Introduction
夫地大而不墾者，與無地者同；
民眾而不用者，與無民者同。
After all, when the territory is large but is not cultivated, it is as if you have no territory;
when the people are numerous but are not used, it is as if you have no people. Footnote 1
The above quotation, from the chapter “Calculating the Land” (Suan di 算地) of the Book of Lord Shang (Shangjun shu 商君書), represents the conventional understanding of the Qin 秦 view on management of resources. The Qin were well aware of the importance of land and human resources during wartime and believed that a state would only become strong by incorporating such resources into agricultural production, also known as the “fundamental occupation” (benye 本業). A ruler should maintain a balance between human and land resources according to “the standard of utilizing territory and being ready for battle” (rendi daiyi zhi lü 任地待役之律).Footnote 2 In the chapter “Attracting the People” (Laimin 徠民), the author states that the problem faced by the Qin at the time was that “there are not sufficient people for the land” (ren bu chen tu 人不稱土). The only solution to this problem was not to conquer more lands, but rather to attract people to come to Qin from the other states and to encourage them to engage in land cultivation.Footnote 3 In sum, these chapters highlight that a ruler should engage all available resources in agricultural production in order to support warfare and maintain a balance between two fundamental resources—land and labor—according to a well-designed scale.
Although Sima Qian 司馬遷 claimed that he had read some of the chapters of the Book of Lord Shang and found the details in them to correspond well with Shang Yang's deeds, the authorship and the reliability of the transmitted version have been debated for centuries.Footnote 4 A multi-slip document recently excavated at Liye 里耶 in Hunan shows that Qin had maintained a system of resource management that appears to be consistent with some of the ideas seen in the Book of Lord Shang. In addition, the document also shows us the difficulties the Qin local government encountered during the early stages of unification on the southern edge of the empire. This article aims to offer a contextualized study of this document with an analysis of the related Qin sources.Footnote 5
The document was excavated from Well No. 1 at Liye in 2002. Archaeologists divided Well No. 1 into 18 levels. Between the fifth and seventeenth levels, they found more than 30,000 Qin slips and tablets, about half of which are inscribed with Chinese characters.Footnote 6 This is the greatest number of Qin texts ever discovered in mainland China. Dated between the twenty-fifth year of the First Emperor of Qin (222 bce) and the second year of the Second Emperor of Qin (208 bce), most of the Liye Qin slips were the actual administrative documents kept in the office of Qianling 遷陵 County, Dongting 洞庭 Commandery before they were discarded in a well.Footnote 7 This group of materials is significant for the reconstruction of Qin history not only because of its unprecedented size, but also because of the light it sheds on the local administration of a newly conquered area in the Qin state and empire.
Based on a thorough examination of the document and other related Qin sources, I argue that the Qin attempted to manage its human resources through a process of categorizing laborers. The main concern of the Qin government was to put all the available human resources in the appropriate place for production. By evaluating the nature of each labor unit, the Qin government would assign it to a category that could reach its highest productivity. As I will show below, this categorization process functioned alongside a system of supervision and punishment.
Materiality and Text
Most of the Liye Qin wooden slips and tablets made public so far are self-contained and not bound together with other slips or tablets. In the terminologies of the Japanese scholars, they belong to the category of “single slips” (tandoku kan 単独簡) in contrast to the “binding slips” (hentei kan 編綴簡).Footnote 8 The document examined in this article, however, is of the latter category. Written on six wooden slips (8-755, 8-756, 8-757, 8-758, 8-759 and 8-1523), it had been bound together by two sets of cords. Although the cords had decayed when they were found in the eighth level of Well No. 1, we can still identify the positions where the cords had threaded through from the traces of binding. In addition to the marks,Footnote 9 the total number of characters on the document amounts to 239. The characters on each slip are written in two vertical-lines and each line comprises 12 to 22 characters. Each of the slips is about 23 cm long, which is equivalent to one Han foot, and ranges between 1.8 cm and 2.4 cm wide. Except for the first and sixth slips (8-755 and 8-1523), the rest are inscribed with characters only on the recto side (Figure 1).
From right to left: slips 755 (recto), 755 (verso), 756 (recto), 757 (recto), 758 (recto), 759 (recto), 1523 (recto) and 1523 (verso). Adapted from Liye Qin jian (yi), 109–10 and 194.
The transcription below follows the annotated version by Chen Wei 陳偉 and his research team at Wuhan University,Footnote 10 and the association of the six slips is suggested by Chen Yinchang 陳垠昶.Footnote 11 For the convenience of discussion, I divide my translation into five sections according to the content:
Section 1
卅四年六月甲午朔乙卯，洞庭守禮謂遷陵丞=Footnote 12 [8-755 Recto line 1]：
In the thirty-fourth year [of the First Emperor of Qin], on the day Yimao of the sixth month, of which the first day is Jiawu (July 16, 213 bce),Footnote 13 Governor Li of Dongting informs the Assistant Magistrate of Qianling:Footnote 14
(丞)言徒隸不田，奏曰：「司空厭等當坐，皆有它罪[8-755 Recto line 2]，耐為司寇。」有書=，(書)壬手。
You (the Assistant Magistrate) said that laborer-servants did not cultivate the land, and submitted a report stating that, “[Bailiff of] Convict Labor Yan and others matchFootnote 15 [the punishment of] being held liable [for a crime], and they are all guilty of other crimes [matching the penalty of] shaving and being made robber-guards.” There is a document [detailing this matter],Footnote 16 on which [the record] “Ren handled” was written.
令曰：「吏僕、養、走、工、組[8-756 line Recto 1]織、守府門、[肖+力]匠及它急事不可令田，六人予田徒[8-756 line Recto 2]四人。徒少及毋徒，薄(簿)移治虜御=史=，(御史)以均予。」
An ordinanceFootnote 17 states, “One must not order officials’ servants and cooks, runners, artisans, weavers, office door guards, carvers,Footnote 18 and those who are employed on urgent matters to engage in cultivation. Every six men [of such statuses] are given four field laborersFootnote 19 [to take their place in cultivation]. If there is a shortage of laborers or if no laborers are available, forward the account book [of laborers] to the Censor for Managing Captives. The Censor will assign [the laborers] evenly based on it.”
今遷陵[8-757 Recto line 1]廿五年為縣，廿九年田。廿六年盡廿八年當田，司空厭等[8-757 Recto line 2]失弗=令=田=。(弗令田)，即有徒而弗令田，且徒少不傅(敷)于[8-758 Recto line 1]奏。
Now, Qianling was made a county in the twenty-fifth year [of the reign of the First Emperor] (222 bce) and its agricultural fields [started to be] cultivated in the twenty-ninth year (218 bce). These fields should have been cultivated from the twenty-sixth year (221 bce) through the twenty-eighth year (219 bce), [Bailiff of] Convict Labor Yan and the others are amiss for not ordering [laborers] to cultivate the land. Not ordering [laborers] to cultivate land [means] that even though there are laborers, one does not order them to cultivate the land or state the shortage of laborers in the submitted report.Footnote 20
及蒼梧為郡九歲乃往歲田。厭失，當坐論，即[8-758 Recto line 2]如前書律令。[8-759 Recto line 1]/歇手[8-755 Verso]
In addition, in the nine years after Cangwu was made a commandery, [Yan and the others ordered laborers to] to go there to cultivate only for a year.Footnote 21 Yan [and the others]Footnote 22 had made a mistake. They match the penalty of being held liable and sentenced, as [stated in] the earlier document and the statutes and ordinances.Footnote 23 Xie handled [the document].
Section 2
七月甲子朔癸酉，洞庭叚(假)守[8-759 Recto line 1]繹追遷陵。/歇手‧以沅陽印行事。[8-759 Recto line 2]
On the day Guiyou of the seventh month (August 3), of which the first day is Jiazi, Acting Governor Yi of Dongting pursues Qianling [to report on the punishment].Footnote 24 Xie handled [the document]. [Acting Governor Yi] is conducting affairs using the seal of Yuanyang.Footnote 25
Section 3
七月甲子朔庚寅，洞庭守繹追遷陵亟言。/歇[8-1523 Recto Line 1]手‧以沅陽印行事。/[8-1523 Recto Line 2]
On the day Gengyin of the seventh month (August 20), of which the first day is Jiazi, [Acting]Footnote 26 Governor Yi of Dongting pursues Qianling to report [on the punishment] immediately. Xie handled [the document]. [Acting Governor Yi] is conducting affairs using the seal of Yuanyang.
Section 4
八月癸巳朔癸卯，洞庭叚(假)[8-1523 Recto Line 2]守繹追遷陵，亟日夜上勿留。/卯手‧以沅陽[8-1523 Verso Line 1]印行事。[8-1523 Verso Line 2]
On the day Guimao of the eighth month (September 2), of which the first day is Guisi, Acting Governor Yi of Dongting pursues Qianling to submit [a report on the punishment] immediately and without delay, regardless of whether it is day or night. Mao handled [the document]. [Acting Governor Yi] is conducting affairs using the seal of Yuanyang.
Section 5
/九月乙丑旦，郵人曼以來。/翥發。[8-1523 Verso Line 2]
In the morning of the day Yichou of the ninth month (September 24), courier Man arrived with [the document]. Zhu opened [the sealed document].
This multi-slip manuscript was sent from Dongting Commandery to Qianling County on September 2, 213 bce. It contains the earlier documents that had been passed from Dongting Commandery to Qianling County from July through August about the penalty to be meted to a group of officials and a record about the arrival of the document in Qianling on September 24 in the same year. It is excellent material for looking into the formation of Qin local administrative documents and the written communications between Qin commandery and county governments.
This multi-slip manuscript indicates that written communications under the Qin required a sender of a document to refer to related earlier documents in the document that he would be sending (much like including an email trail in a modern business correspondence). The purpose of sending this multi-slip document was to ask Qianling County to report on the implementation of the punishment of a group of officials. Since July 16, when the instruction on the punishment was passed down from Dongting Commandery to Qianling County, the commandery had sent three follow-up documents asking the county to report on it. Comparing the wordings in these three documents, one can sense that Dongting Commandery was becoming increasingly impatient with the late reply from Qianling County:Footnote 27
First follow-up document: “pursues Qianling [to report on the punishment]” 追遷陵
Second follow-up document: “pursues Qianling to report [on the punishment] immediately” 追遷陵亟言
Third follow-up document: “pursues Qianling to submit [a report on the punishment] immediately and without delay, regardless of whether it is day or night” 追遷陵，亟日夜上勿留
To remind the county of its responsibilities with regard to the matter, the commandery restated the original instruction (Section 1) and the two previous follow-up documents (Sections 2 and 3), and placed them in front of the third follow-up document (Section 4). The whole document was then delivered by a courier (youren 郵人) named Man 曼 and finally reached the county on September 24 (section 5). The multi-layered structure of this document can be recovered in Table 1.
The layers of a multi-slip manuscript sent from Dongting Commandery to Qianling County in 213 bce
Apparently, the key to the success of the Qin written communication system was to keep a good record of all the sent and received documents. Since the Liye materials were made public, many scholars have debated the format and the multi-layered structure of single slip-documents.Footnote 28 Due to the loss of the cords that were used to tie up multi-slip documents, the association of the scattered slips remains unclear, and therefore, scholars seldom pay attention to the formation of such multi-slip documents. This set of six slips is one of the few examples that bear incontrovertible evidence that the slips had been bound together. As Chen Yinchang indicates, the content, size, word count, and format of these six slips appear to be highly consistent. Chen also observes that the handwriting of Section 5 is slightly different than other sections (Figure 1).Footnote 29 This observation conforms to my analysis on the multi-layered structure of this document. It is conceivable that the record of the delivery of the document was made by another hand after the document had arrived. The main content of the document (Sections 1–4) was very possibly completed by the same person, Mao 卯, an official of Dongting Commandery. Mao then rolled up the document from right to left, with the verso side of the last slip facing out. When the document arrived in Qianling County, the official named Zhu 翥 opened it and made the record (Section 5) on the verso side of the last slip about its arrival.
One of the major differences between single-slip and multi-slip manuscripts is that the size of a single-slip manuscript limits the area of the written surface. On the other hand, the area of the written surface of a multi-slip manuscript can be extended horizontally by adding slips at the end of the document as long as it can be rolled into a scroll. The longest multi-slip administrative manuscript that has been discovered so far is the one that was excavated from the site A27 at Juyan 居延 in the 1930s. It was an account book composed of 77 wooden slips recording the weapons held by the southern Headquarters (bu 部) of Guangdi 廣地 from 93 to 95 ce.Footnote 30 As Sumiya Tsuneko suggests, from the perspective of administration, using single-slip documents could be safer than using multi-slip documents, as there is no need to worry about misplacing or losing the slips. It might be the reason why single-slip documents appear so frequently in the Liye materials.Footnote 31
A newly discovered format of a Qin single-slip manuscript is that the responsible administrative official was required to record his given name with the character shou 手 (lit. hand) on the bottom left of the verso side to acknowledge his accountability for handling the manuscript.Footnote 32 Chinese and Japanese scholars commonly call this phrase mou shou 某手 (such-and-such handled).Footnote 33 In Section 1 of the document I translated above, Governor (shou 守) Li 禮 of Dongting mentioned that there was a record of Ren shou 壬手 (Ren handled) on the “earlier document” (qianshu) he received from the Assistant Magistrate (cheng 丞) of Qianling. The record clearly states that the document was handled by Ren. It is expected that Governor Li of Dongting would rely on this record to trace the accountability of the written content if he noted any mistakes.
It appears that the position of the bottom left side of a slip or tablet has significant meaning to this format. It can be seen that slip 8-219+8-310 was used for scribal practice. Except for the character wu 無 on the top-right corner, the practice inscriptions appear to have followed some pattern. The three characters on the top have the same radical shou, and those four in the middle are composed of the same component ke 可. Obviously, the scribe apprentice was practicing two groups of characters that share some common elements.Footnote 34 Moreover, the apprentice also practiced writing the phrase Lü shou 履手 (Lü handled) on the bottom left side and then repeated the character shou two times on the right side (Figure 2). Lü shou frequently appears in the Liye materials to indicate Lü's accountability for handling documents (slips 8-143, 8-768, 8-1561, and 8-2001). It is uncertain whether or not Lü was the apprentice who actually practiced writing the phrase Lü shou on slip 8-219+8-310,Footnote 35 but it is quite clear that he consciously put it in the position of bottom-left side. I would take this as an administrative model form (shi 式)Footnote 36—that is, a format that the apprentice visualized in his mind as he practiced writing the phrase. Apparently, the position of the phrase within the layout of a slip was a significant part of the format.
8-219 (left) and 8-310 (right). After Liye Qin jian (yi), 50 and 57.
Considering again the multi-layered structure of the manuscript, the original instruction from Dongting (Section 1) and the two previous follow-up documents (Sections 2 and 3) were copied by Mao and placed in front of the third follow-up document (Section 4). Notably, after finishing copying the original instruction on the first five slips of the multi-slip manuscript, Mao followed the format of most single-slip manuscripts, turned over the manuscript and copied the phrase Xie shou 歇手 (Xie handled) on the bottom-left corner of the verso side of the first slip (Section 1). He then turned over the manuscript again and continued to copy the two previous follow-up documents with a sloping line / and the phrase Xie shou following each of them on the recto side (Sections 2 and 3).Footnote 37 Xie was probably the official who composed the original instruction and the two previous follow-up documents. Instead of stating his own name, Mao merely copied the phrase Xie shou, which means that he would not take responsibility for those portions. Finally, he composed the third follow-up document as he was instructed to do. As usual, he made the sloping line / following the follow-up document and put down his given name with the character shou to acknowledge his accountability for Section 4.
It is important to note that only the first instance of mou shou was written on the bottom-left corner of the verso side of the manuscript and the rest does not follow the same rule. This layout is exactly the same as those single-slip manuscripts which have similar multi-layered structure.Footnote 38 A typical example is a set of twelve slips (from 9-1 to 9-12) concerning the location of twelve conscripts (zu 卒) who owed fines (zi 貲) or redemption fees (shu 贖) to Yangling 陽陵 County.Footnote 39 Each of the twelve slips includes four sections, and there is a mou shou for each, which indicates the person's accountability for the written content. Just as in the multi-slip manuscript analyzed in this article, the responsible official only wrote the first instance of mou shou—in this case, Jing shou 敬手 (Jing handled)—on the bottom-left corner of the verso side and put remaining mou shou with the sloping line / following each of the sections. Hence, I suggest that the material difference between a single-slip document and a multi-slip document does not necessarily influence the format of the Qin administrative documents as seen in the Liye materials. In this sense, we can regard an unrolled multi-slip document as a horizontal extension of a single-slip document.
Qin Agricultural Production in a “New Land” (Xindi)
Turning now to the analysis of the content, the original instruction was sent from Governor Li of Dongting to the Assistant Magistrate of Qianling in response to an earlier proposal regarding the punishment of Bailiff of Convict Labor (sikong 司空) Yan and the others. They were charged with failing to order laborer-servants (tuli 徒隸) to cultivate agricultural fields. In the instruction, Governor Li referred to an ordinance (ling 令) on the agricultural use of laborers and approved the punishment proposed by the assistant magistrate of Qianling. He mentioned that Qianling County and Cangwu 蒼梧 CommanderyFootnote 40 were both established in the twenty-fifth year of the First Emperor of Qin (222 bce), a year before Qin's final unification. The record accords with the account in the Shi ji 史記 in which Sima Qian says that Qin General Wang Jian 王翦 suppressed the Chu region and the southern region of the Yangzi river (Jing Jiang nan di 荊江南地) in the same year.Footnote 41 Chen Wei and his research team suspect that Dongting Commandery may have been established in the same year.Footnote 42
Notably, Bailiff of Convict Labor Yan and the others only began to order laborer-servants to cultivate agricultural fields after Qianling had already been established for four years. It is also significant that Bailiff of Convict Labor Yan and the others were supposed to order laborer-servants to cultivate lands in Cangwu Commandery, beyond the jurisdiction of Dongting Commandery.Footnote 43 In light of the passages from the Book of Lord Shang discussed at the beginning of this article, the dereliction of duties on the part of Bailiff of Convict Labor Yan and others was definitely intolerable, since they wasted the available resources of agricultural production and upset the ideal proportion between land and human resources. Yet, on the other hand, the incident shows that during the early years of a newly conquered area, not all commands could be implemented efficiently and smoothly. To maintain its governance over the area, the Qin government had to rely on a system of punishment and supervision. The document examined in this article is the best proof of the existence of this system. Before I turn to discuss Qin management of human resources, it is necessary to briefly examine agricultural production in Qianling so as to provide a context in which this multi-slip document was generated.
During the process of unification, Qin regularly called the newly conquered areas “new lands” (xindi 新地), where “new lands’ officials” (xindi li 新地吏) were set up to govern the “new black-headed ones” (xin qianshou 新黔首) according to the legal regulations.Footnote 44 Commoners were allowed to clear land after seeking approval from the local government (see slips 9-15 and 9-2344), but the newly conquered areas were usually underpopulated. Slip 9-2119 states: “the district [an unknown district of Qianling County] has plenty of land for cultivation, but there is a shortage of black-headed ones” (鄉多田宇，少黔首). In response, the Qin ruler deliberately channeled the use of laborers predominantly to agricultural production. Slips 9-2283, [16-5] and [16-6] record a lost ordinance regarding Qin's policy on the conscription of commoners:
令曰：「傳送委輸，必先悉行城旦舂、隸臣妾、居貲贖債，急事不可留，乃興繇。」Footnote 45
An ordinance states: “[When levying laborers for] delivery and transportation, one must first mobilize all the wall-builders and grain-pounders, bondservants and bondwomen, and those who are [in residence of government facilities] paying off fines, redemption fees or debts [by labor]. Only when there is an urgent matter that cannot be delayed can one levy [commoners] for government service.”
The recto sides of slips 9-2283 [16-5] and [16-6], which concern the transportation of armaments (jiabing 甲兵) from Dongting Commandery to the Capital Area (neishi 內史), Nan 南 and Cangwu Commanderies in 220 bce, indicates that the same legal rationale is at play.Footnote 46 Governor Li of Dongting Commandery referred to the above ordinance when giving his instruction to the affiliated counties and his subordinates. He then added: “At the time of cultivating the fields, I do not wish to levy the black-headed ones” (田時殹(也)，不欲興黔首).Footnote 47 This largely contradicts the traditional view that the Qin brutally exploited commoners as well as potential agricultural workers,Footnote 48 but it does conform to our understanding of Qin's dedication to agricultural production.Footnote 49 As Anthony Barbieri-Low argues, “the government made conscious cost-benefit analysis when employing various pools of labor for a given project, taking into account the nature of the work, the season of the year, and the overall cost to the peasant-based economy.”Footnote 50 The Liye materials enable an investigation into the implementation of Qin agricultural policy at the county level.
The Office of the Agricultural Fields (tianguan 田官)Footnote 51 was the agency in charge of “government-owned fields” (guantian 官田) or “public fields” (gongtian 公田)Footnote 52 and grain production in Qianling County. Slip 8-672, a document submitted by the Office of the Agricultural Fields in 217 bce, mentions the guantian zishi bu 官田自食簿. This type of account book records the details about the grain supplies disbursed to those who were authorized to obtain rations from the Office of the Granaries (cang 倉) of Qianling when they were on a business trip. As stated in slips 8-50+8-422, 8-169+8-233+8-407+8-416+8-1185 and 8-1517, within the territory of Qianling County the authorized persons “can feed themselves with [the grain grown from] the fields of Qianling” (遷陵田能自食).Footnote 53
The Office of the Agricultural Fields not only produced grain, but also had access to granaries and was responsible for disbursing rations like the Office of the Granaries and other offices. Judging from the fact that some of the ration receivers are garrison conscripts (tunshu 屯戍) or men charged with garrison duty (fashu 罰戍), one might wonder whether the Office of the Agricultural Fields was related to the “agricultural garrison” (tuntian 屯田) system as seen in the Han administrative documents from Juyan and Dunhuang 敦煌.Footnote 54 Although the relationship between the Office of the Agricultural Fields and agricultural garrisons remains unclear, it is evident in a “Tabulation on Evaluations of the Commandant” (weike zhi 尉課志) (slip 8-482) that Qianling County did engage garrison conscripts in agricultural production. A newly published slip (9-1247) also testifies that the Qianling government would recruit conscripted soldiers to cultivate the fields.
In newly conquered area, such as Qianling County, the Qin government was very concerned that the land resource should be properly used. Slip 9-1865 shows that the Office of the Agricultural Fields had to submit the “Evaluation of Opened-up Fields” (kentian ke 豤[墾]田課) to Qianling County for review. Slip 9-40 is a legal regulation on the opened-up fields which accords well with the early Han statutes from the Zhangjiashan tomb:
律曰：「已豤（墾）田，輒上其數及户數，户嬰之。」
The Statute states: “When the opening-up of the fields is completed, immediately report to higher authorities their number and the number of households, with the households attached to them.”Footnote 55
Slip 8-1764 also shows that there was even a targeted number of opened-up fields for the Qianling officials to achieve:
〼當豤（墾）田十六畝。
〼已豤（墾）田十九畝。
16 mu of fields should have opened up.
19 mu of fields have opened up.
The official(s) who undertook the task succeeded beyond expectation. Unfortunately, due to the fragmentary nature of the account, we do not have the context of the document. To have an overall idea concerning the opened-up fields in Qianling, it is necessary to look at slip 8-1519:
Recto side
遷陵卅五年豤（墾）田輿五十二頃九十五畝，稅田四頃□□ [Line 1]
Qianling: thirty-fifth year (212 bce): opened-up fields recorded [on the cadastral map] are 52 qing 95 mu; taxable fields 4 qing …
戶百五十二，租六百七十七石。𧗿（率）之，畝一石五 [Line 2]
152 households; tax 677 shi calculating (at a rate of) 1 shi 5 per mu
戶嬰四石四斗五升，奇不𧗿（率）六斗 [Line 3]
To each household is attached: 4 shi 4 dou 5 sheng; the remainder that was not calculated: 6 dou
Verso side
Row 1
啓田九頃十畝，租九十七石六斗 [Line 1]
Qi [ling] fields: 9 qing 10 mu; tax: 97 shi 6 dou
都田十七頃五十一畝，租二百卌一石 [Line 2]
Du [xiang] fields: 17 qing 51 mu; tax: 241 shi
貳田廿六頃卅四畝，租三百卅九石三 [Line 3]
Er [chun] fields: 26 qing 34 mu; tax: 339 shi 3
凡田七十頃卌二畝 ‧租凡九百一十 [Line 4]
In total: fields: 70 qing 42 mu; Tax: in total, 910 [shi]
Row 2
六百七十七石 [Line 1]
677 shi Footnote 56
The level of detail in the records of opened up fields and taxes were kept at Qianling County is impressive, and it is surprising how few fields were opened up before the thirty-fifth year of the First Emperor (212 bce). The year 212 bce seems a quite productive year. Of the only 70 qing 42 mu of total opened-up fields, this year saw the opening up of 52 qing 95 mu of fields. As the manuscript examined in this article states, Qianling began to be a Qin county in 222 bce, and that suggests that in ten years only 17 qing 47 mu of fields were opened up, accounting for a mere one-third of the fields opened in a single year of 212 bce!
The number of opened up fields in this document might suggest why the dereliction of duties on the part of Bailiff of Convict Labor Yan and others was so intolerable from the point of view of the Governor of Dongting Commandery. In essence, they wasted both the human and land resources that might yield income either from cultivation or leasing to peasants. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that the year 212 bce, which saw the remarkable increase in opened up fields, is perhaps not coincidently the year just after the Governor of Dongting's instruction of punishment was passed down to Qianling. I would suggest that the punishment of Bailiff of Convict Labor Yan and others may have had a positive impact on the agricultural production in Qianling County, and this may explain why the Qin believed that the operation of a state should function with a system of supervision and punishment.
Qin Management of Human Resources
Questions about the content of this multi-slip manuscript remain: Who was Bailiff of Convict Labor Yan? Who were the others? Why were they but not other officials held responsible for not ordering tuli (laborer-servants) to farm? Equally important, who were the tuli? How did the Qin incorporate them into production? Above all, how could answering these questions shed light on Qin's general strategy of managing human resources? This section attempts to answer these questions.
Bailiff of Convict Labor (sikong)
Regarding the official title sikong 司空, Ru Chun 如淳, a third century annotator of the Han shu, refers to a statute (lü 律) stating that: “Sikong is in charge of irrigation works and convicts” (司空主水及罪人).Footnote 57 In the Shuihudi Qin legal documents, there is a group of Qin rules that can be identified as “Statutes on Convict Labor” (sikong lü 司空律),Footnote 58 from which we can see that sikong was primarily responsible for managing convicts and administrating government-owned equipment. In fact, sikong was a common official title in the Qin central and local governments.Footnote 59 This article focuses only on those sikong who worked at the county level.
Like many official titles in the Qin and Han official systems, the title sikong in Qianling County can refer to an office as well as the person who was in charge of that office. When it refers to a person, the full title should be sikong sefu 司空嗇夫 (Bailiff of Convict Labor) (slip 8-1445).Footnote 60 According to Nakayama Shigeru's 仲山茂 theory on the parallel structure of Qin and Western Han county administration, Convict Labor (sikong) was an office (guan 官) headed by a bailiff with the assistance of a group of scribes (shi 史) and assistants (zuo 佐). A number of scribe directors (lingshi 令史) at the court (ting 廷) were assigned to the Bureau of Convict Labor (sikong cao 司空曹) to supervise the performance of the Office of Convict Labor.Footnote 61 This relationship can be seen in the “Inventory of the Accounts of the Bureau of Convict Labor” (sikong cao jilu 司空曹計錄) (slip 8-480). The scribe director assigned to the Bureau of Convict Labor managed the accounts (ji 計) of the performance of the Office of Convict Labor, which covered boats (chuan 船), equipment (qi 器), redemption fees (shu 贖), fines (zi 貲) and debts (zhai 責[債]), and laborers (tu 徒). As the chief of the Office of Convict Labor, the bailiff held the major responsibility if the scribe director from the court noticed that the Office failed to achieve its assigned tasks.
According to the multi-slip manuscript examined in this article, in 218 bce (twenty-ninth year of the First Emperor) Bailiff of Convict Labor Yan and the others began to order tuli to cultivate the lands which were supposed to be cultivated between 221 and 219 bce (twenty-sixth to twenty-eighth year of the First Emperor). In addition to that record, there are only two fragments (9-228 and 9-609) that mention Bailiff of Convict Labor Yan. Both of them merely tell us that a certain number of forced laborers were assigned the task of “accompanying Bailiff of Convict Labor Yan to buy horses” (與司空厭偕買馬). That is to say, there is no concrete evidence showing which year Yan served as bailiff of Convict Labor. Apart from Yan, from 221 to 219 bce, De 得, Jiu 樛, Chāng 昌, and Zhang 長 were also bailiffs of Convict Labor, and only Jiu was serving on probation during that time (see Appendix).
It is worth mentioning that almost all of the bailiffs of Convict Labor served only a short term, and reappointment in the same position appeared to be a common practice.Footnote 62 However, there is no evidence that any of the men in the group of Yan, De, Jiu, Chāng, and Zhang had been reappointed to the same position after the charge was brought in 213 bce (the thirty-fourth year of the First Emperor). It is also important that throughout the multi-slip document, Bailiff of Convict Labor Yan is often suffixed with the word deng 等, which means that he was not the only person accused of not ordering the laborers to farm. I would suggest that De, Jiu, Chāng, and Zhang—all bailiffs of Convict Labor from 221 to 219 bce—might have also been accused with the same charge in 213 bce.Footnote 63 As proposed by the assistant magistrate of Qianling, they would have undergone shaving and been made robber-guards. This may explain why their punishment had to wait until 213 bce, because the legal case involved many officials in Qianling County and the investigation and interrogation had to take many years to complete.Footnote 64
Management of Laborer-servants (tuli)
According to the multi-slip document translated above, Bailiff of Convict Labor Yan and the others were charged with failing to order tuli (laborer-servants) to farm. One might wonder what exactly they were supposed to do with tuli and farming. One of the major responsibilities of the bailiff of Convict Labor was to manage the convict-laborers, but the term tuli does not seem to refer to regular convict-laborers. The controversy over the term tuli began with an article written by Li Xueqin 李學勤, who indicates that slips [16-5] and [16-6] use the term tuli to refer to bondservants and bondwomen (lichenqie 隸臣妾), wall-builders and grain-pounders (chengdan chong 城旦舂), and gatherers of firewood for the spirits and sifters of white grain (guixin baican 鬼薪白粲). Li Xueqin argues that from the Han perspective, they were all convict-laborers.Footnote 65 This observation once again brought scholar's attention to the discussion of the nature of bondservants and bondwomen.Footnote 66
Since the discovery of the Shuihudi Qin legal documents in the 1970s, many scholars have debated whether bondservants and bondwomen were slaves. Li Li 李力 has argued that the term lichenqie carries a variety of meanings in the Qin. As a legal term, the meaning of lichenqie underwent a transition from slaves to convicts, which conforms to the trend that hard-labor punishment gradually became the major form of sentencing during the Qin and Han periods. As reflected in the Shuihudi Qin legal documents that cover the period in which the Qin was transforming from a state to an empire, the term lichenqie appears to be unstable and can refer to slaves or convicts in different contexts.Footnote 67
The term tuli is a compound noun composed of the characters tu 徒 (laborers) and li 隸 (servants). Most scholars agree with Li Xueqin's reading of tuli as a generic term referring to three types of forced laborers: bondservants and bondwomen, wall-builders and grain-pounders, and gatherers of firewood for the spirits and sifters of white grain.Footnote 68 Yet, neither the transmitted texts nor the newly excavated texts have specified what type of laborers the term tuli refers to in a given context. Besides, Li Xueqin is inaccurate in saying that tuli was equivalent to convict-laborers. Slip 8-154 records that the county governments “always report to higher authorities on the first day of the month the number of laborer-servants that have been bought” (恒以朔日上所買徒隸數).Footnote 69 Slip 9-1406 shows that the Office of Revenue (shaonei 少內) paid more than 33,000 cash to purchase tuli. These materials indicate that the local government could purchase tuli on the market, which contrasts with our understanding that most convict-laborers were criminals sentenced to hard-labor punishment.Footnote 70
The official title “Censor for Managing Captives” (zhilu yushi 治虜御史) in the ordinance quoted by Governor Li of Dongting in the multi-slip document indicates another source of tuli. The ordinance states: “If there is a shortage of laborers or if no laborers are available, forward the account book [of laborers] to the Censor for Managing Captives. The Censor will assign [the laborer-servants] evenly based on it.” The Censor for Managing Captives should be a subordinate to the Chief Prosecutor (yushi dafu 御史大夫), which shows that there was a specific office in the central government in charge of the supply and assignment of tuli.Footnote 71 On the other hand, the term lu 虜 implies that captured prisoners of war (fulu 俘虜) were one of the sources of tuli. In fact, it is evident in a Shuihudi Qin rule that “enemies who surrender are made bondservants” (寇降，以為隸臣).Footnote 72
Division of Laborers: The Offices of the Granaries (Cang) and Convict Labor (Sikong)
Despite the ambiguity of the term tuli, a group of documents from Liye titled “account books of laborers” (tubu 徒簿)Footnote 73 provide important clues to the understanding of the management of tuli at the county level. These account books detail the number of tuli working at the offices (guan) on daily or monthly basis and the duties assigned to them. Based on the Liye materials excavated from the 5th, 6th, 8th and 9th levels of Well No.1, many scholars have indicated that among the offices in Qianling County, only the Offices of the Granaries and Convict Labor could have their own group of tuli. While the Office of the Granaries was in charge of the bondservants and bondwomen, the Office of Convict Labor was in charge of the wall-builders and grain-pounders, and gatherers of firewood for the spirits and sifters of white grain.Footnote 74 The other offices and the districts (xiang 鄉) had to submit request through the court of Qianling County when they were in need of tuli. Once the work was done, they had to send back all the tuli (slips 8-199 and 8-1515). These observations are verified by a full collection of the account books of laborers from the Liye materials published by the excavators in 2013.Footnote 75
Two account books of laborers can give us an idea about the number of tuli managed by the Offices of Convict Labor and the Granaries. The following is a selected translation of slip 9-2289 (Figure 3):
Row 1
卅二年十月己酉朔乙亥，司空守圂徒作簿 [Line 1]
In the thirty-second year [of the First Emperor of Qin], on the day Yihai of the tenth month, of which the first day is Jiyou (December 19, 216 bce); Probationary [Bailiff of] Convict Labor Hun's account book of [the duties performed by] laborers.
城旦司寇一人 [ Line 2]
Robber-guards of wall-builders: 1 person
鬼薪廿人 [Line 3]
Gatherers of firewood for the spirits: 20 persons
城旦八十七人 [Line 4]
Wall-builders: 87 persons
仗（丈）城旦九人 [Line 5]
Senior wall-builders: 9 persons
隷臣毄（繫）城旦三人 [Line 6]
Bondservants who are detained [with] wall-builders: 3 persons
隷臣居貲五人 [Line 7]
Bondservants who are [in residence of government facilities] paying off fines [by labor]: 5 persons
‧凡百廿五人 [Line 8]
In total: 125 persons (the sum of adult male tuli)
Row 4
□□【八】人Footnote 76 [Line 1]
… ? persons
□□十三人Footnote 77 [Line 2]
… ? persons
隸妾墼（繫）舂八人 [Line 3]
Bondwomen who are detained [with] grain-pounders: 8 persons
隸妾居貲十一人 [Line 4]
Bondwomen who are [in residence of government facilities] paying off fines [by labor]: 11 persons
受倉隸妾七人 [Line 5]
Bondwomen received from the Granaries: 7 persons
‧凡八十七人 [Line 6]
In total: 87 persons (the sum of adult female tuli)
Row 7
‧小城旦九人 [Line 1]
Underage wall-builders: 9 persons (the sum of underage wall-builders)
‧小舂五人 [Line 6]
Underage grain-pounders: 5 persons (the sum of underage grain-pounders)
Bailiff of Convict Labor Hun 圂 submitted the account book to Qianling County on December 19, 216 bce. The total number of tuli held by the Office of Convict Labor at the moment amounts to 226 persons. It is worth mentioning that Rows 1 and 4 record the numbers of bondservants and bondwomen who were originally from the Office of the Granaries but were now working at the Office of Convict Labor. Of these, seven bondwomen were received from the Office of the Granaries. Besides, bondservants and bondwomen who were charged with fines (zi 貲) or sentenced to serve an additional term of wall-builders or grain-pounders (xi chengdan 繫城旦 or xi chong 繫舂) both had to work at the Office of Convict Labor.
Slip 9-2289 upper (right) and lower (left) sides. After Liye Qin jian (er), 244.
Slip [10-1170]Footnote 78 is a summary (zui 冣) for the ji 積 (lit. cumulative) number of tuli held by the Office of the Granaries in a month:
Row 1
▍卅四年十二月倉徒薄（簿）冣 [Line 1]
Summary for the account books of [the Office of] the Granaries’ laborers in the twelfth month of the thirty-fourth year (213 bce)
▍大隷臣積九百九十人 [Line 2]
Adult bondservants accumulated: 990 persons
▍小隷臣積五百一十人 [Line 3]
Underage bondservants accumulated: 510 persons
▍大隷妾積二千八百七十六 [Line 4]
Adult bondwomen accumulated: 2,876 persons
▍凡積四千三百七十六 [Line 5]
In total accumulated: 4,376 persons
Of these 1,085 bondservants and bondwomen from the Office of the Granaries were working in the Office of Convict Labor:
Row 3
男百五十人居貲司空 [Line 1]
150 men are [in residence of government facilities] paying off fines [by labor] at the [Office of] Convict Labor
男九十人（繫）城旦 [Line 2]
90 men are detained [with] wall-builders
Row 4
男卅人付司空 [Line 1]
30 men are given to the [Office of] Convict Labor
女百卌五人（繫）舂 [Line 6]
145 women are detained [with] grain-pounders
女三百六十人付司空 [Line 7]
360 women are given to the [Office of] Convict Labor
女三百一十人居貲司空 [Line 8]
310 women are [in residence of government facilities] paying off fines [by labor] at the [Office of] Convict Labor
Compared to the numbers recorded in slip 9-2289, these numbers are apparently too large at any one time (Table 2). Current studies suggest that the ji numbers in slip [10-1170] are not the numbers of tuli held at the Office of the Granaries in the twelfth month of the thirty-fourth year. Rather, they are possibly indicative of the number of tuli multiplied by the number of days of the month.Footnote 79 At any rate, these two account books show that although all the bondservants and bondwomen were supposed to work at the Office of the Granaries, when they were charged with fines and sentenced to serve an additional term, they would have to work at the Office of Convict Labor. This may suggest that the tasks performed by tuli in the Office of Convict Labor were harsher than those in the Office of the Granaries. Otherwise, it would seem meaningless to have those bondservants and bondwomen with additional punishment transferred to the Office of Convict Labor.Footnote 80
Comparison of the numbers of bondservants and bondwomen working at the Offices of Convict Labor as seen in slips 9-2289 and [10-1170]
The records in the account books of the laborers can give us some hints of what the charge of “not ordering [laborers] to cultivate land” (fu ling tian 弗令田) means. As seen in slip 9-2289 above, the tuli of the Office of Convict Labor were categorized into four groups. 1) 125 adult male tuli (including robber-guards of wall-builders, gatherers of firewood for the spirits, wall-builders, senior wall-builders, bondservants who were detained with wall-builders and who were paying off fines); 2) 87 adult female tuli (including sifters of white grain, grain-pounders, bondwomen who were detained with grain-pounders and who were paying off fines, and bondwomen received from the Granaries); 3) 9 underage wall-builders; and 4) 5 underage grain-pounders. In each category, a significant number of tuli was given to the Office of the Agricultural Fields:
1) 125 adult male tuli
Row 2
廿三人付田官 [Line 5]
23 persons are given to [the Office of] the Agricultural Fields
2) 87 adult female tuli
Row 4
廿四人付田官 [Line 9]
24 persons are given to [the Office of] the Agricultural Fields
3) 9 underage wall-builders
Row 7
六人付田官 [Line 3]
6 persons are given to [the Office of] the Agricultural Fields
4) 5 underage grain-pounders
Row 7
其三人付田官 [Line 7]
Of which 3 persons are given to [the Office of] the Agricultural Fields
The number of the tuli given to the Office of the Agricultural Fields amounts to 56 persons, which is about 25 percent of the total number of tuli held by the Office of Convict Labor at the time. Slip 8-1566 confirms that the major labor force of agricultural production in Qianling was from the Office of Convict Labor. The verso side of the slip lists the types of laborers working in the Office of the Agricultural Fields in 217 bce, which is the year right after Qianling County began to cultivate its fields:
Recto side
卅年六月丁亥朔甲辰，田官守敬敢言之：「疏書日食牘北（背）上」 [line 1]
In the thirtieth year [of the First Emperor of Qin], on the day Jiashen of the sixth month, of which the first day is Dinghai (July 26, 217 bce), Probationary [Bailiff of the Office of the] Agricultural Fields ventures to state that “the [details of those who received] daily rations are listed on the back side [of this tablet].”
敢言之 [line 2]
I venture to state it.
Verso side
Row 1
城旦、鬼薪十八人 [Line 1]
Wall-builders and gatherers of firewood for the spirits: 18 persons
小城旦十人 [Line 2]
Underage wall-builders: 10 persons
舂廿二人 [Line 3]
Grain-pounders: 22 persons
Row 2
小舂三人 [Line 1]
Underage grain-pounders: 3 persons
隸妾居貲三人 [Line 2]
Bondwomen who are [in residence of government facilities] paying off fines [by labor]: 3 persons
戊申，水下五刻，佐壬以來/尚半 逐手 [Line 3]
On the day Wushen (July 30), [when] the water reached the fifth mark of a clepsydra, Assistant Ren arrived [with the document]. Shang split [the sealed document]. Zhu handled [the document].
The Office of Convict Labor held all these 56 laborers. The Office of the Granaries did provide laborers for the Office of the Agricultural Fields,Footnote 81 but the number appears to be fewer than that from the Office of Convict Labor. Slip [10-1170] records that the Office of the Granaries sent 510 bondwomen to the Office of the Agricultural Fields in a month, but this is the ji (lit. cumulative) number. If we divide it by the number of days in that month, there were only 17 bondwomen sent to the Office of the Agricultural Fields.Footnote 82
More importantly, it appears to be a regular practice that a significant number of laborers held by the Office of the Granaries were exempt from the agricultural duties. Slip 8-130+8-190+8-193 states that “those laborer-servants who should work as servants or cooks for the officials all belonged to [the Office of] the Granaries” (諸徒隸當為吏僕養者皆屬倉).Footnote 83 According to the ordinance quoted in the multi-slip manuscript, Qianling County was not allowed to engage laborers who had already been assigned to the tasks of working as servants (pu 僕) and cooks (yang 養) for the officials in agricultural production.
In addition, a Shuihudi Qin law shows that skilled bondservants and bondwomen could become artisans (gong 工).Footnote 84 Slips 8-1490+8-1518 and 8-1560 reveal that the Office of the Granaries could provide runners (zou 走) for the scribe director at the court. Slip 9-1408+9-2288 records a case that indicates that the Office of Convict Labor could not provide skilled laborers for the Office of the Armory (ku 庫) for making a weaving machine (zu yong ji 組用機) and the bailiff of the Armory had to request the laborers from the Office of the Granaries through the court. Notably, the artisans, runners, and weavers were all exempt from agricultural work according to the ordinance quoted in the multi-slip manuscript.
Given the evidence presented above, it is safe to argue that the labor force of agricultural production in Qianling County relied mainly on the labor pool held by the Office of Convict Labor. Slip 9-2289 notes that Bailiff of Convict Labor Hun submitted the account book in 216 bce, which was the seventh year since the establishment of the Qianling County and the third year that Qianling began to cultivate its land. Hun sent 56 laborers, which is about a quarter of the laborers held by his office at the time, to the Office of the Agricultural Fields. Bailiff of Convict Labor Yan and the others were also supposed to provide laborers for the Office of the Agricultural Fields to perform agricultural tasks between 221 and 219 bce—as Hun did in 216 bce. However, they only started to do this in 218 bce.
Conclusion
This article has been a contextualized study of a multi-slip administrative document on the Qin resource management in a newly conquered area. The document sheds new light not only on the actual practice of the Qin written communications and management of laborers, but also on the Qin general strategy of managing human resources. The ordinance quoted by Governor Li of Dongting in the document stipulates that “one must not order officials’ servants and cooks, runners, artisans, weavers, office door guards, carvers, and those who are employed on urgent matters to engage in cultivation.” Apparently, the intention of this ordinance was to make sure that the laborers would not be overwhelmed with multiple tasks. Closer attention should be paid to those skilled laborers, such as artisans and weavers, as they were always exempt from harsher work. A Shuihudi Qin law states, “When bondservants have skills and could be made artisans, they must not be made servants or cooks of other people.”Footnote 85 The Qin were well aware of the significance of putting these laborers in a position that could maximize their productivity.
Although the Qin always emphasized the priority of employing resources in agricultural production, they did not neglect the significance of other types of production. The idea about maintaining the balance between human and land resources in the Book of Lord Shang is an ideological representation of the Qin strategy for managing resources. In practice, the Qin had to maintain this balance through a categorization process of laborers. In order to determine the tasks to be assigned to each labor unit, this process involved not only the evaluation of the skills required for each task, but also the onerousness of the task. An order from the Chief Prosecutor (yushi [dafu] ling 御史[大夫]令) seen in slip 8-1514 indicates that the Qin put much effort into categorizing laborers according to the difficulty of the tasks they performed:
各苐(第)官徒丁【粼】Footnote 86 … … 
(劇)者為甲，次為乙，次為丙，各以其事
(劇)易次之。
Rank each of those official laborers who reached adulthood … those capable of taking the most onerous tasks as jia, the next as yi, and the next as bing. Range each of those according to the difficulty and the easiness of their tasks.Footnote 87
By doing so, the Qin government could make full use of human resources by assigning each of the labor units to a position that would allow it to reach its highest productivity.
However, in reality, the Qin government always encountered resistance in the process, especially during the early stages of its occupation of newly conquered land. As the document examined in this article reveals, the resistance often came from the inside: the officials who were familiar with the daily routine in the administrative system.Footnote 88 Bailiff of Convict Labor Yan and others failed to follow the instruction on the use of laborers in agricultural production that was clearly stated in the ordinance. The dereliction of duty on their part wasted both the usable human and land resources, which is intolerable from the perspective of a ruler. To minimize the harmfulness of such resistance, the Qin heavily relied upon a system of supervision and punishment. I argue that the remarkable increase of the number of opened-up fields in the year following that the passing of the Governor of Dongting's instruction of punishment down to Qianling might suggest the effectiveness of this system, which might, in turn, explain why the Qin would be inclined to rely on it for the operation of the state.Footnote 89
Appendix: Bailiffs of Convict Labor of Qianling County mentioned in the Liye materials from 221 to 210 bce
