Research On The Eunuch Legal System In Song Dynasty

In ancient China, the eunuch is the servant in court to serve the emperor and his family. But because of serving in court, the eunuchs are close to the center of the feudal autocratic power, so they can always beyond the scope of their duty and widely participate in political, economic and military activities in feudal dynasty. Thus, the eunuchs become an important part of the imperial politics. Eunuch power is an extension of imperial power; essentially root in monarch’s suspicion to civil servants and military commanders. The monarch use eunuchs who are closely associated with him to restrict and supervise civil servants and military commanders. Although, the eunuchs of Song dynasty are widely active in every field, but eunuch authoritarian in Han and Tang dynasty didn’t appear in Song dynasty. Song dynasty is succeed to prevent eunuch authoritarian. As a new era of history, legal thought in Song dynasty is active, rulers attached great importance to the legal construction, for some classes derived from imperial power like eunuch power and consort power, laws and regulations are particularly severe. In the beginning of the foundation of Song dynasty, rulers analyze the mistakes of eunuch authoritarian in Han and Tang dynasty, develop and reform in basis of regulations of Tang dynasty and Five dynasty, formulate strict laws to restrict the behavior of the eunuch, made the eunuch bureaucratic, made specific provisions about promotion of eunuchs. The rulers have also established eunuch supervision mechanism:the civilian official class has a boycott attitude towards eunuchs, they have played an important role to supervise eunuchs; special supervisory offices and supervisory system is the main power of supervision to eunuchs. In the process of implementation, these laws and regulations has obtained good effect to limit the eunuch power. In other words, in the Song dynasty, rulers have used eunuchs and also inhibited the development of the eunuch forces. The success of Song dynasty is not only prevents interfering of eunuchs, but also brought lots of enlightenment to Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasty.