The famous masterpiece of the Tang Dynasty, "Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty", is named after the organization, employment, and job distribution of the six departments in the province of Shangshu. This book has detailed provisions on the functions and powers and personnel distribution of various departments and organizations at that time.
This book became a great book of administrative regulations in Chinese history, and since then, all generations of the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties have attached importance to this valuable code of law and regarded it as a guideline.
For more than 1,000 years, the state has carried out administrative affairs, and generally this book has been used as a model, with little change.
Since then, only a part of the order has been issued in Zhongshumen, and there has never been a major change in the six-part system of Shangshu Province that implements the order.
This book "Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty", which was compiled by Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty in accordance with the current laws and regulations of the Tang Dynasty, can be said to be the specific facts and the current system at that time, which is different from the ideal hope.
Excerpted from the second lecture of Qian Mu's "Political Gains and Losses in China in the Past Dynasties" "The ** Organization of the Tang Dynasty".
The Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty is an important work on the administrative system of the Tang Dynasty, the earliest existing administrative code, and the earliest existing political book. It has a very prominent position in the history of Chinese administration.
Chinese dynasties are extremely historical.
The history I am talking about here does not refer specifically to history, but to the original meaning of the word history.
In Chinese history, every dynasty and every generation has a huge group of historians, who are responsible for recording everything, including daily life. For example, the Liye Qin Jane unearthed in Liye, Hunan Province, is the daily life recorded by a group of county-level historians.
The daily life of these records, the recorder is history, a very low-level **, and even called a knife and pen officer, and their records become history, that is, history. History, which we understand in a narrow sense, is a memorabilia compiled by later generations based on these records, extracted from the parts that they considered important.
For example, "Spring and Autumn", "Zuo Chuan", "Historical Records", "Book of Han", etc., all belong to the memorabilia of historical evolution.
These records focus on political latitude and latitude, and have been compiled by later generations, first, after a lot of trade-offs, second, with the social value orientation and personal value orientation of the time, third, many historical facts, which have long been tampered with by those in power, and fourth, for the sake of curiosity and readability, the compiler added a large number of literary techniques.
In this way, these histories are no longer the original phase of history, but have become different phases.
Records of a purely political nature such as the Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty have more historical authenticity and historical value because they do not involve or mainly involve personal history, and have always been despised by literati because they do not have the readability of the biographical form of historical records.
Later generations of researchers suffered from the lack of a set of relevant legal codes, so they could not get the full picture of the Shang Dynasty law.
The Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty is the first work of administrative law in China, the full name of which is the Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty, which is an official work of the Xuanzong period of the Tang Dynasty.
In the tenth year of Kaiyuan, Tang Xuanzong Li Longji summoned Lu Jian, a resident of the house, to repair the "Six Classics", and personally formulated the six articles of science, education, etiquette, government, criminal and affairs as the compilation outline, and the prime minister of Lizheng Academy (later renamed Jixian Academy) was the prime minister.
The level of this matter was very high at the beginning, the emperor's decree, the prime minister was in charge, can the specifications not be high? The prime ministers who successively led the compilation of this book include Zhang Shuo, Xiao Song, Zhang Jiuling, etc. More than 10 people participated in the compilation, which lasted more than 10 years. It was not until the twenty-sixth year of Kaiyuan that it was written, and the following year it was presented to Li Longji by Prime Minister Li Linfu, so the title of the book was written by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty, and Li Linfu was annotated.
The book is divided into 30 volumes, the first volume of which is the province of the three divisions, the three dukes, and the Shangshu. The following volumes are divided into six parts: officials, households, rituals, soldiers, criminals, and workers. Then the five provinces of Xumenxia, Zhongshu, Secretary, Dianzhong, and Inner Servants, as well as Yushitai, Nine Temples (Taichang Temple, Guanglu Temple, Weiwei Temple, Zongzheng Temple, Taifu Temple, Dali Temple, Honglu Temple, Sinong Temple) Five Supervisors (Guozijian, Shaofu Supervisor, Ordnance Supervisor, Coinage Supervisor, Will be Supervisor, Dushui Supervisor) Twelve Guards and East Palace. The last volume is for local officials, which are divided into administrative organizations such as the three prefectures, the governors, the protectors, and the prefectures and counties.
Mr. Qian said, "The famous masterpiece of the Tang Dynasty, the book "Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty", is named after the organization, employment, and job distribution of the six departments in the province of Shangshu. It means that Mr. Qian has not read this book, and there is no current one for checking. Otherwise, it would not be said so.
If I don't check carefully, I will have the same determination as Mr. Qian. There were six departments in the province of Shangshu in the Tang Dynasty, which were all administrative, and the "Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty" probably recorded the organization, staffing, and official rank of each department according to the example of these six departments.
On the other hand, I am a little puzzled, the so-called three-province six-ministry system, the earliest six-province six-ministry system, when did it become three provinces? Therefore, I checked the information and learned that the six provinces did not become three provinces at all, and the Tang Dynasty was still six provinces, and the other three provinces were the secretary province, the palace province, and the inner service province. In fact, it is the three provinces of the inner court and the three provinces of the outer court.
In this case, why is the "Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty" named according to the six-part system, but not according to the six-province system?
For this doubt, I checked the relevant information again, and only then did I know that Mr. Qian's statement was simply a matter of what he wanted. The reason why it is called the Six Classics is because when Tang Xuanzong arranged this work, he had a general idea, which was to compile it into six canons according to the order of the "Zhou Rites", including the governing code, the religious code, the ritual code, the political code, the criminal code, and the affairs code.
In fact, it was not sorted that way.
Mr. Qian doesn't even need to read all the "Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty", just need to look at the table of contents, and he will not make another mistake, that is, to identify the functions of the Jiuqing in the Tang Dynasty and transfer them all to **. Obviously, the ** (broad sense**) of the Tang Dynasty is still divided into inner courts and outer courts, and outside the three inner provinces, there are also Yushitai, nine temples, five eunuchs, and twelve guards.
The chief official of the Imperial Historical Observatory is still the former Imperial Historian, and the chief official of the Nine Temples is still Jiuqing. However, the three inner provinces are veritable inner courts, and the five prisons and twelve guards of the nine temples of the Imperial History Taijia cannot be identified as pure inner court institutions, and they are not subordinate to the three provinces and six departments of the outer courts.
But after all, the five eunuchs and twelve guards of the Nine Temples of the Imperial History Observatory are a huge group of organizations, and it is impossible to have no subordination, and this subordination should be in the Imperial Council.
It can be seen that the foreign dynasties of the Tang Dynasty actually had two sets of implementation systems, one was subordinate to the Imperial Council, and the other was subordinate to the Political Affairs Hall.
Frankly, I also did not study the Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty, so I am not entirely aware of this division and subordination. You must figure these out, as long as you take a look at "Tang Liudian", you will see it at a glance.
My focus is not on history, but on the ancient administrative system. Therefore, I think that it is enough to discuss the separation and enforcement of public and private power in the Tang Dynasty, the pattern of the separation of powers under the Tang Imperial Council, and the basic idea of the emperors to control the political power and weaken and balance the executive power.
In other words, what I am looking for is the metaphysics of history and politics, and all the metaphysics is only used to prove its metaphysics, and this kind of evidence does not need to be large and complete, and there must be no fundamental errors, which is enough.
As for Mr. Qian, he said, "This book has become a great book of administrative regulations in Chinese history, and since then, all generations of the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties have attached importance to this valuable code of law and regarded it as a guideline." ”
Generally good. Previously, there was no such law to follow, but now, there is a model placed there, and there is a basis for the establishment of the ** mechanism in all dynasties.
In fact, for more than 1,000 years, it has not remained basically unchanged, but has been changing, but it has never deviated from its origins. Even if the Tang Dynasty changed, there was a sect. This sect is partly from the feudal era, as well as from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and naturally from the Qin and Han dynasties.
This sect is the law of the balance of power after private power enters public power.