Japanese scholars' selected translations of Chinese historical treatises: Volume 5. Five Dynasties and Song-Yuan

Author: Liu Junwen
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Fragment: Jing united with several hundred villagers and members of his clan as a guarantee, and the people all attached themselves to him. Also in The Book of Shu, Volume 12, Biography of Qiao Xiu (should be The Book of Jin, Volume 94, Biography of Qiao Xiu—translator): A hundred or so villagers and clan members relied on him. (The Book of Jin uses "villagers" instead—translator). The term equivalent to bucu (private troops) in The Biography of Li Dian is "xiangcu" or "xiangren" here, which does not necessarily refer to laborers on private estates. "Xiangcu" is an archaic term, as seen in The Records of the Grand Historian, Book of Pingzhun, where it says, "Wuduan xiangcu," meaning "village," so here it is synonymous with "xiangren" (villagers). Below is an event from the early Eastern Jin period, from The Book of Jin, Volume 43, Biography of Shan Xian: Wealthy families often concealed households, treating them as private dependents. It then states that Shan Xian inspected these private dependents and released over ten thousand people ("exported over ten thousand"), a number roughly comparable to Li Dian's "over thirteen thousand mouths." Shan Xian returned these concealed private dependents to the state as commoners because they were not laborers on private estates. Li Dian's situation may have been 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.
The fall of the Western Jin and the rise of the Eastern Jin led to continuous warfare in northern China under the so-called "Five Barbarians and Sixteen Kingdoms," disrupting or distorting social development. In contrast, the orthodox Chinese society continued to develop in the relatively backward region of Jiangnan. After The Records of the Three Kingdoms, another historical source for study is Ge Hong's Baopuzi, written in the early 4th century. The outer chapters of this work, particularly the third and fourth, are titled Wu Shi (The Loss of Wu), describing the symptoms of the state of Wu before its collapse. The powerful elites possessed vast estates and lived in luxury: "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 refers to estates. In fact, this phrase was originally used to describe Fan Zhong, a villa operator during the reign of Wang Mang, as cited in Taipingyulan, Volume 827, "Market" entry, which quotes Dongguan Hanji: "Terraced ponds were filled, bamboo and trees formed forests, and livestock and fruits grew in abundance. Sandalwood, lacquer, mulberry, and hemp were cultivated, and trading was conducted behind closed doors." This describes the self-sufficient operational strategy of a villa. Another passage in Taipingyulan, Volume 471, "Wealth," also refers to Fan Zhong, stating, "Whatever was demanded was always supplied."
From this, it can be inferred that the phrase "servants formed armies" in Baopuzi also refers to the situation of private estates, and thus the "servants" in this sentence are nothing more than villa laborers. The peculiar thing about this sentence is that in later times, it would not be written as "servants formed armies" but as "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 is that the character "jun" (army) in "formed armies" carries the same meaning as bucu (private troops). Literally speaking, the actual perception of the people at the time was that villa laborers were not like animals in a herd but were organized like an army, forming units (bucu). Thus, referring to villa laborers as bucu was based on the actual perception of the people at the time. In other words, the "servants" here can be seen as essentially no different from the bucu of later times.