The Tang Dynasty also had a household register, with millions of population data, all by hand

Classmates! Good morning, teachers!

Today, let’s talk about a particularly interesting topic:

手实.

At first glance at the word "手实", many people may be confused, but the explanation is actually very simple, nothing more than two words:

户REG .

In the fourth year of the Tang Dali calendar year, Shoushi, Yiheli, Xuanquan Township, Dunhuang County, Shazhou

During the Tang Dynasty, the term Shoushi had specific directivity and reflected the facts. It is household registration statistics in the Tang Dynasty.

For example, there are 10 million people in Datang. In order to facilitate population investigation and tax statistics, the Datang court will require the people to actively report the family population. According to the total number of people in the family, how many people are there A mu of land, these data and information related to household registration are recorded into document files, and then handed over to the government. This primary document file is called "手实".

to put it bluntly, it is what we call "户口本", except that the actual hand also contains asset information such as fields, but there is one thing to note. Strictly speaking, "hands" is just equivalent to The primary text form of household registration, or in simple terms, is equivalent to a form filled out by an individual. After it is submitted, it must be checked and checked by relevant officials, and then combined into a general household registration file for the Ministry of Household to count the national household registration. Such purposes are actually quite different from our current account book.

The concept of hand-realization is not unique to the Tang Dynasty. It was first seen in the classics of the Pre-Qin period-《管子》:

The husband Guan Zhongzhi Kuang Tianxia also, its implementation seven The ruler, dutiful relocation, the five kinds are all unsuitable, and they immediately become [hands].

At that time, although the concept of "hands real" had already appeared, everyone just used hand reals as a noun, that is, the actual amount of land in the hands of the people, defined by the word hand real.

Unearthed from the Tomb of Astana in Turpan: Ninghecaishoushi in the first year of Zaichu

Later with the development of history, the term shoushi was used exclusively in the Tang Dynasty To refer to household registration file .

For example, how many households there are in a certain village, and how much land they collectively own, the Datang government will require all households to record their actual situation in accordance with the law, and finally submit them in a unified way. Then this is closely related to household registration. The document is called "手实".

as stated in "Tang Lvshu Discussion" :

Li Zhengzhiren, he is more than a household registration, and a book of registration.

This "里正" is the town official responsible for household registration statistics and investigations, and tax collection. So from the above, it can be seen that one of Lizheng’s responsibilities is from the hands of the people After receiving the "hands-on", and then relying on this as a basis, compile and compile the household registration files for the government's tax collection and inspection purposes.

I think many friends have to ask when they see this. Since the people write out "hands" based on their own situation, and then hand it in for the state to collect taxes from themselves, what if someone conceals it?

Hey, in fact, it’s true, so the Tang Dynasty’s report is real.

First, it all depends on the personal integrity of the people. Everyone reports honestly, so the natural data tends to be honest. To be accurate.

Second, from the legal level, with stringent legal provisions, the township officials’ sense of responsibility is enhanced and the integrity of the tax system is guaranteed.

In the early Tang Dynasty, the people’s initiative was very high, and most people reported according to the facts. How many people in the family, how many mu of land, and how many catties per mu are produced are based on the facts.The actual situation was written into a detailed manual, and finally reported to the government through Lizheng.

Screenshot of "Chang'an Twelve Hours" dialogue

During this process, "Lizheng" will be responsible for collecting the hands. After he finishes the statistics, he will go to the people's homes to check opponents. If someone conceals the truthfulness of the truth, or if Lizheng fails to check it, Shangfeng officials will be held accountable when they learn that they must punish Lizheng as the main responsible person in accordance with the explicit provisions in the "Law of the Tang Dynasty".

"Tang Law Commentary·Volume 12": Li Zhengzhiren, palm case is better than household registration, collection of hands is solid, and registration book. Those who are not aware of missing their account will be exempted from the account, the account is missed, and the number of years is increased or decreased, 40 for one mouthful, one for three mouths, one hundred for a stick, and one for ten mouths. The crime is three years.

The general meaning of this law is that Lizheng is responsible for investigating the local household registration, collecting people’s hands, and making household registration files. And if there is any omission in the process of closing, then he must accept the corresponding punishment.

For example, Zhang San’s family originally had five people, but Zhang San secretly bought Lizheng in order to pay less tax. Lizheng took advantage of Zhang San to help Zhang San conceal the report, or underreport one person, so few The person who reported is regarded as quit his account, and is quit.

If one person is underreported, then that person will be regarded as 漏口.

According to the Law of the Datang Family Order, in Lizheng, if one person is underreported, he will be beaten forty. If three or more are underreported, the crime will be increased by one and the rod will be beaten by one hundred. If you report ten, you will be imprisoned for three years.

Cui Qi's self-report in "The Twelfth Hours of Chang'an", he and his elder brother Cui Liulang are both escaped farmers Lizheng’s fairness and integrity, increased Lizheng’s sense of responsibility for reporting truthfully, and ensuring the honesty of the people’s reporting truthfully, thus enacting strict laws. Therefore, most of the Lizheng in the early Tang Dynasty were diligent and diligent and went door-to-door. Visiting and investigating the household registration, collecting the actual data, and finally calculating the actual annual yield of the people and the household registration, and finally causing the "registration book" to be reported to the government.

The government office mentioned here is naturally "户部".

The Ministry of Households can calculate how many people there are in Datang, how much land these people cultivate, and how many acres of annual output based on the data being reported in each grassroots level, and then calculate the annual taxation. As a basis, conduct timely national policy formulation and regulation.

So from this level, is directly related to the central fiscal revenue of the Tang Dynasty, which is of great significance.

Take the bridge section in "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" as an example. If everyone at the grassroots level is doing things fairly and the people take the initiative to report truthfully, then the annual tax collected by the Tang Dynasty will be relatively complete. But if someone falsified and deliberately concealed the report, the tax collected by the court would naturally decrease accordingly, leading to the occurrence of negative tax evasion and tax evasion, and the treasury would gradually become empty, resulting in financial weakness.

"Old Tang Book · Biographies 38 · Biography of Wei Si Li": Today, I got off my hukou, and more than half of them fled, the rent has been reduced, and the country is insufficient.

Then Li is in the process of collecting "hands", how to ensure the authenticity and accuracy of the hands?

Especially in ancient times when there were no cameras and computers, it is conceivable that the work was very difficult, but the ancients still thought of corresponding methods and measures.

In the Tang Dynasty, the actual hand is not as simple as what I mentioned above. I just describe the whole process in summary terms. The actual verification process is quite cumbersome. The specific method is called

Group appearance.

"Tang Huiyao·Volume Eighty-Five·Tuan Appearance": All prefectures in the world have a group appearance every year, which is determined by the renewal of the year and can be relied upon.

This is particularly interesting, because the ancients are not like our current police station, who can go to the household registration section to take pictures, so the ancients used the physical features and actual age of the people in their hands. Adding a description of the person's appearance now seems very interesting.

For example, Li Si, who is eighteen years old, has a pockmark on his chin, and he will write in his hand:

Li Si, who is eighteen years old, has a pockmark on his chin.

Another example is Wang Er, who is 40 years old, has crooked eyes and slanted mouth, so add:

Wang Er, who is 40 years old, has slanted eyes and slanted mouth.

Of course, I just give an example. The ancients did not write in this way, but referring to the household registration system in Japan imitating the Datang household registration system in the same period, in order to be able to accurately describe the appearance, The features of the person’s appearance will be specified.

Professor Zhang Rongqiang, deputy dean of the School of History of Beijing Normal University, wrote a paper "Examination of the Relationship between Handfulness and Rural Accounts" in "New Tangshu·Shihuo Zhi":

The system of group appearance was also imitated by Japan at that time. In the "Unexplained Accounting of Osumi Country in the Seventh Year of Tianping" in the Masakura Institute, not only the names of the head of the household and the members of the family are noted "Zhengding" and "Shaoding", but also the head and facial features of each person, such as "right" "Cheek sunspot", "Romejiri sunspot", "neck sunspot" and so on.

According to "Tang Kaiyuan Four Years (716) Cihui Township in Dunhuang County, Shazhou" unearthed in Dunhuang, Part 3 , we can explore part of the household registration files at that time ：

The head of the household Wang Miaozhi Nian Wu picked up Lu, a widow, and got married after two years of birth. He entered the county in Linchili, Dunhuang Township, and advocated a benevolent wife.

The female was married after three years of accounts in Kaiyuan, and the head of the household, Yu Shanyi, Sun Nan Fubao was his wife.

The head of the household Yu Shanyi Nianba picked up a one-year-old man under the middle school class.#Sun Nanfu Baonian two years old Baiding

After the three-year account of the three-year-old wife Yang Nianyi, married Wang Miaozhi, the head of the family, Wang Wang Wang, the daughter of the family in Linnei

The household registration information of a place in Dunhuang during the Tang Tianbao period, the text in the red box is: "Tianbao (?) Disabled household registration" and "Dunhuang County in the fourth year of Tang Dynasty" Pingquan

(Note: The text in the red box I marked is: "Tianbao (? This should be a certain year) Disabled household registration" and "Disabled household registration of Pingquan Township, Suohuang County, Dali four years.")

(above: reference picture, this book is a special issue of the fourth volume of the semi-monthly food and commodities fifth issue" published in the 25th year of the Republic of China (1936-08), this issue of The main content is the collection of the household registration books of the Tang Dynasty, which contains "two types of Kaiyuan household registration, Tianbao incomplete household register, and Ding Ji in Tianbao ten years in various townships in Miaohuang County, Ding Ji fragmentation" and other Tang Dynasty household registration information.)

On the occasion of the New Year’s Eve, Lizheng will use the hand-to-hand facts collected at the beginning of the year to conduct verification and inspection door to door, and this method of verifying information is called "团脸".

"Tang Hui Yao·Volume Eighty-Five·Tuan Appearance": All prefectures in the world have a group appearance every year, which is determined by the renewal of the year and can be relied upon by the book.

is usually conducted once a year. For example, at the beginning of the year, Lizheng visited the villages under his jurisdiction and collected hands. At the end of the year, he would have to visit the grassroots again. According to the physical characteristics and age of the person recorded in the hand, it is compared with the actual situation, and if there is any change, timely modification and addition are made.

Because the appearance and age of a person will change and grow with the passage of time, so in addition to the annual group appearance,It is also necessary to formulate a "fixed book" every three years, that is, use the "group appearance" in the previous point as a basis, and formulate a general "fixed book" based on this, usually after checking the hands of each household , With a three-year cycle, the content that needs to be corrected or added is added to the self-reported hand of the people, and copied again, and glued into a volume for inspection.

"Tanghuiyao·Volume Eighty-Five·Tuan Appearance": All households will enter the Ding, old and sick, should be exempted from school service and waiters, all in the county's personal appearance, which is determined The book must not be changed in the future. If there is a suspected treacherous person, please follow the situation to settle the matter.

For example, Li Si’s old mother unfortunately passed away due to illness within three years, so Lizheng will correct the actual information accordingly, which is equivalent to updating the household registration database in time, and the specific content Precious historical materials can be seen:

"Hands in Yiheli, Xuanquan Township, Dunhuang County, Shazhou, Shazhou in the fourth year of the Tang Dali calendar year":

The head of the household Wang Shanzi's seventeen-year-old Wuqi Wei Qianyuan died after the third year of registration

Wife Zhang Niansi picked up the old man's wife died after the third year of Qianyuan

As you can see, in this four-year Tang Dali handwork In the document, a householder named "王山子" in Xuanquan Township, Dunhuang County, was recorded who died at at the age of 87, which is the third year of Qianyuan (760 AD). , And his wife Zhang, not long after, also died in Qianyuan three years, but only 40 years old.

Through this household registration record, we can see a lot of in-depth information, such as:

Qianyuan three years, that is, AD 760, the reigning emperor is the Tang Dynasty Zong Li Yu.

The head of the household, Wang Shanzi, located in Xuanquan Township, Dunhuang County, was an official of the imperial court, from an official to Wuqiwei (military position), from the seventh rank, died in the third year of Qianyuan, at the age of 87.

and his wife Zhang passed away, but she was only 40 years old.

I dare to guess that this shows that when Zhang married Wang Shanzi, he was not an adult, and this is why the age gap between husband and wife is huge.

further speculates that Zhang is likely to be Wang Shanzi’s second wife, because the age difference between the two at the time of death is 47 years old, so when Wang Shanzi married him, he was at least 60 years old and above, and Zhang’s Only about 15 years old.

So through these two short sentences, we can learn a lot of key information related to people’s livelihood at that time:

First, we can understand the background and identity of the ancients, such as the old man Wang Shanzi, official To Wu Qiwei.

The second is to understand the special circumstances of marriage in the Tang Dynasty. For example, old men marry young wives, elderly men are called "old men" in household registration, and their wives are called "old men's wives." "Wait.

Based on these two pieces of household registration information alone, many relevant contents can be drawn, and we can also see from them that the household registration system of the Tang Dynasty was quite complete at that time.

To sum up, the manual formulation and implementation improved the household registration statistics of the Tang Dynasty, and the complete household registration system promoted the economic development of the Tang Dynasty and enabled the Tang Dynasty to have tax revenue. Evidence can be followed and evidence can be found, and the relevant laws have strengthened the responsibility and fairness of the entry officials at the grassroots level, safeguarding the timely update of population data, and further ensuring the stability of fiscal revenue, resulting in the fullness of the national treasury, and the common prosperity of the economy and people’s livelihood The Great Tang Dynasty.

Therefore, a complete household registration system is not only conducive to the country’s statistics on population and other data, but also closely related to a country’s fiscal revenue. Throughout the ages, the importance and significance of the household registration system, It is reflected in every historical period, and the complete statistics of household registration is the cornerstone of a country’s economic prosperity.It can be described as the foundation of a country and the law of a century.