唐代の制誥

Abstract

This article is an inquiry into the nature of zhi-gao 制誥, the orders issued to bureaucrats which in the Tang period were written by the drafting officials at the state secretariat (zhong-shu she-ren 中書舎人). The process by which the decrees were drafted is traced, especially the decrees addressed to the bureaucrats of the extra-codal (ling-wai 令外)， commissioners' offices (shi-yuan 使院). The opening section of a decree, that is, the subject-heading of an order, was known as the ci-tou 詞頭. Refusal on the part of the drafting officials to accept the ci-tou assigned to them was an exceptional occurrence during the Tang, but in the Song 宋 period, after 1041, rejection of ci-tou and refusal to draft decrees were not regarded as anything strange. On the basis of an analysis of the actual uses to which zhi-gao were put, it is possible to gain some concrete understanding of many features of the Tang bureaucracy. One example is the work of the shang-cuo 上佐 (lower-echelon prefectural officials such as bie-he 別駕, zhang-shi 長史, and si-ma 司馬) during the second half of the Tang.