On Minor Officials Of Clan Kings In Nan Dynasty (420-589 A.D.) In Chinese Ancient History

This paper mainly studies the officials of a kingdom among the minor officials of a clan king and the minor officials who served in the mansion of a clan king. Officials of a kingdom could be divided into two categories: instructive official in the Mansion and affairs' official in a kingdom. The former was mainly responsible for the dan king's education whereas the latter was solely in charge of some specific affairs, such as guarding, governing people, budgeting, etc. The arrangement of some affairs' officials in Nan Dynasty (420-589 A.D.) was not so popular and this suggested the fact that the central government strengthened the centralization of the kingdom's sovereignty. The minor officials who served in a mansion of a clan king could be divided into two categories, i.e. civil officials and military officers. The senior level in civil officials, such as biejia, zhizhong, were not all selected by the central government but a few of them were so. The military officers were usually appointed by the central government but a clan king could recommend candidates. Thus the clan king had some right of choosing somebody and appointing his title to some degree. Among military officers, only zhangshi, sima, and canjun could get their salary whereas civil officials could not do so. But the latter could gather wealth illegally or through the awards given by the mansion's owner.Many minor officials were the relatives of a mansion's owner and were easily made use of by a clan king. Some minor officials assisted a clan king to found his empire when the imperial sovereignty was not so stable.They also performed actively during the regional rebellion. As a rule, xingshi usually aided the king because the latter was often too young to exercise his power independently. The relationship between xingshi and his master were often tense. A military mansion had a position for dianqian whose power differed from time to time, from different kings, from different situation of imperial sovereignty. So the power of dianqian could not be exaggerated.Minor officials of a clan king made great contribution to academic culture in Nan Dynasty, especially in Qi(479-502) and Liang(502-557). There appeared many people who valued literary writing and they formed some groups of men of letters led by the clan kings. The achievement of these people in academic culture mainly covered compiling books of different thinking schools, teaching and spreading doctrines in their own academic field, and the composition of poems about nature and poems about frontier fortress.