Study On The Tribute Of Tang Dynasty

Chinese ancient local tribute system, revised and supplement by dynasties, almost perfected develop to the Tang Dynasty, become a kind of political and economic law expressly system. Compared with previous generation, the Tang Dynasty has more detailed tribute data."Tang Liu Dian","Tong Dian","Annals of Yuan he County" and "new book of Tang-Geography", has a more detailed description of the Tang state soil tribute items, In this paper, several historical records of the local contribution are as the center, first to textual and release soil tributes which are necessary, and then analysis and study on various problems the Tang Dynasty soil tribute reflected.There are so many soil tribute goods in the Tang Dynasty, statistics tribute from several historical materials, remove the repeated, still remaining about500kinds. These local tribute items, some of which have already been familiar to people, some can roughly speculate what is it from literally means, some are strange. For the already known, it is easy for us to judge its properties, and also more convenient for the classification; but for those who rely on to speculate about the attributes from the literal meaning, sometimes it’s easy to be misled, and therefore not very sure of its function; while some strange tribute, or because of historical records error and easy to cause the will the wrongly accused of something else, or because of it has different names between ancient and modern, and difficult to determine what it is, or tribute exist in the ancient but not spread so far. only by our limited knowledge and experience, it is difficult to judge what exactly the local contribution is. Based on these textual and release for kind of tributes, corrected the errors in some historical records, identified the means of a number of soil tribute which are difficult differentiate items, put forward to my views on those local contribution which were controversial and be in suspense.Tang Dynasty local tribute system provisions:the states required for local tribute, and shall not exceed fifty bolts of silk markets, the tribute items purchased by the official. As the place dedicated to the imperial court, all tributes are of high quality. From the variety speaking, all tributes are the most unique and most representative products. Soil tribute goods production in the Tang Dynasty is often responsible for by special tribute households; after package, according to the geographic conditions and attributes of tribute, choose different modes of transportation; Tribute from each state display on the palace in unity at the first day of the year, after the review, tribute are sent to left and right reservoir bank stored and custody by Tai Fu SI; tribute expenses needs to check the wood agrees, the emperor often decide where are the local contribution consumption. Soil tribute and dedication have many differences in the Tang Dynasty, such as nature, subject, time, content and so on. The essence between the two is that:the local contribution is a system that national law specified expressly, and dedication just as a kind of social phenomenon which is breeding with social and economic development.The Tang Dynasty soil tribute information is abundant,"Tang Liu Dian","Tong Dian"," Annals of Yuan he County " and "new book of Tang-Geography" are the mainly historical data recorded the Tang Dynasty states soil tribute items in detail."Tang Liu Dian","Tong Dian" and "new book of Tang-Geography" record three periods of soil tribute completely,"Tong Dian" written for the early TianBao years, reflects the local tribute and specialty in the Tang period state, but the most important value of "Tong Dian" lies in its soil tribute contained many tribute quantity, this is the other two kinds of historical materials have not;"Tang Liu Dian" and "new book of Tang-Geography" in the local contribution data can represent respectively the early Tang and late Tang Dynasty states specialty, have very important value not only for the study on soil tribute features of each state, but also for comparative changes between the early and later Tang Dynasty. Relatively with the three kinds of historical data above," Annals of Yuan he County " records less comprehensive, but some individual soil tribute items in which are the other three historical did not load, but there are many error in " Annals of Yuan he County ", caution is required when using the screening.Take soil tribute in "Tong Dian" as an example, ten local tribute items have their own characteristics. Natural products are far higher than the proportion of artifacts in Longyou road and Guannei road, and there is no silk, animal class is obvious. Industrial products are far higher than the proportion of natural products in Hebei road and Henan Road, and the silk as the main characteristics. Hedong Road is the transition zone of west and east in the north five roads, which tribute have animal products as the northwest characteristics, and a small part of the textile and other handmade goods. Huainan road soil tribute showing north-south transition characteristics, the tribute is still to the majority of artifacts, but different with the Henan Road and Hebei road, the silk is much less, hemp fabric is more. And Yangzhou accounted for the majority in Huainan road, which reflects the prosperity economic of Yangzhou in the Tang Dynasty. In Jiangnan and Jiannan road, natural products and artificial products proportion approximately convergence. Shannan and Lingnan road, the proportion of natural products is higher than that of artificial products. There is a large difference between different regions of the soil tributes, showing distinctive regional characteristics. Mostly agricultural economy more developed regions, the proportion of its industrial products is high, and the semi agricultural or livestock based that economy owes developed area, the higher proportion of natural products.Comparing with the early Tang Dynasty, soil tribute types is preliminary changed significantly in the late Tang Dynasty, individual states reduced or unchanged excepted, the vast majority of states increased significantly in the soil tribute items. Southern states under the jurisdiction of Shannan Road, Jiangnan Road and Jiannan Road made the largest increase. The soil tributes could be divided into six categories, which were textiles, medicine, daily necessities, food, rare fowls and strange animals and others, each category of tribute content has increased in the late Tang Dynasty, of which the largest increase is diet class tribute. Tribute changes reflect that Chinese ancient local contribution experiencing the change from symbolic significance to the practical significance, and the Tang Dynasty is the key period of this transformation. The main factors that effects local contribution changes between the early Tang Dynasty and the late Tang Dynasty are central fiscal situation, the central government to the local control, the sustainable development of society economy in southern, the individual will of emperor and the local officials, geographical environment and the level of technology.