Basic Research for the Documental Administration in Han Period seen from Dunhuang and Juyan wood slips

1999 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 10610363
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Asian history
• Research Institution: Kansai University
• Principal Investigator: FUJITA Takao Kansai University, Faculty of Letters, Associate Professor, 文学部, 助教授 (90298836)
• Project Period (FY): 1998 – 1999
• Keywords: administrative system / Juyan / Dunhuang / manuscript / wood slips / Qin and Han period

Research Abstract

It is not necessary to say that a number of wood slips which were discovered from the North-west Chinese frontier are the most precious materials for the research of administrative system in Han period. For this kind of research, the identification of each office that bears the administrative documents is of fatal importance. I tried in this report to offer the basic method to identify offices by using wood slips, and to suggest some controversial point.
Generally speaking, there are four method to identify office : 1)the name of office in the postal address ; 2)the name of office in tags attached to some goods ; 3)the name of sender or receiptor of official documents ; 4)the contents of administrative records. The application of these method to the wood slips from Juyan proves that there are some exceptions to the rule, which are thought to be caused by secondary re-moving or re-using, and in Dunhuang wood slips, things get more difficult to solve. I made close investigations on the slips discovered from the site TVlb in Dunhaung for example, and reached the conclusion that this site is not a watch station nor a mere watch tower, but some intermediate office between them.