern suburb of the Imperial capital and instituted the ceremonies of worship for the God of Earth in the northern suburb. In AD 5 Emperor P'ing accepted a unanimous decision of a Court Conference (with sixty-seven participants) and resumed the practice inaugurated in 32 BC after the shrine of the God of Earth at the capital had been abolished twice previously (16 BC and 4 BC). Accepting a unanimous decision of a Court Conference of eighty-nine ministers, he officially announced the title of the God of Heaven as Huang-t'ien-shang-ti (Supreme God of the Great Heaven) and that of the God of Earth as Hou-t'u (Sovereign of Earth)."
  • Page 175: An example of financial issues handled by the Court Conference would be their majority opinion in 44 BC that the age qualification for the head tax imposed on children should be raised from age 4 to age 7, an opinion that the Emperor agreed upon and implemented as policy.
  • Page 175-176: An example of foreign policy would be the Court Conference in 61 BC over the threat of the Qiang people at the western border. Zhao Chongguo, a general who had experience fighting the Qiang people, argued that instead of engaging in fruitless offensives into Qiang territory, the Han borders should be strengthened with permanent military settlements of farmers mixing farming duties with martial duties. At first he was opposed by 70% of those present at the Conference, but with further discussion he won over 50% of the debators, then the majority 80% and a victory for his proposal.
  • Page 176: Wang writes "It is unnecessary to continue enumerating events of this kind. Suffice it to say that the Court Conference of the Former Han dynasty served as an organ of deliberation on state politics, whether of a military or civil nature. It constituted an interministerial organization possessing an authority higher than that of the Chancellery and regency. Its decisions were based on the opinion of the majority regardless of the position or rank of the individuals on either side. As a rule they were accepted by the Emperor." The Conference was always called to assemble by the Emperor or the Empress Dowager. Its usual participants included the Chancellor, Imperial Secretary, the Generals, the Marquises, ministers who ranked as full-two-thousand-bushels and two-thousand bushels, the Grandees and Grandee Remonstrants, Palace Grandees, the Erudites, and the Court Gentlemen advisors. They can be classified into two groups, those being the Outer Court members comprising all the officials of the Outer Court, and the Inner Court, which consisted of the Grand Minister of Mount (Regent), the Generals, the Attendants within the Palace, and the Palace Regular Attendants.
  • Page 176: For smaller matters, smaller conferences could be assembled, usually of just a few officials; for example, on a minor issue involving a judiciary decision, the Commandant of Justice and a few others could be called to assemble a small conference.
  • Page 177: As emperors in the latter half of the Western Han began to distrust their ministers more and more and became closer to relatives-in-law and palace officials, they called upon their Inner Court far more often than the Outer Court for Court Conferences. However, for vital issues, a joint conference of the Inner and Outer courts was usually convened. The Chancellor acted as president of the Court Conference whether it was just the Outer Court in session or both the Outer and Inner courts convening together. Sometimes the Emperor attended the Conference, but as a rule he was to be absent from the discussion. The Chancellor would then summarize the discussion and resulting opinion of it in a report to the Emperor for decision-making. If the Court Conference was divided 50-50 or nearly 50-50 on an issue, the Chancellor would detail the positions held by both sides and number the members of each opposing side.
  • Page 177: Wang says that one should not overestimate the importance of the Court Conference, as it was not a legislative organ, but simply an advisory one. The majority opinions made by the Court Conference and delivered to the Emperor were suggestions, not laws; it was he who made the law or final decision. It was only customary for the Emperor to accept the Conferences decision, but he was by no means forced to do so. The Conference was also called into session by the Emperor, as ministers had no right to assemble a Conference on their own.
  • Page 177-178: It's significant, though, in that it usually swayed the decision of the Emperor, kept a small clique of ministers or even one minister from gaining too much power in decision-making, and "may have mitigated in good part the friction between government departments." It also respected majority opinion and strengthened the position of the ministers in the face of the autocratic Emperor. Wang says that "The setting up of the Court Conference of the Inner Court to counterbalance that of the Outer Court is good proof of this fact."

Conclusion[edit]

  • Page 181: In a very good one-sentence summary of this entire article, Wang says: "The structure of the central government of the Former Han Dynasty was that of an autocracy supported by a bureaucracy." Perfect!
  • Page 181-182: Wang says that the officials, although armed with the same Confucian ideology, did not represent a homogeneous body of thinkers and formed different competing factions advancing different interests and at times at odds with the desires of the Emperor. Officials were eager to restrain the Emperor by using Confucian ideology as their weapon as they fought for their faction or their own positions. In order to counter these ministers, the Emperor elevated the power of those close to him in the Inner Court and granting them greater power than the Outer Court. Wang writes "The establishment of the regency, the enhancing of the office of the Masters of Documents, the employment of relatives-in-laws and eunuchs, these were the most important measures adopted by the throne to achieve this purpose."
  • Page 182: However, the Emperor was not ultimately successful in dominating the Outer Court with his Inner Court, as the super-cabinet of the Masters of Documents expanded its bounds from the Inner Court to the Outer, becoming virtually an organ of the latter and "no closer to the person of the Emperor nor more subservient to his wishes than the former Chancellery."
  • Page 182: Wang says that the complementary disciplinary control of the Chancellery and Imperial Secretariat provided a mode of "checks and balances," as well as the installment of dual chancellors.

Hsu's article[edit]

The Changing Relationship between Local Society and the Central Political Power in Former Han: 206 B.C.-8 A.D.

By Cho-Yun Hsu

Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Jul., 1965), pp. 358-370

Introduction[edit]

  • Page 358: The purpose of this paper is to "present the formation of the local elite group through the changing social base of political power during Western Han. The problems are threefold: the changing nature of the political power in different periods, the community order, and the local government structure, which provided the local elite group with certain circumstances favorable to its taking root."
  • Page 358: The thirteen chancellors of the first five emperors of the Western Han were either comrades-in-arms with the founding emperor Gaozu or their descendants, and they were enfeoffed as Marquises. With few exceptions, the Chancellors under Emperor Wu were either relatives of the imperial house or came from the "college of Marquis". Three of these chancellors under Wu were military men. In contrast, most of the chancellors under Zhao and Xuan were "veteran officials rising from the rank and file of civil service."
  • Page 358-359: Beginning with Emperor Yuan's reign (48–33 BC), chancellors not only had a long record of employment in the government, but were also heavily learned in the Confucian classics. However, beginning all the way back in Emperor Wu's reign, Gongsun Hong was the first chancellor to be appointed to the chancellorship without having the rank of Marquis beforehand. The Hanshu also records that Emperor Wu employed a diverse personnel from all different backgrounds, some from very humble origins.

Decentralized government[edit]

  • Page 359: During the reign of the first five emperors, there was a lack of a strong central government and lack of a strong relationship between the capital area and its provinces and principalities (Hsu calls them principalities, but Wang calls them kingdoms above). The country was not treated as a unified one, as passes between the capital region in Shanxi and eastern regions were carefully guarded, while travellers were required to present passports to authorities at fortified passes. "Even horses of specified heights and ages produced in the western regions were banned from exportation to the eastern provinces." There was also a great amount of suspicion in the capital about people in the eastern principalities ruled by the Emperor's brothers and cousins. "Subjects of certain principalities were not allowed to serve as Imperial court attendants. As late as the end of the Western Han Dynasty, people still recalled an old injunction that no citizen of any principality should take office at the capital in spite of his ability."
  • Page 359-360: If you developed a relationship with the rulers of the semi-autonomous principalities, then you were also viewed with suspicion and could be punished. The celebrated General Li Guang (d. 119 BC) won over rebellious princes to the Han, but he was stripped of his award of doing so because he had accepted a nominal appointment from a prince, despite this prince being loyal to his brother, Emperor Wu, by fighting his enemies (i.e. his princely cousins who had rebelled). For the Imperial Academy (Taixue), a written recommendation for one aiming to become professor had to state: "He has had no record of communicating with the princes nor accepting their gifts." Any high minister of the central government who allied themselves with rulers of neighboring principalities would be charged with a crime equal to high treason.
  • Page 360: the rulers of principalities in the Han were more or less independent of Imperial Han control, as they had full authority over the subjects in their designated territories, appointed their own officials, and upheld administrative bodies which paralleled those of the capital. The semi-autonomous principalities in Eastern China were located in what was considered the "nucleus of Chinese civilization since antiquity," a macroregion where all of China's great philosophers were born and raised. The princely courts there attracted just as many men of great talents as the capital did, and most often learned men in these parts would apply for a job in the principality before considering the option of serving in the capital.
  • Page 360: The only real check the central government had over these semi-autonomous principalities was the fact that they sent out their governors to administer the provinces located around the principalities, thus the governors could serve as imperial watch-dogs in case something went awry. In fact, the first wave of these provincial governors were military men who were comrades of the founding emperor. By the time Emperor Wen ascended to the throne in 180 BC, 24 of the provincial governors still in power were comrades of the late Emperor Gaozu.
  • Page 361: During the early Western Han, the central government had several advantages over the principalities within the empire, those being the provincial governors who acted as agents watching the activities of the princes, greater military power than any of the princes, and greater political hegemony over all the land than any of the princes. There was just one major problem: "it did not have firm roots or ways to plant them in the loose soil of the eastern regions. It was, after all, a regime without much social foundation in most parts of China!"

Centralized government[edit]

  • Page 361: Hsu writes that "The social order in local communities was not dramatically altered until 127 BC under Emperor Wu, when rich men, ranking officials, and 'local elite' were compulsorily moved from the provinces to the capital area." However, this measure of forceful relocation was nothing new in Chinese history, while each time an emperor died the area around his tomb site was deliberately populated with elite people selected from the provinces to "guard the deceased monarch." The men involved could be categorized as rich men, families of ranking officials, and local elites.
  • Page 361-362: Gaozu used forced relocation schemes to eliminate any threat and concentration of power by the old but dethroned Warring States royal lineages still living in their traditionally-ruled areas. This relocation affected a population of some 100,000 people, as men or dethroned royal lineage and prominent families who had served these once royal lines were forcibly removed to the capital region where the central government could keep an eye on them and even make use of them, such as employing their services in fighting on the western frontiers or against rebellion in the East.
  • Page 362: Rulers after Gaozu only moved small amounts of people, but mostly resorted to recruiting volunteers to populate Imperial ancestral tomb sites. Emperor Wu continued this model of allowing volunteerism until 127 BC, when ordered that the most wealthy and elite people of the provinces had to move to a new burial site. The second instance of forcible relocation in his reign was in 96 BC, this one targeting "officials" as well. The purpose of these moves was to strengthen the capital region's power, while Emperor Wu also expressed that it was his desire to eliminate those from power who had exploited the poor to gain wealth. His son Emperor Zhao and grandson Emperor Xuan propagated a total of three similar forced relocations. In the county of Maoling where Emperor Wu was buried, there was a population of 277,277 people, which would be a tenth of the population of the whole capital area, which was 2,434,460. The latter figure is also remarkable due to the fact that this population of roughly 2.5 million was crowded together in only 57 counties that comprised the capital area.
  • Page 362: Local elites and wealthy magnates who stayed behind and did not move to the burial site or capital region risked hostile action by local governors under Emperor Wu, as many who stayed behind in their native areas were killed by these governors.
  • Page 363: Then there are the Circuit Inspectors, agents of the Palace Assistant of the Imperial Secretary, who along with the Provincial Governors extended the reach of Emperor Wu's control into the provinces. Hsu states that the local power of the provincial elements "had not been challenged in early days" of the Western Han. Therefore, Emperor Wu's new imperial outreach into the provinces "clearly marked the change from an accomodating policy to a concentration and even monopoly of power."
  • Page 363: In Yen-T'ieh Lun's Discourse on the Salt and Iron Monopoly, he says that "If some people become over-wealthy, they are not seeking for office after emolument. If some people become over-powerful, they are not subject to the threat of being punished."
  • Page 363-364: Wealthy merchants gained a fair degree of social power during the Warring States Period, and remained wealthy during the Han. Merchants came from a diversified background while their incredible wealth "made them the masters of fellow subjects." The most successful of these merchants were even honored with biographies written on them in the Shiji and Hanshu. Feudal lords in need of cash sometimes even took out loans from these more powerful merchants.
  • Page 364: To the state, the existence of powerful individuals such as wealthy merchants working outside the framework of the administration posed a potential threat. This threat was mitigated by several measures of the state, including heavy taxes imposed on the merchants, management of intra-regional trade, and the establishment of the salt and iron state monopolies. The central government also brought in more revenues by selling honorable ranks and even offices, while imposing harsh fines for certain civil offenses was another channel for revenue. Hsu states that the "huge wealth of the imperial government in the overwhelming amounts of silver, the numbers of slaves, and the large landed estates it possessed, was a major reason, as is well-known, for the non-development of reinvesting capitalism in the Han period."

Local society[edit]

  • Page 364: Hsu says: "The formal structure of administration had two levels: the province and the county, both administered by the central government with officials aided by staffs mostly recruited from the local elite. The governor and the magistrates held considerable discretionary power. However, at least in the case of the governors, they were frequently considered to be imperial agents whose function was partly military. This was particularly true at the early stage of the dynasty when governorships were frequently assigned to meritorious and reliable soldiers. Thus governors in the early days could in practice do very little routine administration. Governors in frontier provinces fought invaders, trained armed forces, and otherwise maintained defense. Even in the interior, the primary concern of a governor during the first half of the Former Han was to maintain security and to control disturbing elements such as bandits. The term 'general' thus became a synonym of 'governor'. The county magistrate was given no less power in his own territory than the governor—at least in theory."
  • Page 365: Below the county level of administration, "there were village and ward organizations, the sheriffs and headmen of which seemed to have handled most of the problems of daily life, such as arbitrating disputes, collecting taxes, and enforcing laws." Hsu says that the people who really administered day-to-day affairs on the local were "community chiefs and local government staffs." He says that the governors and county magistrates relied on the local leaders at the district level to handle pretty much everything, especially in areas with poor communication networks, where district level staffs and even those without a formally commissioned rank had "a free hand they could play by issuing orders according to their own judgments."
  • Page 365: Hsu writes "Besides the formal structure, the informal structure of community leadership consisted of influential individuals; some of them loosely classified as 'elite' and 'magnates' by historians. Chapter 101 of the Shih Chi and Chapter 92 of the Han Shu offer us a number of illustrations. Chu Chia and Kuo Chieh were examples of stereotype elite. Both were leaders of lower elements in urban areas with an influence respected even by the noble people in the court. These charismatic leaders won the hearty support of followers and friends by sharing and solving their personal problems. Giving aid to the poor and shelter to the troubled enlarged their loyal following and in turn strengthened their influence in nearby areas, some large and some small, which constituted their power outside the government channel. And they were precisely the threat which the government, especially that of Emperor Wu, moved away, in wave after wave, to the capital area."
  • Page 365-366: The Qin philosopher and reformer Shang Yang (d. 338 BC) advocated the idea of a small nuclear family instead of a large lineage group under one household or property lot. This was the policy of Qin, and it was carried into the Han Dynasty, barring sons from living under the same roof as their father. This law was not abolished until the 3rd century under Cao Wei, so, even if it was only partially effective in the Han, it was still a policy throughout the Han Dynasty to maintain nuclear families. With the lack of a large lineage group living with you or close-by to fall back on or rely on in times of need, it is no wonder that people turned to these charismatic local people and elites in their community.
  • Page 366-367: Hsu asserts that Emperor Wu's oppressive relocation schemes were most likely spurred by his fear of local district level staff under county administrations becoming far too connected and aligned with these charismatic and influential local elites.
  • Page 367: This is the timeline table for the harsh relocations under Emperor Wu that undermined the social balance in the eastern provinces, affecting them immediately.
Chronology of State Interference in Local Society during and after Emperor Wu's Reign[5]
127 BC Emperor Wu has local elites forcibly moved to the tomb county of Maoling.
122 BC Two principalities revolted against Emperor Wu but the plot was crushed; the local elite who had participated in this revolt were executed by the thousands.
119 BC The monopoly of salt and iron is instituted, as well as a new levy on property.
117 BC When millions of people were found guilty of counterfeiting, there was a general amnesty given. Also, commissions were dispatched to pacify the populace in East China.
116 BC Following the advice of Yang Ge at court, Emperor Wu instigates a mass confiscation of properties, ruining the wealth of the merchant class.
109 BC There is open revolt in East China, and the state responds by reinforcing the guards at the Pass to the East.
108 BC A general amnesty is pronounced for those who revolted.
107 BC Local elites are forcibly relocated to the tomb county.
86 BC Emperor Zhao's first year on the throne
81 BC Emperor Zhao calls upon "worthy scholars" for recommendations of new policies; the scholars request that the state monopolies be abolished.
80 BC Prince Yan plots a rebellion against the Han with the aid of the remaining local elites in the provinces.
66 BC Emperor Xuan investigates the suffering of the people and issues an edict which forbids the provincial governors of instigating brutal measures against the populace.

"Xiaolian" system of provincial quotas[edit]

  • Page 367-368: Hsu writes that "The most important change which served to stabilize the Han regime was the institution of 'worthy scholars' and Hsiao-lien from the provinces. Worthy persons of specified qualifications or 'worthy scholars' in general had been summoned several times before and also during the reign of Emperor Wu. In fact, Emperor Wu even ordered that no governor should fail to make recommendations with an excuse that no qualified people were available (126 BC). However it seems that throughout the Western Han and Eastern Han Dynasties, not every category of recommendation took place on a regular basis. Each was a particular case; the Emperor issued a specific edict and specified officials would recommend particular kinds of personnel whose services were desired at that time. The Hsiao-lien category was a great exception. Four kinds of qualifications were mentioned as 'old precedents' for the recommendations. These have been identified by Lao Kan. A similar order was issued in 43 BC by Emperor Yuan in which he made it clear that 'every year' the candidates would be examined and one from each province would be chosen. This settled the Hsiao-lien system once for all. No particular mention of it was made or needed thereafter, while the other categories of recommendation still depended on particular orders from time to time. The significance of such a regular Hsiao-lien system is that each province was thereby given an assigned channel to send some of its people to participate in the central government. Although the court of Emperor Wu, as mentioned earlier, gathered many worthy talents from all parts of the empire, the temptation of irregular channels was still there which could lead the ambitious to become adventuresome. By contrast, the regulated channels, even narrow, would help induce even the ambitious to play the game according to the rules. While the reservoir of potential officials was, in the early years, limited to the descendants of ranking officials, rich men, imperial relatives, and military men, the new social basis now included new blood from the provinces. Indeed, the Hsiao-lien institution opened the way for the entire civil examination system throughout the subsequent history of China, which created the feeling that the monolithic powerr had been shared, to some extent, with the grass roots. Direct evidence is lacking; still, it might be safe on theoretical grounds to say that the Hsiao-lien recommendation was such a formal coöptation, that it was a necessary condition for the general acceptance of the central government by the people at large."

Governors, local staff, and basis for gentry[edit]

  • Page 369: After the reign of Emperor Xuan, the local elite were gratified that they had the sole right to serve as staff members in local administrations. At the same time, a regulation was made that barred provincial governors and county magistrates from serving in their native region or home town, which set up the scheme of leaders entering new regions where they had to rely on a local staff who were strangers to them but had to rely on their for their services and support. "A new official was likely to yield before his staff, whenever there was a slight suggestion of withdrawing support. Even cruel officials had to depend on the aid of their local staffs." Some administrators even became intimate with their staffs and looked after their protection from things such as being drafted to serve on the frontier.
  • Page 369: Local staff members were also given the opportunity of being drafted as Hsiao-lien. "Among eleven Hsiao-lien appointed to the College of Imperial Attendants, a reservoir of high ranking officials, four were recommended for their capability shown as local administrative staff members. One more Hsiao-lien was also recommended for the same reason, though he was not appointed to the College. Among the six persons from local staffs who were recommended under other categories, there were only two before or during the reign of Emperor Wu. Thus the local elite consisted of three elements, a sort of power trinity: the local administrative staffs including the district chiefs directly over the community of people, the valiant-type leaders, and those recommended to enter the central officialdom. This pattern remained throughout the subsequent history of China without drastic changes. And the local elite evolved during later centuries into what has been called, in an all-inclusive and hence focused way, the 'gentry'."
  • Page 370: After the reign of Emperor Zhao, families at the local level began to expand in size and influence. In one certain case under Emperor Xuan, there were five brothers all serving under the same local administration, while one of these was recommended for service in the central government. Yet another one of their brothers was involved in trade. Hsu says of their newfound power, "The local elites soon had such a firm grip in their home provinces, as well as a fairly strong voice at the imperial court, that to move them once again to the capital area as had been done with their predecessors in the reign of Emperor Wu, could hardly be possible or successful. This, perhaps, might be the real reason why establishing new settlements around the imperial tomb was given up in 40 BC and again in 15 BC."
  • Page 370: "By the end of the Former Han period, local lineages, an associated phenomenon of elite power structure, did become important enough to oppose Wang Mang. They gathered people either to rebel with political aspirations or build fortresses for self-defense. Almost everywhere, they played a role as the core of a snowball of resistance. Yü Ying-shih, in an outstanding paper, has listed eighty-eight rebel groups, of which fifty-six are classifiable as 'distinguished clans' or 'notable families'. These local lineages formed the social base of the Eastern Han regime, a point made by L.S. Yang a quarter of a century ago. It seems safe to add that they had already been in the process of becoming the social base of political power toward the end of the former Han."

Western Han Commerce and Society[edit]

Wilbur's article[edit]

Industrial Slavery in China During the Former Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 25)

By C. Martin Wilbur

The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 3, No. 1 (May, 1943), pp. 56-69

Introduction[edit]

  • Page 56: While slave labor in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds developed a strong industrial character to it, industrial slavery was not so prevalant in China during the same period. "Private and government slavery had a marked growth under the Han empire, but the use of slaves for industrial purposes—even commercial farming—did not become an important characteristic of the Chinese institution."
  • Page 57: "Slavery was an integral though relatively minor part of the Han social system. Its legal existence is attested by laws regarding enslavement as a punishment for certain crimes, by special taxes on slaveowners, by legislation that limited the master's disciplinary powers, and by the inferior status of slaves before the law. Although slavery was a commonly accepted phenomenon, there existed an abolitionist sentiment in the Confucian school of officials."
  • Page 57: "Slaves were not bound in a caste system, as they tended to become in later Chinese periods. Fluidity of transfer from free to slave status, and from unfree to full plebeian rank in one step marks the system." Ex-slaves could even marry their former owners.
  • Page 57: The entire slave population in the Western Han ranged from 1% to 5% of the entire population, making it an integral institution, but not a very prominent one. In contrast to the many convict revolts in the Han, there were no known slave revolts.

Types, distribution, employment[edit]

  • Page 57: Of the types of slavery, there were "government and private ownership, native and foreign slaves, hereditary, criminal, and debtor slavery, self-sale and selling of women and children under economic pressure, kidnapping, slave raiding, and enslaving of prisoners of war."
  • Page 57-58: Of the means to obtain slaves, "The trade included government dealings in slaves as well as private selling, public slave markets, probably dealers in specially trained slaves, and organized importing and probably exporting."
  • Page 58: "Employment of slaves varied. Owners used private bondsmen in farming, handicraft industries, probably mining, and in merchandising. But we know much less about such economically productive uses of servile labor than about slaves employed as grooms and domestic servants, mounted and armed bodyguards, tomb watchers, musicians, dancers and other entertainers, or used as personal attendants, confidential advisors, and business managers. Public slaves did the servant work in palaces and government bureaus, held petty bureaucratic positions as clerks, accountants, timekeepers and ushers, and engaged in some skilled handicrafts, in gamekeeping and ranching, as well as in the imperial grain transport and some other lines of heavy gang labor."
  • Page 58: Most slaves in China were Chinese natives, not foreigners. However, the foreign slaves in China were often taken from fringe borders of the empire, as well as through established networks of trade via the Western Regions and Manchuria, the former where Fergana horses, gold, silver, incense, and rugs also came, and the latter where cattle, horses, bows, and furs of tigers, leopards, and sables also came. Sables look fucking weird! Lol.

Eastern Han Government and Society[edit]

S.A.M. Adshead's book[edit]

S.A.M. Adshead. (2004). T'ang China: The Rise of the East in World History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1403934568 (hardback).

  • Page 31: "When the Eastern Han was restored in AD25 [sic], it was in an environment more aristocratic and less socially mobile than the opportunity state celebrated by Ssu-ma Ch'ien. The rise of the aristocracy had begun indeed as far back as the reign of Han Wu-ti (140-87). The failure of Wang Mang's attempt to curb aristocratic dominance by land nationalization and intellectualizing government only confirmed it. Against Wang Mang's meritocracy, and the lower gentry Red Eyebrows who opposed him, the Han were restored as the champions of the aristocracy."
  • Page 31-32: "Kuang-wu-ti (25-58) was a great landowner from Nan-yang in southern Honan and Lo-yang was selected as capital in preference to the Western Han's Ch'ang-an because it was more open to aristocratic pressure. In the reign of Kuang-wu-ti's successor Ming-ti (58-76), the emperor's hereditary allies and agnatic relatives came to dominate the court through the great offices of state. To avoid being stifled by overmighty subjects, subsequent emperors turned for a counterweight to their uterine relatives, the families of their mothers and wives. These consort families, wai-ch'i, external relatives, became increasingly important in Han politics. Often the consort families did not belong to the old aristocracy. They were selected because they stood outside its ramifications. But this meant that they were rapacious, determined to get rich quick, since their power hung by the gossamer thread of an empress's life. The consort families lowered the tone of court life and intensified its factionalism. Furthermore, they did not make the emperor genuinely independent. They simply added a new stratum to the aristocracy. To check the consort families, the emperors turned to their court eunuchs, originally harem domestics, but, because the emperor was isolated in the palace and constrained by protocol, often his real friends and confidential advisers."
  • Page 32: "Eunuchs came from the middle classes. They had links to trade, technology and the third layer. They brought a new parameter into politics. Unfortunately, they too were rapacious and made hay while the sun shone. They did not have children, but they had brothers and sisters and there was nothing to stop them adopting heirs. So the eunuchs too acquired titles, land, clients and retainers and added another stratum to the aristocracy. Finally, at the end of the second century, when massive rebellions led by dissident intellectuals and lower gentry necessitated the employment of non-Chinese auxiliaries to suppress them, a fourth aristocratic stratum was added: the barbarian generals, who entered the limes with their armies, and joined the old families, the wai-ch'i and the eunuchs."
  • Page 32-33: The thickening web of rival aristocracies weakened the Han state by depriving it of taxpayers and conscripts, who passed into patrician control as tenants and retainers. Following suppression of the mobile Yellow Turbans [sic, no apostraphe for ownership of] rebellion in Western Shantung and Eastern Honan and accomodation with the static Five Pecks of Rice movement in Central Szechwan, the Han empire broke into three pieces. Each was under different aristocratic leadership: the heirs of the eunuchs and the barbarian generals in Wei in the north under Ts'ao Ts'ao; the old Han agnatic families in Shu in Szechwan under Liu Pei; and the new consort families in Wu in the Yangtze delta under Sun Ch'üan.

Crespigny's Book[edit]

de Crespigny, Rafe. (2007). A Biographical Dictionary of Later Han to the Three Kingdoms (23-220 AD). Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. ISBN 9004156054.

Governor vs. Inspector[edit]

  • Page 1193: Provinces were controlled by Governors until 42 AD (and some restored after 188 AD), while the provinces were then controlled by Inspectors. A Governor had the executive authority of a Minister, while an Inspector was "ranked below the heads of the commandery units in his division: in normal circumstances he was entitled only to report wrong-doing and could take no direct action."
  • Page 1193: The term "commandery units" here means not only commanderies, but also kingdoms and dependent states of the same rank as a commandery. These are discussed below.

Sources and evidence[edit]

  • Page 1216: Fragments of contemporary Later Han sources have been found to confirm the structure of Han administration. This includes pieces of the books Hanguan mulu by an anonymous author, the Xiaoxue Hanguan pian by Wang Long with commentary by Hu Guang, the Hanguan dianzhi yishi xuanyong by Cai Zhi, and the Hanguan Yi by Ying Shao.
  • Page 1216: However, the information provided in these material is sparse and insignificant compared to the great wealth of information provided in Sima Biao's Treatise on the Bureaucracy, a compilation written during the 3rd century.

The Imperial Power[edit]

  • Page 1216: QUOTE: "The Emperor held supreme power in the state and was the sacral intermediary between the forces of Heaven and Earth and the world of men. During Later Han, his authority was all but obsolute: the ruler might consult with his ministers or hold a full court conference, but his final decision was accepted without question. Most notably in times of crisis, documents prepared by the Imperial Secretariat and endorsed by the emperor were normally sufficient to remove even the highest and most powerful ministers from their positions."
  • Page 1216-1217: QUOTE: "In contrast to many other royal and imperial states, formal arrangements for succession to the throne of Later Han were clear and generally accepted. During his lifetime, the ruler could name any of his sons as Heir...[Chinese characters here]...and the ceremony of accession was held as soon as he died and in the presence of the late sovereign's corpse. If an emperor died without naming an Heir, his Empress...[Chinese characters here]...now Dowager...[Chinese characters here]...could choose any of his sons or any male member of the imperial clan. In carrying out this responsibility, the Dowager had no obligation to consult with or take the advice of any particular official, no matter how high: the decision was frequently taken within the private apartments."
  • Page 1217: QUOTE: "Should a new ruler be under age, the Dowager became regent for the duration of his minority. She took part in the affairs of court, ruling with the same authority as an emperor. In practice, a regent Dowager commonly involved a senior male member of her family, father or brother, in the government, frequently with title as General-in-Chief...[Chinese characters here]...The General-in-Chief and some other senior officials could have 'control of the Imperial Secretariat'...[Chinese characters for phrase here]...which gave administrative command of government, but the regent Dowager had ultimate power, and could defy her male kinsmen."

The Imperial Harem, the Private Apartment and the Eunuchs[edit]

  • Page 1217: During the Western Han Dynasty, there were ten grades of concubines that were ranked below the Empress. During the Eastern Han there were only three, those being the Honored Lady, the Beautiful Lady, and the Chosen Lady. However, there could be an unlimited amount of concubines under these highly ranked concubines. Emperor Huan was said to have some six hundred concubines in the harem during the 160s.
  • Page 1217: In order to become an imperial concubine, you had to be a virgin who came from a "respectable family", meaning your family did not have any criminal history, were not involved in medicine, magic, trade, or handicraft manufacture of any kind. The candidates were found and inspected by officials including a eunuch and physiognomist, once every eighth month of the year. Women were graded on a scale of nine for attractiveness and character. Any concubine could be promoted by the emperor. Some empresses were chosen because of their well-connected family backgrounds, while others could be somewhat humble. Due to the complexity of politics, the Emperor was restrained from just choosing anyone he wanted to be his Empress; he had to take many matters into concern.
  • Page 1217: Within the harem was the Empress's separate palace, which was managed by a eunuch known as the Grand Prolonger of Autumn, who earned a ranked salary of 2000 bushels. This eunuch commanded a large staff of officials, servants, and slaves. He was in charge of provisions, clothing and furnishing, horses and carriages, and having his secretaries keep records and uphold correspondence.
  • Page 1217: The Empress's bodyguard corps were overseen by the Supervisor of the Retinue of the Empress.
  • Page 1218: The manager of the Empress Dowager's palace was the Privy Treasurer, who was ranked higher than the Grand Prolonger of Autumn just as the Empress Dowager was ranked above the Empress. The Privy Treasurer was equal in status to a Minister in the outside court.
  • Page 1218: The head eunuch of the palace was the Coachman. The Commandant of the Guards was responsible for the protection of the Dowager Empress and at times keeping her under house arrest.
  • Page 1218: QUOTE: "The natural mother of the emperor had neither the political nor the ritual status of the Dowager and the Empress, and her establishment was correspondingly less important."
  • Page 1218: QUOTE: "Within such a closed and cloistered environment, with personal and family fortune depending upon favour [sic] and childbirth, there was predictably fierce competition for the emperor's interest and affection. Intrigue was endemic, quarrels were frequent, witchcraft and magic were often brought into service, and murder was not unknown." The Lateral Court (i.e. the Harem) had a prison for criminals and offenders.
  • Page 1218: As for the Emperor's separate palace apartments, they were closed off with yellow doors and managed by a Prefect of the Yellow Gates. He earned a rank salary of 600 bushels. Others who earned this rank salary were the Prefect of the Palace Gardens (a eunuch) and a Supervisor of the Retinue. The latter was in charge of guards and escorts. Eunuch officials known as Palace Internuncios were responsible for communication between the emperor and his palace apartments. About the time of Emperor Huan of Han, the Northern Prison of the Yellow Gates was used to house political prisoners who were enemies of the imperial eunuchs.
  • Page 1218: The Regular Attendants, whose power increased as the dynasty went on and whose number and salary amount fluctuated over time were generally seen as de facto leaders of the eunuchs, even though they had no formal subordinates. They were regarded as equal to high ministers of the outside court.

Kings and Nobles[edit]

  • Page 1219: It was an established principle in the early Western Han that kings (i.e. wang) should only come from the imperial Liu clan and no others. However, Emperor Guangwu of Han named people outside of his clan as kings due to their aid in defeating Wang Mang. The later warlord Cao Cao was also granted kingship. Crespigny writes "but these were both exceptional times, when the Han emperor did not have full control."
  • Page 1219: During the first half of the Western Han, the kings' power was considerable, but they lost their power over time and by the 1st century BC were "no more than figure-heads". Their limited status was a continued model of the Eastern Han, and they had no power to conduct the affairs in their nominal states. In fact, their close relation to the emperor was reason enough to keep them under tight surveillance.
  • Page 1219: The kingdoms wound up becoming truly governed by chancellors appointed by the imperial court. In fact, all high officials in the kingdoms were appointed by the central court, and none answered to the local king. The kings were given a generous pension based upon tax collection of their kingdom, "but they had no political power."
  • Page 1219: Kings were for the most part expected to stay on their fiefs, while the luckier ones were allowed to live in the capital. Even in the provinces, though, they lived in luxury and stayed out of government affairs.
  • Page 1219: Kings passed on the domains of their fiefs to their eldest sons, while the latter's brothers recieved county marquisates.
  • Page 1219: Below kings were twenty grades of noblemen. Each grade provided special privileges. Breaking the law meant one would not be severely punished, as they could be simply relegated to a lower ranked grade. The highest rank was the marquis, and below this secondary marquis. While the former could pass on an inheritable fief, the latter only received a pension.
  • Page 1220: Descendants of Confucius were given marquisate titles, which were maintained until the fall of the Han. Descendants of the ruling Shang and Zhou lineages were made dukes.
  • Page 1220: A full marquis during the Western Han could be quite powerful and had control over an entire county. This was changed in Eastern Han, where marquises of rising grades had control over either a village, a chief village, a district, or a chief district.
  • Page 1220: Although they took a cut of local tax revenues, marquises—like kings—had no control over the affairs of their nominal fiefs. Marquises with the title Servant at Court were permitted to stay at the capital and could hold high rank at court conferences.
  • Page 1220: The central government gained revenues from the marquises by controlling the succession process, exacting a fee from any new marquis (who had to be formally approved by the imperial government). The title of marquis was also sold to wealthy people in order to rake in more revenues.
  • Page 1220-1221: QUOTE: "It was rare for a woman to be enfoeffed in her own right. The sisters or daughters of an emperor were given titles as Princess...[Chinese characters]..., ranking equal with a marquis, and could be promoted to Senior Princess...[Chinese characters]..., ranking with a king. Each was granted a county as an estate, their husbands held rank as marquises, and their eldest sons inherited the fief. Daughters of kings also received title as Princesses, but their fiefs were districts and villages, and they were not passed down to their sons. Outside the imperial family, a few women were enfoeffed as Ladies...[Chinese character for jun]..., with county fiefs, primarily because they were related to the emperor by marriage. Emperor An honoured [sic] two of his wet-nurses, Song E and Wang Sheng, but this was predictably disapproved of."

Salaries and Ranks[edit]

  • Page 1221: There were eighteen different ranks in the Eastern Han government. The highest were 10,000 Bushels (wanshi), Fully 2000 Bushels (zhong erqian shi), 2000 Bushels (erqian shi), and Equivalent to 2000 Bushels (bi erqian shi). These salaries were paid both in grain and cash, but "the annual value was not identical to that indicated by his rank." High officials also received grants and donations, boosting their income considerably.
  • Page 1221: High officials in the capital received the 2000 bushel rank. A head of a bureau in the capital or a magistrate of a fairly-sized county received a 600 bushel rank.

Excellencies, Ministers and Other Senior Officials[edit]

  • Page 1221: A Grand Tutor (taifu) was established at the beginning of each emperor's reign. He was given the highest status and could have formal control over the Imperial Secretariat. However, "the office was normally a position of honour rather than of substance." If he died, he was not replaced until the next emperor took the throne.
  • Page 1221: For most of the Western Han, the highest official in government was the Imperial Chancellor (chengxiang), who was assisted by the Imperial Counsellor (yushi dafu, Grandee Secretary or Imperial Secretary), the latter of whom had censorial powers. These posts were scrapped in 8 BC for new posts of Grand Commandant (taiwei) Grand Minister over the Masses (da situ, which Crespigny calls Grand Excellency over the Masses), and the Grand Minister of Works (da sikong, which Crespigny calls Grand Excellency of Works). Together these high officials formed the Three Excellencies. Emperor Guangwu implemented this same structure when he established the Eastern Han. However, instead of a Grand Commandant he had a Grand Marshal (da sima; Commander-in-Chief), which was renamed Grand Commandant once again in 51 AD. At the same time, the "da" or "grand" was dropped from the titles of situ (i.e. changed to Minister over the Masses) and sikong (i.e. changed to Minister of Works).
  • Page 1221: All three excellencies had their own staffs. The Grand Commandant was the most senior of these three excellencies, even though all three received the 10,000 Bushel rank. This was different from Western Han, in that no one man held unmatched power; now there were three high ministers with equal power. Crespigny says "For active emperors such as Guangwu and his immediate successors, this arrangement ensured their control of government."
  • Page 1221: QUOTE: "Below the Excellencies and ranked at Fully 2000 shi were nine Ministers (qing), responsible for the bulk of the regular administration."
  • Page 1221-1222: Three of these nine ministers were under the supervision of the Grand Commandant, those being the Minister of Ceremonies (taichang, also known as Grand Master of Ceremonies), Minister of the Household (guangluxun, also known as Superintendant of the Imperial Household), and Minister of the Guards (weiwei, also known as Commandant of the Guards).
  • Page 1222: The Minister over the Masses was the supervisor of the Minister Coachman (taipu, also as Grand Coachman), the Minister of Justice (tingwei, also as Commandant of Justice), and the Minister Herald (dahonglu, also as Grand Herald).
  • Page 1222: The Minister of Works was the supervisor of the Minister of the Imperial Clan (zong zheng, Director of the Imperial Clan), the Minister of Finance (da sinong, also known as Grand Minister of Agriculture), and the Minister Steward (shaofu, also as Privy Treasurer).
  • Page 1222: The Minister of Ceremonies "was responsible for the relations between the sovereign and the supernatural"; in other words, he was in charge of religious rituals, celebrations, prayer services, and the upkeep of ancestral temples and altars. His subordinate was the Court Astronomer (taishi ling, Prefect Grand Astrologer), who—as you should know through Zhang Heng—received a salary/rank of 600 bushels. The Court Astronomer's office "maintained observations of the heavens, prepared the calendar, recorded portents, and advised on auspicious and ill-omened days. The Court Astronomer was also in charge of the literacy test which was administered to candidates for entry to the Imperial Secretariat or the Censorate; they were required to know some nine thousand characters and be able to write all recognized styles of calligraphy." The Minister of Ceremonies was also in charge of the Imperial University, or Taixue. He also managed the Thirteen Academicians, or Erudites, who held chairs corresponding to each of the Five Classics of the New Text school.
  • Page 1222: The Minister of the Household was one of three officials in charge of the emperor's security. He was responsible for guarding the public areas within the palace and while the emperor was outside the palace. The Minister of Guards was in charge of guarding the walls and gates of the palace. The eunuchs were responsible for guarding the harem. Crespigny states that "in this way, no single officer had full control of the ruler's security." Under the supervision of the Minister of the Household were gentleman cadets (lang), organized into five corps that were each commanded by a General of the Household (zhonglang jiang, or General of the Gentleman of the Household).
  • Page 1222-1223: The gentleman cadets, who were actually civilians, served a probation as guards before being appointed to a civil office. Some guards inherited their position, while other recruits were the sons and grandsons of soldiers who died in battle or were from respectable families of Liang province.
  • Page 1223: Other subordinates of the Minister of the Household were the Counsellors (dafu), who were advisors at court and took part in scholarly debates. With salaries ranging from 600 to 1000 bushels, they were often assigned special tasks of investigation or relaying of messages for the emperor. There were also the Consultants (yilang), who earned 600 bushels and were the lowest position of the Counsellors, although they could very well be men in waiting for an appointment to a high office.
  • Page 1223: The Internuncios were also under the Minister of the Household, and will be described by Crespigny in the Imperial Agencies section below.
  • Page 1223: The Minister of the Guards, commanding some 3,000 troops (with regulars conscripted for a year's time), was in charge of guarding the walls, towers, and gates of the two palaces in Luoyang. His Prefects of the Guards (weishi ling) were posted at each palace. There was also the Prefect of the Majors for Official Carriages (gongju sima ling), who oversaw the two Gates for Official Carriages that "accepted memorials to the throne and received special nominees for office." These three prefects ranked 600 bushels, while the Major (sima) who oversaw each separate gate to the palace earned 1000 bushels. Entrance into the palace required a sophisticated use of passports and tallies.
  • Page 1223: The Minister Coachman oversaw the imperial stables, horses, and carriages used by the emperor and his retinue. However, he was also in charge of the supply of horses for the army, which meant he was responsible for the upkeep of breeding grounds. The great horse parks in the northwest established by the Western Han was retained by the Eastern Han, the most important of these being the Liuma Pasture in Hanyang Commandery. The breeding grounds in the northwest were reduced in size following the victory over the Xiongnu in the late 1st century, but new ones were established in the southwest to combat the threat of the Qiang people.
  • Page 1223: The Minister of Justice "was the chief legal officer of the empire." Aided by a staff of about 150, his responsibilities were many; he administered the law, recommended changes, codifications, and amnesties of the law, and acted as the chief judge for cases submitted to the central court from the provinces. He was responsible for meting out death sentences. His Ministry also maintained the Imperial Prison (zhaoyu) of Luoyang.
  • Page 1223-1224: The Minister of Herald was responsible for the reception of visitors to the court. This included members of the imperial clan and foreign embassies. His subordinates acted as guides for notables attending court ceremonies and sacrifices. He was also responsible for the reception of messengers entering the capital from the provinces, commanderies, and kingdoms. In conjunction with the Minister of the Imperial Clan, he supervised the inheritance of titles and fiefs.
  • Page 1224: The Minister of Finance acted as the Treasurer. During the Western Han era, he shared responsibilities of funding with the Minister Steward (i.e. Privy Treasurer, in charge of the privy purse), but during the Eastern Han the Minister of Finance became the sole official in charge of financial matters. His officers maintained the treasury, the mint, and government granaries. They supervised and reviewed tax collections. They implemented policies on price control. They implemented policies on government monopolies. However, during the Eastern Han the salt and iron industries were decentralized (entrusted to the governments of commanderies and kingdoms) and so the officers of the Minister of Finance lost monopolized control over these financial matters.
  • Page 1224: The Minister Steward was responsible for the emperor's personal health, his food and drink, his entertainment, and the maintenance of the harem and imperial parks. Under him were the Court Provisioner (taiguan ling) and the Court Physician (taiyi ling). The former controlled what went on in the kitchen and ensured the supply of food. There were separate officials in charge of the emperor's wardrobe. Others acted as valets.
  • Page 1224: The Eastern Garden was outside the main palace compound, but its grounds had the workshops that crafted ritual funerary objects such as the jade shroud, which was often issued to deceased members of the imperial clan. The Western Garden was also outside the main palace compounds, and it was chiefly a pleasure park for the emperor. The Prefect of the Palace Gardens—a eunuch—was in charge of the pleasure parks and gardens. There were also hunting grounds outside the capital, each one administered by a prefect. Crespigny writes that they "provided not only exercise and entertainment for the ruler but also birds and beasts for the imperial table."
  • Page 1225: Another subordinate of the Minister Steward was the Prefect of Insignia and Credentials, who issued official seals and emblems of authority.
  • Page 1225: The Minister Steward was responsible for maintenance of the imperial libraries for much of the dynasty. He also had jurisdiction over the Censorate, whose headquarters were located in the Orchid Terrace (lantai), where documents and archives were kept. The Eastern Pavilion (dongguan) held a similar number of archived documents used in the compilation of the Dongguan Hanji, the history of the Eastern Han. Both the Orchid Terrace and Eastern Pavilion were placed in the grounds of the Southern Palace. The Northern Palace had its own archival building, the Hall of All-Embracing Brightness (xuanming dian). The apocryphal texts were housed in the Stone House, the location of which is unclear.
  • Page 1225: Palace Attendants (shizhong) were subordinates of the Minister Steward. They earned a salary of 2,000 bushels, had the right to escort the emperor, and before a reform of Emperor He of Han, were allowed full privileges to access the palaces. Even after this privilege was revoked, they still were in a prestigious position.
  • Page 1225: The Gentlemen at the Yellow Gates (huangmen shilang) were laisons between the palace and the outside world. They served as ushers during formal ceremonies.
  • Page 1225: The Bearer of the Mace (zhijinwu) was in charge of policing the entire city of Luoyang outside of the palaces. The Colonel of the City Gates (chengmen xiaowei) was responsible for guarding all twelve gates of the capital. Both of these officials were given 2,000 bushel ranks.
  • Page 1225: The Court Architect (jiangzuo dajiang) was in charge of the construction, maintenance, and repair of imperial buildings, official, buildings, and roads leading in and out of the capital. Crespigny writes "most buildings were made of wood with tiled roofs, so dilapidation was constant, and fires were also frequent. Maintenance and repair were thus a considerable task." While the Imperial University was restored under Emperor Shun of Han in the 130s, it required the labor of some 100,000 men for a year.
  • Page 1226: A Prefect (ling) was in charge of the county and city of Luoyang. The surrounding commandery of Henan was administered by an Intendant (yin, or Governor). These two had the same salaries as their counterparts in the provinces, but they had to deal with more complex issues. They could easily butt heads with people of influence. Plus, the Intendant of Henan was responsible for the upkeep of the great Ao Granary, the main distribution center for supplying the capital with grain. The Prefect of Luoyang could imprison criminals who happened to be of high rank in the government, and oversaw an Imperial Prison.
  • Page 1226: The Director of Retainers (sili xiaowei) administered the capital province, which consisted of seven commanderies: Henan, Henei, Hedong, Hongnong and the Three Adjuncts (sanfu) around the former capital of Chang'an, those being Jingzhao, Youfufeng, and Zuopingyi. Although regular provincial Inspectors earned only 600 bushels, the Director of Retainers earned Equivalent to 2,000 bushels and had the authority to impeach any officials in the capital province.

The Imperial Agencies[edit]

  • Page 1226: QUOTE: "At the beginning of Later Han, as Emperor Guangwu appointed Xuan Bing his Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk (yushi zhongcheng; Palace Assistant Secretary), he arranged for him to take a separate place at court with the Director of the Retainers and the Director of the Imperial Secretariat; closely associated with the throne, they became known as the holders of the Three Special Seats (san duzuo). The direct contact of the emperor with these lower officials, together with the division of the highest position of the bureaucracy between the Three Excellencies, gave the ruler another means to influence the government.
  • Page 1226: The Imperial Secretariat (shangshu) in the Eastern Han was officially administered by the Minister Steward. It's Prefect of the Masters of Writing earned 1,000 bushels and had a Deputy Director (puye) who earned 600 bushels. The Prefect had subordinates who were known as regular Masters of Writing (shangshu), ranked at 600 bushels. These Masters of Writing were each responsible for one of six bureaus. Crespigny states that these bureaus "dealt variously with correspondence and documents relating to the senior ministers, the heads of provincial administration, memorials and petitions from common people, and non-Chinese states and tribes."
  • Page 1226-1227: The Imperial Secretariat was "the essential source for any official documents, including commissions and appointments to office," so naturally it was a powerful institution. According to Crespigny, it was also in a position to heavily influence policy and "played a pivotal position in any coup d'état." In footnote 50, he cites examples such as "the activities of Yu Xu and Zuo Xiong in the time of Emperor Shun, and the coup of the eunuchs against Dou Wu and Chen Fan in 168."
  • Page 1227: QUOTE: "The Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk reflected the original position of the office as one of two chief assistants to the Imperial Counsellor under Former Han. At the beginning of Later Han, however, the position was set up in similar fashion to the Secretariat; ranking at 1,000 shi, the Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk was formally subordinate to the Minister Steward, but his close association to the emperor made it largely independent of that ministry. Most notably, the Palace Assistant and his subordinates, the Imperial Clerks (shiyushi, Attending Secretaries), were responsible for checking memorials for possible offenses and for supervising the conduct of state ceremonies. They could raise any matter of concern, could charge any official with an offense, and the most senior and experienced, the Imperial Clerks Preparers of Documents (zhishu shiyushi), advised the ruler on cases referred by the Minister of Justice."
  • Page 1227: QUOTE: "In this regard, though the Excellencies still exercised general supervision over the affairs of state, and the Secretariat could be called upon to investigate and adjudicate accusations of crime or lese-majesty, the Imperial Clerks had the right to take the initiative, and their office thus performed the essential functions of an Imperial Censorate."
  • Page 1227: The Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk had his headquarters at the library of the Orchid Terrace; until 159, he was in charge of all the imperial libraries, but in that year responsibilities for these were transferred to a new Custodian of the Private Library.
  • Page 1227: The Imperial Clerks performed various duties, including missions as the emperor's agents abroad, representing the ruler at a funreral or enthronement, reporting local conditions to the central court, and ever since Emperor An of Han they sometimes commanded troops in battle, appearing in "various campaigns until the last years of effective government."
  • Page 1227: The Internuncios were ranked below the Imperial Clerks at Equivalent to 600 bushels, and did not have the censorial powers that the Imperial Clerks had. However, they still acted as agents of the Emperor. They were led by a Supervisor ranked at Equivalent to 1000 bushels. They participated in imperial ceremonies, they were sent as envoys to feudatories and non-Chinese peoples, and they could also be sent to supervise and monitor potential dissidents in the provinces or kingdoms. They inspected public works along the Yellow River. They supervised the defensive works built along the frontier. "A reserve and training camp established at Liyang in Wei commandery was under the permanent command of an Internuncio, and on occasion, like Imperial Clerks, Internuncios could lead troops in the field."
  • Page 1227: The Commissioners with censorial powers to investigate provincial administrations during the Western Han and Wang Mang's regime did not exist during the Eastern Han. The closest thing resembling these Commissioners in the Eastern Han were the Special Commission of Eight led by Zhou Ju and Du Qiao under Emperor Shun, but this was "unique to the dynasty, and achieved only limited success."
  • Page 1227-1228: Just as Wang describes it above, Crespigny talks of the Staff of Authority (jie) wielded by some officials, giving them special status. The staff was six feet in length, with ribbons at the top. Some officials given the staff had only a minor duty to fulfill, such as granting promotion to a general in the field or serving as a temporary ambassador. However, sometimes it was given to officials who then had great powers to make senior appointments to office and execute criminals without prior notification to the imperial court. "It was commonly used in time of emergency, or where the local situation was too distant and complex for the normal procedure of submitting reports and receiving instructions."

The Provinces[edit]

  • Page 1228: QUOTE: "The Later Han empire was divided into thirteen provinces (zhou) supervising more than a hundred commanderies (jun) or equivalent units, which in turn governed almost 1200 counties (xian), including marquisates and other fiefs. At the time of census about 140 the population was some 48 million individuals in 9.5 million households.
  • Page 1228: QUOTE: "The administrative system of Han was notable for the manner in which it maintained checks and balances, so that, as we have seen, the protection of the emperor was in the hands of the eunuchs of the harem, the Minister of the Household and the Minister of the Guards, while other officers, commanding separate troops, controlled the gates of the palace and of the city, and the precincts within. The same technique and policy was applied in the territories outside the capital, where a complex structure of executive authority, balanced by supervision, restrained local independence and official corruption over the vast area of empire."
  • Page 1228: There was a significant change in the administration of provinces during the Eastern Han. At the beginning of the Eastern Han, the Governors (mu, Shepherds) ruled provinces with executive authority similar to the Director of Retainers, the latter described above as the governor of the capital province. The Governors also earned the same salary rank as the Director of Retainers (i.e. Equivalent to 2000 bushels). However, beginning in 42 AD, the Governors were replaced by Inspectors (cishi), who earned a much smaller salary rank at 600 bushels and did not have direct authority over the multitude of commanderies in their provincial territory. In fact, the Inspector had no executive powers at all; he merely reported to the throne on an annual basis about the conditions of the province. It was the central government which performed all executive actions in the province based on the Inspector's annual report of any wrongdoing or areas needing improvement. In essence, the Inspector was merely an advisor.
  • Page 1228: QUOTE: "There were two exceptions to this rule. Firstly and generally, when banditry or other disturbance was greater than could be dealt with by the resources of a single commandery, the Inspector was authorized to raise troops throughout the province, and he took command of the united forces. Second and specifically, because the region of Jiaozhi in the far south of the empire was distant from the capital, the Inspector held the Staff of Authority and could act on his own initiative. In 188, moreover, shortly before the death of Emperor Ling and the collapse of central power, the system of Governors was in part restored; Governors and Inspectors were then appointed to one province or another according to circumstance."
  • Page 1228: The Governors and Inspectors were appointed by the central government, but their staffs were recruited from the local areas of the province. The Assistant Officers (congshi, or Attendant Clerks) under the Governor or Inspector were sent to supervise each commandery in the province. The Headquarters Officer (zhizhong congshi, or Attendant Clerk for the Bureau of Headquarters) was in charge of local appointments as well as recommendations of local worthies and gentrymen to the imperial court. There was also a Registrar (zhubu, Master of Records) and an Attendant Officer (beijia congshi, or Aide-de-Camp).
  • Page 1228: Crespigny writes "the core of local government was the commandery." It was governed by an Administrator (taishou, also Grand Administrator), who earned a salary of 2000 bushels. In frontier commanderies or commanderies with frequent disturbances, a Commandant (duwei, or Chief Commandant) was appointed to deal with all military affairs; sometimes more than one Commandant was appointed. The Administrator was aided by an Assistant (cheng), who was known by another name in frontier commanderies, the Chief Clerk (zhangshi). All of these commandery officials mentioned were appointed by the central government.
  • Page 1229: A kingdom was very similar to commandery, only it was made the nominal fief of a member of the imperial family. The local king had no authority within his so-called state, since kingdoms were administered by Chancellors (xiang) instead of Administrators seen in commanderies. Also, in kingdoms the Chief Clerk was the equivalent position of the commanderies' Assistant. Unlike commanderies, the kingdoms also had their own Commandant of the Capital (zhongwei).
  • Page 1229: The commandery Administrator was aided by a large locally-recruited staff. The highest of these officials headed specialized departments or bureaus. Lower officials included clerks, yamen runners, and policemen. Each commandery had an Officer of Merit (gongcao) similar to the Headquarters Officer on the provincial level, in that he was responsible for local appointments and nominations to the capital.
  • Page 1229: Since the central state monopolies were abolished in Eastern Han, the major resources of salt, iron, silver, lead, and other minerals were now handled by local governments.
  • Page 1229: Each commandery had its own Investigator (duyou) sent out to inspect the affairs and administrations of subordinate counties. "Like the provinces, the commanderies were required to send annual reports and accounts, including information from the counties."
  • Page 1229: All centrally-appointed officials were barred from serving in their home provinces. A commandery's Administrator could not perform any executive actions outside the boundaries of his commandery; all actions which necessitated the involvement of two or more commanderies were the responsibility of the provincial Inspector. For such tasks, troops of the commanderies could be used, but they were under external control of the Inspector or a commissioned general under the throne.
  • Page 1229: Outside of the commandery system were Dependent States (shuguo), a system established first by Western Han on the frontier to deal with non-Chinese peoples who were subordinate to Han rule; this system was continued by Eastern Han. A dependent state at the equivalent level of a commandery was administered by a Commandant earning Equivalent to 2000 bushels. County-level dependent states were known as marches (dao), a name that could be applied to counties within regular commanderies which happened to have a large non-Chinese populace. Crespigny writes that "the establishment of a dependent state indicated a loosening of imperial control rather than expansion; in both those areas [Yi province in the west and You province in the northeast], dependent states covered territory which had been part of a regular commandery during Former Han."
  • Page 1230: The county was the lowest administrative unit where the leading official was appointed by the central government. The larger counties (i.e. those with more than 10,000 households) were governed by a Prefect (ling), who earned 1000 bushels. Smaller counties were governed by Chiefs (zhang), who earned only 500 or 300 bushels. The fief of a county marquis was administered by a Chancellor, as described above. However, there was not much difference between a Prefect and a Chief, and Crespigny prefers to call them all magistrates. The administrative structure of the county resembled that of the higher commandery, though on a much smaller scale with officials earning smaller salaries. The bureaus of counties had head officials appointed by the local government, but were usually men who were recognized by the community as eligible for the job. The assistants to the county magistrate were considered in theory to be commissioned officers in imperial service, but quite often they simply skipped the whole complex process of nomination, probation and appointment.

Appointment and Recruitment[edit]

  • Page 1230: Crespigny writes that both Western Han and Eastern Han distinguished between commissioned officials and non-commissioned officers. Commissioned officials included Inspectors, Administrators, county magistrates and their chief assistants, and all were appointed by the central government. As commissioned officials, they served in territories outside of their home province and could be promoted to a higher office if they proved worthy. Their non-commissioned and locally-recruited staffs, on the other hand, had no right to promotion. At the capital, any officer or official earning at least 600 bushels was commissioned by the central government, while officers earning less than this salary were non-commissioned and did not expect to be promoted to any higher office.
  • Page 1230: The process of becoming a commissioned official had three steps: nomination, probation, and examination. In some special cases, one or two of these steps were skipped.
  • Page 1230: Commandery nominees sent to the capital were called Filial and Incorrupt (xiaolian) and were assigned to one of three corps of gentleman cadets (lang) serving a probational term as nominal guards under the General of the Household. They were divided into three ranks, those earning 300 bushels, 400 bushels, or 600 bushels; Crespigny writes that the way this system most likely worked was three years of probational service, and the completion of each year meant a promotion to the next salary rank. At the end of each year, the cadets would be assessed by the Minister of the Household, whereupon they could be commissioned with a substantive office, usually as a county magistrate.
  • Page 1230-1231: In the Western Han, it was required of each commandery that they send two nominees for Filial and Incorrupt to the capital each year. However, in 92 AD this was changed to a more flexible system based on population size, having each commandery send one candidate for every 200,000 households, while commanderies of smaller size would be discounted. With this system, about 200 candidates were sent to the capital each year, from all across the country. In each commandery, it was the duty of the Officer of Merit to find suitable canditates for Filial and Incorrupt. Until the year 126, the head of a commandery had to hold office for at least a year before being allowed to send in a nomination. In 132, it was made official policy that candidates had to be at least forty years old and were forced to take examination upon entry. Crespigny states that the latter could not have lasted more than a few years.
  • Page 1231: Nominees for men of Abundant Talent (maocai or moucai) were also carried out annually, yet these were more prestigious than Filial and Incorrupt, as they were recommendees of provincial Inspectors, Excellencies, or the Minister of the Household. Only seventeen candidates were accepted each year. They sometimes were required to send a memorial for assessment, but they usually received immediate employment as a high official.
  • Page 1231: One route to gaining high office was serving as a Senior or Junior Clerk (yuan or shi) under one of the Three Excellencies; althoughthey had to serve a term of probation like cadets, such a position allowed one to observe how the higher offices of central government worked and was a sure path to success as a high official.
  • Page 1231: QUOTE: "After three years service at the rank of 2000 shi or above, high officials gained the ren privilege of appointment for their sons or other close kin. This allowed entry to the corps of gentleman cadets, on probation for commissioned rank. The same privilege could also be the subject of a special imperial grant, and there are a number of occasions that entry to the corps of cadets was awarded directly."
  • Page 1232: QUOTE: "On occasion, moreover, the emperor would issue a specific invitation to a man of exceptional reputation, often someone known for his scholarly achievements who had chosen the life of a hermit. This often entailed a complex pattern of offer, rejection and acceptance, for to attract such an individual could enhance the reputation of the court, while the man himself gained prestige from such imperial attention. Not all invitations were successful, and several gentlemen who came to the capital under these auspices failed to live up to their reputation; in effect, the process was often rather a matter of political show than a serious attempt to fill a senior post."
  • Page 1232: The Imperial Academy (Taixue) was another source of recruitment to high ranks of officialdom, but its role was at its most prominent under the first of the Eastern Han emeprors such as Guangwu; eventually the Academicians contented themselves merely with scholarship and not with government service.
  • Page 1232: QUOTE: "During Former Han and under Wang Mang, as many as a hundred students of the University had been able to gain entry to the imperial service through a system of annual examinations, but though Later Han maintained examinations for University purposes, they no longer serves as a route to commissioned office. A series of edicts from the later 140s, as the regent Liang family demonstrated its patronage of scholarship, provided new opportunities, but they were few compared to those offered by other routes, while the number of students soon afterwards reached thirty thousand. Attendance at the University could be useful for a man to establish his name and obtain nomination or appointment elsewhere, but it did not normally give direct entry to office."
  • Page 1233: QUOTE: "Finally, we may note abnormal forms of entry to the commissioned imperial service. The sale of offices had been used by Emperor Wu of Former Han to finance his great campaigns against the Xiongnu; his example was followed by the regent Dowager Deng at the time of the great Qiang rebellion in 109, and in 161 by Emperor Huan."

The Military[edit]

  • Page 1233: Han armies were commanded by a General (jiangjun). During the civil wars at the beginning of Eastern Han Dynasty, the title Chief General (da jiangjun) was issued, but this became an awarded title later on to those related to the Empress or regent Dowager (an example of such was Dou Xian, d. 92). During times of peace and relative stability, the Chief Generals rarely commanded troops. Crespigny prefers to call them Generals-in-Chief, since their title and position was more of a political appointment than those who regularly held command in the army.
  • Page 1233: Although there were many flowery titles given to makeshift generals during times of crisis or civil war, the constant and recognized titles of those in the military hierarchy were General of Chariots and Cavalry (juji jiangjun), General of Agile Cavalry (piaoji jiangjun), General of the Guards (wei jiangjun), General on the Left (zuo jiangjun), General on the Right (you jiangjun), General of the Van (qian jiangjun), and General of the Rear (hou jiangjun). Like the General-in-Chief, these military positions were court appointments, and they were not maintained consistently. There were some long-term appointments, such as the General on the Liao (du-Liao jiangjun) who guarded the northern frontier (he will be discussed in the next section).
  • Page 1233-1234: The liutenant-generals (pian jiangjun) were ranked below full generals, and below the liutentant-generals were the major-generals (pi jiangjun). Others who commanded troops were Commandants of Cavalry (ji duwei), Attendant Cavalry (fuji duwei) and Commandants of the Equipage (fengju duwei). Generals of the Household and imperial agents with special commissions could also command troops.
  • Page 1234: QUOTE: "At the core of the military establishment of Later Han were five regiments (bu) of the Northern Army (beijun), each commissioned by a Colonel (xiaowei) at Equivalent to 2000 shi. Stationed at encampments (ying) near Luoyang, they were the Chang River Regiment (Changshui), the Elite Cavalry (yueji, Picked Cavalry), the Garrison Cavalry (tunji), the Archers Who Shoot at a Sound (shesheng) and the Footsoldiers (bubing). Second-in-command were Majors (sima) at 1000 shi, while an Adjutant (beijun zhonghou, Captain of the Centre of the Northern Army), with a small staff, was responsible for inspection and supervision. Following the common practice of Han, the Adjutant ranked at 600 shi, well below the colonels and the majors."
  • Page 1234: QUOTE: Each regiment of the Northern Army had up to 750 men and 150 junior officers, for a total of some 4,200. This was the central strategic reserve of the empire, and though their numbers were not large, the regiments were composed of professional soldiers, trained to a very high standard, who acted as stiffening for other conscripts and levies. Colonelcies of the regiments were often awarded to lesser imperial relatives by marriage, but this does not appear to have affected their competence: in action they were presumably commanded by their majors.
  • Page 1234: Most men in the imperial military forces were volunteers and convicts (tu), including those whose sentences had been commuted in exchange for military service (chixing). Others were recruited through commandery levies, most often from the frontiers. Crespigny writes "Unlike Former Han, there was no provision for general conscription or training in the inner commanderies of the empire. Men could be summoned for military service in time of emergency, but they were not skilled soldiers, and most commuted their regular liability by payment of the gengfu tax, a form of scrutage which contributed substantially to the revenue of the imperial government."
  • Page 1234: QUOTE: There were two grades of Major, the regular officer (sima or jun sima) and the Senior Major (beibu sima), either of which could command a regiment. Below them were Captains (hou) in command of companies (qu); lower ranks and units are mentioned in the frontier strips of the northwest, but seldom appear in the histories."
  • Page 1234-1235: QUOTE: "The officers described above normally held rank on campaign. More static forces were under a Commandant (duwei). We have observed the role of a Commandant within a frontier commandery or as head of a dependent state, but such officers also held charge of garrisons and fixed encampments: two important appointments were the Commandants of the Campt at Yong in Youfufeng, and of the Tiger Tooth Encampment (huya ying) at Chang'an, established against the threat from the non-Chinese Qiang in 110. There were also Commandants in charge of the passes which led to central Asia, and at the time of the Yellow Turban rebellion in 184 Commandants were stationed to guard the passes about Luoyang. Their subordinate officers were majors and captains, as elsewhere."

Officials Dealing with Non-Chinese Peoples[edit]

  • Page 1235: QUOTE: "During Former Han officials had been appointed to deal with the Wuhuan tribes of the northeast and the Qiang of the northwest. At the urging of Ban Biao, Emperor Guangwu likewise established a Protector of the Qiang (hu-Qiang xiaowei; Colonel Protecting the Tibetans)" and then a Protector of the Wuhuan (hu-Wuhuan xiaowei). With the Staff of Authority, rank at Equivalent to 2000 shi, and wide-ranging powers across commandery and provincial borders, the Protectors were responsible for dealings with the non-Chinese peoples of their frontier region, including the Di in the west and the growing power of the Xianbei in the northeast. Each had a small civilian staff, and relied chiefly upon negotiation, but they could raise troops and command in the field when necessary. The Protector of the Wuhuan maintained a regular market at his headquarters in Shanggu commandery, trading particularly in horses and furs."
  • Page 1235: QUOTE: "At the beginning of Later Han the Xiongnu were committed and dangerous enemies of the new Chinese stat, but during the late 40s a succession quarrel caused the claimant Shanyu Bi to turn for support to China. He came with his followers to the Ordos region, kowtowed to the imperial representative, and established a puppet court at Meiji in Xihe commandery. He and his descendants, the Southern Shanyu, were supervised by an Emissary (shi Xiongnu zhonglang jiang; General of the Gentleman of the Household in Charge of the Xiongnu), whose rank was Equivalent to 2000 shi, and who was accompanied by a troop of guards."
  • Page 1235: QUOTE: "A few years after this initial settlement, there was concern lest the two rival parties should seek to re-unite, and in 65 the offfice of General on the Liao (du-Liao jiangjun; General Who Crosses the Liao River) was established on the northern loop of the Yellow River in Wuyuan commandery, to guard against such contacts, and to serve as a strike force against the Northern Xiongnu. There were now only a limited number of Chinese settlers in this region, and it appears that the Trans-Liao army obtained most of its soldiers from the Camp at Liyang in Wei commandery, the chief recruitment and training centre for the North China Plain."
  • Page 1235-1236: Ever since the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, the Chinese became involved in Central Asia. During the 1st century BC, the Protectorate of the Western Regions (xiyu duhu) was established and dealt with various oasis states of what is now Xinjiang. The Protector-General was aided by a Senior Colonel (fu xiaowei), two junior colonels (wuji xiaowei), and a Chief Clerk (changshi). However, Eastern Han did not fully develop an interest in Central Asia until the 70s AD. In the 90s AD, General Ban Chao established Chinese dominance in the region and was awarded the title Protector-General. However, contact with the region was sullied by the Qiang people's rebellion in the early 2nd century. Ban Chao's son Ban Yong was able to regain some influence over the region in the 120s, yet he held only the position of a Chief Clerk, not a Protector-General, the latter of which was not restored. The Administrator of Dunhuang commandery and the Inspector of Liang province were able to exercise some Han influence over the region, but this was marginal.

Eastern Han Commerce and Society[edit]

Ebrey's article[edit]

Estate and Family Management in the Later Han as Seen in the Monthly Instructions for the Four Classes of People

By Patricia Ebrey

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 17, No. 2 (May, 1974), pp. 173-205

Introduction[edit]

  • Page 173: This article focuses on the Sima Yueling, or Monthly Instructions for the Four Classes of People by Cui Shi (c. 110–c.170), in reference of course to the Four occupations. According to Ebrey, it is the "first work in the Chinese tradition to put practical information about daily activities into the form of a monthly guide. This text contains information about religious, social, and economic organization that cannot be found in other places. Its value, however, is not simply as a sourcebook of early references to technical procedures or religious practices. Above all, it provides the most complete account of the activities of the farming estate of a middle-level official in the Later Han (25–220). This paper will examine the Monthly Instructions, paying attention especially to the ways it can supplement other works, such as standard histories, as a source for Later Han social history."

Independent farmers to large estates[edit]

  • Page 173-174: In the Western Han era, small independent farmers were the mainstay, particularly in the 2nd century BC. After the Han Dynasty in the Period of Division, large estates managed by elite families gained predominance, while they often employed the use of unfree labor. Ebrey says that the Later Han was the transitional period between these two eras classified by socio-agricultural units. In the Eastern Han, "Independent farmers were less common than before. However, the social system was more open, and office and landed property were not as closely correlated as in the subsequent period. Yet there was always a tendency for the richer landowners to increase the size of their lands and to come to dominate the social and economic activity of an area. Particularly as the central government weakened at the end of the Later Han, private and local power came to replace public authority."
  • Page 174: Ebrey writes "Since the growth of great families after the Later Han is one of the major social transitions of early Chinese History, it is important to examine the stages and processes of its development. Modern scholars have singled out as a transitional group the strata of Han society...powerful families or lineages. A much broader group than the great families who were the elite of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the powerful families of the Han were people with local influence as large landowners or leaders of large clans. These powerful families were present in considerable numbers in the Former Han, but their position seems to have been even stronger in the next dynasty. While their members might hold positions as subordinates in the prefectures or commanderies, or eventually gain provincial bureaucratic posts, they were only occasionally important in the central government. Unfortunately information about these powerful families is limited." She goes on to say that people who played a national role had biographies written about them, not local people per say.

Cui Shi's background[edit]

  • Page 175: Cui Shi's father, Cui Yuan, was friends with Zhang Heng!
  • Page 177: Shi wrote of the flaws in the bureaucracy in the 2nd century AD. "Superiors were ever eager to spot minor short-comings in their subordinates. Pressed to show results quickly and constantly under observation, lower officials became cruel and hard on the people. Their posts were changed frequently, and they had no time to develop close ties to the people they governed. Salaries were so low corruption was inevitable."
  • Page 177-178: In his On Government, Cui Shi was critical of the central government, wanting to return to a more intimate relationship between ruler and ruled, and criticized the model of officials being rotated to different locations every three years, which did not allow them to build any meaningful relationship with those they governed over in the local area.

Unique estate owner literature[edit]

  • Page 178: In his On Government, Cui Shi showed an interest in farming and textile production that was unusual for a Han literati, as he was knowledgeable in spinning and weaving hemp, as well as plowing and sowing methods used in different parts of the country.
  • Page 182: After lengthily quoting Shi's text about a winter month, Ebrey writes "The activities of the four classes of people are not too clearly distinguished. There are the activities which primarily concern the shih (upper or educated class), such as sacrifices, capping sons, marriages, military preparations and practices, and schooling for children. Mixed with these are discussions of work involved in the 'basic occupations': when to plant various grains and vegetables, what time to start each stage of silk production, and how to preserve food, brew alcohol, and make sauces. A very clear line is drawn between all of these activities and buying and selling, which, with only one exception, comes at the end."
  • Page 182: Ritual and agricultural texts that might have influenced Cui Shi's book.
  • Page 184-185: "One of the most unusual features of the Monthly Instructions is that it puts information about ancestral rites and other activities of gentlemen into the same book with rules for farming, weaving, and brewing. This was an unprecedented step, and not copied for many centuries. Through the T'ang there were many works giving instructions or information arranged by months, but they usually were of a more specialized nature. One reason why T'sui Shih's work is unique could be his personality. He was a member of the upper class, well-read in the classics, but fascinated both with family management and the methods of productive work. He may also have been trying to redefine the ancient concepts of ritual based on the Chou feudal hierarchy to fit the social order of the Han with its elite of office-holders and powerful families. In his work the educated farming estate owner acquired a degree of ritual dignity. Like the emperor, the estate holder performed seasonal sacrifices, organized military practices, brought comfort to the less fortunate and ordered the activities of those under him to see that work progressed smoothly. T'sui Shih's text seems to have answered a real need, and remained in circulation until the early Sung, but gradually social changes in the role of the estate owner away from personal management made it out of date. Educated men of the T'ang and later seem to have been less interested in running their families and estates on the model of the ancient kings and more interested in the popular festivities and urban life described in later monthly guides."
  • Page 185: Cui Shi's book is the earliest to detail information of religious rites and sacrifices as practiced by the heads of private households instead of emperors or nobles.

Education[edit]

  • Page 190-191: Ebrey asserts that a lot of a child's education was received at home. However, the Monthly Instructions mentions education received outside the home, with children ages 10-14 sent to lower schools and youths ages 15-20 sent to upper schools, all in the first month of the year, then starting again in the eighth and eleventh months for an unspecified amount of time, although the children did return home for considerable amount of time to attend to farm work. Children studied the Classic of Filial Piety, the Analects, and primers, while older youths studied the Five Classics. Hence, children would be educated in the classics as well as farming, which could help them in whatever careers they decided to choose.

Maintaining relations with relatives[edit]

  • Page 192-193: The Han Chinese viewed blood relations in levels of hierarchical degree, and treated relatives according to how closely they were related. This could be seen in practices such as contributions to funerals of those related to you, and being careful not to be too generous to relatives. Ebrey says "Degree of relationship was always stressed so that distant relatives deserved hardly any more attention than other villagers. Courtesy calls and charity probably extended only to clansmen who lived nearby. The biography in the Hou Han Shu confirms that the Ts'ui family did not maintain close ties with their relatives."

Agriculture, domestication, diets, textiles[edit]

  • Page 194-195: Farming and textile production formed the economic basis of the estate, as Ebrey lists the things produced: "varieties of wheat, barley, millet, and rice. Vegetables included melons, gourds, mallow, various scallions, leeks, smartweed, garlic, ginger, sesame, taro, mustard, four kinds of beans, rape turnips, lucerne, and madder." Ebrey says that certain types of trees such as bamboo, pine, and cypress were probably used as building materials. "Fruit and nut trees are mentioned, but the exact varieties are not listed."
  • Page 195: Some of these food products required processing before consuming or selling. The text describes bean sauce that was made from roasting beans, boiling them a week or two later, and allowing them to ferment for five to six months. If desired, fish or meat could be added to this. "White elm seeds and snake-fish eggs were also used to make sauces. Vinegar, pickles, and various kinds of cakes were all made. Vegetables such as squash and gourds were stored for the winter. Wheat was hulled, ground, and part of it was used in the production of yeast, which later was used to brew alcohol."
  • Page 195-196: The Chinese had many domestic animals and ate pickled meats. Pork, lamb, dog, and fish were all sacrificial food items. "Chicken heads were used in medicine, and eggs were used in sacrifices." Oxen used as draft animals for plowing was mentioned, as well as horses, which Ebrey states were probably for transportation. Bran was stored away at the estate so that it could serve to feed the horses during winter.
  • Page 196: The diet on the estate seems to have been primarily vegetarian, seasoned with "soya and other bean sauces, ginger, garlic, leeks, scallion, mustard, and vinegar. Salt must have been bought, although this is never stated."
  • Page 196: Irrigation and drainage canals were mentioned in the text, along with plowing by oxen, fertilization, and specified times to plant each crop. "One technological advance which Ts'ui Shih was the first to report is the transplanting of rice. Until this time rice was apparently planted directly in the fields, but Shih instructed that one should plant rice first during the rains of the third month, and later separate and transplant it in the fifth month."
  • Page 196-197: While men worked in the fields or did repairs, women workers made clothing. Silk production started early in the third month, when the apparatus for the silk worm eggs had to be assembled. When the worms had all hatched the work became hectic, and the estate owner had to see to it that everyone was diligent. In the next month reeling had to be done, and the shuttles and looms assembled. The weaving of different kinds of cloth then went on for most of the rest of the year, and is mentioned specifically in the sixth, eighth and the first months. Work on hemp was started in the tenth month. Probably as important as making new cloth was taking care of old clothing. During the hot and humid summer, on the seventh of the seventh month, clothes, like books, were laid out to dry. In that month and the next old clothes had to be washed and new ones made, adding more padding if necessary to prepare for winter. After winter was over, in the second month, and before the silk work began, winter clothes were washed and the padding taken out."
  • Page 197: "The status of the workers involved in these activities is never fully clarified. It appears that the state owner possessed almost complete control over what was planted, when, and where. In the twelfth month he was to give the farmers and workers rest. The estate itself kept possession of the farm implements and plowing oxen, putting them away in the twelfth month. Within the house there were other workers, slaves and domestic servants of low status. Many of them worked on silk production and were probably female. There were also cooks, either male or female. It is difficult to determine exactly under what conditions these people worked, but they often worked side by side with their masters. Women of the family seem to have helped with the textile production and sons with the farming. Sons entered school only when agricultural activities were not at their busiest."

Commercial activities[edit]

  • Page 197-198: The Monthly Instructions provides details on what an estate owner should buy and sell, while local markets for buying and selling remained open only nine months out of the year.
  • Page 198: Below is a table on this page of goods that Monthly Instructions tells its reader should be bought and sold in each month. Ebrey explains why: "As can be seen from this table the same item was often bought and sold at different times of the year. The rationale for this is very clearly financial: items were bought when the price was low and sold when it was high."
Goods bought and sold throughout the year at the estate[6]
Month Bought Sold
2 Firewood and charcoal Unhusked millet, glutinous millet, soya and lesser beans, hemp and wheat
3 Hempen cloth glutinous millet
4 Huskless and regular barley, scrap silk wadding
5 Huskless and regular barley, wheat, silk floss, hempen and silk cloth, straw Soya and lesser beans, sesame
6 Huskless barley, wheat, thick and thin silk Soya beans
7 Wheat and or barley, thick and thin silk Soya and lesser beans
8 Leather shoes, glutinous millet Seed wheat and or barley
10 Unhusked millet, soya and lesser beans and hemp seeds Thick silk, silk, and silk floss
11 Non-glutinous rice, husked and unhusked millet, lesser beans and hemp seed
  • Page 199: It should be noted that "amounts of goods bought and sold are not mentioned" and that "not everything the family bought or sold was mentioned in the Monthly Instructions, only those items affected by seasonal needs or price changes. To this list we probably must add salt, iron agricultural implements, iron or ceramic kitchen utensils, paper and ink and any luxury items such as exotic foods or high quality silks."

Other stuff[edit]

  • Page 200: In the Han Dynasty, family estates that were 600 to 700 qing (1 qing = 11.4 acres) were considered extremely large, as the vast majority of estates were much smaller, certainly the ones described by Cui Shi.
  • Page 200: "The Monthly Instructions was written for someone who managed his own estate; an absentee landlord was not envisioned." According to Ebrey, the estate owner "did not live in the capital but among his clansmen, and close enough to his ancestors' graves to offer periodic sacrifices there."
  • Page 200-201: the workers on these estates could be hired workers, tenant farmers, or slaves. As dependents on the estate owners, the tenants and hired workers were "socially and economically inferior to independent farmers; however, they were still free, taxed citizens, legally and socially distinct from slaves." They were only taxed by the poll tax, as it was their landlord who was the only one who had to pay the land tax.
  • Page 201-202: Small neighboring independent farmers relied upon these estates to sell them essential goods that were produced there, such as grain and even grain seeds in times of bad harvest.

General Info[edit]

Loewe's Book[edit]

Loewe, Michael. (1968). Everyday Life in Early Imperial China during the Han Period 202 BC–AD 220. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd.; New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Emperor and His Government[edit]

  • Page 29-30: The Emperor, viewed as the Son of Heaven with a mandate to rule, had to conduct himself in a manner that distinguished his pinnacle position as intermediary between Heaven and Earth, and in return he received the obedience of his subjects.
  • Page 31-32: In the case of Liu Bang, he was a war victor who legalized his position as emperor "by acceding to his subjects' request that he would submit to enthronement as emperor; and in this way the mandate was 'conferred' on an incumbent who may have been unlettered, untrained and completely inexperienced."
  • Page 33: Here he talks about the two high officials of state (although he does not call them "chancellor" or "imperial secretary" as Wang specifically distinguishes them) and says they sort of resemble a modern-day prime minister and a head of the civil service. Loewe says these two guys "received reports from junior officials and brought them to the emperor's attention when they deemed it necessary to do so." In other words, they had a lot of control over information and how that information reached the emperor's ear, as well as being responsible for disseminating all of his decrees and edicts describing his decisions; "for in name all decisions were taken by the emperor in person" as Loewe claims (and others above have claimed).
  • Page 33: Here he mentions the nine ministries (not calling them Nine Ministers) that Wang elaborated on above. Here he lists their functions (but does not bother saying which specific office did what) as: "religious ceremonial, observation of the stars, record keeping; superintendance of the court and imperial household; security of the palace and control of its guards; care of the imperial stables; administration and punishment of crime; receipt of homage and tribute from foreign leaders; maintenance of records of the imperial family and regulation of the degrees of precedence for its members; collection of state revenues and direction of working projects; and charge of the imperial purse and disbursements therefrom."
  • Page 34: Ok, now he names a couple, such as the Grand Controller of Agriculture who collected revenues for the state in the form of taxed grain, while his deputies supervised state granaries, maintained commodity prices, and the transport of grain. He also names the Keeper of the Imperial Purse who collected dues of coinage and was supported by junior officials who prapared emblems and badges for other officials as well as supervised craftsmen that made all the equipment and luxury items for the palace.
  • Page 34-36: The Western Han at its beginning was carved up into 15 Commanderies and 10 Kingdoms, but more commanderies were added due to military conquest and some of these kingdoms were either reduced in size, split into smaller kingdoms, or totally eliminated as time went on. By 2 AD there were 83 commanderies and 20 kingdoms.
  • Page 36: Loewe says the Commanderies were governed by Grand Administrators (Wang would call these Provincial Governors) appointed by the central government, while the kingdoms were naturally run by hereditary kings related in blood to the emperor. Loewe says the central government played a role in who would succeed each king while the central government even appointed each of the kings' senior assistants. Loewe says that because of this the kingdoms were more or less controlled on an equal level as the commanderies.
  • Page 36: Loewe says the commanderies were broken down into prefectures, which numbered 1587 by the year 2 AD, comparing them in size to English counties. Counties were further divided into districts, and each district had a number of wards.
  • Page 36-37: "Local officials set about the collection of tax in grain, textiles or cash from the farms or the villages; constables of the districts were responsible for arresting criminals, deserters or fugitives from justice, or any villager who gave shelter to such law-breakers. Local officials were responsible for calling up the emperor's subjects to serve their allotted time in the labour gangs or the armed forces; and the prefects or their subordinates maintained granaries, canals and roads in a proper state of repair. Finally, the provincial and lcoal authorities were responsible for the upkeep of a system of communication...Urgent dispatches and routine mail were carried from one post to another on horseback or by runner; and officials of the central government or the provincial agencies could ride at speed from one commandery to the next by means of the chain of stations and post-horses that were carefully kept for their use."

The Officials[edit]

  • Page 38-39: Officials had certain rights and privileges according to their rank, as the types of carriages they rode in, the types of robes they wore, and the emblems of office in gold, silver, bronze wrapped in purple, blue, yellow, or black ribbons all corresponded to the officials' position and salary.
  • Page 39: Loewe says that since the 5th century BC, Chinese philosophers argued that officials should be chosen not by birthright but by abilities in intellectual capacity and moral integrity. People in the Han argued the same, although political expediency and circumstance sometimes got in the way.
  • Page 39: Here Loewe talks about the evolution of how officials from the provinces were drafted by the central government: "In an edict of 196 B.C., senior officials of the commanderies and the kingdoms were ordered to send men of promise to the capital city, where their talents could be considered and suitable appointments made. A century later it had become a regular annual event for each commandery or kingdom to send up a few candidates for the same purpose, and by the middle of the first century A.D. a quota had been fixed. Thus, for every 200,000 inhabitants in his commandery a governor was entitled to submit one candidate who had been chosen for his proven moral standards and devotion to family duties, and between six and ten men who were believed to possess more than a nodding acquaintance with literature; and by A.D. 140 a total of at least 200 candidates of the first type were presenting themselves each year for inspection, drawn from the interior parts of China."
  • Page 40: On what examination criteria the recommended men and students were judged by little known from the Han period. It is known that senior officials and sometimes even the emperor addressed questions to and judged the answers of aspiring students or recommmended men, but it is unknown if these questions and answers were verbal or written, or how topics were chosen in questioning. It is known from Han law fragments that youths were tested in reading and writing proficiency and that officials began their careers due to tests of selection.
  • Page 40: Although it is known that some men of humble means advanced up the ladder of the civil service hierarchy due to their meritorious action and moral character, others could simply be sons recommended by their official fathers while some posts could be hereditary, some could be purchased, and others could be won by having a female relative captivate the emperor and persuade him to staff positions with her kinsmen in mind.
  • Page 40: Gaining an official posts by any one of these means not only provided prestigious social standing and a salary, but also more lenient punishments for civil or criminal offenses as well as exemption from harsh conscript service.
  • Page 40-41: Once recommended to the court and then examined by the court for suitability, these candidates "joined a pool of gentlemen waiting at court in expectation of assignment to a vacancy...his appointment could be confirmed as permanent after a year's trial. There were also various types of temporary appointment."
  • Page 41-42: The Han civil service established the system of triennial evaluations of officials, as provincial authorities would submit reports to the throne every three years that included info on the performance of junior officials. There is evidence that their performance in office was graded as 'high', 'medium', or 'low' in quality, as well as their abilities to read, write, manage accounts, and to understand the law. It was required in the certificate of the report on an official's performance that it state the distance between his location of office and his home district in order to ensure that there was "no infringement of the rule which banned a man from serving in his home district." Based on these reports, officials could be promoted or demoted.
  • Page 42: Both provincial and central civil service positions were graded according to the annual stipend of grain an official would receive, which ranged from Full 2,000 to 100. In reality, officials were only paid partly in grain while also paid in coinage and bolts of silk.
  • Page 42: "Officials were allowed one day of rest in five and were entitled to an allowance of sick leave." Some honorable officials who left office due to old age were granted bonuses in their retirement payments, while pensions were sometimes given.

Education[edit]

  • Page 45: The first formal institution of learning in the capital was established in 120 BC by the suggestion of a senior official (??? Who?). The school in the capital was designed to educate sons of officials or prominent families that could become recruits for civil service. Quotas were set for the amount of students who could pass with first, second, or third class degrees. Progressive thinkers thought that this type of school should also be established in the provinces, but in the meantime provincial governors sent promising youths to the capital (Chang'an and then Luoyang) to be educated in this school, the Taixue.
  • Page 46: Besides this, Loewe writes "We also know of the growth of private establishments during the Han period. Sometimes a seminary arose around the figure of a well-known scholar, whose expert profession of a particular school of thought attracted pupils or disciples. We are told that these were sometimes to be numbered by the hundred; and some of the famous statesmen of the Han period received their training and formed their opinions in this way."
  • Page 46: Children were said to begin their education of reading and writing at age 8, although Loewe says this might not have been such a regular practice. Scholars and school-teachers compiled word-lists for this specific reason, while parts of these word-lists have survived from the old Western Han imperial library where they were preserved.
  • Page 46: These word-lists were basis for education in the sophisticated Confucian Classics of prose and poetry.
  • Page 49: Students also learned mathematics.
  • Page 49: Besides the obvious aim for civil service, education served the purpose of "improving the human character, of correcting a man's faults and repressing his more ignoble motives."

Court intrigue[edit]

  • Page 50-51: In 87 BC, Tian Tianqiu, an official with little experience (serving only one year as a nominal senior official in foreign affairs), was made the chancellor, the supposed head of government that was second only to the emperor (at least in theory). In reality, though, he was merely a figurehead compared to Imperial Counsellor Sang Hongyang and Huo Guang and Jin Midi, who were made co-regents by Emperor Wu shortly before he died.
  • Page 50-51: Huo Guang was the half-brother of the famous general Huo Qubing and nephew to Empress Wei Zifu, who committed suicide alongside Crown Prince Liu Ju in 91 BC due to a succession crisis and conflict in the capital itself. In fact, it was this event which launched the career of Tian Tianqiu as chancellor, as his comments that the crown prince Liu Ju had been a victim of miscarriage of justice gained him the appreciation of Emperor Wu, who then assigned him to his nominal foreign affairs job.
  • Page 51-52: Jin Midi was of nomadic Xiongnu origin and of a prominent family who refused to surrender to the Han, but were eventually brought into captivity by the Chinese. At age 14 (in the year 121 BC), Jin Midi became a groom in the palace stables. Jin Midi "was the only attendant who was too proud to acknowledge the presence of majesty; and his behaviour and fine appearance earned him the emperor's respect and admiration" according to Loewe. Due to this, he was given an official appointment and a generous salary, on top of earning the emperor's close friendship.
  • Page 52: Since he was foreign, others were jealous of his status, so he made himself appear humble by refusing high favors. His son was married to one of Huo Guang's daughters, so he was well-connected with others. He served as co-regent for a year before dying of an illness.
  • Page 52-53: Sang Hongyang came from a merchant family based in Luoyang, serving first as a court attendant around 140 BC at the age of 13. He was adept in arithmetic and took part in official councils on commercial and industrial discussions where he suggested applying methods of business to government policies in order to gain more profits from China's resources.
  • Page 53: Sang Hongyang was made Minister of Agriculture, responsible for "agricultural production and the collection of taxes." He had an open rivalry with Huo Guang and the two hated each other. Sang got involved in a plot against the throne, and for this he was executed by Huo Guang in 80 BC.

Social Distinctions and Occupations[edit]

  • Page 55: While birth into old prominent families was becoming less important due to the central government's demand for highly skilled men of merit to serve in office, the importance of obtaining wealth and its inheritance substantially increased during the Han, giving prominence to the shop owner, businessman, or wholesaler of the merchant class. The roots of this could be found in the fifth century BC (with the greater circulation of coin money, better communication networks, and growth of commercial cities), but it flourished and became far more sophisticated during the Han. The greatest asset of one's wealth in the Han was perhaps the amount of arable land one owned. With the growth of trade, arable land could be bought and sold with cash, which prompted many to invest their money in land property.
  • Page 56-57: There was a variety of workers and landholders. There was the small landholder who could not afford to live on the work of servants or laborers. There was the farmer-cultivator, who worked alongside his family members, wife and children, to till the fields and take care of the home. There were tenants who "held land by lease from the large estate owner or the government." There was also the peasant laborer who earned a consistent wage. Others in the countryside engaged in forestry, fishing, irrigation works, or mining.
  • Page 57-58: Marquises, who were ranked just below kings, could tax the households within their jurisdiction; granted that most of this money was forwarded to the central government, but they were able to take a considerable cut, enough to be well off and live in luxury.
  • Page 58: Feudal lords convicted of crimes were demoted in status, and if the crime was serious enough, they could be relegated to commoner status.
  • Page 58: Convicts were put to work by the state, in a maximum of five years' labor, but they could be granted amnesty by the emperor on special circumstances.
  • Page 58-59: Loewe states that the slave population in the Han Dynasty probably never increased beyond 1% of the entire population. Although they were forced to obey their masters, a slave still had some rights that the slaveowner had to observe, and could not just arbitrarily kill a slave. Sometimes slaves were made when peasants sold their children due to economic hard times and the need for quick cash. Domestic slaves often performed menial tasks such as kitchen duty, while others could serve even as bodyguards, acrobats, jugglers, or musicians. Han Chinese society did not rely on slaves to work in agriculture, as large land-owners often put their slaves to work making utensils and textiles.
  • Page 59-60: In the palace or city office, a slave could serve as a messenger, a door-keeper, or attendant at banquets. They could be commissioned to watch water clocks and strike drums to announce the hours. In the Imperial Parks they were sometimes put in charge of watching a master's dogs or horses. In urban areas, slaves could also be employed towing barges up the river, an essential job which the Han cities' "material existence depended."
  • Page 60: Han peasants were annually conscripted (for temporary service) in the government-run labor corps perfomed similar tasks. Peasants worked for transport services along canals, as miners in salt or iron mines, as road-builders for imperial highways, and many other state jobs. Peasant life was hard and economic fortunes uncertain. This often led to peasants selling off family members to stay out of debt, or they could seek loans from wealthy landowner creditors.
  • Page 60-61: Since most families in Han China were poor peasant families who could not afford to sustain a non-productive member, the practice of concubinage was reserved for the rich and wealthy who could afford extra women and female attendants. Concubines were not lowly or derogatory members in society; in fact, in rich homes and in the imperial palace they were trusted with many tasks and responsibilities.
  • Page 62-63: Loewe compares the Han census figures of AD 1–2 at 59.5 million people and AD 140 at 49.1 million people with the estimated census (by Michael Grant, The World of Rome) of the Roman Empire during the age of Augustus, that being 70 to 90 million.

The Force of Government[edit]

  • Page 68: Sometimes flogging was used by authorities to obtain a confession of a crime, although one official of the Han realized that the accused could simply lie in confession to escape the predicament. Witnesses were called to submit their testimony as evidence of innocence or guilt; if necessary, they were also detained until the day of the trial, to ensure they would be present. At court, an account of the charge was read aloud to the accused, yet he was also allowed to make his own statement and could call for further inquiry if he felt he was treated unjustly.
  • Page 68: QUOTE: "The death penalty was carried out by beheading, or cutting in two at the waist; and in extreme cases not only was the criminal himself executed, but members of his family were exterminated with him. Sometimes criminals were punished by mutilation, such as tattooing, amputation of the nose or the feet, or castration; or, in lighter cases, by shaving the beard and whiskers. In addition there would be sentences to hard labour; and the more exalted members of society could be punished by exile, monetary fines or by a ban on holding an official position. This somewhat rigorous conduct of justice was sometimes relaxed for charitable reasons. For example, the very old, or pregnant women were treated more leniently than others. Privileged members of society could ransom themselves from severe punishment or mitigate its worst excesses by means of payment or by rendering meritorious service."
  • Page 68-70: The principal reason of creating the census was to collect the right amount of taxes from the population, whether it be poll tax or land tax. The land tax was exacted on all landowners, whether they were owners of great estates or owner-cultivators. The tenant farmers were exempt from this tax, as their landlords were the ones who paid. While owner-cultivators and estate owners alike paid a tax rate of the value of their entire annual agricultural produce, the tenant farmer paying dues to his landlord would end up paying perhaps half or even more the produce he made on his lord's land.
  • Page 70: The poll tax was levied at 120 cash coins per adult, while 23 cash coins had to be paid for each child between the ages of seven and fourteen.
  • Page 70: The poll tax was necessary in order to assess how many eligible laborers there were for the state to employ in its public works projects. Labor duties for the state were exacted upon a certain number of male commoners (certainly not all) who reached the age of 23, and were frequently called for temporary service until they reached the age of 56.
  • Page 71: Commoners conscripted for corvee labor service worked in communication, industries, or in building projects for imperial palaces and mausoleums. They could be assigned to work in the iron, copper, and salt mines, or in the imperial mint.
  • Page 72: In 55 BC, it was reported that the government was seeking ways to reduce the burden of some 60,000 servicemen (either conscripts or convicts) who were charged with delivering four million bushels of grain by water transport to the capital at Chang'an. New canals and roads were built to meet this large demand for grain.
  • Page 73-74: In order to avoid excessive flooding along the Yellow River, in 69 AD the mathematician, astronomer, and engineer Wang Jing was commissioned to repair and build new water works. He made a topographical survey of the land, rebuilt damaged dykes where they were needed, cut tunnels into the hills for new canals relieving the flow of water into separate outlets leading to sea, and cleared any obstacles that obstructed the flow of water. He also placed several flash lock gates along the Yellow River to regulate the flow of water and prevent inundation.

The Army[edit]

  • Page 75: Just like the obligatory corveé service, men between the ages of 23 and 56 were eligible for conscription into military service. The limit of service was perhaps two years, but they were likely to be recalled in times of emergency. There were permanent military garrisons on the frontiers.
  • Page 75-76: In the Western Han, there was a commandant in each commandery who was responsible for conscripting local men for military service. This practice was partially kept in the Eastern Han, but it was only maintained in remote frontier commanderies. The head official of the provinces could call on men for military service in times of crisis. In the north, static garrisons were permanent installations. Loewe writes "Generally speaking the provincial authorities elsewhere did not maintain large regular forces."
  • Page 76: The Han maintained naval forces in the lakes and coastal rivers of the South. Most conscripts became land infrantrymen, though. Joining the cavalry was perhaps voluntary, Loewe says, and was most likely comprised of privileged members of society who were not conscripted or with assimilated Central Asian horsemen. "Conscript soldiers received basic rations of food, clothing, and equipment, but not pay."
  • Page 83: Defensive watchtowers and walls were made of brick with a coating of plaster and whitewash. Loewe writes of the towers, "Some of them boasted several rooms, whose doors were fitted with bolts to secure privacy. Some towers rose to a height of five to ten metres [sic], with a stairway or a ladder that provided access to the top. This was laid out as a platform and surrounded by crenellated walls so as to afford maximum protection to the defence [sic]. Heavy cross-bows were hung on the walls, their quivers stiff with arrows, and there were sighting devices with which to direct the shooting accurately. Defensive armour and helmets were provided, and there were supplies of grease and glue for the care and maintenance of weapons."
  • Page 84: Watchtowers sent signals to each other through use of colored flags or flames, depending on whether it was day or night.
  • Page 84-85: Men conscripted for military service could also act as policemen who patrolled areas outside the reach of Han government authorities, where passers-by would be asked to present passports of identification in order to prove they weren't fleeing criminals or deserters. Conscripted servicemen could also serve as couriers dispatching letters to and fro on horseback "carrying the rolls of wooden documents." Others were temporarily detached from military service to perform duties of construction, such as making bricks. "When they made bricks, which were probably moulded in wooden frames and baked by the sun, they reached an output of 80, or exceptionally 150, a day; they stacked the bricks; and scraped, cleaned, plastered and whitewashed the surfaces of buildings. As carpenters they kept the wooden equipment in good trim." Other conscripts could be put to agricultural work, such as digging irrigation canals or tending to vegetable gardening.

The Art and Practice of Writing[edit]

  • Page 88: QUOTE: "The new needs of government made it essential to find a standardised [sic] form of writing which would serve throughout the provinces, and the style that was brought into fashion in the Han period underwent little change until the end of the imperial age (1911). The commercial and cultural contacts with foreigners who came from India and Central Asia from about 120 B.C. rendered it desirable to reproduce foreign words and names in Chinese texts, and the principles of creating Chinese characters were applied on a far wider scale than hitherto, with extensive important additions to the Chinese written vocabulary."
  • Page 89: On the growth of intellectual maturity, Loewe says "This was seen in the need to express more ideas or abstractions in writing, and resulted in the formation of a large number of new characters to supplement the 3000 or so already in use by 202 BC. Indeed, as a result of the activities of the writers and scholars of the Han period over 9000 characters were included in China's first [SIC!] dictionary, presented to the throne in A.D. 121; although not all were in general use." NOTE! This is an old book, after all, and the oldest Chinese dictionary discovered now is the Erya, written in the 3rd century BC.
  • Page 89: The ancient Chinese engraved their written characters into hard surfaces of bone, shell, and bronze, but around 300 BC they painted or inscribed the characters on surfaces of silk or wood, and then paper by the late Han period.
  • Page 92-93: Besides scrolls of silk there were also scrolls of wooden strips with written characters written vertically in columns.
  • Page 94: In order to keep the wooden strips bound together, holes were drilled in them where hempen strings could be passed through.
  • Page 95: In order to keep the scroll's hempen string in place, clay was used to secure them, and it was common for officials to stamp their official seal into the clay before it hardened, so that the originator of the documents could be known.

Literature and the Intellect[edit]

  • Page 98-99: From a wealth of known book titles from surviving Han library catalogues and a scarce amount of actual surviving books of the Han, it is apparent to modern historians that the Chinese of the Han had developed a sophisticated corpus of literature, including literary criticism in the interpretations of texts which preceded the Imperial era. The Han Chinese had books on philosophy, divination, mathematics, medicine, warfare, agriculture, and astronomy.
  • Page 99: China's earliest poems from the Zhou Dynasty were meant to be accompanied by music, but in the Han Dynasty poetry became much more sophisticated and was "designed to afford lyrical delight."
  • Page 101-102: Here Loewe talks about the philosophy of Wang Chong: QUOTE "This was an age when nature's mighty forces were felt only too violently but understood only too rarely. Wang Ch'ung insisted that the uncontrollable catastrophes of storm, earthquake, drought or landslide were not brought about by the desire of a heavenly force to warn an emperor of his imperfections, so that he would mend his ways and save his people from destruction. Wang Ch'ung affirmed that disasters sprang from natural causes, from imbalances of temperature or climate, and that they formed but a usual part in nature's rhythmic process of growth, change and decay. Certainly, according to Wang Ch'ung, no explanation should be sought in the exercise of moral considerations by natural forces; nor was man's enjoyment of health, wealth or prosperity to be correlated with his moral qualities or conduct. According to Wang Ch'ung, man is certainly the servant of destiny; but destiny is no power to be manipulated by symbolic practices or magic. Man's failings and lack of independence are only too obvious, and misguided notions such as the belief in ghosts were engendered by man's physical weakness and his hallucinations."
  • Page 102: QUOTE: "Wang Ch'ung's attitude can be described as scientific, in so far as he believed that the world is to be explained on rational principles, without recourse to the miraculous, and that their truth can be demonstrated by the collection and verification of data. There were other manifestations in the Han age of a systematic intellect and its applications to material problems. Mathematicians had addressed themselves to problems such as that of calculating the relationship between the diameter and circumference of a circle, or of extracting the square and cube roots of numbers...Systems of measuring length, area, volume and weight were based sometimes on a less regular progression of units...For the practical application of mathematics, there were rules and formulae for calculating the area or capacity of a wide variety of figures such as a square, rhomboid, or circle, cube, pyramid or prism."
  • Page 103: Han sundials divided one whole period of day and night into 100 sections, and these were related to the day which was divided into 12 hours (an ancient Han Chinese hour was equal to two hours of our modern time). Water clocks were also used.
  • Page 103-105: Here he provides info on the Chinese calendar if you are interested.
  • Page 105-107: Here he talks about Zhang Heng and the seismometer.

Religion and the Occult Powers[edit]

  • Page 108: It was in the emperor's best interests to have people believe that a supernatural Heaven was associated with his rule on earth.
  • Page 109: Here Loewe talks about the Ministry of Ceremonies and its officials who conducted prayers and maintained shrines. Loewe says this was not an invention of the Han era, but was an inherited tradition of China's earlier states which also wanted to "secure earthly blessings from unseen powers." The Chinese believe that deities had the power to make human life miserable if they desired, so to placate these potentially wrathful deities the Han government built shrines in their honor. This included shrines for the god of rain, the god of wind, and guardian spirits of mountains and rivers.
  • Page 109-110: The Chinese worshipped deceased ancestors of their family clan, who they deemed to have powers to influence the earthly world. Shrines for the emperor's ancestors were erected not only in the capital, but also in the provinces. At each shrine, an offering of food and sacrifices of sheeps and pigs were presented. Priests, temple guards, and musicians were commissioned for these services, which burdened the state with a great expense. Officials often protested and debated about the number of shrines to be erected and the amount of funds to be allotted for them.
  • Page 110-112: Mount Tai, one of the Sacred Mountains of China, was often visited by Chinese emperors, such as Qin Shi Huang, Emperor Wu of Han, and Emperor Guangwu of Han. The mountain was venerated as a site where prayers could be offered and blessings given from Heaven in return. In essence, the site was seen as an intermediary between the earthly ruler and the authorities of the cosmos. When emperors visited there, they reported on their successes in office and prayed for a long reign. Bulls were sacrificed and ritual mounds erected for the ceremonies there. The Emperor then deposited jade tablets securely held in stone caskets with inscriptions detailing his actions in office and "prayers for the future."
  • Page 116: QUOTE: "According to one theory, which was evolved at about 300 BC, the creation of the world and the continued processes of nature were to be attributed to the complementary powers of the two major forces of Yin and Yang. The different impact of these two forces could be recognised in the everyday phenomena of the world. Yin was associated with female, dark, and cold, Yang with male, light and heat; and the rhythmical procession of natural phenomena depended on which of the two forces happened to be in the ascendant. Yin and Yang were manifested in types of energy or qualities, or in the material elements of fire, water, metal, wood and earth whose creation they had contrived, but which were themselves powerful enough to ordain the form of the material world."
  • Page 116-117: QUOTE: "The powers of the five elements became associated with other sets of objects or qualities that could be numbered in five, such as the colours (red, black, white, green and yellow) or the directions (south, north, west, east, center). There were likewise five sacred mountains, five senses of human perception, five musical notes, not to speak of the five fingers of the hand and the five toes of the foot."
  • Page 117-118: QUOTE: "It had become fashionable to believe that the proper state of man on earth depended on maintaining the correct balance between the forces of Yin and Yang, and that the powers of certain members of the five elements, colours, or directions could be engaged as allies against the dangers of natural disruption or even political disturbance. These ideas were introduced into some fo the conventions and prescriptions of the court protocol, and permeated the dynasty's faith in its own legitimate authority. Han sovereignty was explained as representing the dominant element of water, or later earth, and the appropriate colours were chosen for ceremonial use and display. At times of a coup d'état it could be maintained that the champion of a new political force stood for that one of the elements which was naturally due to rise to a position of ascendency in accordance with the terms of the cosmic rhythm. The champion would thus claim that he was acting in support of the natural order of the world and that it was the duty of all men who represented the law and order to place their loyal support at his displosal."
  • Page 121: While the ancient pit and shaft graves existed in Han as they did in earlier periods, during the Han a new tomb design of tunnels built with brick or stone were made. On top of this a large artificial hill was made, creating a landmark of a mound pyramid. Imperial tombs such as these had walled compounds guarding them, with entrances flanked by towers and stone blocks fashioned into sculptures of guardian beasts. Shrines, pillars with ornate carvings, and inscribed tablets could also be found.
  • Page 122-123: QUOTE: "For the Han period we have examples of joint graves which housed the bodies of a man and his wife, or, occasionally, a man and a child who had predeceased his parents. The sacrifice of animal or human victims to accompany the departed in the future life was now rarely practised, and in the place of this gruesome habit there had arisen the custom of providing the dead with the material equipment that they might need in the life beyond the grave. To this splendid gift to posterity, archaeologists and historians owe much of their knowledge of life in Han China; of the houses, granaries, and water-wells; of a man's or woman's valuables, or of the furnishings and ornaments which they proudly possessed; of the carriages deemed suitable for the use of an official in the new society which he was entering. Wooden horses or clay manikins were interred so as to wait on their master or mistress; and the critic whom we have already met observed that while there were living creatues of the earth who lacked raiment, the puppets that accompanied the dead were clothed in the finest silks. The walls of the tombs were sometimes gaily painted with scenes of happy occasions to which the man or his spouse could look back with some nostalgia; such as the dances or musical entertainments which they had promoted; the banquets that they had enjoyed; or the excursions on which they had spent their days of leisure. For the poorer members of society pit burials were sufficient with their stark simplicity; and many a body was probably laid to rest in an earthenware shell."
  • Page 123-124: Buddhism entered China at a time when traditions of worshipping spirits of nature, Heaven, and ancestors were well-established. There were also budding traditions of philosophical Daoist mysticism, the search for immortality, and the understanding of five elements and their symbols. Traditional accounts for the arrival of Buddhism in China state that it was revealed to Emperor Ming of Han in a dream in 65 AD, but Loewe says that it perhaps entered China a bit earlier. Introduced by traveling foreigners from the west, it became commonly accepted in the capital region around Luoyang by about 100 AD. Loewe says that Sanskrit translations of Buddhist texts into Chinese began around 150 AD.
  • Page 124: In regards to Buddhism, Loewe writes, QUOTE: "Buddhism was now becoming a religion of the Chinese people as well as of the alien sojourners, but we do not know how widespread was its appeal, or how accustomed the Han Chinese had become to its imagery, priests and ceremonies. The faith rested on the belief that human suffering can be avoided by the renunciations of desires, and rules of behaviour were prescribed to attain that perfect state of non-suffering. While Taoism rested largely on the practice of techniques that were aimed at preserving the body as a home fit for the soul, Buddhists hoped to free both body and soul from the pain of this world. This ideal state of salvation could be achieved by any individual, and the practice of the faith might in this way cut across notions higher or lower stations in home or state. As yet the faith was not sufficiently well-established to conflict critically with established ideas, and there had not been time to realise the social and economic implications of the communal life of a monastery."

The capital city of Chang'an[edit]

  • Page 128: Large Han cities were usually built and extended from older settlements. Han cities did not exist only for administrative functions, as they could also be viable market centers, communication centers, industry centers close to natural resources, or towns adjacent to military garrisons.
  • Page 130: The capital of Chang'an was built to face the south, so that the Emperor, when seated in his audience hall, could face the direction of yang "and marked the sun's uppermost position in the heavens."
  • Page 130: There are some impressive stats provided by Loewe for the fortifications of Chang'an. QUOTE: "The total distance round the walls amounted to over 25 kilometres [sic], and each of the four sides was pierced by three imposing gateways. These allowed access by three separate entrances, each of which measured six metres in width. Traces of ruts lef by a vehicle show that each entrance could admit four carriages simultaneously."
  • Page 130: QUOTE: "Much of the original Han city was destroyed in fighting and fires during the disturbed periods of AD 9–27 and 190–5, and not one of the dynastic houses which adopted Ch'ang-an as its capital in the next four centuries was able to rebuild it in a manner that was comparable with its former glory. Only when the Sui (589–617) and T'ang (618–906) dynasties arose was the city restored to its earlier splendour; but by then the site of the settlement had been shifted; and the noble city which served as a capital from the seventh century lay to the south-east of the area when Han Ch'ang-an had been erected."
  • Page 130-131: QUOTE: "Although the decision to establish the seat of government at Ch'ang-an was taken in 202 BC, the work of building the protecting walls was not started until 194. Within the next four years large forces of labourers were assigned to this task. These were presumably men who had been called up for their statutory duty of a month's service annually."
  • Page 131: The walls of the city, which were 16 meters thick at the base (but thinner at the top) were made of rammed earth and some bricks. Each of the 12 city gates had watchtowers. Earthenware gullies were placed along the sides of the roads to drain rain water. Inside the city houses were packed together in close quarters. The marketplaces in Chang'an served as centers of trade, meeting places for traveling Asian merchants, as centers of divination, and as public areas where spectacles of executions took place.
  • Page 132-133: QUOTE: "The palaces must have presented a sharp contrast with most of the buildings of the city, whose construction was of a very humble standard. Even the palace buildings were not always built of brick or stone, and some of the walls were made of clay and wattle, covered in plaster and brightly painted scarlet and white. The gateways were perhaps the most imposing parts of the buildings, with their towers placed symmetrically to enclose the entrances and to house the upper chambers of the guardsmen. While thatch may well have been the usual form of roofing material, tiles were laid on the halls and chambers of the emperors. These were moulded in earthenware as half-cylinders; and when they were laid side by side in lines the rain water would drain away in the valleys that lay between adjacent tiles. At the lower end of the roof the half-cylinder was sealed with a rounded tile-end which could be used to carry artistic or propagandist designs. There are many surviving examples of these circular medallions, which formed an admirable medium for a calligrapher to demonstrate his skill. Some roundels bear the name of the palace of which they formed part; others carry a short invocation for eternal bliss; and on some specimens the artist traced a stag or a bird as a decorative device."
  • Page 133: QUOTE: "Many a tale is told of the glories of Han Ch'ang-an; of the imperial pleasure gardens that lay beyond the west wall, stocked with botanical rarities from the south and strange beasts from different climes. There are highly imaginative details of the landscaping of this park, of the ornamental towers with which it was studded and the lakes contrived for pleasure. We are also told of the many towers that had been built within the city walls, some for religious purposes, some to facilitate observation of the heavenly bodies or the phenomena produced by the Yin and the Yang; and as the beings of the immortal world were thought to be fond of towered buildings, Wu ti is said to have erected several in Ch'ang-an as a means of attracting their favours."

Life in the Cities[edit]

  • Page 137-138: He mentions the debate of 81 BC, but in his usual vagueness and never revealing any worthwhile nuance. He does mention that there were two sides or political factions split in the debate, one representing the progressive critics and the other the conservative pro-government establishment. He does mention that the document detailing this government debate revealed clues about the affluence of the well-to-do in Han society, in regards to contrasting the thrift and frugal nature of their forebearers (arguing society had become decadent).
  • Page 138-139: QUOTE: "Opulent families lived in multi-storeyed [sic] houses, built with intersecting cross-beams and rafters that were richly carved and decorated on all visible surfaces. The stairways and partitions were plastered or painted. Instead of the simple skins or grass-made mats on which their ancestors had been content to rest, these families covered their floors with embroidered cushions, woollen rugs or rush-mats trimmed to a nicety; and even middle-class families could afford to take their ease on coverings of wild boar hide or the smooth felts that came from the north. In the inner rooms fo the house the beds were carefully furnished with wooden fittings cut from the choicest timber; fine embroideries were hung up as drapes, and screens were set to overlap each other and ensure privacy."
  • Page 139: QUOTE: "There was a shocking profusion of fine silk among the rich. Even ordinary folk donned the sort of garments that were fit for queens, and everyday wear was bright enough for weddings. While the wealthier classes wore choice furs of squirrel or fox, and wild duck plumes, others were content with woollens and ferret skins. The same was true of footwear, with affluent members of society sporting shoes of inlaid leather or silk-lined slippers. But the worst excesses of dress were associated with weddings, when you could see the rich classes with their red badger furs and their tinkling jades; and even the well-to-do could afford long skirts, with jewels, clasps and earrings."
  • Page 140: The Han Chinese consumed meat with seasonsings such as leeks, ginger, pickles, and relishes and ate minced fish, quails with oranges, pork, and even dog. The rich drank their beverages from cups with inlaid silver and golden handles.
  • Page 140-141: The rich rode in fancy carriages pulled by caparisoned horses decked in jewelry, "kept in check by means of gilt or painted bits, with golden or inlaid bridles; and the not-so-rich made do with lacquered leather equipment or tassels. With these extravagances, there should be borne in mind the comparative cost of keeping the horses alive, as a single animal consumed as much grain as an ordinary family of six members."
  • Page 141: QUOTE: "There was no shortage of entertainments for the rich, who would amuse themselves looking at performing animals, tiger-fights and foreign girls. Musical performances were no longer restricted to speical occasions such as folk festivals and the tunes and dances were far more sophisticated than they had been in the past. Rich families now kept their own five-piece orchestras with bells and drums, and their house-choirs; and the middle-rich arranged their flute or lyre concerts, sometimes with a visiting artiste who came from central or eastern China."
  • Page 141: QUOTE: "The strength of religious beliefs and practices and their effect on daily life was a further reason for dismay. There was altogether too much devotion to strange powers or spirits, with animal sacrifices, musical shows and puppetry. Very often these rites were performed simply to secure an earthly happiness from the supernatural powers, and without any attention to moral standards or the decencies of human conduct."
  • Page 141-142: The rich had the finest woods used in the making of their coffins, while "even the poor managed to get the lids painted."
  • Page 142: An interesting picture of a juggler balancing three children on a cross with a wheel at the top that one child uses to spin on.
  • Page 142-143: One writer of the Han commented that people who did not care much for their parents when they were alive spent lavishly on their funerals when they died, as a sign to the community that they were good sons and daughters after all.
  • Page 143: While some people lived in abject poverty and ate coarse food, pet dogs and horses owned by the rich were decked in the finest embroideries and ate food fit for human consumption.
  • Page 144: On this page is a Han mural of the game liubo being played; the caption reads, QUOTE: "The game of liu-po was played by two opponents supported by seconds, and depended on the throw or manipulation of rods and counters and the use of a cup. The design of the pieces may have been associated with the symbolic beasts [i.e. the red bird representing south, the white tiger representing west, the green dragon representing east, and both the snake and tortoise representing north], and the powers of Yin and Yang."
  • Page 145: Although it was looked down upon by many as a way of exploiting other people to make gains without contributions, gambling was still popular. He then mentions the game of liubo saying that it was, QUOTE: "probably played by two or four people. Six bamboo sticks, suitably marked with lines, were shaken out of a cup, like dice; and the throw probably entitled the player to move his counters on the board to carefully prescribed positions. The game was evidently accompanied by lively gestures and noisy shouts; and in addition to being the sport of men it is occasionally represented as a pastime of the immortals."
  • Page 145: In a written work of Wang Fu (78–163), he describes how upset he is with the wasteful extravagance of society, such as the "habit of cutting expensive coloured silks to form charms or amulets; and he deplored the way in which the general public had been deluded into trusting to witchcraft rather than physic to cure its bodily ills."
  • Page 145: Tomb relief of a sword juggler. QUOTE "In addition to these literary pieces, material evidence in the form of the reliefs that decorated a tomb illustrates the type of entertainment that rich families could afford to stage, right at the end of the Han period. There was dancing and sword-play, juggling and acrobatic feats, accompanied by skilled players with their drums and bells, their wind and string instruments; and we know fo other forms of amusement in Ch'ang-an or Lo-yang, such as cock-fighting, dor or horse racing and bird hunting."
  • Page 146-147: Poor members of society lived in slums that contrasted sharply with the homes of the rich and could be abused by street gangs. There were crime waves from time to time. Officials sought to diminish corruption amongst the constables by increasing their pay, so that they would not fall so easily to bribery by criminals. QUOTE: "We hear also of bands of ill-disciplined youths who roamed the city, wearing their own distinctive garb and protective armour, and carrying knives and other weapons with which to intimidate the inhabitants."
  • Page 147-148: Description of the layout of rich Han homes, if you care for it.
  • Page 148: People often had kennels where they could keep their guard dogs on their property.
  • Page 151: For a picture caption of a liubo board game, QUOTE: "The markings on this reconstructed liu-po board may be related to the lines used for astronomical purposes on sundials (figure 33), and some mirrors (figure 1). The game may have been associated with divination."

Trade and communications[edit]

  • Page 152-153: Of the development of the two centuries which preceded Qin and Han, QUOTE: "Improved means of communication, a more extensive use of iron and a demand for luxury goods tended to promote the exchange of merchandise; and the attainment of political unification and stability under the empire enhanced the opportunities for profit-making by large-scale and small-scale operators alike." However, government officials were fearful of wealthy and powerful individuals who could exploit the populace by means such as taking advantage of local shortages, so the government stepped into the sphere of trade and distribution with the establishment of certain monopolies, regulation of coinage, and stabilizing prices.
  • Page 153: In the evolution of Chinese money, cowry shells were the first form, then bronze knives and shovels which gave way to miniature forms of bronze knives or shovels in the Bronze Age. The next phase was the bronze disc coin, which became the standard unit of currency in the Qin and Han empires. Before 112 BC, various currencies were used and were not controlled by the government, such as privately-smelted coins and even old Qin coins. In that year, however, the government introduced the five-shu coin, which only the government was allowed to manufacture. It was called this because of its weight, five shu (equivalent to 3 grams). It had a square-bored center, so that a string could be passed through. These coins were made with a standard of 80% copper, the rest tin, lead, or iron.
  • Page 154: In the Han, 100000 of these copper coins were considered the equivalent of a piece of gold weighing 244 grams.
  • Page 154: In 9 AD, Wang Mang introduced 28 different coins made of either gold, silver, tortoise-shell and cowries, copper, and some modelled on the knife-coins used in the past. The coins were not met with acclaim or trust, and the five-shu piece was restored in 25 AD, to last throughout the rest of Han.
  • Page 154: QUOTE: "Official stipends were paid partly or wholly in coin; sometimes payment was made in the form of textiles, whose value was set out on a recognized scale of values. For example, we know of an officer serving at the north-west frontier, who received two rolls of silk, to the value of 900 coins, as his month's pay. With the breakdown of political stability and the loss of prosperity of the second century AD the use of coin tended to give place to a more general use of textiles or grain as a medium of exchange. Towards the end of the dynasty one writer at least was concerned with the effects of coin-hoarding and the tendency of coin to fly outwards from the centre. He raised the question of how circulation could best be stimulated, and whether the standard coin should be withdrawn and replaced by a lighter piece, weighing four shu."
  • Page 154-155: QUOTE: "The markets were walled and closed to the public at nightfall; and the shops or stalls were laid out in rows together, with traders in the same commodity bidding against each other for custom. Retail traders made their living by selling animals, raw materials, foodstuffs and manufactured goods. Horses and cattle, sheep and swine changed hands in the markets, and some businessmen dealt in slaves. There were specialists in horn, cinnabar, lacquer and raw sheep-skins. There were butcher's shops and cooked-meat stalls, as well as purveyors of syrup, pickled goods, dried fish, relishes, grains and fruit. Hardware stores sold utensils and equipment made of brass, iron, or wood; carriage makers proudly displayed their light two-wheeled vehicles and their heavier ox-carts. Drapers stocked fine silken rolls and coarser fabrics of hemp, as well as made-up furs and furnishings such as mats or felts."
  • Page 156-157: The government was well aware of the power of private wealth and merchants. In an extreme case of this during the Rebellion of the Seven States in 154 BC, QUOTE: "the government needed ready cash to put down a rebellion. A wealthy man who was willing to lend 1000 units of gold was evidently in a position to dictate his terms; and as the rebellion was repressed within three months, he was soon able to collect his interest which amounted to ten times the principal." In order to curtail the power of private wealth, the government commandeered the salt and iron industries in 117 BC by creating government monopolies on these enterprises which had once been private.
  • Page 157-158: The chief export from China was silk, which could be exchanged for essential horses from the north, pearls from the south, or the raw material of jade from Central Asia which could be carved and turned into a luxury good. The Han hunting parks displayed imports of lions and rhinoceroses. Slaves were also bought from abroad, who along with jugglers Loewe says could have came from as far as the Mediterranean.
  • Page 158: On commercial contracts, QUOTE: "We possess a few fragments of contracts or similar documents which regulated sales or loans between two Chinese parties to the transaction. These agreements specify the goods in question and their quantity (e.g., clothing, textile or land) together with the names of the parties and the witnesses. There is usually a reference to the agreed price and the date for completing the settlement. Servicemen who entered into dispute with each other in such transactions could refer the matter to their officers for arbitration."
  • Page 158-159: After explaining the cumbersome and often inefficient trek of grain to the imperial capitals and large cities from the interior, as well as efforts to build new roads and canals in order to mitigate the slow travel of grain transport, Loewe says, QUOTE: "By the end of the sixth century AD a growing dependence on the grain grown in the Lower Yangtze Valley had resulted in the connection of several canals to form a system that would bring the grain-boats to the north-west from just that area. But for the Han period a further weakness in natural communications lay in the absence of a usable link between the north-west and the highly fertile reaches of the Upper Yangtze; i.e. the modern province of Ssu-ch'uan. The intervening territory is mountainous and wooded, and it proved impossible to make use of the small streams that fed the Wei and Han rivers, as a means of joining the two areas. It may be noted that this problem has only been solved recently, thanks to the railway engineers of the twentieth century and their techniques."
  • Page 159-160: In 129 BC a canal was built to connect the waterways of Chang'an directly with the Yellow River, instead of relying on the link of the Wei River to the Yellow River. This would cut travel time by two-thirds. The project was completed (with conscript labor) in three years and dually benefited farmers in the region who could draw irrigation waters from the new canal.
  • Page 160: Han Chinese troops were sometimes conveyed by naval ship, such as in the south or across the Bohai Sea to Korea. Loewe writes that Chinese junks may have traversed Malayan waters. Clay tomb models of ships show examples of Han trade ships.
  • Page 160-161: On imperial highways, the central lane was always reserved for passage of the emperor's carriage, while the side lanes were used by everyone else. There were roads were laid out explicitly for the conveyance of troops and supplies. The most abundant type of road found in Han China, however, were the simple and rough roadways criss-crossing throughout the countryside.
  • Page 160-161: Two pictures shown here of tomb brick reliefs, one of a one-horse-drawn, two-wheeled light carriage with a canopy shielding the driver and passenger, the other of a covered wagon used to convey goods and supplies. The ox driving a cart, pack mules, and northwestern camels were the most common types of draft animals used.

The Countryman and His Work[edit]

  • Page 163: The Chinese believed the world was based on agriculture, and contrasted their civilized sedentary society with the alien nomadic way of life, living on one pasture to the next without stability. Other occupations were seen as less essential, such as the merchants who were described by Han officials as people who exploited others in society to earn a buck, as discussed earlier by Loewe on page 152.
  • Page 163-164: Loewe says that it is safe to assume most people in Han China lived in simple country homes, on average with four of five family members living within, all of whom worked constantly to harvest the land.
  • Page 164: The grain tax was the basic form of revenue for the Han government, who needed to keep an accurate census and monitor household units to keep track of the population. Several households would band together and cooperate in their farming, as droughts and other disasters would be disastrous for a loner family with no helpful contacts.
  • Page 164: In times of crisis in a harvest, the state also stepped in to help the farmer by distributing free seeds or tools. The government of course also had its safety net of food stores away in official granaries.
  • Page 164-165: During the Eastern Han, the rise of powerful families and estates evolved. When the people were dragged away from their fields too often to serve on campaigns which necessitated food be made from farms such as theirs, when the government taxed the people too harshly and forced them to flee and beg in the countryside, leaving their farms fallow, and when natural disasters hit and ruined crops, the government could no longer tax the people of their grain, and the people would flee to find shelter, food, tools, and seeds which rich families could provide but the government momentarily could not. Displaced families such as these became tenant dependents to prominent estates which shielded the people from officials' demands, acting as their protectors. This was the general case by the 2nd century AD.
  • Page 167: Rice was the staple of the south, while wheat and millet were mainly consumed in the north, and barley in the far northwest. A variety of grains were used in making solid food as well as distilling liquor. A farmer spent most of his day plowing, sowing, hoeing, and watering his fields.
  • Page 168: A tomb relief of a double-oxen-drawn plow, circa 103 AD.
  • Page 170-171: A farmer spent most of his time harvesting grain or producing hemp, the material which most of the poor used for clothing. However, rural farmers could also turn profits from pasturing or stock-breeding horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs; by keeping fish farms and woods that could be cut down for timber. Fruit was grown by farmers in both northern and southern China. In areas where the climate allowed it, chestnuts, date palms, and citrus fruits were grown, and vegetables such as leeks and ginger could be grown. There were some farming families which made most of their profits from sericulture and growing mulberry trees. Other farmers grew the lac tree used to produce lacquer for lacquerwares. There was not yet any widespread growth of tea, cotton, or sugar. The grape from Central Asia was used, while the imperial palaces had grape vineyards. Sheep were raised so that they could be eaten in mutton. Their hides could also be made into warm winter fleeces. However, the Han Dynasty Chinese did not fashion sheep's wool into weavable textiles, as their neighbors in Central Asia did.
  • Page 176: As described at length in an article above, Loewe goes over Cui Shi. Coming from a family of landowners who lost their fortunes by the 2nd century AD, Cui Shi had trouble with his finances, especially with the expenses made for his father's funeral, which had to be suitable. He was forced for a time to trade in liquor because of this. He later became a provincial governor in the north, though. In his writing, he established rules of husbandry, such as when the farmer should plant, weed and harvest various types of crops. He also detailed the timed process of sericulture, weaving, dyeing, and tailoring as maintained by womenfolk. He also gave specific times when wild plants should be gathered to be distilled in making medicines. He also gave instructions on the maintenance of one's property and farming equipment. It also gave instructions on what time of year the head of the household should send his sons off to school.
  • Page 176-177: He detailed the ceremony of the Chinese New Year of having the family purifying themselves by making offerings of strong drinks at the family shrine. Afterwards all the family members, junior and senior, would sit in appointed places before their ancestors and raise their wine cups to one another in prayer.
  • Page 177: Since there was no agricultural activity in the first month of the year, it was the most suitable time to send one's sons off to school. However, certain things could be planted, such as bamboo, pine, lac, or oak trees, while the seeds of melons, gourds, onions, and garlic could be sown.
  • Page 178: The Han Chinese also grew beans. They preserved their foods with certain seasonings gathered at the right time from the woods. In the spring time was spent re-plastering the walls, some of which could be covered over with a coat of lacquer.

Craftsmanship[edit]

  • Page 180: QUOTE: "Chinese textiles in use during the Han period were woven from hemp, or other vegetable fibres or silk; and although the greater part of the population were probably dressed in coarse hempen garments, it is of silk fabrics that most is known and of which we can speak here."
  • Page 182: Vegetable fibers and silk-wadding were used as padding in clothes.
  • Page 182-183: People in the Han distinguished between different types of silk by where and by whom they were manufactured, as textiles in the east differed from that of the west, and silk made in palace workshops, home industries, or professional producers all differed from one another.
  • Page 183: Cotton was not used in the Han Dynasty. In addition to silk and hemp, however, a cloth derived from nettle was used, which was softer to the skin than coarse hemp and warmer too. Sometimes silk and vegetable fibers were used in the same article of clothing, such as in certain types of footwear. Some silks were woven with as many as five different dyed colors. The most prized and expensive one was 'ice-white' silk that had a brilliant luster that people would perhaps prefer to wear only indoors, as exposure to sun or rain would ruin it. The artistic designs on Han silks were either geometric patterns or curvilinear, the latter sometimes dubbed as the 'cloud-scroll' pattern.
  • Page 184: Han silks often sported animal designs of dragons, phoenixes, horses, fish, and birds in stylized or conventional forms, and were often for symbolic purposes. Chinese characters could also be found on silks, often in the form of written prayers such as "ten thousand life-times, and all you wish" or "many years and long life, with a goodly blessing of sons and grandsons."
  • Page 184-185: Beyond clothing there were other uses for silk. Ladies could use silken bags to store and carry decorative bronze mirrors.
  • Page 185: QUOTE "The main centres of textile production lay in east China, where both hemp and silk were made up in bales, and three official agencies which were responsible for preparing the imperial robes were situated in this area. There was also a secondary centre of production in the west, which was at first concerned with hemp only, and whose products were finding their way by devious paths to north India during the second half of the second century BC; and towards the end of the Han period western China had won a reputation for the gilded cloth that it was producing. We do not hear much of silk production south of the Yangtze River before the Eastern Han period."
  • Page 186: Here Loewe describes how durable lacquer is, remaining unblemished after millenniums of time and able to be immersed in water without allowing the material it covers to decay. The hard surface also made a perfect medium for a painter to brush the unique designs seen in the Han period. QUOTE: "There were not only lacquered articles of daily use such as cups, plates, and dishes, or ladies' toilet requisites; military equipment such as sword-sheaths or shields were coated with this preservative, as were many of the component parts of carriages; and coffins themselves, together with a whole variety of funerary equipment, were treated with the substance."
  • Page 186-187: The Han government maintained three imperial workshops dedicated to the production of lacquerwares, some of which traveled far outside of China. For example, a Chinese lacquerware beaker was found in a Han colony tomb in Korea with an inscription dating it to 55 AD and was made specifically in a workshop located near Chengdu.
  • Page 187: The perfect accuracy of lines in geometric patterns painted on some lacquerwares has led scholars to believe that not only the brush was used to paint them, but a mechanical device of some sort. Some lacquerwares were decadent, with inlay of gold, silver, bronze and tortoise shell.

Industry and technology[edit]

  • Page 189-190: Gong Yu wrote in about 45 BC that there were several thousand men employed in each of the the government's textile agencies located in eastern China. Metallurgic industries concentrated in the west also consumed a fair amount of state revenues. There were 48 iron agencies functioning at the turn of the millennium at 1–2 AD, most of them located north of the Yangzi River, in the valleys of the Yellow and Huai rivers of the Shandong Peninsula. Gong Yu estimated that the government employed about 100,000 people in the mining of iron and copper.
  • Page 190-191: Of the many iron farm tools discovered (including the shares of ox-drawn plows, hoes, and seed boxes), some were even cast with the character or two of the government agency which had manufactured them.
  • Page 191: Loewe describes the bronze crossbow trigger mechanism, QUOTE: "These instruments were made with a very considerable degree of precision, and comprised several component parts that were fitted together with the greatest accuracy. A catch, which held the bowstring, and a control lever which released the arrow were fitted by means of pins to a principal box-like part; and some triggers were equipped with a graduated sight, so that the aim could be adjusted to suit the distance of the target. Many of these triggers bear an inscription giving details of manufacture."
  • Page 191: QUOTE: "At one bronze foundry that was discovered recently the shafts were driven 100 metres deep. There are signs that the installation had included ladders and iron tools for working the mine, and that the passage-ways had been carefully laid out with timbers."
  • Page 193-194: There were 34 government agencies of the salt monopoly by 1–2 AD, with a dozen of these operating along the coasts of Shandong alone, extracting salt from seawater. In remote areas of Sichuan, Manchuria, and the Ordos Desert, however, the Chinese collected rock-salt or brine by way of mining. In this the lifting device of the derrick was used, as displayed on Han tomb brick reliefs found in Sichuan. Liquid brine was raised from the mine through a bamboo pipeline, which would pour brine into a furnace, possibly heated by natural gas. Loewe says that borehole drilling in such mining projects reached depths as far as 600 m (2000 ft), perhaps.
  • Page 194-195: Now Loewe talks of the 81 BC debates about salt and iron. QUOTE: "A spokesman who argued the case for restoring these undertakings to private hands accused the iron-agencies of failing to provide the tools taht the ordinary farmer needed; for they were obliged to spend their efforts in meeting the other demands that the government presented, for goods that were of less utilitarian value; and the shortage of the right sort of tools with a sharp cutting edge meant that the peasant had to work very hard for a meagre return. In defence of the monopolies it was claimed that only a centralised control of the mines and the iron industry could produce goods that were of a standard quality and price. But the critics had the last word. They referred to the reasonable price of salt and fine quality of iron tools that had been available when it had been possible for any member of the public to take a lease on these undertakings; and these benefits were to be contrasted with the shoddy and expensive goods turned out by the unwilling labour of the agencies. Under a system of competition, eager hands had worked to turn out first-rate products, and people had been able to procure the articles they needed at reasonable prices. But under the public monopoly there was no choice of quality—all the goods were bad; and as the tools were so dear, the poorer farmers had to till the fields with wooden ploughs and weed the soil with their bare hands."
  • Page 195-196: This page shows a complex sliding caliper used for measuring which is also described on the next page; it could be adjusted by means of a slot with a pin (keeping in place the component lug of the instrument) to measure in tenths of an inch (.23 cm). An inscription on the one shown here by Loewe dates its manufacture to a day corresponding with January 15, 9. The caliper was used by the craftsman for many different ventures that needed utmost precision. Altogether it measured only six inches in length.
  • Page 196-197: Although he doesn't mention Ding Huan's name, he does mention "one ingenious inventor" who set up seven interconnected wheels, each ten feet in diameter, which were quickly rotated by the operation of one man and could effectively cool some of the palace quarters.
  • Page 198: Here he does not mention the names (once again), but alludes to the use of the chain pump being used to supply Luoyang with a continuous water supply, sufficient enough to make sure that the streets were regularly sprayed and washed.

Industry and Commerce[edit]

Wagner's book[edit]

Wagner, Donald B. (2001). The State and the Iron Industry in Han China. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Publishing. ISBN 8787062836.

Before Han[edit]

  • Page 1: In 120 BC, the salt industrialist Dongguo Xianyang and the iron industrialist Kong Jin were appointed as Assistants to the Minister of Agriculture; along with Sang Hongyang, a man of a wealthy merchant family, they oversaw revenues of government run industries in salt and iron. "In 117 BC they submitted a proposal for a state monopoly of the salt and iron industries."
  • Page 1-2: Wagner writes "The proposal was accepted, the monopoly was established, and thus began an immense upheaval in the Chinese iron industry which was long the subject of bitter contention. It has remained a matter of controversy through the centuries, as can be seen in discussions of it by Wang Anshi in connection with the New Policies of AD 1069 and by Thomas T. Read in an attack on Roosevelt's New Deal in 1935."
  • Page 4-5: It is known from inscriptions that Warring States Period kingdoms had officers in charge of bronze production, while archaeologists have discovered four State of Qi iron foundries at Linzi in Shandong where two of these were in the vicinity of the Qi palace, which has led Xu Xueshu to argue that they were under royal administration. Seals from the Western Han era found at the site also proclaim titles of men working for a Qi Kingdom iron office, which would signify iron smelting there before the iron monopoly of 117 BC. Therefore, state intervention in iron production was a continual process from the Warring States into the Han Dynasty period.
  • Page 5-7: From inscriptions on iron agricultural implements from the State of Yan found in an ancient foundry in Xinglong, Hebei, there is questionable evidence about Yan's involvement in the iron industry, but more substantial evidence comes from the State of Qin. In addition to evidence that Qin used private iron industrialists to enrich and bring areas up to production levels that benefited the government, there is 3rd century BC legal texts from a Qin tomb in Hubei found in 1975 which mention the penalty against iron extracting officers whose work or products were found to be substandard and not up to snuff.

Lead up to Monopoly[edit]

  • Page 7-8: The salt and iron industries managed by the state were under the direction of the Privy Treasurer (shaofu), the person in the palace who managed the Emperor's finances as well as the royal household's finances. "The non-agricultural natural resources of the Empire were considered the Emperor's personal property and responsibility, and the income from their exploitation was for his personal use." Yet this was not strictly followed, especially by the time of Emperor Wen of Han, when the people were allowed to "cast coins, smelt iron, and boil salt." Besides personal favorites of the Emperor such as Deng Tong, the King of Wu engaged in copper gathering and salt industries, as the revenues gained in these allowed him to lower taxes and gain the loyalty of his local subjects. He was the leader of the Rebellion of the Seven States in 154 BC.
  • Page 8: The only direct and contemporaneous information we have about the lead up to the state's salt and iron monopolies comes from Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, as the Book of Han largely copies what Sima Qian had to say.
  • Page 9: Sima Qian claims that the breakdown of the state came when finances had to be raised to face the barbarian border peoples in battle, so that anyone who made financial contributions could be given official posts without merit; he says it got so bad that anyone who presented a sheep was given the position as a Court Gentleman (lang).
  • Page 9-10: At the beginning of the dynasty, merchants and tradesmen were barred from serving as officials; by Sima's time under Emperor Wu, some of the highest positions (i.e. Ministry of Agriculture) were held by those associated with the merchant class. Around 120 BC, Dongguo Xianyang, a salt-boiler of Qi (modern Shandong), and Kong Jin, a smelter from Nanyang (modern Nanyang, Henan), made fortunes from their businesses and were recommended to office by Zheng Dangshi, a Minister of Agriculture who had a canal built that linked the capital Chang'an with the Yellow River for expedient tax-grain transport. Sang Hongyang, a scion of a wealthy merchant family from Luoyang, was adept in arithmetic, and thus was made a Palace Attendant at the age of 13.
  • Page 11-12: Dongguo and Kong's proposal to the throne of establishing a monopoly was accepted in 117 BC on the grounds that the Emperor transferred his right to the resources of the land from his Privy Treasury to the Ministry of Agriculture (to supplement the poll tax), and that merchants dealing in these industries exploited the common people and obstructed affairs of state. Iron and salt were made monopolies together because iron vessels and cauldrons were needed to boil the salt. Anyone caught privately casting iron or boiling salt would be forced to wear a fetter on their left foot and have their equipment confiscated. However, the new offices of this monopoly invited the old merchants to take staff positions for the new monopoly, much to the detest of Confucians who did not want merchants in government positions.

Criticism of the monopoly[edit]

  • Page 13: In 110 BC the state created an "equable transportation" (junshu) system where price variation over time and from place to place was eliminated, an act which wealthy farmers complained about, accusing Sang Hongyang of putting government officials in market stalls and describing the government's iron as inferior in quality. In 100 BC, Dong Zhongshu also felt the need to complain in favor of agriculture, demanding that salt and iron be returned to the people.
  • Page 13-14: As complaints surfaced more and more, a Grand Inquest (Court Conference) was held in 81 BC at the behest of the regent general Huo Guang (d. 68 BC), since Emperor Zhao of Han was still a child at this point. It asked for all 'Worthies' (xianliang, people recommended by local authorities for possible appointments) and 'Scholars' (wenxue, people approved by the government for their literary competence) to assemble for a meeting to discuss how the people's suffering could be alleviated. The 'Worthies' represented the interests of the provincial elite while the 'Scholars' represented the interests of the central government.
  • Page 14: The result of this Court Conference was the abolition of the fermented liquor monopoly established in 98 BC while there was only a minor adjustment to the salt and iron monopolies: closing of the Iron Offices 'within the passes' (capital region). This debate became the subject for the book Discourses on Salt and Iron.
  • Page 15: Sang Hongyang was appointed as Imperial Counsellor (yushi dafu) in 87 BC by regent Huo Guang, as Sang's policies were largely intact after the 81 BC Court Conference. However, Sang was executed for treason against Huo in 80 BC, meaning his biography (hence a lot of info about the monopoly) was not included in the Book of Han.
  • Page 15: the Salt and Iron monopolies were abolished in 44 BC but reinstated in 41 BC, due to either of two reasons: the state still needed more revenues, or immediate privatization caused problems for the whole economy in a short period of time, prompting officials to revert back to the monopolistic system. No real changes were seen until the time of Wang Mang.

Wang Mang and Eastern Han[edit]

  • Page 15-16: A lot of information about Wang Mang's salt and iron monopolies is unavailable due to the Book of Han's hostility towards its hated villain Wang Mang. It is known that it was one of his 'six controls' established in 10 AD. In 12 AD, severe penalties up to capital punishment were announced for violators of the law, which Wagner states is a clear sign that successful law and order was breaking down. In 22 BC, one of these 'six controls', the 'mountains and marshes', was lifted and not intended to be reinstated until 49 AD, although Wang Mang was killed long before that in 23 BC.
  • Page 16: Wagner writes: "The first century BC seems to have seen a gradual deterioration of the powers of the central government in favour of powerful families throughout the Empire, and Wang Mang's reforms should probably be seen as a last-ditch attempt to reassert central authority. After Wang Mang's fall and the Restoration of the Han in AD 25, a reorganization took place which in effect endorsed the central government's loss of power."
  • Page 16-17: With the establishment of Eastern Han, the Salt and Iron Offices of the Ministry of Agriculture were taken from it and transferred to the administrations overseeing the local prefectures and commanderies. The 'Chief Commandant of Waters and Parks' who had a large hand in the monopolies was reduced in power to a minor office overseeing a few seasonal tasks. Wagner says that a sparse amount of sources on this subject indicate that the salt and iron monopolies were no more, while local governments still engaged in large scale iron production.
  • Page 17: The official Zhang Lin suggested in 85 AD that the central government resume its role as the monopolistic power over salt and iron, a proposal that was at first rejected, then accepted despite the protest by the faction under Zhu Hui. However, this central monopoly was again abolished by Emperor Zhang of Han in 88 AD, who had his ten year old successor (later Emperor He of Han) announce his decision.

Discourses on Salt and Iron[edit]

  • Page 18-19: Huan Kuan, the author who wrote the Yan tie lun (Discourse on Salt and Iron), was an erudite scholar who was appointed as a Court Gentleman during the reign of Emperor Xuan of Han (r. 73–49) as well as Vice Governor of Lujiang. Wagner says that "One motivation for Huan Kuan to compile this work may have been a later debate, which led to the brief abolition of the monopoly in the period 44-41 BC. The abolition was a result of the general attack on the role fo government around this time, in which statesmen such as Gong Yu (123–43 BC) went so far as to demand the abolition of all forms of money and a return to natural economy."
  • Page 19-20: The Yan tie lun describes the debate in 81 BC as a meeting of some sixty-odd provincial Scholars and Worthies engaging in dialogue with Imperial Counsellor Sang Hongyang, who was assisted by ministers supporting the central government's position. The text described Emperor Zhao and Huo Guang as being present during the discussion where debators freely traded insults, labeling the other as "bigoted Confucians" and the other as "decadent toadies."
  • Page 20: Apparently, the martial regent Huo Guang was compelled to call forth Worthies for a Court Conference because of his associate Du Yannian hinting that recent crop failures and the people's resulting suffering might be signs that Heaven was displeased with the Han Dynasty's central government, and it needed to reform itself to be more frugal and modest.
  • Page 25: Both sides in the debate agreed that agriculture was the root (ben) of all society while other occupations were branches (mu), but the heart of the debate was how to best serve agriculture. The central government's side argued that the state's production of iron freed up the time and energy of the people so that they could focus on agriculture instead. However, critics of the monopolies argued that the state-produced iron was inferior in quality to privately-produced iron, therefore state-produced iron implements were only made to meet quotas and were no good for farming when needed.
  • Page 26: Imperial Counsellor Sang Hongyang shoots back at this with a retort of how private iron smelting does not have enough specialization, is poorly equipped, omits certain production techniques, and private smelters have no decent amount of spare time to engage in the industry. The Worthies make the counter-retort that former private smelting by small-scale family enterprises made better implements "because of pride of workmanship and because they were closer to the users" according to Wagner. Wagner says the lesson to be learned here is that large-scale enterprises can produce larger quantity of products while small-scale enterprises can produce better quality products. The government side points out a problem with the Worthies' argument though: before the monopoly, powerful families upheld large-scale enterprises, a successful smelting familiy employing over a thousand people, encouraging them to leave their ancestral grave sites to become dependents on great families. Wagner says the truth was perhaps a mixed one: "there were probably two sectors of the iron industry, one consisting of small units producing for local needs, the other of large units producing for trade over long distances."
  • Page 28: In the debate, the assistant to the Imperial Counsellor argues that the monopolies as well as selling of offices have enriched the state so that it can employ armed campaigns in the East and West without increasing taxation.
  • Page 29-30: In Huan Kuan's Discourses on Salt and Iron, there is some discussion on the state's superior ability to use calculation in order to operate and produce precisely what is necessary. Wagner says in relation to this is a chapter in the Han mathematical treatise The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art called "Equable Transportation" (Junshu), the same name of one of the contentious policies established in Emperor Wu's time. The chapter states:
In the equable transportation of grain,
Prefecture A has 10,000 households and a journey of 8 days;
Prefecture B has 9,500 households and a journey of 10 days;
Prefecture C has 12,350 households and a journey of 13 days;
Prefecture D has 12,200 households and a journey of 20 days;
All [journeys] being to the place of [tax] transportation. The total liability of the four prefectures is the transportation of a tax of 250,000 hu in 10,000 carts. It is desired that this should be apportioned according to the distance travelled and the number of households. How much grain and how many carts does each supply?
Answer:
Prefecture A, 83,100 hu of grain, 3,324 carts.
Prefecture B, 63,175 hu of grain, 2527 carts.
Prefecture C, 63,175 hu of grain, 2527 carts.
Prefecture D, 40,550 hu of grain, 1,622 carts.
  • Page 30: In order to arrive at these answers, Wagner states that: "The calculated tax liabilities are proportional to the number of households divided by the number of days of the journey."

Iron Offices[edit]

  • Page 32-33: The Book of Han reveals the locations of 48 Salt and Iron Offices as they existed in the year 2 AD, and as Wagner shows on his map on page 32 (which also includes locations known from other written sources or archaeological sites), most of these offices were located in the Yellow River macroregion in what is today's modern Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, Shandong, and Jiangsu provinces.
  • Page 33-34: Although the central government in the Eastern Han no longer produced iron, local authorities now took over this responsibility, as the Book of Later Han states, "If a commandery or prefecture produced large quantities of salt, a Salt Office was established to administer the salt tax; if it produced large quantities of iron, an Iron Office was established to administer production." Wagners says that from this description it appears that Salt Offices were merely financial offices which collected taxes, while the Iron Offices of local government still had some role in production, although the extent of their involvement is unknown. The Book of Later Han lists 36 localities that 'have iron' in 140 AD but says nothing else; Wagner assumes they are locations of the localized Iron Offices.
  • Page 36: Although there is scant evidence in written texts for Iron Offices existing in Wang Mang's time, archaeology has proven they did, such as iron implements with their place name of production being "Juye", a place name that existed only during the reign of Wang Mang.
  • Page 39-43: Here Wagner talks about the six wooden tablets and 156 wooden and bamboo strips found in Tomb M6 at Yinwan, Donghai County, Jiangsu, dated 10 BC. He not only used these texts to prove that the Book of Han had errors in its geographic section by using incorrect characters for certain place names, but that the population census figure of 50 million for the year 2 AD may be very false. The Yinwan documents report in 10 BC that the Donghai Commandery had 266,290 households with 1,397,343 persons, while the Book of Han states that the Donghai Commandery in 2 AD had 358,414 households and 1,559,357 persons. Wagner writes "This would imply a 10 percent increase in population in 12 years or less, which is not credible." Even Wang Mingsheng (1722–1798) of the Qing Dynasty believed that, since Wang Mang already had de facto rule over the court in 2 AD, he may have inflated the population figures in order to "prove his beneficial influence" as Wagner paraphrases.

Reasons for Monopoly and Opposition[edit]

  • Page 53-54: A typical argument of the government side was that Emperor Wu, having established border garrisons that needed to be properly funded if they were to successfully defend against the hostile Xiongnu, established the Salt and Iron Offices to pay for military expenses. Yet critics of the monopolies found the State's dealings in manufacture and commercial selling were demeaning and "not proper activities for the State."
  • Page 55-56: Wagner writes that "Blast furnace iron production is highly capital-intensive, and wealth is required for its exploitation." The central state argued that "brutal and tyrannical" salt and iron industrialists who gathered in 'deep mountains and remote marshes' were they were free to form household factions and gangs of evil-doers. The state saw independent wealthy industrialists as a potential threat, so a comprimise was made to make them officials in the government to oversee the industry and their followers and gangs were replaced by convict laborers that the state could control.
  • Page 56: The critics of the government felt that bringing in wealthy merchants as government leaders of the state monopoly was a mistake, and that only men learned in the Five Classics were qualified to work for the Emperor and administer the people.
  • Page 56: The government made the argument that the state monopolies provided abundant raw materials and good working conditions for producing iron of quality. This may have been true in certain cases, as several cast iron artifacts of the period show several complex stages thatt would require a high degree of trained skill and days of time. Wagner writes: "Several axeheads, for example, were cast, than annealed in an oxidising [sic] atmosphere to reduce the carbon content, then cold-hammered, then annealed in a reducing atmosphere to increase the carbon content at the surface...The two annealing processes required at least a day or two each, and maintaining the appropriate temperature and furnace atmosphere required skill on the part of the workers." However, there is evidence of mistakes in discarded iron axeheads in an excavated scrap-heap in Mianchi, Henan, iron axeheads which presumably failed quality inspection.
  • Page 57: Critics of the monopolies state that the monopoly ironworks made large and impractical implements that were made for mass-scale quotas rather than for practical use. They also criticized state iron as inferior in quality and too expensive to purchase.
  • Page 59: There were also other problems with the monopolies, such as when they "inappropriately standardised [sic] the implements without considering the different needs of peasants in different parts of the Empire. And there is sometimes over-production, in which case the Iron Offices force the peasants to purchase more than they need."
  • Page 62-63: Some people in the Han complained about deforestation as well as the nuisance of smoke produced by blast furnaces.

Technology and Science[edit]

Wagner's book[edit]

Wagner, Donald B. (2001). The State and the Iron Industry in Han China. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Publishing. ISBN 8787062836.

Introduction[edit]

  • Page 64: Foundry and smithy techniques were used in smelting iron, while steel was used for edged tools and weapons. Steel could also be quench-hardened.
  • Page 64: While there is a rich variety of artifact examples to study from the period following the establishment of Emperor Wu's government monopoly, we have a lack of knowledge of many aspects of the pre-monopoly period, such as "how iron was produced from ore, how (or whether) cast iron was converted to wrought iron, and how steel was made. There have not been enough proper excavations of iron smelting sites of the period," which Wagner says is due to the fact that they were often located in remote mountain forests while monopoly-era ironworks were close to administrative centers where they are "more likely to be discovered and excavated by modern archaeologists."
  • Page 65: Wagner writes: "The basic technology of the twentieth-century traditional Chinese iron industry seems already to have been in place by the Han. Cast iron was produced in blast furnaces, and this was either cast into useful products in a cupola furnace or converted to wrought iron in a fining hearth."
  • Page 65: While evidence about exact iron production methods in pre-Han times is non-existent (despite the iron artifacts found dating to the period before Han), there is also no evidence of the bloomery ever being used in Han China or any time after the Han Dynasty.
  • Page 66: Despite this, Wagner believes that the bloomery method may have been wiped out in Han China because of the monopoly itself and its standardization of iron production that eliminated the need for bloomeries altogether. He believes that the small-scale household production of "father and son pool[ing] their labour" may have something to do with bloomery iron smelting.

Blast Furnace[edit]

  • Page 66: "A blast furnace is a shaft furnace in which cast iron is produced from iron ore. Ore, fuel, and flux (normally limestone) are charged periodically into the top of the shaft, an air blast is blown continuously into tuyeres near the bottom, and iron and slag are periodically tapped out at the bottom."
  • Page 66: Much of the existing blast furnaces from the Han Dynasty have been found in what is today's Henan province.
  • Page 67-68: The Han blast furnaces were able to withstand high temperatures in melting iron ore because of the workers' understanding of refractory and mechanical properties in ceramic materials and powdered charcoal that went into the coating and walls of the furnace itself.
  • Page 70: Although he doesn't mention Du Shi, Wagner states that the elliptical-shaped blast furnaces allowed operation with smaller blast pressure, which he says was good for the Han people since that was a time when "most blast furnaces were operated by human labour rather than water or steam power."
  • Page 71: Blast furnaces seem to have had an outer brick facing, but the height of the furnaces themselves are indistinguishable. Based on the height of the tuyeres, Wagner estimates they were 4.5 m (14.7 ft) to 6 m (19.6 ft) in height. There was also a huge outer wall of tamped earth about 9 m (29.5 ft) thick that acted as a gradual ramp for charging the furnace.
  • Page 72: This charge consisted of ore, charcoal, and limestone, which Wagner says were found in large quantities at the blast furnace sites. The ore was broken into pieces by hammers and anvils and then sieved to get rid of smaller pieces that, if included in the charge, would have "made the furnace burden less porous, necessitating greater blast pressure" as Wagner states.

Cupola Furnace[edit]

  • Page 75: "It is possible that molten iron was sometimes cast directly into moulds from the blast furnace," but Wagner adds that most, if not all, iron cast in the blast furnace was remelted in a cupola furnace during the Han.
  • Page 75: Wagner describes a cupola furnace as "a shaft furnace charged with fuel (coal or charcoal) and iron (pig or scrap) through the top and supplied with a blast blown in at the bottom. The iron melts in contact with the burning fuel and is tapped out at the bottom."
  • Page 75: Cupola furnaces have been found at numerous Han ironworks sites. They can be described as follows: "It is built of brick with an inner and outer layer of refractory clay. The height is 3–4 m [9.8–13.1 ft], inside diameter ca. 1.5 m [4.9 ft]. The base includes a hollow space, 17 cm [6.69 in] high, supported by 12–15 cylindrical bricks. The fuel used was charcoal."
  • Page 75: Wagner writes that the cupola furnaces' "hollow base and the thick (20–30 cm) walls provided thermal insulation. It can be seen that air from the bellows passes through a pipe up one side of the furnace, over the top, and down the other side to the tuyere." He is referring to the picture on page 74, showing the entry of cold blast input, turning into a hot blast as it passes the top of the furnace, and enters the bottom of the furnace via a tuyere pipe. He says that this design allowed for the "generation of extremely high temperatures at a relatively high fuel efficiency" due to the fact that "This arrangement provides for recycling of heat otherwise lost through the top."
  • Page 76: The direct evidence of such an arrangement is the fact that "many of the earthenware pipes found have been subjected to such high heat that their surfaces are partially vitrified, and the directions of glass drips indicate the spacial orientations of the pipes in use."

The Bellows[edit]

  • Page 77: Here he repeats the same quotation as Needham on the Han official Du Shi and his application of water-power to operate the bellows. However, since there is no remaining evidence of what type of bellows were used in the Han (whether they were leather bellows or wooden blowers found in the later Yuan Dynasty is unknown), Wagner does not make assumptions about them.
  • Page 77-78: The smelting official Han Ji (d. 238) under Cao Cao during Cao Wei also applied water-powered bellows to his furnace, which the Records of the Three Kingdoms states outmoded the production rates and tripled the profits of earlier horse-powered and human-powered bellows that required many men or one hundred horses. The state-sponsored water-powered bellows of the Wei and Jin Dynasty is confirmed by a travel literature book quoted in the Shui Jing Zhu during the fifth or sixth century AD about the remains of Wei and Jin water-powered smelting works at Luoyang being still existent at that point.
  • Page 80: Since Du Shi and Han Ji both came from Nanyang Commandery in Henan, and the Kong family was known to smelt and cast on a large scale "and regulated ponds", Wagner writes that these ponds "might have been related to the use of water power" and that water-powered bellows may have been used in and around Nanyang since the 3rd century BC, although there is no direct evidence for it.

Fining Hearth[edit]

  • Page 80-81: For converting high-carbon cast iron into low-carbon wrought iron, there are a number of small hearths found at Han period ironworks that are believed to be the remains of fining hearths.
  • Page 81-82: There is also a hint of evidence in the Daoist text Taiping Jing written some time in the 3rd or 4th century, where a Taoist master replies to his discipline about preparedness in crafting weapons. The text outlines the stages in making a sword, those being mining, smelting in a blast furnace, and fining and smithing it. Wagner writes "There is no sign that he knew the distinction between fining and smithing, but since the iron was liquid it must have been fined."
  • Page 83: Another hint of evidence is an Eastern Han Dynasty tomb-relief found in 1930 at Hongdaoyuan in Teng County, Shandong province. It shows some sort of metallurgical work going on, and it is still being discussed whether or not it represents fining or something else, but Wagner states that it shows a hearth similar to the traditional Chinese fining hearths.

Deng and Wang's book[edit]

Deng, Yingke. (2005). Ancient Chinese Inventions. Translated by Wang Pingxing. Beijing: China Intercontinental Press (五洲传播出版社). ISBN 7508508378.

  • Page 67: The Sìfēn 四分 (Quarter Remainder) Calendar was established in the late Spring and Autumn Period (722–481 BC) by ancient Chinese astronomers, and calculated the duration of the tropical year between winter solstices at 365.25 days, the same as the later Roman Julian Calendar. In 104 BC, Emperor Wu of Han established the Tàichū (太初) (Grand Inception) Calendar, which set the tropical year at 365 days and the lunar month at 29 days.

Image test[edit]

PericlesofAthens/Sandbox
Chinese ceramic figurines of the Eastern Han (25-220 AD) period, exhibits from the Sichuan Provincial Museum, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
A laborer, unearthed from a tomb of Xinjin County, Sichuan
A laborer, unearthed from a tomb of Xinjin County, Sichuan
A storyteller, unearthed from a tomb of Songjialin, Pi County, Sichuan
A storyteller, unearthed from a tomb of Songjialin, Pi County, Sichuan
A seated woman with a bronze mirror, unearthed from a tomb of Songjialin, Pi County, Sichuan
A seated woman with a bronze mirror, unearthed from a tomb of Songjialin, Pi County, Sichuan
A woman with a broom and dustpan, unearthed from a tomb of Cuiping Mountain, Yibin, Sichuan
A woman with a broom and dustpan, unearthed from a tomb of Cuiping Mountain, Yibin, Sichuan

Kingdom of Khotan NOTES NOTES AND MORE NOTES[edit]

Sai 塞 (Sāi, also called Sairen 塞人 or Saizhong 塞種)

Cambridge History of Iran[edit]

KHOTANESE SAKA LITERATURE[edit]

Bailey, H.W. (1996) "Khotanese Saka Literature", in Ehsan Yarshater (ed), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol III: The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods, Part 2 (reprint edition), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Page 1230: In the Achaemenid-era inscriptions of Persepolis in Old Persian, dated to the reign of Darius I, the Saka are said to have lived just beyond the borders of Sogdiana. Likewise an inscription dated to the reign of Xerxes I has them coupled with the Dahae people of Central Asia. The Greek historian Herodotus noted that the Achaemenid Persians called all of the Indo-Iranian Scythian peoples as the Saka. From Chinese records of the 2nd century BC, the Saka are known as the Sai 塞 (Sāi, also called Sairen 塞人 or Saizhong 塞種) and are said to have inhabited the region around Kashgar. During the 2nd century BC the Saka invaded the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and eventually had the region named "land of the Saka" (i.e. Drangiana, of modern Afghanistan and Pakistan).
  • Page 1230-1231: This is attested in a contemporary Kharosthi inscription found on the Mathura lion capital belonging to the Saka kingdom of the Indo-Scythians (200 BC - 400 AD) in northern India. In Iran the territory was called Sakastāna, in Armenian as Sakastan, with similar equivalents in Pahlavi, Greek, Sogdian, Syriac, Arabic, and the Middle Persian tongue used in Turfan.
  • Page 1231: Khotanese Saka language documents come primarily from Khotan and Tumshuq (northeast of Kashgar) and predate the arrival of Islam to the region.
  • Pages 1231-1235: gives descriptions of various texts, including medical texts and Buddhist literature in Khotanese Saka.

IRANIAN SETTLEMENT EAST OF THE PAMIRS[edit]

Emmerick, R. E. (2003) "Iranian Settlement East of the Pamirs", in Ehsan Yarshater (ed), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol III: The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods, Part 1 (reprint edition) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 274–5.

  • Page 265: Suggestive evidence of the city's early link to India are minted coins from Khotan dated to the 3rd century bearing dual inscriptions in Chinese and Gandhari Prakrit in the Kharosthi script. Although Prakrit was the administrative language of nearby Shanshan, 3rd-century documents from that kingdom record the title hinajha (i.e. "generalissimo") for the king of Khotan, Vij'ida-simha, a distinctively Iranian-based word equivalent to the Sanskrit title senapati, yet nearly identical to the Khotanese Saka hīnāysa attested in contemporary documents. This along with the fact that the king's recorded regnal periods were given in Khotanese as kṣuṇa, QUOTE: "implies an established connection between the Iranian inhabitants and the royal power. Similarly the use of Khotanese for royal rescripts in the 10th century makes it likely that the ruler of Khotan was a speaker of Iranian."
  • Page 265: QUOTE "The name of Khotan is attested in a number of spellings, of which the oldest form is hvatana, in texts of approximately the 7th to the 10th century AD written in an Iranian language itself called hvatana by the writers. The same name is attested also in two closely related Iranian dialects, Sogdian and Tumshuq...Attempts have accordingly been made to explain it as Iranian, and this is of some importance historically. My own preference is for an explanation connecting it semantically with the name Saka, for the Iranian inhabitans of Khotan."

SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS[edit]

Yu Taishan (June 2010), "The Earliest Tocharians in China" in Victor H. Mair (ed), Sino-Platonic Papers, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.

  • Page 13: QUOTE: The Daxia 大夏 people in the valley of the Amu Darya came from the valleys of the rivers Ili and Chu. From the Geography of Strabo one can infer that the four tribes of the Asii and others came from these valleys (the so-called “land of the Sai 塞” in the Hanshu 漢書, ch. 96A). The time when the Sai 塞 tribes occupied these regions cannot be exactly known, but it was possibly as early as the twenties of the sixth century B.C., or before Darius I of the Achaemenids ascended the throne (B.C. 521).

Foundation[edit]

Different versions of the legend of the founding of Khotan may be found in accounts given by the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang and in Tibetan translations of Khotanese documents, and they suggest that the city was founded around the third century BC involving a son of Ashoka.[7] According to one version, the nobles of a tribe in Taxila, who traced their ancestry to the deity Vaiśravaṇa, were said to have blinded Kunãla, a son of Ashoka. In punishment they were banished by the Mauryan emperor to the north of the Himalayas where they settled in Khotan and elected one of their members as king. However war then ensued with another group from China whose leader then took over as king, and the two colonies merged.[7] In a different version, it was Kunãla himself who was exiled and founded Khotan.[8] The legends suggest that Khotan was settled by people from northwest India and China, and may explain the division of Khotan into an eastern and western city since the Han dynasty.[7]

Surviving documents from Khotan of later centuries however indicate that the people of Khotan spoke the Saka language, an Eastern Iranian language that was closely related to the language of the neighboring Sogdians, and distantly related to the Tocharian languages spoken by the Indo-European Tocharians of nearby Kucha and Turfan.[9] It is not certain when the Saka people moved into the Khotan area. Some have suggested they may not have moved there until after the founding of the city,[10] others argued that the legend of the founding of Khotan is a fiction as it ignores the Iranian population, and that its purpose was to explain the Indian and Chinese influences present in Khotan in the 7th century AD.[11] Various groups of Caucasians may have inhabited the Tarim Basin in the early period.[12][13]

A document from Khotan written in Khotanese Saka, part of the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, listing the animals of the Chinese zodiac in the cycle of predictions for people born in that year; ink on paper, early 9th century

Suggestive evidence of the city's early link to India are minted coins from Khotan dated to the 3rd century bearing dual inscriptions in Chinese and Gandhari Prakrit in the Kharosthi script.[14] Although Prakrit was the administrative language of nearby Shanshan, 3rd-century documents from that kingdom record the title hinajha (i.e. "generalissimo") for the king of Khotan, Vij'ida-simha, a distinctively Iranian-based word equivalent to the Sanskrit title senapati, yet nearly identical to the Khotanese Saka hīnāysa attested in contemporary documents.[14] This along with the fact that the king's recorded regnal periods were given in Khotanese as kṣuṇa, "implies an established connection between the Iranian inhabitants and the royal power," according to the late Professor of Iranian Studies Ronald E. Emmerick (d. 2001).[14] He contended that Khotanese-Saka-language royal rescripts of Khotan dated to the 10th century "makes it likely that the ruler of Khotan was a speaker of Iranian."[14] Furthermore, he elaborated on the early name of Khotan:

The name of Khotan is attested in a number of spellings, of which the oldest form is hvatana, in texts of approximately the 7th to the 10th century AD written in an Iranian language itself called hvatana by the writers. The same name is attested also in two closely related Iranian dialects, Sogdian and Tumshuq...Attempts have accordingly been made to explain it as Iranian, and this is of some importance historically. My own preference is for an explanation connecting it semantically with the name Saka, for the Iranian inhabitans of Khotan...[15]

The Indo-Iranian Saka people, speaking a language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, were known as the Sai 塞 (Sāi, also called Sairen 塞人 or Saizhong 塞種) in ancient Chinese records.[16] These records state that they originally inhabited Gansu (around modern Dunhuang) before being expelled by rival Tocharians and fleeing to Yining 伊寧, Xinjiang (in the northern Pamir Mountains).[16] In Chinese historical accounts, the "Daxia" (大夏) people, Bactrians then under the rule of the nomadic Indo-European Yuezhi,[17] originated from the valleys of the Ili River and Chu River of modern Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.[18] Similarly the ancient Greco-Roman geographer Strabo claims that the four tribes of the Asii, who took down the Bactrians in the Greek and Roman account, came from these same valleys.[18] In the Chinese Book of Han, a historical text compiled by the Ban family of the Eastern Han from the 1st to 2nd centuries AD, this was called the "land of the Sai", i.e. the Saka (ch. 96A).[18] The exact date of their arrival in this region of Central Asia is unclear, yet it was perhaps just before the reign of Darius I of the Persian Achaemenid Empire.[18] The Saka are recorded as inhabiting Khotan by at least the 3rd century and also settled nearby Shache (莎車), a town named after the Saka inhabitants (i.e. saγlâ).[16] Although the ancient Chinese had called Khotan Yutian (于闐), it's more native Iranian names during the Han period were Jusadanna (瞿薩旦那), derived from Indo-Iranian Gostan and Gostana, the names of the town and region around it, respectively.[19]

Coin of Gurgamoya, king of Khotan. Khotan, 1st century CE.
Obv: Kharosthi legend, "Of the great king of kings, king of Khotan, Gurgamoya.
Rev: Chinese legend: "Twenty-four grain copper coin". British Museum

In the Achaemenid-era Old Persian inscriptions found at Persepolis, dated to the reign of Darius I (r. 522-486 BC), the Saka are said to have lived just beyond the borders of Sogdiana.[20] Likewise an inscription dated to the reign of Xerxes I (r. 486-465 BC) has them coupled with the Dahae people of Central Asia.[20] The contemporary Greek historian Herodotus noted that the Achaemenid Persians called all of the Indo-Iranian Scythian peoples as the Saka.[20] From Chinese records of the 2nd century BC, the Saka, known as the Sai in Chinese, and are said to have inhabited the region around Kashgar, Xinjiang, China.[20] H.W. Bailey asserts that during the 2nd century BC the Saka invaded the Hellenistic Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and eventually had the region named "land of the Saka" (i.e. Drangiana, of modern Afghanistan and Pakistan).[20] This is attested in a contemporary Kharosthi inscription found on the Mathura lion capital belonging to the Saka kingdom of the Indo-Scythians (200 BC - 400 AD) in northern India,[21] roughly the same time the Chinese record that the Saka had invaded and settled the country of Jibin 罽賓 (i.e. Kashmir, of modern-day India and Pakistan).[16] In the Persian language of contemporary Iran the territory of Drangiana was called Sakastāna, in Armenian as Sakastan, with similar equivalents in Pahlavi, Greek, Sogdian, Syriac, Arabic, and the Middle Persian tongue used in Turfan, Xinjiang, China.[21] Bailey notes that according to the Sima Qian's Shiji the Indo-European Yuezhi, who spoke Bactrian (an Indo-Iranian language),[22] originally lived between Dunhuang and the Qilian Mountains of Gansu, China.[23] However, the Yuezhi were assaulted and forced to flee from the Hexi Corridor of Gansu by the Mongolic forces of the Xiongnu ruler Modu Chanyu, who conquered the area in 177-176 BC (decades before the Han Chinese conquest and colonization of Gansu or the establishment of the Protectorate of the Western Regions).[24][25][26][27] In turn the Yuezhi were responsible for attacking and pushing the Sai (i.e. Saka) west into Sogdiana, where in the mid 2nd century BC the latter crossed the Syr Darya into Bactria, but also into the Fergana Valley where they settled in Dayuan, southwards towards northern India, and eastward as well where they settled in some of the oasis city-states of the Tarim Basin.[28] Whereas the Yuezhi continued westward and conquered Daxia around 177-176 BC, the Sai (i.e. Saka), including some allied Tocharian peoples, fled south to the Pamirs before heading back east to settle in Tarim Basin sites like Yanqi (焉耆, Karasahr) and Qiuci (龜茲, Kucha).[29]

In Northwest China, Khotanese-Saka-language documents, ranging from medical texts to Buddhist literature, have been found primarily in Khotan and Tumshuq (northeast of Kashgar).[30] They largely predate the arrival of Islam to the region under the Turkic Kara-Khanids.[30] Similar documents in the Khotanese-Saka language were found in Dunhuang and date from the 10th to 11th centuries.[16]

In the second century BCE a Khotanese king helped the famous ruler Kanishka of the Kushan Empire of South Asia (founded by the Indo-Iranian Yuezhi people) to conquer the key town of Saket in the Middle kingdoms of India: [a]

Afterwards king Vijaya Krīti, for whom a manifestation of the Ārya Mañjuśrī, the Arhat called Spyi-pri who was propagating the religion (dharma) in Kam-śeṅ [a district of Khotan] was acting as pious friend, through being inspired with faith, built the vihāra of Sru-ño. Originally, King Kanika, the king of Gu-zar [Kucha] and the Li [Khotanese] ruler, King Vijaya Krīti, and others led an army into India, and when they captured the city called So-ked [Saketa], King Vijaya Krīti obtained many relics and put them in the stūpa of Sru-ño.

— The Prophecy of the Li Country.[31]

The people of the early period were not Buddhist, and Buddhism may have been adopted in the reign of Vijayasambhava some 170 years after its founding.[32] However, an account by the Han general Ban Chao suggested that the people of Khotan still appeared to practice Mazdeism in 73 AD.[11]

According to Chapter 96A of the Book of Han, covering the period from 125 BCE to 23 CE, Khotan had 3,300 households, 19,300 individuals and 2,400 people able to bear arms.[33]

Ethiopian historiography stuff[edit]

Islamic and Chinese historiography[edit]

Further information: Historiography of early Islam and Chinese historiography

Ethiopia is mentioned in some works of Islamic historiography, usually in relation to the spread of Islam. The Mamluk-Egyptian historian Shihab al-Umari (1300-1349) wrote that the historical state of Bale, neighboring the Hadiya Sultanate of southern Ethiopia, was part of an Islamic Zeila confederacy, although it fell under the control of the Ethiopian Empire in the 1330s AD, during the reign of Amda Seyon I.[34] Al-Maqrizi (1364-1422 AD), another Mamluk-Egyptian historian, wrote that the Ifat sultan Sa'ad ad-Din II (r. 1387-1415 AD) won a crushing victory against the Christian Amhara in Bale, despite the latter's numerical superiority.[35] He described other allegedly significant victories won by the Adal sultan Jamal ad-Din II (d. 1433 AD) in Bale and Dawaro, where the Muslim leader was said to have taken enough war booty to provide his poorer subjects with multiple slaves.[35] Historian Ulrich Braukämper states that these works of Islamic historiography, while demonstrating the influence and military presence of the Adal sultanate in southern Ethiopia, tend to overemphasize the importance of military victories that at best led to temporary territorial control in regions such as Bale.[36]

Contacts between the Ethiopian Empire and Imperial China seem to have been very limited, if not mostly indirect. However, there were some attempts in Chinese historiographic and encyclopedic literature to describe at least parts of Ethiopia and its empire. Zhang Xiang, a scholar of Africa–China relations, asserts that the country of Dou le described in the Xiyu juan (i.e. Western Regions) chapter of the Book of Later Han is that of the Aksumite port city of Adulis, which sent an envoy to Luoyang, the capital of Han China, in roughly 100 AD.[37] The 11th-century New Book of Tang and 14th-century Wenxian Tongkao describe the country of Nubia (previously controlled by the Aksumite Kingdom) as a desert southwest of the Byzantine Empire that was infested with malaria, where the natives had black skin and consumed foods such as Persian dates.[38]

The Wenxian Tongkao describes the main religions of Nubia, including the Da Qin religion (i.e. Christianity, particularly Nestorian Christianity associated with the Eastern Roman Empire) and the day of rest occurring every seven days for those following the faith of the Da shi (i.e. the Muslim Arabs).[38] These passages are ultimately derived from the Jingxingji of Du Huan (fl. 8th century AD),[39] a travel writer during the Chinese Tang dynasty (618-907 AD) who was captured by Abbasid forces in the 751 AD Battle of Talas, after which he visited parts of West Asia and northeast Africa.[37] Historian Wolbert Smidt identified the countries of Molin and Laobosa in Du's Jingxingji (preserved in part by the Tongdian of Du You) as Eritrea and Ethiopia respectively, making it the first Chinese text to describe Ethiopia.[37] Trade activity between Ethiopia and China during the latter's Song dynasty (960-1279 AD) seems to be confirmed by Song-Chinese coinage found in the medieval village of Harla, near Dire Dawa, Ethiopia.[37] The Chinese Ming dynasty (1368-1644 AD) sent diplomats to Ethiopia, which was also frequented by Chinese merchants.[37] Although only private and indirect trade was conducted with African countries during the early Manchu-led Qing dynasty (1644-1911), the Chinese were able to refer to Chinese-written travel literature and histories about East Africa before diplomatic relations were restored with African countries in the 19th century.[37]

REFLIST[edit]

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  7. ^ a b c Mallory, J. P.; Mair, Victor H. (2000), The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West, London: Thames & Hudson, pp. 77–81
  8. ^ Smith, Vincent A. (1999). The Early History of India. Atlantic Publishers. p. 193. ISBN 978-8171566181.
  9. ^ Xavier Tremblay, "The Spread of Buddhism in Serindia: Buddhism Among Iranians, Tocharians and Turks before the 13th Century," in The Spread of Buddhism, eds Ann Heirman and Stephan Peter Bumbacker, Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2007, p. 77.
  10. ^ Ronald E. Emmerick. "Khotanese and Tumshuqese". In Gernot Windfuhr (ed.). Iranian Languages. Routledge. p. 377.
  11. ^ a b Xavier Tremblay. The Spread of Buddhism. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)
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  38. ^ a b Friedrich Hirth (2000) [1885]. Jerome S. Arkenberg (ed.). "East Asian History Sourcebook: Chinese Accounts of Rome, Byzantium and the Middle East, c. 91 B.C.E. – 1643 C.E." Fordham University. Retrieved 2 August 2017.
  39. ^ Bai (2003), pp. 242–247.


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