Research On Household Registration And Administration System In Qin And Han Dynasties

The broad sense of “household registration” refers to a variety of records as the unit of“household”,the narrow sense of “household registration” should refer to the record keeping of the identity information of the head of the household and family members in Qin and Han Dynasties.This paper mainly studies the narrow sense of household registration by focusing on the original household registration found in bamboo slips.In the early China Empire,there were two ways to compose household registration: self-declaration and the government registered household registration.Township(乡)government is the case of the specific execution of the unit,County(县)government keep a copy of the household registration.The household registration of the Qin Dynasty was represented by the style of Liye Wooden Slips’household registration(里耶户籍简).The identity information of the head of the household,family members and the slaves are written in five columns in the slips.The household registration records in the early Western Han Dynasty included minzhaiyuanhu records(民宅园户籍),nianxi records(年细籍),tianbidi records(田比地籍),tianhe records(田合籍),and tianzu records(田租籍),minzhaiyuanhu records and nianxi records are compiled separately.In the middle of the Western Han Dynasty,the household registration is merged with the age records.And the notes such as“counting property”(“算”)and“exemption”(“复”)were added to the household registration.The household registration of the Eastern Han Dynasty was more detailed,there was a note on whether the man in the family is a soldier.The number of“family”and“counting property”notes and so on to sum up a“summary”attached to the household registration.The household registration alteration is also an important content of household registration and it is embodied in the change of the family members and the domicile in the Qin and Han dynasties.About the change of household register,specifically refers to“The living write,the dead cut”(“生着死削”),marriage registration and replacing the head of the household,household division and household return.The change of domiciliary place is mainly the“migration”of household registration stipulated by the system and related requirements.The Liye Wooden Slips’“household statistics”and other accounting documents are mostly compiled by Village(里)and Township officials.The officials regularly classify and count the persons with different household registration status and make summaries,which transferred to the County government for verification;the County government to make Lingshi(令史)——as the chief official of the Liecao(列曹)is responsible for the verification of documents and further collating the plans submitted by the officials.Compared with the Township level household register,the content of the County and Prefecture(郡)level household register is more consistent,books register the administrative region number,number of total population and the number of each area,port number,and increase or decrease.The Han Bamboo Slips Jibu of Yuanling Huxishan’s(沅陵虎溪山汉墓《计簿》)contents and patterns of household registration of each Township and cluster in Principality of Yuanling were basically the same as the Han Bamboo Slips residence booklet of Tianchang Jizhuang(天长纪庄汉墓《户口簿》).The statistics of the number of relevant population and identity information in the Tang-Yi Yuanshou Er-Nian Yaoju Bu(《堂邑元寿二年要具簿》)are similar to the“summary”part of the Eastern Han household registration.