Studies On The Vacations Of Grassroots Officials In The Han Dynasty

The system of officials' leave was an important one in ancient China.It had a long history,and had already taken shape in the pre-Qin.With the development of the society,it finally took shape and became an effective way for the rulers to manage the officials.On the basis of the leave system in Qin,the Han Dynasty innovated and formed a unique system of officials' leave,making it gradually institutionalized.The official vacations in the Han Dynasty could be divided into regular vacations,holiday leave,sick leave,given leave,funeral leave,and personal leave.In the existing literature,it only recorded the higher-ranking officials' vacations,rather than the leave for the gass-roots ones.Fortunately,a large number of unearthed simple matcrials in the last century has made up the lack of materials for our study.First of all,this paper introduced the vacation system of officials in the pre-Qin a nd Qin dynasties,and classified it into three categories,the regular vacation,sick leav e and funeral leave.Second,according to the Yinwan Hanjian,Juyan Hanjian and Di wan Hanjian,the vocation period of the grass-rooted officials was listed specifically i n the counties and border counties of the Han Dynasty and the author compared it wit h the vacation of the officials in the capital.As a result,about the regular vacations,th e officials in the capital had "Xiu Mu" mainly according to the law.In the northwest c ounties,the grassroots officials rested every two days.They regarded ten days as a wo rking cycle;In terms of holidays,both the capital officials and grassroots officials wer e off one day;As for sick leave,they would be exempted from three-month sick leave,but the grassroots officials in the inner counties would be exempted from sick leave fo r no more than one month.Before the period of Ai Emperor of the Western Han Dyna sty,the funeral leave was varied from 30 days to 36 days.After that,it changed greatl y.It was three months for the northwestern officials.Finally,after comparing the unea rthed Quji Jian and Quning Jian,the author found that the latter one belonged to the fo rmer one,but the event of Quji had the characteristics of urgency,which was a tempo rary leave in an emergency.