Abstract
According to the Liye and Yuelu bamboo slips, there was a division of power at the local commandery (jun) level in the Qin dynasty, as junshou had the authority over financial issues, junwei had the authority over personnel appointments, and junjianyushi had the authority over the circulation of laws and maps. These three government departments (fu) operated independently of each other since each of them had unique power over specific affairs. Moreover, as the authority over judicial affairs was shared by both junshou and junjianyushi and the authority over military affairs was shared by both junshou and junwei, the commandery system of Qin embodied the spirit of mutual check and balance. In other words, junshou did not have full and sole control over the commandery as well as the affiliated counties.
This finding overthrows the claim made by Yan Geng-Wang (1916-1996), who argued that in the Qin and Han dynasties, each commandery had a single chief executive in charge of all affairs. According to the recently unearthed bamboo slips, the Qin commanderies did not have a single chief executive in charge of all affairs, and instead had three independent and yet also mutually supervised departments. This design was intended to prevent any kind of power monopoly. Thus, the Qin commandery system reflected the philosophy of Legalism and was completely different from the Han administrative system.
Keywords
commandery and county system, local administration, local check and balance, Liye bamboo slips, Yuelu bamboo slips
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