Japanese scholars' selected translations of Chinese historical treatises Volume 5 Five Dynasties and the Song and Yuan dynasties

Author: Translated by: Suo Jieran
Editor-in-Chief: Liu Junwen
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1993-09-01
Features:
Fragment: Jing gathered several hundred people from the village and the clan as a guarantee, and the crowd all attached themselves to him. Also, "The Biography of Qiao Xiu" in Volume 12 of The Book of Shu (should be "The Biography of Qiao Xiu" in Volume 94 of The Book of Jin — translated by the author): The number of clansmen who relied on him was in the hundreds (the Book of Jin uses "village" instead — translated by the author). The term equivalent to bucu (private followers) in "The Biography of Li Dian" is xiangqu or xiangren here, and this does not necessarily refer to laborers on private estates. Xiangqu is an archaic term; in the Records of the Grand Historian·Book of Pingzhun, there is the phrase "wuduan xiangqu," meaning "village," so here it is entirely synonymous with xiangren. Below is an event from the early Eastern Jin period, from "The Biography of Shan Xian" in Volume 43 of The Book of Jin (hereinafter referred to as The Book of Jin): The powerful clans often concealed households, treating them as private dependents. It then states that Shan Xian inspected the private dependents and released over 10,000 people ("released over 10,000"), a number roughly comparable to Li Dian's "over 13,000 mouths." Shan Xian returned the concealed private dependents to the state as commoners because these people were not laborers on private estates. Li Dian's situation may also be similar. Later, Li Dian's bucu became his personal private army, so it can be inferred that the term bucu was first used in The Book of Wei. After the fall of the Western Jin, the Eastern Jin rose, and northern China fell into the continuous warfare of the so-called "Five Barbarian Dynasties and Sixteen Kingdoms," disrupting social development in unforeseen ways, or producing distorted results. The orthodox Chinese society, however, continued to develop in the relatively backward region of the Jiangnan. After The Records of the Three Kingdoms, the next historical source for study is Ge Hong's Baopuzi, written in the early 4th century, with its outer chapters numbered 34 titled "The Loss of Wu," which describes the symptoms of the state of Wu in the Three Kingdoms period before its collapse: the powerful rulers possessed vast estates and lived a luxurious life: "servants formed armies," "trading was conducted behind closed doors," "cattle and sheep covered the plains," and "fields and ponds stretched for a thousand miles." Just from the phrase "trading was conducted behind closed doors," it is clear that this obviously refers to estates. In fact, this phrase was originally used to describe Fan Zhong, the estate operator during the reign of Wang Mang, as cited in the "Market" entry of Volume 827 of Taipingyuluan: "the ponds and pools were irrigated, bamboo and wood formed forests, and livestock and fruits grew in abundance, with sandalwood, lacquer, mulberry, and hemp, so that trading was conducted behind closed doors." This describes the self-sufficient operational strategy of estates. Also, in the "Wealth" entry of Volume 471 of Taipingyuluan, it is also said of Fan Zhong: "whatever was sought was always supplied." From this, it can be inferred that the phrase "servants formed armies" in the aforementioned Baopuzi must also refer to private estates, and thus the "servants" in "servants formed armies" are nothing more than estate laborers. What makes this sentence somewhat unusual is that in later times, people would not write "servants formed armies" but would write "servants formed herds." For example, in Tang Changru's The Development of the Large Land Ownership System in Jiangnan from the Third to the Sixth Centuries (Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1957), on page 7, this quote is cited as "servants formed herds." However, my view is that it was not "herds" but "armies," and this distinction is significant. The reason for this is that the character "jun" (army) in "formed armies" is semantically equivalent to bucu. From a literal perspective, it reflects the actual perception of people at the time: estate laborers were not like animals in a herd but were organized like an army forming bucu (troops). Thus, calling estate laborers bucu was based on the actual perception of people at the time. In other words, the "servants" here can be seen as essentially no different from the bucu of later times.