Silver Moon Out Of The Yuan Dynasty Legal Cases Document Research

The documents excavated from the ruins of Khara-Khoto have great historical value, which includes more than300pieces of litigation documents of Yuan Dynasty, involving about170cases. The documents are comparatively complete judicial records of Edzina Route during Yuan Dynasty, which are strong supplements of legal materials then. They fill in the gaps in the missing judicial files of local organizations, and provide a wealth of detailed first-hand information for the research of law suits in the court system, legal status, social status and the decree law implementation in the local organizations of Edzina Route during Yuan Dynasty.At present, the relevant researches on the Khara-Khoto litigation documents mainly focused on the minor well-preserved documents and representative cases, and the majority of damaged, incomplete documents are not nearly dabbled in, lack of a comprehensive, systematic study in academic papers and monographs. In view of the precious value of the litigation documents and current weak academic research status, this paper systematically arranges all the documents and does deep research, with the support of literature, history, philology, ethnology and other disciplines of knowledge, as follows:The first part describes the profile of Edzina Route during Yuan Dynasty. It is an introduction to its history and the deployment of the route command (Zongguanfu), and an overall description of its natural environment, finance and economy, resident status, highly focusing on its geographical importance in the northwest part of Yuan Dynasty and even the whole country.The second part is about the content of the Khara-Khoto litigation documents. In this part the documents are presented about its publishing situation, and divided into seven categories according to its content, including slavery cases, marriage cases, murder cases, theft cases, property cases, land cases and other cases, all of which are sorted, introduced and listed of time, content, type.The third part is about textual research and interpretation of the Khara-Khoto litigation documents. The documents are summarized of its language value and features, and interpreted about its more than60legal words, with typical characteristics of the Yuan Dynasty, one by one.The fourth part is Edzina Route’s adjudication system research during Yuan Dynasty. Through these lawsuit documents, this paper focuses on Edzina Route’s legal system and lawsuit-trial system. It describes the deployment, function, cooperation of the route command of Edzina, its higher-up supervision division Suzheng Lianfang Si, and affiliated Siyu Si in detail, and the judicial process of these divisions completing lawsuit trial and implementation. It also summarizes the use of documents and writing form of judicial literature in the operation of administrative justice. Specific process is summed up of Edzina Route, including filing the lawsuit, official acceptance, investigation and evidence collection, officer deliberation (Yuanzuo Yini), sentence, execution, and so on.Using the documentmaterials, combined with the related cases, this paper does detailed textual research and discussion on the specific implementation of each link. And it also analyzes and summarizes the status of law implementation and enforcement in Edzina Route.The fifth part refers to the social situation of Edzina route looking through the Khara-Khoto litigation documents. Through these litigation documents and a large number of cases, the paper does research on the social security situation of Edzina Route in Yuan Dynasty, especially in the late Yuan. And it reveals many social problems reflected by the documents, including an avalanche of thief, refugee influx, property disputes, defiance of the government resolution, and so on. And it also analyzes the survival of some particular social group, slaves (Qukou), women and so on, and the local mainstream thinking and ideology.In addition, the paper also examines some characteristic lawsuit-trial systems of Yuan Dynasty, like Yuanzuo Yuanshu, dating trial system (Yuehui Shenli), and so on, thus making contribution to the overall understanding of the legal system.