唐代兩京鄕里村考

Abstract

Many studies have been made now about the cities of Chang'an and Luoyang as they existed during the Tang period. Such research has benefitted considerably from the published results of recent archaeological excavations made at their actual sites. Each of these studies however has considered only the sites at the urban center of these cities, to the exelusion of those in outlying areas. In this essay, l will try to define the Tang system of local administration by means of an analysis of sites in the suburbs of these two capital cities. Using the sources available, I located 76 xiang out of the 104 recorded to have made up the district of Chang'an, and 49 xiang out of 70 recorded xiang for the district of Luoyang. Their locations were then mapped. The following observations resulted. Under certain circumstances, segments of the population of a single village were assigned to different districts. The administrative units of the xiang and li were determined by a fixed number of families, regardless of the village to which they belonged. In most cases, it is possible to trace the Tang names of the xiang, as well as their geographical boundaries, from the previous Sui 隋 period. This indicates that the system of local administration at this level was historically continuous. Furthermore, many of the xiang are named after rivers, mountains or historical relics within their borders. Many of the li however, are named with Confucian philosophical terms. These names often changed when the unit was reorganized. This indicates that the li, unlike the xiang, was regarded as the more fundamental and more significant unit of the system of local administration. Finally, the names of several xiang correspond with terms used in the zhechongfu 折衝府 system. This suggests that the organization of the xiangli system was closely connected with that of the fubing 府兵 system. This relation remains to be researched.