Study On Testing Verdicts Of Tang Dynasty

Verdict was an important literary form of Chinese classic literature, which has been developing for a long time before Tang Dynasty. It was a kind of applicative judicial document when it came into being. In Tang’s official-selected examinations, it was called Testing Verdict. Owing to Tang’s official-selected system, Testing Verdict was quite popular and finally became the main kind of Verdict in Tang Dynasty. The study on Tang’s Testing Verdict, is helpful to understand the Dynasty’s literature and culture completely.The essay is to make an entire and systematic research on Testing Verdict, from the angle of Tang’s official-selected system, and the main contents are as follows:Chapter One A Summary of Verdict in Tang Dynasty about thirteen hundred Verdict remains after the documents in Tang Dynasty are sorted out and they can be classified into three kinds:Testing Verdict, Case Verdict and Essayistic Verdict. Of them, eleven hundred and eighty five are Testing Verdict.Chapter Two A Textual Research on the mechanism of Tang’s testing verdicts There are four ways involved in Testing Verdict to select government officers, and they are for people from different social ranks, of different degree of difficulty, and of different proportions in enrollment. In a word, Testing Verdict plays an increasingly important role in Tang’s official-selected system.Chapter Three the Structure of Testing Verdict A piece of Testing Verdict includes the Title, Test question and Verdict answer. Test question has three resources:judicial cases or current events designated ancient classics and rare records. A large proportion of Test question comes from judicial cases at the beginning, but it turns to the other two rapidly in several years, and the three of them survive together in the end. Accordingly, Testing Verdict changes from easy to hard, and ends in moderate degree.Test question can be divided into five parts on the basis of content:people involved the background, the event process, decisions on objections and the plea. Each part can be detailed or brief, so can Test question. What’s more, except people involved and the events, the core of Test question, the other three parts may be omitted entirely.Verdict answer includes Entry word, Main part, and End word. It starts with Entry word, which is to introduce the background such as people involved, events, locations and so on. As the main part, Main part is to retell the case and show the critical evidence. Verdict answer means the final decision to the case.The literal characteristics of Verdict answer lie on its choice of words and the way it gives its expressions. A good piece of Verdict answer pays attention to the use of antithetical parallelism and pursues the harmony of the rhythm. The statements of Verdict answer, focus on narration of the event’s background, the sympathy towards misfortune, or are developed in a reasonable way. It is seen that the author is a capable official and a talented writer as well.Chapter Four The Subjects of Testing Verdict According to modern jurisprudence, judicial cases of Tang’s Testing Verdict can be divided into criminal cases, administrative cases, civil cases and so on. As cases used in examinations, they have something in common with real cases, but differs in many ways. They are hard to make appropriate judgments but have relatively identical answers. Most of them are materials from classic records. These characteristics are bound up with official selected activities.Chapter Five Grounds to Judge Testing Verdict All kinds of laws, rules and principles are used to make judgments in Tang Dynasty. They are direct as well as the most important basis to reward or punish people. When rules contradict each other, the decisions will be made according to the latest one. And if there are contradictions between common rules and those from senior government department, senior rules will be adopted.What’s more, the Confucian’s classics are inner grounds to make judgments in Tang Dynasty. Ancient Chinese systems and regulations written in Confucian works, Confucian spirits about manners, humanity, filial piety and fraternal duty, typical people and deeds are all regarded as bases of judgments. Of them humanity, filial piety and fraternal duty are of the most importance.The text-based analysis shows that the judgments, besides on the ground of laws and classics, are prone to change according to reality. And it happens that people make different or opposite decisions on the same thing. This phenomenon occurs because they judge by different bases.