Abstract
Judging from a series of newly discovered materials, such as Zoumalou Han bamboo slip 0109, we can see that when the Qin and early Han governments registered people’s ages they did not include the year of birth in their “real age.” In August of each year, the government surveyed and updated their demographic data, but the data would not take effect until the beginning of the following year. According to “Ye shu” 葉書from the Shuihudi Qin bamboo slips, in the first year of the First Emperor of Qin, an individual named Xi was registered (fuji傅籍), for matters such as taxation and the corvée system, at the age of sixteen. Following revisions concerning punctuation to Yuelu shuyuan cang Qin jian (si) (Qin slips from the Yuelu Academy collection [four]), we know from “Weizu lü” 尉卒律on slips 135–138 that sons of those whose ranks were at or higher than shiwu士伍and gongshi公士were registered at the age of eighteen, whereas sons of those with the status of xiaojue小爵were enrolled at a later age. Furthermore, as an early Han statute, Er nian lüling二年律令shows that the age of registration can be divided into three classes: 1) sons of shiwu and bugeng不更were registered at the age of twenty; 2) sons of dafu大夫and wu dafu五大夫, as well as xiaojue with rank between bugeng and shangzao上造were registered at twenty-two; and 3) sons of qing卿and xiaojue of rank dafu were enrolled at twenty-four. According to the Hujia caochang Han bamboo slip “Sui ji” 歲紀, the above statute from Er nian lüling should be viewed as a result of the decree to “reduce the range of ages for registration” (jian lao zeng fu減老增傅, i.e., lowering the ceiling and raising the starting age for registration), issued in the first year of Empress Lü. From the first year of the First Emperor of Qin to the early Han dynasty, we see an apparent increase in the ages for registration, a phenomenon which is closely associated with the gradual shift from war to peace of the time.
Keywords
registration (fuji傅籍); reducing the range of ages for registration (jian lao zeng fu減老增傅); Qin slips from the Yuelu Academy collection; Hujia caochang Han bamboo slips; Zoumalou Han bamboo slips
Cite
Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.
