唐代における官蔭入仕について : 衞官コ―スを中心として

Abstract

In the pre-modern age, China had a perfect and unparalleled bureaucracy. This Chinese bureaucracy is, indeed, different from the modern one in many ways. One of its decisive differences is yin 蔭. Since Sui 隋 period, the selective examinations of the officials, or ke-ju 科舉, which was based on the merit system, had been executed. But so far as the government organization in Tang 唐 period is concerned, they took a principle of maintaining the status order, and the proportion that the officials through ke-ju occupied in the officialdom was extremely low in the early Tang period ; the overwhelming majority were of guan-yin 官蔭 origin. They had been bound to take the post of wei-guan 衛官 and complete the fixed term, as it were, as a preparatory stage before they rose to their official rank. Examining the contemporary estimation of the wei-guan post over the whole Tang period, we can see it fell down suddenly in the latter half of this period. That is evidently in inverse proportion to the relatively upward tendency in the estimate of those of ke-ju origin, and in other words it means the fall in the estimate of guan-yin. Even those who had the guan-yin qualification dared to aim at becoming the officials through ke-ju, while men without the guan-yin qualification managed to enter the wei guan post by a forgery of guan-yin. The guan-yin system which had aimed at the maintenance of the status order became insignificant, and on the contrary it filled the function of undermining that order. The purpose of this article is throwing light on the aspects as a period of transition in the latter half of Tang period by investigating the transformation of the constitutional function of guan-yin.