西漢の官僚階級 : 官吏の登用法と、官吏の出自について

Abstract

One of the most important changes, social and political, in the history of ancient China was the birth of a centralized state with the provinces and prefectures under its full control (the chun-hsien system), which had replaced the feudalism (the fengchien system) of the Chou dynasty. It was in the reign of Emperor Wu-ti that the chunhsien system became a firmly established institution. In view of the fact that this system of centralized despotic government with the bureau-cracy as its backbone became a pattern for the succeeding dynasties, this change deserves the historian's close examination. The present article deals with the nature and the political significance of the bureaucracy of Western Han. According to the author's view the two different ways of selecting and appointing the government officials, i.e., jen-tzu (任子) and hsuan-chu (選舉), were antipodal, but complementary, making it possible to keep the class of big clans vigorous by recruiting from among the lower literati. It was in the reign of Emperors Chao-ti and Hsuan-ti that this dual system of appointing the government officials was most effective and fruitful. As time elapsed, however, the high government officials turned into a privileged class with a definite social status, thus paving way to the control of government by the powerful clans in the Eastern Han period. Here may be sought the origin of the social stratification into the landlord-bureaucracy on the one hand and the peasant class on the other in post-Han ages.