淸初の文館について

Abstract

The Wenkuan or archives was a government agency in the early Ch'ing period; it was often called shufang (書房). The Wenkuan is said to have been set up as early as 1629. But officially it appeared first in the Ta Ch'ing Huitien Shihli (大清會典事例) compiled during the Chiach'ing (嘉慶) era (1796-1820). The so-called ref-erence to the Wenkuan found in the Veritable Records of T'aitsung (太宗) tells us merely that the court literati were divided into two sections, one for translation and the other for documentation. Though the name of Wenkuan first appeared in 1629, an investigation of its personnel seems to indicate that it had existed before that year. Translation and documenation were already practised in the early days of the reign of Nurhachi, and contact with Mongols and Koreans on the one hand and the Ch'ing Government's own needs; on the other led to the establishment in 1616 as a separate government agency of the Wenkuan or Shufang, assuming a full-fledged form at the end of the T'ienming (天命). There was another important function of the Wenkuan; transmitting of imperial orders and reports to the throne. This function further developed the Wenkuan into a kind of inner cabinet like that of the Ming (明) dynasty, and immediately before the the beginning of the Ch'ungte (崇德) era (1636) it became the Neisanyuan (内三院).