戰國秦漢時期大、小畝制新證

A Re-examination of the Standards of Large Mu and Small Mu of Land in the Warring States and Qin-Han Period

張學鋒(Zhang Xuefeng)

《中國文化研究所學報》 新8期 (1999/01) Pp. 1-33

https://doi.org/10.29708/JCS.CUHK.199901_(8).0001

並列摘要

This article seeks to re-examine the implementation of the standards of large mu 畝 (ridge) and small mu of cultivated land, particularly the standardization of the mu in the Warring States and Qin-Han period, in light of the agricultural capacity of the independent individual peasant families (自耕農) based on the documents written on wooden or bamboo strips (簡牘) excavated during the past three decades, and on literary records and recent studies. It can be summarized as follows: 1. Early in the end of the Spring and Autumn period 春秋, the small mu standard of land originated in the Western Zhou 西周 seemed to begin to break down considering the fact that the practice of an enlarged mu standard with more bu 步 (step) had already come into existence in the San Jin 三晉 region. Influenced by this region, the Qin government also started to make the large mu with 240 bu in size the legal standard for the kingdom under Shang Yang's reform (商鞅變法) in the mid-Warring States period. Since then, the Qin government implemented the large mu standard in both its old kingdom and newly conquered territories stage by stage. 2. The small mu with 100 bu was still generally accepted as the legal standard measure of land among the states in the Guandong 關東 region during the mid/late Warring States period. But on the other hand, it is very probable that the standard of the large mu with 240 bu or another number of bu was into practice in light of the bamboo document called ＂law of the field＂ (田法) excavated in Han tomb No. 1 of the Silver Bird Mountain (銀雀山).This revealed that there was a tendency towards standardization of the size of mu in the late Warring States period. 3. The view that the Qin dynasty unified China and hence standardized the measures except the mu by its own system is undeniably questionable. After closely examining the rich archaeological material and literary record, the author draws the conclusion that the previous argument that the standardization of the mu took place in the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han (Han Wudi, 漢武帝) is invalid. Indeed, the Qin-Han government had already instituted the large mu as the legal standard measure of land before Emperor Wu's time, and thus the standardization of the mu should be dated back the unification of the Qin empire.