居延漢簡に見える物資の輸送について

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to arrange in order many types of Han documents recorded on the wooden slips excavated from Juyan in Gansu (Juan Hanjian 居延漢簡) in 1930's and 1970's. In the age of Han, this region had soldiers (shuzu 戍卒) stationed in a number of watch towers (housui 候燧) to look out for the nomadic tribes' invasion. The supplies such as provision and arms were placed under the management of the watchtower captain (houguan 侯官), and were transported by the troops specially constituted by his officers and soldiers. The means of transportation was a cow carriage which was provided for each captain and driven by special shuzus called chefu 車父. The carriages and chefus had originally been dispatched there with infantries from all parts of the Empire and enrolled into the frontier forces. Those forces, however, had no independent transport troops to support them. Therefore they always had to mobilize part of their own personnel for that task, which was destined to suffer from lack of hands. To make up for this disadvantage, they could resort to hiring carriages and hands (jiuren 就人) from the neighbouring areas, or sometimes, imposing special labour services of transporting cereals on rich civilians (zijia 貲家), most of whom used employees to fulfill this duty. Thus the transportation channels of the frontier forces were overlapped with the regional transportation networks of the commodities indispensable for the neighbouring society.