INTERPRETACIÓN DE RESULTADOS 79!

                                                                                                                70 _{Ibid., 87.}

71 _{Liu Tseng-Kuei, “Taboos: An Aspect of Belief in the Qin and Han,” in Early Chinese Religion, Part}

One: Shang through Han (1250 BC - 220 AD), ed. John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2009), 881-948.

72 _{Ibid., 896-97.} 73 _{Ibid., 948.}

This study consists of six chapters. Besides the first chapter, the introduction of this dissertation, Chapter Two examines the Chu state administrative system, first by explaining the Chu local district units and then by demonstrating how deeply the central government was involved in the official business of the districts, based on judicial records from Baoshan. The district or district court functioned as the base unit for delivering and executing centrally issued commands within its region and for making judicial decisions. To stabilize each district’s authority, the central government bestowed on district officials not only political and judicial authority but also economic benefits,

such as “[bestowed] land for living” (sitian 食田) and trading privileges. Despite the

political and economical authority of the districts, the Baoshan slips verify a strong connection to the central authority and its supervision, for each district transferred judicial documents to the capital for review and asked for legal advice when the court was deadlocked.

The next four chapters focus on the role of Qin officials and offices in local government, among which Chapters Three and Four demonstrate the micro-management of the Qin central government. Chapter Three explores the administrative law that Qin officials had to obey, concentrating on their role as protectors and managers of government resources. According to Qin law, officials in peripheral units had to manage natural resources and governmental property, such as forests, minerals, tools, and crops, and had to report distribution and discrepancies to their superior units annually. Several managerial duties were required of officials, and they were legally obligated to keep straight records of each resource; indeed, the central government supervised the flow of

economic resources within the Qin territory.

Chapter Four examines the so-called “Household register slips” from Liye, records used to control the population and to levy taxation and extract labor. Each household record was divided roughly into five sections from top to bottom, recording on top the male household head, then his wife and mother, minor sons, minor daughters, granddaughters, and occasionally his mother. Not only was the Qin state a male-centered society, but the government also viewed its people as labor resources. In other words, the records identify who provided which amounts of labor power. Thus, the grandmother was listed along with the granddaughters if she was over sixty, while adult brothers of the headmaster were listed in the top section. Apparently, the Qin government viewed its people as calculable resources to be used by the state.

Aside from the institutional history of the Qin government, I have taken another approach to explain the Qin centralization process: examining how the Qin government controlled its officials’ thoughts and activities. And I explain in Chapter Five that the slips from Shuihudi and the Yuelu Academy depict values Qin officials must have and practice. Surely the Qin government required officials to abide by the law. And in order to make its officials to follow the law, the government not only used administrative law and punishments but also requested its officials to internalized law abidingness, which

was defined as “loyalty” (zhong 忠) and was the core value for officials. Other than

“loyalty,” slips from Shuihudi and Yuelu also encourage other values, such as trustworthiness and devotion to people, which was not for the purpose of self-cultivation but to encourage the people to trust their officials.

Shuihudi. Unlike administrative law, hemerological calendars and day-omens were not strictly used by all officials, but some might have consulted them in the course of

fulfilling their duties, especially those officials known as a “bailiff” (sefu 嗇夫). I

examine different types of hemerological calendars and daily omens that provide information to officials, such as which tasks one could complete on certain days, the anticipated yearly harvest based on the amount of rain on the first day of the new year, methods for preventing misfortunes according to the location of the North Dipper and the five phases theory, and how to catch a thief. Although officials of the Qin government must follow the law and certain values, some probably consulted such religious devices for their own benefit. This chapter provides a different perspective of the Qin state and empire: that low ranking officials did not simply rely on administrative law but also personally used alternative methods in order to fulfill their responsibilities.

Chapter Two: Centralizing the local governments of the Chu state

Along with the Qin, the Chu empire was a “lord protector” (ba霸) from the Spring and

Autumn period to the Warring States period. Allegedly, it originated around the eleventh

century B.C.E. in a place called Danyang 丹陽 (in the modern day Hubei province) in the

southern region of China; however, there are unfortunately no archaeological findings

that are unquestionably Chu before 600 B.C.E.74 The Chu state had its ups and downs

until the Qin conquest in 223 B.C.E. From roughly the eighth to the fifth century B.C.E., the Chu state was at the height of its power; expanding north from its southern base, holding sixty polities at one point, it covered almost one third of China and stood as one

of the most powerful alongside the Qin state.75

Although the Chu created a powerful state on par with the Qin, the nature of the Chu government is somewhat uncertain. Susan Weld noted that the Chu government was a

74 _{For a study of the early history of the Chu state from the bronze age to the Spring and Autumn period,}

see Lother Van Falkenhausen, “The Waning of the Bronze Age: Material Culture and Social Developments, 770-481 B.C.,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origin of Civilization to 221 B.C., ed. Michael and Edward L. Shaughnessy Loewe (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 514-25; ____, Chinese society in the age of Confucius (1000-250 B.C.): the archaeological evidence (Los Angeles: Costen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, 2006), 263-65, 338-39. Whether the Chu state exited in early China has been debated by scholars because of the graphs chu 楚 and jing 荊 in the bronze inscriptions. Yet it is questionable whether those graphs indicate that the Chu was a polity. See the debates between Wang Guanggao and Zhang Jun in Wang Guanggao 王光鎬, “Shang dai wu Chu 商代無楚,” Jianghan luntan, no. 1 (1984); Zhang Jun 張君, ““Shang dai wu Chu”xi “商代無楚”析,” Jianghan luntan, no. 8 (1984); and Wang Guanggao 王光鎬, “Er lun Shang dai wu Chu - Jian da Zhang Jun “Shang dai wu Chu”xi 二論 商代無 楚 – 兼答 張君《”商代無楚”析》,” Jianghan luntan, no. 6 (1985).

Recently, referring to the Liye 里耶 Qin slips, scholars have claimed that jing indicates either Chu or a Chu official title. See page X in chapter Y for an explanation. Although this Qin slip from the late Warring States used the jing graph to indicate a Chu origin or title, whether it actually refers to Chu in earlier times is debatable.

75 _{For an extensive study of Chu conquests, see He Hao, Chu mie guo yan jiu 楚滅東國研究 and Barry B}

Blakeley, “The Geography of Chu,” in Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China, ed. Constance A. Cook, and John S. Major (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press).

“somewhat decentralized structure” because the government had to share its power with

powerful lineages holding administrative offices.76 Similarly, Park Bong-Joo 朴俸住,

based on the “township system” (邑制體系), argued that the granting of territory to lords,

as described in the Baoshan slips, is evidence of weak centralization in the Chu

government.77 Both scholars used different terms, “decentralized structure” and “weak

centralization,” but they both made reference to noble lords and their beneficed lands as support for their arguments. From this perspective, the state of Chu can be characterized as a decentralized government.

The excavated texts from Baoshan suggest that nobles possessed some degree of political and economic authority in peripheral areas. But as explained later in this chapter, such socio-political power still came from the central government, leading us to question whether the Chu state was an autocracy. To the extent that the Chu government retained control over the power and authority of its noble lords and officials, it was a centralized state.

In order to investigate this matter, I will mainly focus on three topics addressed in the

Chu Baoshan slips:78 structural organization of the local governments, economic

privileges granted to officials and lords, and local judicial practices. The Baoshan slips are a valid source for this discussion for two reasons: first, the slips were documented by Chu officials and not by non-Chu people who might have colored their descriptions of the

76 _{Susan Roosevelt Weld, “Grave Matters: Warring States Law and Philosophy,” in Understanding China’s}

Legal System: Essays in Honor of Jerome A. Cohen, ed. C. Stephen Hsu (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 138.

77 _{Park Bong-Joo, “Zhangguo Chu de difang tongzhi tizhi 戰國楚的地方統治體制,” Jianbo yanjiu 簡帛研} 究二〇〇二，二〇〇三 (2003).

78 _{Hubei sheng Jingsha tielu kaogudui, Baoshan Chu mu (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe: Xinhua shudian}

jingxiao, 1991). Hereafter, I will refer to this text as Baoshan slips in the main part and Baoshan in the footnotes.

Chu with their own political or historical biases; second, it is a cluster of bamboo slips recording local administrative practices that also indicates relationship with the central government. The reason local government plays a key role in the discourse of centralization is that centralization implies geographical distance by definition. In order to determine whether the Chu state was in fact centralized government, we must find evidence that central authority penetrated rural areas.