An Examination of the Household Unit in the Legal System of the Early Western Han, as Seen Primarily through The Statues of Year Two, Zhang Jia Shan Materials
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Jonathan Bell, David
Abstract
Studying the history of ancient Chinese jurisprudence is perhaps one of the most useful methods of understanding the tectonic shift in social structure that occurred between the Zhou and the Han Dynasties. This thesis utilizes legal documents from the Qin and the Han excavated in the past forty years in order to closely examine the most basic unit of Han society: the household. The materials, especially the codes contained in The Statues of Year Two, part of the trove discovered at Zhang Jia Shan in 1983, reveal a great deal about the nature of the household and its role in the relationship between state and society during the early Western Han. We can clearly see from the statues that the household (hu) has become differentiated from and has largely replaced the family unit (jia). The system of incorporating households into groups of five for administrative purposes had developed, by the Han, characteristics not see in the Qin: the reach of the system was extended as far as the Grandee of the Ninth Order, and incorporation was based upon geographic propinquity as opposed to kinship, vocation or social status. These mutations indicate that the early Western Han government was stepping up its efforts to exact tighter control on local communities, as part of an effort to more efficiently collect taxes and forced labor from the populace. The legal codes also reveal that it was common for adult sons to continue living under one roof before the death of their father, and that in order to be eligible to set up one''s own household, a certain amount of private property was required. Finally, the various statues dealing with inheritance of the title of "head of household" make clear that the government was interested in preserving the stability of each household unit.
Subjects
household
household incorporation
household establishment
SDGs
Type
thesis
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