The author had in the past wrote articles discussing how military services are fulfilled by collective military households in the Ming dynasty, and the common phenomena that whether descendants from the same family or people outside the family inherited the military service, the original household name registered in the early Ming was maintained in official records. This article, with an in-depth exploration into genealogies and references to existing research on the lijia system, further observes the inheritance of military obligation within the lijia system since the general household registration during the early Ming, and the influence of military status on the formation of lineages throughout the Ming dynasty. Furthermore, this article also analyses the relationships among three types of members within lineages of military households: household members who stayed in the original registered locations, who were distributed to garrisons under military administrations, and who settled down, purchased estates in/around distributed garrisons, and were administered by nearby county or district governments. Hopefully through this detailed and deliberative case study, we can better understand about military households and the operation of military system during the Ming dynasty.
the Ming dynasty, military status, lijia system, household registration system, lineages of military households
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