阡陌制論

Abstract

In the pesent study I examine the following questions. 1) Pursuing the origins of the qianmo land system put into practice by Shang Yang 商鞅, I argue with point of departure in the Questions on Wu 吳問 section of the newly excavated Sunzi 孫子 that there is a line connecting Shang Yang's land system and the land system of the Warring States period state of Zhao 趙 2) I reconstruct the qianmo system from the hand ordinances 田律 excavated recently in Qingchuan 青川 prefecture in Sichuan 四川 and argue that the system was premised on a method of cultivation using manually operated farming implements and that the qian and mo were paths dividing the land into plots of a thousand and a hundred mu 畝. 3) I examine the reasons for the collapse of the qianmo land system three centuries after Shang Yang from the point of view of the adoption of the daitian 代田 system of cultivation and argue that it collapsed because of the increasing employment throughout society of cultivation methods using plows drawn by draft animals in the period from Emperor Wu 漢武帝 on.