Five
Community and Welfare: Chu Hsi's Community Granary in Theory and Practice

Richard von Glahn

Southern Sung political thought was marked by a loss of faith in state activism. Political commentators invariably decried the perceived trend toward greater autocracy and the equally dismaying divergence from the precepts and institutions laid out by the dynastic founders. Critiques of the misuse of power commonly were accompanied by a corresponding skepticism toward the desirability of legislative innovation. Conservatism—defined as an abhorrence of radical institutional reform—had become a hallmark of mainstream political thought since the 1070s, when Wang An-shih's sweeping program of reform triggered a virulent conservative backlash. Virtually all major political theorists of the Southern Sung explicitly rejected Wang's program of comprehensive reform. Yet Wang's policies could not fail to have a profound impact on the ideas of even his most fervent detractors.

Indeed, any justification for political activism had to come to terms with Wang An-shih's legacy. Despite the brief triumph of his ideological opponents, who dismantled many of the New Policies during their decade in

power (1085-1094), Wang's brand of state activism enjoyed favor with later prime ministers such as Ts'ai Ching and Ch'in Kuei. On the other hand, the self-ordained exponents of Tao-hsueh , or "Learning of the Way," led by Ch'eng I, spurned state activism and instead hoped to induce social change through moral suasion and personal example. The Tao-hsueh circle, which eventually became the dominant force within Neo-Confucianism, abandoned statecraft for the pursuit of self-cultivation. The dilemma of how men of principle could, in immoral times, fulfill their duty to society was bequeathed unresolved to their Southern Sung heirs.

Chu Hsi, while upholding the primacy of moral cultivation, sought to reinvigorate the patricians' (shih ) role in the great tasks of ordering state and society. (In choosing to translate the Chinese term shih as "patrician," in contrast to the plebian min , I simply follow the broad distinction in Chinese political discourse between the rulers and the ruled.) Chu parted company with many of his colleagues in affirming both that existing institutions were inadequate and that the restoration of classical institutions was infeasible. Instead, Chu proposed a new vision of political activism grounded in both moral cultivation and the pressing social needs of the times. The community-granary (she-ts'ang ) concept that he and his disciples popularized illustrates the continuity as well as the disjuncture between Wang's utilitarianism and Chu's political activism. While inveighing against Wang An-shih's neglect of the fundamental requirements of moral self-transformation, Chu recognized that Wang was responding to a genuine and dire need for change. To his students he acknowledged the value of specific reforms undertaken by Wang to alleviate the misery of the rural population. Consequently many of Chu's contemporaries became suspicious that in promoting his community-granary concept Chu Hsi had fallen into the error of resurrecting one of the most criticized of Wang An-shih's policies, the "Green Sprouts" (ch'ing-miao ) rural credit program.

Yet the community granary was an authentic expression of Chu Hsi's political philosophy. In a marked departure from the spirit of the New Policies, Chu viewed the community granary as a means of freeing the organic rural community from its dependence on a state that had proven unresponsive to the predicament of the poor. Chu's unyielding conviction that the foundation of government must be moral knowledge and action was manifested in his determination to entrust the management of the community granary to local patricians steeped in the teachings of classical antiquity. Through institutions like the community granary Chu sought to realize the moral ethos, though not the specific social institutions, of the sage-kings.

In this chapter I trace the formulation of the community-granary concept through Chu Hsi's writings and actions. But other contexts are necessary to complete the picture. First, we must consider the problems to which the community granary was addressed, namely, the endemic cycles of in-

debtedness and subsistence crisis afflicting rural society, and the failings of state efforts to deal with these problems. Second, I examine Chu Hsi's private and public advocacy of the community granary, and the actual history of the institution from Chu's own day to its eventual demise at the close of the Sung period. By way of conclusion I assess the place of Chu Hsi's ideas of community and political activism within the dominant strains of Sung political thought.

The Endemic Crisis of Subsistence

Legions of later hagiographers credited Chu Hsi with inventing the community granary, but Chu himself readily acknowledged that his ideas were inspired by his friend Wei Shan-chih (1116-1173). Wei, an abrasive and often arrogant gadfly, achieved renown largely for his strenuous but unsuccessful effort to convince the court to remove Wang An-shih's tablet from the Confucian pantheon and install those of the Ch'eng brothers in its place. Wei's prickly candor ensured that he would spend most of his life as a "retired scholar" in his native county Chien-yang, in northern Fu-chien. In 1150, when Chien-yang was caught in the throes of harvest failure and impending famine, Wei persuaded the granary intendant to make interest-free loans to indigent peasants. Afterwards Wei founded a granary at Ch'ang-t'an to collect loan repayments. Rather than reimbursing the Ever-Normal Granary Wei retained the repaid grain at Ch'ang-t'an in anticipation of future harvest failures.^[1]

Chu Hsi was reminded of Wei's granary in 1167 when he received a request to lend assistance to famine relief efforts in his adopted home county Ch'ung-an, adjacent to Chien-yang. Chu embarked on a ten-day tour of the county to assess the extent of damage and distress following heavy spring flooding. The magistrate also asked Chu and another local notable, Liu Juyü, to intercede with higher authorities to help speed the delivery of famine relief supplies. Upon Chu's request the prefect of Chien-ning sent six hundred piculs of rice upstream to Ch'ung-an and placed Chu and Liu in charge of distributing loans of grain to the needy. In the fall of 1168 the

[1] Li Hsin-ch'uan, Chien-yen i-lai hsi-nien yao-lu , 161/20b-21a; "Chien-ning-fu Chien-yang-hsien Ch'ang-t'an she-ts'ang chi," CWKWC 79/18b-19a; "Yun-p'an Sung kung mu-chihming," CWKWC 93/22a. On Wei, see his funerary inscription composed by Chu Hsi, "Kuo-lu Wei kung mu-chih-ming," CWKWC 91/2a-5a; Chang Shih, "Chiao-shou Wei Yuan-fu mupiao," Nan-hsien hsien-sheng wen-chi , 40/12b-15b. On Chu Hsi's career and political thought, see Conrad Schirokauer, "Chu Hsi's Political Career: A Study in Ambivalence," in Arthur F. Wright and Denis Twitchett, eds., Confucian Personalities , pp. 162-68; Schirokauer, "Chu Hsi's Political Thought," Journal of Chinese Philosophy 5 ( 1978): 127-48; Kusumoto Masatsugu, SoMin jidai jugaku shiso no kenkyu , pp. 246-67; Tomoeda Ryutaro, Shushi no shiso keisei , pp. 373-418. For a study of Sung disaster relief that focuses on the activities of Neo-Confucians such as Chu Hsi, see Wang Te-i, Sung-tai tsai-huang ti chiu-chi cheng-ts'e .

new prefect, Wang Huai, suggested that the proceeds of loan repayments should be stored in the countryside for future emergencies rather than being shipped back to the prefectural seat. The following summer Chu and Liu presented a plan for establishing a "community granary" as a permanent institution for rural relief. Wang approved this proposal, and his successor agreed to subscribe public funds to support the project. By the time construction of the granary was completed, in the fall of 1171, Liu Ju-yü had left Ch'ung-an on official assignment. His place was filled by his son and several of his kinsmen, who drew up regulations for the operation of Ch'ung-an's community granary and served as its managers.^[2] The proposals by Wei Shan-chih and Chu Hsi to establish granaries in the countryside represented attempts to remedy the endemic crisis of subsistence that afflicted not only the poor frontier areas of northern Fu-chien but even the prosperous "rice bowl" plains of Chiang-hsi and Hunan. In the mountainous interior of Fu-chien, where lack of capital and labor resources ruled out intensive cultivation, the margin of subsistence was especially narrow. Three features of economic life in this region contributed to the subsistence crisis: (1) monocrop price fluctuations; (2) the annual cycle of peasant indebtedness; and (3) the ineffectiveness of market mechanisms in responding to acute food shortages.

In Fu-chien as in much of South China most peasant families subsisted almost entirely on rice, despite official encouragement of wheat cultivation. Since most of the high-quality, late-ripening rice was reserved for payment of rent and taxes, peasant households primarily consumed the inferior, early-ripening Champa rice. Champa rice was especially prominent in the subsistence regime of the hilly interior districts of Fu-chien and Liang-che because of its tolerance of poor soils and drought conditions.^[3] On the other hand, the ubiquitous spring floods of the Wu-i Mountains in northern Fu-chien often ruined the early-ripening crop, precipitating food shortages in the summer months. As a consequence of the inelastic demand for rice, the paucity of alternative food crops, and the long months of spring and summer during which the peasant household's supply of rice steadily diminished, the price of rice fluctuated violently according to the seasonal undulations of consumers' needs and the available supply of food. As single-

[2] "Chien-ning-fu Ch'ung-an-hsien Wu-fu she-ts'ang chi," CWKWC 77/25a-27b; "Ts'ung-shih-lang chien T'an-chou Nan-yueh-miao Liu chun mu-chih-ming," CWKWC 92/25a.

[3] "Shen ch'ao-sheng chieh-po he-ti-mi chuang," HSCWK 10/8b-9b; Ku-lo-chih , in YLTT 7510/22a; Tai Pang-yung, "Ch'ang-sha-fu Ta-chueh she-ts'ang shih-mo," in YLTT 7510/22b; Shu Lin, "Yu Ch'en ts'ang lun ch'ang-p'ing," Shu Wen-ching chi , hsia/10b. On Champa rice, see Ho Ping-ti, "Early Ripening Rice in Chinese History," Economic History Review , 2nd series, 9, no. 2 (1956): 210-11; Francesca Bray, Agriculture , in Joseph Needham, gen. ed., Science and Civilisation in China , vol. 6, part 2, p. 486; Chang Hsueh-ch'eng and Wei Hung-chao, "Lun Sung-tai Fu-chien shan-ch'ü ching-chi-ti fa-chan," Nung-ye k'ao-ku , 1986, no. 1:65.

crop producers, peasants depended on the harvest and market demand to ensure a sufficient income; as rice consumers, they were ensnared in a cycle of price movements and debt that threatened to eviscerate their subsistence resources.

The annual oscillation in rice prices proved entirely unfavorable to peasants on the margin of subsistence who needed to borrow grain to feed their families during the lean summer months. Peasants dependent on such loans were forced to sell cheap and borrow dear. To use an example from 1167, a peasant would contract a loan denominated in cash for one picul (66.4 liters) of rice during the spring, when his resources approached exhaustion and the price of rice reached its apogee of 5,000 cash per picul. By the time the peasant gathered in his harvest, however, prices dropped to the range of merely 1,200-1,300 cash per picul. Thus the peasant had to sell four piculs of grain simply to repay the principal on a loan of one picul, let alone interest charges ranging from 50 to 100 percent.^[4] Few alternatives existed in isolated rural areas where credit institutions were underdeveloped and moneylenders held sufficient leverage to demand and obtain exorbitant rates of interest. Compelled to sell his grain immediately after the harvest, when prices were low, the peasant once again lacked an adequate reserve of food for his family the following spring.

In a letter to Wei Shan-chih written in the 1160s, Chu Hsi commented that even after excellent harvests the "small folk" of Ch'ung-an bore a heavy burden of debt.^[5] In times of dearth sheer survival became the most pressing concern. Ordinarily Chien-ning and the other three inland prefectures of Fu-chien (T'ing, Nan-chien, and Shao-wu) enjoyed abundant harvests and low prices, unlike the coastal areas, which depended on imported grain from Kuang-tung to meet basic subsistence needs.^[6] Chen Te-hsiu, writing in the 1230s, reported that Chien-yang and Ch'ung-an counties were reputed to be surplus-producing areas, but when harvests fell below normal yields grain prices doubled.^[7] Of course imported grain could be ac-

[4] SHY, shih-huo 58/5a. For a similar example, dating from 1133, see WHTK 26/256. Roughly speaking, during the period of relatively stable prices between 1145 and 1205 (a trough preceded and followed by bursts of rapid inflation) postharvest prices ranged between 1,220 and 1,500 cash per picul, while spring prices typically rose to 3,000-4,000 cash/picul (rising as high as 5,000-7,000 cash/picul in famine years): Ch'üan Han-sheng, "Nan-Sung ch'u-nien wu-chia-ti ta pien-tung," Chung-kuo ching-chi-shih lun-ts'ung , pp. 235-63; Ch'üan, "Sung-mo t'ung-huo p'eng-chang chi-ch'i tui-yü wu-chia-ti ying-hsiang," ibid., pp. 325-54.

[5] "Yü Wei Yuan-fu shu," CWKWC 24/18a-b.

[6] In 1171, for instance, relief grain from public stores in Chien-ning was shipped to the coastal prefectures: SHY, shih-huo 61/125a. On grain deficits in coastal Fu-chien, see the documents cited in Shiba Yoshinobu, Sodai shogyoshi kenkyu , pp. 161-62 (summarized in Shiba, Commerce and Society in Sung China , p. 61), and Lin-t'ing chih (1258), cited in YLTT 7890/19b.

[7] "Tsou-ch'i po P'ing-chiang Pai-wan-ts'ang mi chen-t'iao Fu-chien ssu-chou chuang," HSCWC 15/20a-b.

quired only at great cost. Even in coastal Hsing-hua prefecture, readily accessible by oceangoing vessels, the populace bitterly resented the "southern ships" from Kuang-tung, which brought rice during times of scarcity only to sell it at exorbitant prices.^[8] Chien-ning's remote location in the mountainous interior rendered dependence on imported foodstuffs even more unreliable. Most vexing of all was the problem of supplying food to the rural hinterland, which ironically suffered from the most acute shortages. The market system that functioned smoothly in funneling Chien-ning's rice to Fu-chou's metropolitan consumers proved less tractable in distributing relief grain to stricken peasants. In a letter to his friend Fu Tzu-te (1116-1183), prefect of Chien-ning in the mid-1170s, Chu noted with dismay that all available stocks of relief grain were distributed only within the county seat Ch'ung-an and the market town Huang-t'ing, with nothing left over for the countryside.^[9] The practice of barring the export of grain, though strictly speaking illegal, was widely employed by local officials anxious to shore up local grain stocks and prevent arbitrage.^[10] At the time of the 1167-1168 famine Chu recalled that in 1162 and 1163 the prefect had strictly enforced a ban on the shipment of rice out of rural areas, a measure that angered officials in Fu-chou who counted on Chien-ning to contribute to their food supply. Chu did not condone this practice; on the contrary, he believed that the government must have recourse to the marketing system to bring grain to distressed areas. Chu recommended that officials in Chien-ning prepare in advance to purchase rice in Kuang-tung or along the Liang-che coast to keep local granaries full.^[11] As a last resort he proposed that the authorities commission local magnates—who in normal times conducted a thriving trade in smuggled salt—to use their contacts to procure grain in eastern Kuang-tung and haul it over the mountains to Chien-ning.^[12] Yet in spite of all the efforts to ensure an ample supply of rice, subsistence crises—too minor to receive recognition in the official annals of famine relief—regularly beset Chien-ning.

[8] Liu K'o-chuang, "Hsing-hua-chün ch'uang p'ing-t'iao-ts'ang," Hou-ts'un hsien-sheng tach'üan wen-chi , 88/12a-13b.

[9] "Yü Chien-ning Fu shou cha-tzu," CWKWC 25/11a; see also "Ta Huang Tzu-hou," CWKWC, hsu-chi 7/la-b.

[10] For complaints about this practice and the resulting obstruction of the private grain trade, see CHSC 52/15b; "Ch'i chin-chih e-ti chuang," CWKWC 21/1b-2a; "Shen chu-ssu ch'i hsing-hsia Chiang-hsi pu-hsu e-ti," CWKWC, pieh-chi 9/22b-23a; P'eng Kuei-nien, "Lun Huai-Che han-liao ch'i t'ung mi-shang . . . ," Chih-t'ang chi , 5/12a-13b; "Tsou-ch'i fen-chou ts'o-chih huang-cheng shih," HSCWC 6/23b-24a; HMS 2/32-33 (for a fuller discussion of Tung Wei's opposition to the interdiction of grain shipments out of the locality, see chapter 7 in this volume).

[11] "Yü Lin Tse-chih shu," CWKWC 27/4a-5a.

[12] "Yü Chien-ning chu-ssu lun chen-chi cha-tzu," CWKWC 25/9a-1 la.

The daunting problem of inadequate food reserves facing officials in the Fu-chien interior was compounded by the volatile social chemistry of the region. The ranges of the Wu-i Mountains, particularly in the south along the borders of Kuang-tung and Chiang-hsi circuits, had long been infamous for their lairs of fierce bandits, salt smugglers, and She tribesmen.^[13] Although salt was the staple of this surreptitious economy, the bandit princes of the mountains dealt in all kinds of contraband, from South Seas exotica to slaves. The law-abiding inhabitants joined together in "covenants of duty" (i-she ) to fend off the depredations of the bandits, but in so doing fell under the thrall of powerful magnates. The region justly deserved the epithet "ungovernable."^[14] T'ing, the southernmost of the interior prefectures, was considered the most barbaric: "Though part of our King's realm, in truth it differs not a whir from the 'haltered-and-bridled' [non-Han] jurisdictions beyond the pale of civilization" wrote Chu.^[15] At home at his retreat in Ch'ung-an in 1188 Chu Hsi witnessed the brutal mayhem of rioters who seized the granaries of the rich during a terrible famine.^[16] In founding his community granary Chu no doubt hoped to provide an alternative to the all too common survival strategies of migration, banditry, rent revolts, food riots, and infanticide and bring some measure of civilization to this remote and poor land.

The Failings of Normative Systems of State Welfare

Beginning in the early eleventh century, the Sung government developed a broad range of policies and programs to cope with periodic subsistence crises. The most common form of government assistance for stricken rural areas was to remit the Twice-a-Year land taxes and extraordinary levies such as the poll tax. Yet crop failures wrought havoc with the subsistence economy, not simply because of a decrease in the peasant's ability to pay his social dues, but also because of the resulting scarcity of food. The peasant's most vital concern again was not a problem of production but

[13] Hua Shan, "Nan-Sung Shao-ting Tuan-p'ing chien-ti Chiang, Min, Kuang nung-min ta ch'i-i," Wen shih che , 1957, no. 3:41-48.

[14] Huang Kan, "Chien-ning she-ts'ang li-ping," Mien-chai hsien-sheng Huang Wen-su kung wen-chi , 15/18a; Yuan i-t'ung-chih , cited in YLTT 7890/1 la; Pa-min t'ung-chih (1491), 61/18a. For similar covenants organized by local magnates in the Nanling Mountains of southern Hunan, see Richard von Glahn, "The Country of Streams and Grottoes: Geography, Settlement, and the Civilizing of China's Southwestern Frontier, 1000-1250," pp. 307-13.

[15] "Yü Chang Ting-sou shu," CWKWC 27/21a-b. Chu later commented that circuit intendants refused to enter T'ing out of fear of bandits and malaria: "Yun-p'an Sung kung mu-chih-ming," CWKWC 93/22a.

[16] "Yü Wang ts'ao shu," CWKWC 27/22b.

rather one of consumption. The most important normative institutions of rural relief, then, were ones designed to increase the amount of rice in circulation: the Ever-Normal Granaries (ch'ang-p'ing-ts'ang ) and the charitable granaries (i-ts'ang ).

The Ever-Normal Granaries functioned as price-stabilizing mechanisms. The state attempted to maintain an equilibrium between returns to producers and costs to consumers through regular market intervention. As was noted above, grain prices reached their lowest level during the autumn harvest season and peaked during the spring and summer as the reserves of peasant households approached the brink of utter depletion. In the spring of years of dearth the state sold grain from the Ever-Normal Granaries to prevent exorbitant increases in food prices. The income from these sales was used in years of plenty to purchase rice immediately after the harvest, thus increasing demand and guaranteeing a satisfactory price to producers. In general the state purchased rice at prices slightly above (2-10 percent) the market rate in the autumn, and sold it at a discount of one-third off prevailing prices during the spring.^[17] The state also used the resources of the Ever-Normal Granaries to sell or loan grain to low-income households. Under both the "relief sales" (chen-t'iao ) and "relief loans" (chen-tai ) programs no individual was permitted to acquire more than three piculs (199 liters), in an effort to forestall rice brokers from hoarding food supplies desperately needed by the poor.^[18] During the Southern Sung, responsibility for the operation of the Ever-Normal Granaries rested with the granary intendant (t'i-chü ch'ang-p'ing shih ) of each circuit. Although the intendant submitted recommendations to the court on how the resources of the region under his jurisdiction ought to be used, only the court could authorize disbursement of Ever-Normal Granary stocks. The decision-making process in the famine relief administration often foundered in a web of interminable bureaucratic procedures. The crucial importance of timing in providing relief magnified the effect of administrative delays on the part of the state. Ssu-ma Kuang, writing in 1086, succinctly described the effect of the state's frequently dilatory response to petitions for relief:

At the beginning of the harvest season the cultivators need cash and are anxious to sell their grain. We should direct government officials to offer to purchase rice at a price slightly above the prevailing rate and thus prevent the stockpilers from procuring all of it. . . . Yet only after the granaries and storehouses of the stockpilers are filled to the point of overflowing does the government suddenly raise prices and buy grain. For this reason the cultivator markets his grain and obtains only a meager profit. When the government buys

[17] SHY, shih-huo 53/19a, 53/32a, 58/2b.

[18] Directive of 1086: HMS 2/26-27.

grain, it usually sets a price above the market rate. Thus the profits all wind up in the hands of the stockpilers [who had bought grain cheaply from the cultivators and then sold it to the state]. Moreover, even though there are officials who wish to seize the opportunity to purchase grain, the magistrate must first notify the prefect, who must notify the judicial intendant, who in turn must notify the Court of Husbandry to obtain the authorizing directive and then send back a reply. The formal procedures carry on for months, while the opportunity has already been lost, and the price of rice has doubled.^[19]

In addition, the granaries' location in the prefectural and county seats restricted the geographic range of relief sales and loans. Complaints that the distribution of Ever-Normal Granary stocks never extended beyond the city walls were legion.^[20]

Aside from the price-stabilizing functions of the Ever-Normal Granaries, the state provided interest-free loans and direct subsidies (chen-chi ) through the charitable-granary system. The charitable granaries served as a perennial system of poor relief for the chronically indigent: orphans, widows, invalids, the homeless aged, and paupers. The system was established by imperial decree in the 1040s and funded through a 5 percent surcharge on the Twice-a-Year taxes of property owners.^[21] As a result agriculturally rich areas with a substantial tax base could accumulate considerable reserves, while the ability of charitable granaries in poorer districts to meet the needs of indigent inhabitants was constrained by their limited endowments. A local gazetteer from Hu-chou describes how the charitable granaries operated at the close of the twelfth century:

The charitable-granary rice payments are stored in the Western Granary to provide for the needs of registered paupers (ch'i-kai yu-chi-che ). The old, infirm, and ill who have no family to return to are also accepted there as inmates. . . . In 1133 the prefect Wang Hui rebuilt the granary within the Feng-sheng Gate. In all it consists of twenty-seven bays (chien ), and has become popularly known as the Beneficent Providence Asylum (li-chi-yuan ). [Wang] set aside arable lands, the rent from which would be used to support and maintain the asylum, and deputed the monk Hsing-ke to assume management of its receipts and disbursements. Approximately forty people resided permanently at the Beneficent Providence Asylum in 1201, each of whom received 500 cash and six tou (40 liters) of rice per month. In addition the asylum allocated one picul of rice per month to women who adopted abandoned children, and arranged for physicians to visit and administer to foster children.

[19] Ssu-ma Kuang, "Ch'i ch'en-shih shou-ti ch'ang-p'ing hu-tou pai-cha-tzu," Ssu-ma Wen-cheng-kung ch'üan-chia chi , 56/681. See also the corroborative appraisals of Southern Sung observers, such as Liao Kang, Ou-yang Shou-tao, and Wei Ching, in Shiba Yoshinobu, Commerce and Society in Sung China , pp. 69-70.

[20] CHSC 26/25a; SHY, shih-huo 58/2b, 58/3b (both for 1164), 58/5b (for 1168); HMS 2/26.

[21] SHY, shih-huo 53/31b.

As a part of their continuing campaign to provide for unwanted children, the asylum directors offered rewards of one hundred cash to anyone reporting abandoned children in the alleys of the city.^[22]

Besides their perennial responsibility for the chronically indigent the charitable granaries distributed food to the destitute during periods of famine or natural disaster. Unlike the Ever-Normal Granaries, the charitable granaries appear to have been dispersed evenly throughout rural areas.^[23] In the event of harvest failure the prefect sent out inspectors to determine which households were unable to meet their subsistence needs. Those who qualified for public relief were allowed to go on the dole beginning in the eleventh month, with each adult receiving one liter of rice every five days until the end of the third month of the following year.^[24] Distribution of grain was entrusted to Buddhist monks or the village officers. Despite the proximity of the charitable granaries to the people they supposedly served, corruption in the distribution process often thwarted the actual dispensation of relief grain. Contemporary observers often inveighed against the malfeasance of government supernumeraries and village officers.^[25] Tung Wei included in his Book for Relieving Famine and Reviving the People (ca. 1201-1204) a schedule of punishments for fraudulent relief claims, the heaviest of which was meted out to village officers who composed fictitious petitions for relief.^[26]

Although the central government strove to keep the Ever-Normal Granaries and the charitable granaries functionally distinct, in practice the two funds often were used interchangeably, resulting in administrative disorder and fiscal insolvency. A common complaint centered on the appropriation of charitable-granary endowments for purposes unrelated to charity. A well-intentioned edict of 1156 permitted the granary intendants to sell off charitable-granary stocks in danger of spoiling. Objections that once converted to cash the charitable-granary funds could be easily diverted to alternative uses went unheeded.^[27] The problem of misappropriation was even more acute in the case of the Ever-Normal Granaries, since the granary intendants managed a fiscal administration that extended well beyond the domain of famine relief. In 1172 the executive of the Board of Revenue,

[22] Chia-t'ai Wu-hsing chih , 8/6b-7b. Poor relief and poorhouses received sponsorship from the central government beginning in the first decade of the twelfth century: Hugh Scogin, "Poor Relief in Northern Sung China," Oriens Extremus 25, no. 1 (1978): 30-35.

[23] According to Chih-shun Chen-chiang chih (ca. 1330), 13/22a-24b, only two of Chen-chiang's ninety-six charitable granaries were located in the prefectural seat; the rest were distributed throughout "the markets, cantons, and wards" of its three subordinate counties.

[24] HMS 2/28.

[25] HMS 2/29; Fu-chou fu-chih , cited in YLTT 10950/5b.

[26] HMS 2/45.

[27] HMS 1/21.

Yang Yen, reported that preliminary investigations had uncovered diversions of substantial Ever-Normal-Granary resources for unauthorized purposes. Yang dispatched investigators to each prefecture to impound and scrutinize local granary records for the preceding five years. Any cases of large disbursements of granary funds during years of normal harvests were to be turned over to the censorate for formal investigation.^[28] An audit of Hsin-chou's account-books revealed that 25,000 piculs, or 27 percent, of the prefecture's Ever-Normal-Granary stocks could not be accounted for.^[29] In light of the volume of memorials criticizing local misappropriations of granary resources to meet quotas for taxes and army supplies or other fiscal exigencies, such practices must have gained considerable currency.^[30] In the Southern Sung the state decentralized famine relief procedures in an effort to respond more efficiently to particular local circumstances. This devolution of relief administration was consistent with the growing autonomy of the village within the state apparatus of social control.^[31] The tu-pao system of rural administration, promulgated in 1095 and retained in its essentials under the pao-wu system in the Southern Sung, was based on a new administrative unit, the ward (tu ). The ward became the basic unit for land surveys, tax assessment and collection, disaster relief, assignment of service duties, and administration of justice. Each ward comprised a group of villages represented by a ward chief (tu-pao-cheng , also referred to as li-cheng ) selected on a rotating basis from among the first-rank master households and directly responsible to the county magistrate. The ward chiefs, together with other village officers and families of government officials (kuan-hu ), formed a new rural elite, the "influential households" (hsing-shih-hu ), a status duly recognized by the state.^[32]

Under regulations issued in 1163 the ward chiefs and quadrant officers

[28] CHSC 51/9b-10a. In 1150 the court formulated a strongly worded statement forbidding the apparently common practice of loaning Ever-Normal-Granary rice to rice brokers: HMS 2/26.

[29] SHY, shih-huo 53/32a. A later audit recovered another 12,900 piculs (perhaps returned by the miscreants). In all, 12,100 piculs, or 13 percent of Hsin-chou's granary reserves, were lost: CHSC 55/14a-b.

[30] In 1182 the Fu-chien granary intendant reported that the three most common abuses of the Ever-Normal-Granary system were: (1) untimely transfers of funds to other agencies; (2) allocation of funds for purposes unrelated to relief; and (3) disbursal of grain stocks to feed the chronically needy (properly the responsibility of the charitable granary system): SHY, shih-huo 43/40b.

[31] von Glahn, "The Country of Streams and Grottoes," pp. 218-23; Satake Yasuhiko, "Sodai kyoson seido no keisei katei," Toyoshi kenkyu 25, no. 3 (1966): 244-74.

[32] Sudo Yoshiyuki, "NanSo kyoto no zeisei to tochi shoyu," Sodai keizaishi kenkyu , pp. 545-46; Yanagida Setsuko, "Kyosonsei no tenkai," Sekai rekishi 9, 309-43; Yanagida, "Sodai keiseiko no kosei" Toyoshi kenkyu 27, no. 3 (1968): 272-91; Brian McKnight, Village and Bureaucracy in Southern Sung China .

(yü-kuan )^[33] were required to draw up cadastral surveys known as fish-scale charts (yü-lin-t'u ) for the purpose of registering property holdings and determining which persons within their jurisdiction were eligible for relief purchases, loans, or subsidies.^[34] Chu Hsi's disciple Huang Kan, trying to cope with a severe famine in Han-yang prefecture in 1213-1214, directed village officers to group the population into the following four categories: category A possessed surplus food resources; category B had sufficient food to meet the household's needs; category C needed to make relief purchases; category D qualified for subsidies. Households in category C were permitted to purchase up to six tou of rice at half the prevailing price from the beginning of the eleventh month to the end of the third month, while those in category D received allowances of three tou per month beginning in the ninth month. Similar classification procedures, including the creation of "relief sale stations" (chen-t'iao-ch'ang ) scattered across the countryside, were implemented by Chu Hsi in 1180 during his tenure as prefect of Nan-k'ang. Compilation of the registers and supervision of relief sale stations were the responsibility of the quadrant officers and ward chiefs, while the canton clerk (hsiang-kuan ) supervised the activities of each ward within his bailiwick. The magistrate allocated grain for famine relief out of the stores of the Ever-Normal Granaries as well as the charitable granaries, further evidence of the functional confusion between the two systems.^[35]

Yet rather than making relief administration more responsive to local needs, decentralization created even more impediments to the efficient and equitable distribution of aid. Village officers responsible for compiling lists of needy households extorted fees from the indigent and entered on the relief roles the names of anyone who paid a bribe, whether needy or not.^[36] Tung Wei castigated quadrant officers and ward chiefs who would not request relief grain because of their reluctance to foot the bill for shipment costs from the county seat.^[37] Chu Hsi added the accusation that corrupt quadrant officers and ward chiefs siphoned off relief grain into the storehouses of the well-to-do.^[38]

As normative institutions of famine relief broke down, the state, not surprisingly, turned to coercive measures to appropriate private stores of grain

[33] Originally the quadrant officers were appointed to supervise police and fire-fighting activities within walled towns. In the Southern Sung, however, many localities divided their rural precincts into "quadrants" (yü ) roughly equivalent to the canton (hsiang ) unit. Thus the quadrant officers in many places served as the functional equivalent of canton clerks: Suds Yoshiyuki, "NanSo no hogoho," ToSo shakai keizaishi kenkyu , pp. 699-712.

[34] Ibid., p. 726.

[35] Shiba Yoshinobu, "Kosei no chiikishi—Kanyogun (1213-14) no jirei," Toyo gakuho 66, nos. 1-4 (1985): 309-10; Sudo, "NanSo no hogoho," pp. 726-27.

[36] Chou-hsien t'i-kang , 2/25.

[37] HMS 2/26.

[38] "Yü Hsing-tzu chu-hsien i huang-cheng shu," CWKWC 26/24a.

for public assistance. Southern Sung documents are replete with pleas beseeching the "superior households" (shang-hu ) to put their surplus grain on the market. The term "superior household" designated the two highest brackets (out of a total of five) of property-owning taxpayers, a group that accounted for at most 10 percent of rural property owners.^[39] The most common, but least dependable, policy was that of "exhortations to share" (ch'üan-fen ). The government rewarded with honorary titles persons who sold their stocks of grain, but presumably local officials also resorted to informal pressures to draw hidden caches into the marketplace.^[40] In some instances the state mandated that the wealthiest households market a certain percentage of their stores,^[41] or sell rice directly to the state relief agencies under the rubric of "harmonious purchases" (ho-ti ).^[42]

Despite all of these injunctions, few parted with their hoards. The balance sheets for famine relief in two Chiang-tung prefectures in 1171 show that charitable granaries provided 75 percent of total relief resources. Private contributions ranged from 15 percent down to virtually nothing. Tung Wei, among others, pointed out that the policy of compulsory sales was counterproductive; it exacerbated scarcity by driving away grain traders. Tung advocated reliance on market incentives rather than government sanctions or subventions. In his capacity as a local administrator Chu Hsi did endorse coercive measures to compel the wealthy to sell grain during times of famine.^[43] But Chu readily admitted that market incentives produced better results than state-run relief programs.^[44] Beyond the immediate concern with famine crises, though, Chu stressed the need to confront endemic

[39] Estimate based on Umehara Kaoru, "Sodai no kadosei o megutte," Tohogakuho 41 (1970): 389.

[40] For various schedules of compensation, see HMS 2/37-38; Sung shih 178/4341.

[41] In 1164 owners of more than 10,000 mu of land in the lower Yangtze valley were required to sell 3,000 piculs, while those who possessed from 8,000 to 10,000 mu were ordered to sell 1,500 piculs: SHY, shih-huo 58/3a.

[42] In 1165, for example, the state purchased 300,000 piculs, roughly one-third to one-half of the annual income for the relief administration, through "harmonious purchases" in Liang-che and Chiang-hsi/tung: SHY, shih-huo 58/3b.

[43] The contrasting views of Chu Hsi and Tung Wei on "exhortations to share" are discussed in chapter 7 in this volume.

[44] Consider, for example, the following letter from Chu to Chao Ju-yü, ca. 1185 ("Yü Chao shuai shu," CWKWC 27/7a): "[Recently] considerable grain has come from Liang-che, and market prices have dropped sharply. The local people rejoice in their good fortune. But an astute and far-sighted person should be concerned that in the future the grain may not arrive in time; the prosperity of the entire circuit hangs in the balance. I say that we must take measures to ensure that there will be an ample supply of grain on hand. The government should raise prices and make purchases to induce grain merchants to come. Compared with the expense and losses incurred through government transport of relief grain over ocean routes and upstream to the interior, the cost [of higher market prices] certainly would not amount to much."

problems, such as usurious rates of interest, which underlay peasant misery. Like Wang An-shih, Chu was determined to break the monopoly on credit exercised by a nefarious class of "engrossers" (chien-ping-che ).^[45] In Chu's mind this goal could be accomplished only by reinvigorating the moral ethos of village society.

Evolution of The Community Granary as An Instrument of Local Subsistence Relief

The inadequacy of the Ever-Normal and charitable granary systems hardly came as a surprise to Chu Hsi, who harbored an abiding skepticism of the efficacy of centralized, state-run relief institutions, particularly given what he viewed as the shallow-minded leadership of the current regime in Hang-chou.^[46] What caused Chu much greater unease was the failure of local notables to exercise the moral leadership proper to their station. At the time of the 1167 famine in Ch'ung-an, Chu despaired that "nowadays those who eat meat heedlessly give no thought to the plight of the people. It certainly is hard to give an explanation for this situation."^[47] Perplexed by what he saw as the anomalous moral indifference of the natural leaders of local society, Chu set out to create an institution that would restore the ruptured bonds between members of the rural community.

In keeping with the basic tenets of Confucian social theory, Chu Hsi strongly endorsed vertical solidarity within the family, clan, and village and underscored the reciprocal commitments to communal welfare incumbent upon members of these communities. This notion of a moral economy, in which the wealthiest members of the group bear a moral obligation to provide subsistence insurance to their less fortunate brethren, also is implicit in official admonitions enjoining the superior households to share their resources with the poor. Proclamations issued by Chu in his official capacities were entirely consonant with imperial decrees in this respect. While prefect at Nan-k'ang, Chu urged the superior households to provide for the welfare of their own extended household, including their tenants (tien-k'e ), bondservant fieldworkers (ti-k'e ), and sharecroppers (huo-k'e ).^[48] Once the needs of

[45] Wang's "Green Sprouts" loan program was expressly designed to wrest control over credit away from the engrossers; see chapter 2 in this volume. Tung Wei expressed great enthusiasm for the community granary as a means of achieving this objective: HMS, shih-i 91.

[46] For Chu's views on the political leadership of his day, see Schirokauer, "Chu Hsi's Political Career," passim.

[47] "Ta Lin Tse-chih," CWKWC 43/18a.

[48] This term frequently has been misread as designating bondservants who cultivate virgin lands using fire-field techniques. The recent work of Liu Ch'ung-jih demonstrates that huo-k'e were groups of tenants working the lands of a common landlord in areas of labor scarcity. Although their contracts specified various personal services owed the landlord, the huo-k'e were not bound to him: Liu, "Huo-tien hsin-t'an," Li-shih yen-chiu , 1982, no. 2:113-25.

these groups had been met, the superior households were expected to sell any remaining surplus grain to the distressed population at large.^[49] Yet Chu himself admitted that the superior households failed to live up to their moral duty as paterfamilias.^[50] Indeed, in a memorial to the emperor written in 1188 Chu gloomily declaimed against the subversion of the bonds of mutual affection and dependence by suspicion and hostility: "In recent years we hear of cases where wives have murdered husbands, grandsons have murdered grandfathers, and bondservants have murdered their landlords."^[51] Existing social institutions had clearly failed to regulate social conduct.

In elaborating the concept of the community granary Chu Hsi stressed the importance of entrusting the granary's operations to men of high moral character, without whom any organizational plan was doomed to fail. At the same time, in his sample outline of regulations for community granaries, he detailed a complicated set of checks and superintendences designed to minimize the potential for peculation and favoritism. The execution of these meticulous procedures hinged on the cooperation of the magistrate's yamen, village officers, and a community headman (she-shou ) specially appointed to manage the granaries.^[52]

Chu's plan simply grafted the organizational structure of the community granaries onto the existing pao-wu system of rural administration. Eligibility for loans was determined by consulting the cadastral registers compiled by the village officers. In other cases the community headman, in consultation with members of discrete chia units, decided how much each family would be allowed to borrow.^[53] The index of economic deprivation varied considerably. In Ch'ung-an only those who had taxable property valued at less than six hundred cash were permitted to borrow grain, while in Ch'ang-sha the maximum standard was set at ownership of twenty mu of land.^[54] Chu insisted on restricting relief to those who lacked any source of income apart from cultivating the land. Thus he advocated the exclusion of superior households, soldiers, yamen clerks, shopkeepers, artisans, and Buddhist and Taoist clergy.^[55] Apparently those who drew up regulations for community granaries largely abided by these guidelines.^[56] Attitudes toward landless

[49] "Ch'uan-yu chiu-huang," CWKWC 99/10a-11a; "Ch'üan-nung-wen," CWKWC 100/ 11a.

[50] "Yueh-shu t'iao-mi chi chieh-lueh pang," CWKWC 99/26a-27a.

[51] "Wu-shen Yen-he tsou-cha," CWKWC 14/1b.

[52] Chu Hsi, "She-ts'ang shih-mu," in YLTT 7510/2b-7b.

[53] "She-ts'ang shih-mu," in YLTT 7510/2b; "Chin-hua she-ts'ang kuei-yueh," cited in HMS, shih-i 94; "Ch'ing-chiang-hsien she-ts'ang kuei-yueh," cited in HMS, shih-i 95.

[54] "She-ts'ang shih-mu," in YLTT 7510/2b; Lu-chiang chih , cited in YLTT 7510/23b-24a.

[55] "Yü Chien-ning chu-ssu lun chen-chi cha-tzu," CWKWC 25/9a-11a.

[56] "Chin-hua she-ts'ang kuei-yueh," in HMS, shih-i 94; Jui-yang chih , cited in YLTT 7510/ 32b.

peasants were mixed. In Lin-chiang (Chiang-hsi) they were excluded, but in Nan-an (also Chiang-hsi) hired laborers could apply for assistance from the community granary.^[57] A community granary in sparsely populated Kuang-hsi permitted only landowners to receive loans.^[58]

Beyond fulfilling eligibility requirements, applicants also were required to obtain the sponsorship of several guarantors. Liability for defaulted loans fell upon the other members of the debtor's chia unit.^[59] In this as in many other respects the community granaries relied on the obligations of mutual responsibility imbedded in the pao-wu system, and indeed within the rural social structure as a whole. Custodians of the state granary systems, however altruistic their intentions might have been, could not hope to achieve such intimate contact with both the privileged rural elite and the small-holders, tenants, and bondservants who depended on them for relief.

Chu Hsi's community-granary concept, while gaining instant celebrity, did not in its own time enjoy the unalloyed praise lavished on it by later generations of Confucian intellectuals. Vigorous criticism was voiced by none other than Wei Shan-chih, who cautioned Chu against emulating the aggrandizing fiscal policies of Wang An-shih. The substance of Wei's objection was that in levying interest charges of 20 percent on loans to indigent peasants Chu essentially resurrected the much-vilified "Green Sprouts" program of rural credit assistance; Wei's own community granary exacted no interest whatsoever.^[60] Lü Tsu-ch'ien, visiting Chu's retreat at P'ing-shan in 1175, admired the workings of the community granary but chided Chu for relying on grain and funds supplied by the state. Luü professed that a collegium of local patricians (hsiang-jen shih-yu ) should subscribe the necessary capital and direct the granary's affairs.^[61] Even Chu Hsi's defenders expressed unease with some features of the system. His close friend Chang Shih (1133-1180) rebuked Chu's detractors for equating the community granary with Wang's policies, but at the same time warned Chu not to succumb to the temptation (as Wang An-shih had) to turn his granary concept into a universally applicable model for institutional reform.^[62]

Harsh criticism from his peers within the Tao-hsueh circle clearly stung

[57] "Ch'ing-chiang-hsien she-ts'ang kuei-yueh," in HMS, shih-i 95; Jui-yang chih , in YLTT 7510/32b. Chen Te-hsiu noted that "the distressed people who own no land" were excluded in Ch'ang-sha: "Ch'üan-li i-k'u wen," HSCWC 40/12a.

[58] Wang Hsiang-chih, Yü-ti chi-sheng , 113/3b.

[59] "She-ts'ang shih-mu," in YLTT 7510/3a. In Chin-hua each member of the chia was compelled to pay an equal share in compensation, with the headman paying a double share: "Chin-hua she-ts'ang kuei-yueh," in HMS, shih-i 94.

[60] The debate between Chu and Wei is summarized in Wang Po, "She-ts'ang li-hai shu," Lu-chai Wang Wen-hsien kung wen-chi , 7/9b-10b. Note the similarity between Chu's defense of interest charges and Wang An-shih's views on the same issue (chap. 2).

[61] "Wu-chou Chin-hua-hsien she-ts'ang chi," CWKWC 79/17a.

[62] Chang Shih, "Ta Chu Yuan-huai mi-shu," Nan-hsien hsien-sheng wen-chi , 20/10a-13a.

Chu. He countered Wei Shan-chih's objections by emphasizing that failure to collect interest would surely result in insolvency. Nonetheless, Chu modified the interest schedule to mollify his critics. In his 1182 memorial to the emperor he proposed that interest charges be reduced to 10 percent if the harvest fell below normal yields, or remitted entirely in the event of serious famine. Once accumulated interest receipts enabled the managers to repay the initial investors, no further interest would be collected.^[63] Many granary networks based on Chu's model forgave interest charges after the initial capital was paid Off,^[64] On the other hand, Lu Chiu-yuan, writing in 1188, regarded the community granaries as readily susceptible to bankruptcy because of the high rate of default in the event of harvest failure. In Lu's view there was no alternative except to replenish community granaries with periodic infusions of funds from price-stabilizing granaries.^[65] The interest issue continued to provoke heated debate in the thirteenth century. Liu K'o-chuang in 1233 again chastised Chu Hsi for charging interest and held up as a more exemplary model the interest-free community granary founded in that year in Hsing-hua.^[66]

Chu Hsi's manifest sympathy for Wang An-shih's stated intentions, if not for his concrete policies, made him all the more defensive about the community-granary concept. In 1185 he wrote an essay to answer his critics and demonstrate the substantial differences between the community granary and the "Green Sprouts" loan program. Chu identified four ways in which the community granary corrected flaws in Wang's policies: (1) instead of making loans in cash, the community granaries lent grain, thus sparing borrowers catastrophic losses due to the vagaries of commodity prices; (2) in an effort to make the credit system more responsive to local needs, Chu based it on the canton administrative unit rather than the county; (3) to guarantee sufficient autonomy and freedom from bureaucratic skulduggery, the operation of the granaries was entrusted to local patricians, not to government officials or their hirelings; (4) rather than serve the state, with its myopic priority on generating additional revenue, the community granary was predicated on a genuine sense of compassion for the distress of the unfortunate. Chu concluded that although Wang's system proved successful during Wang's tenure as magistrate of Ning-po, its inherent flaws resulted in disaster when Wang tried to introduce it on an

[63] "Hsin-ch'ou yen-he tsou-che (4)," CWKWC 13/17b.

[64] "Chin-hua she-ts'ang kui-yueh," in HMS, shih-i 94; I-ch'un chih (ca. 1221-1222), in YLTT 7510/13b-14a; P'o-yang chih (ca. 1214-1216), in YLTT 7510/18a-b; Yuan Hsieh, "Pa Wu Huai-fu she-ts'ang," cited in YLTT 7510/1 la-b.

[65] Robert P. Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-chou, Chiang-hsi, in Northern and Southern Sung (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 155.

[66] Liu K'e-chuang, "Hsing-hua-chun ch'uang p'ing-t'iao-ts'ang," Hou-ts'un hsien-sheng wen-chi , 88/12a-13b.

empire-wide scale. Ignoring Chang Shih's admonition on exactly this point, Chu remained confident that his proposals would succeed where Wang An-shih's failed.^[67]

In the final analysis, Chu repeatedly affirmed, the success of the community granary would depend on "enlightened laws imbued with compassion and benevolence, and selfless and trustworthy patricians of discerning intelligence."^[68] The detailed rules he presented to the court in 1181 were offered as a set of guidelines that ought to be amended as local conditions and customs dictated. Only after close investigation of prevailing circumstances could the patrician caretakers develop institutions that would satisfy the actual needs of the community.^[69] Chu's organizational plan was devoid of any bureaucratic ethos. Devotion to principled service, in his mind, implied, not unambiguous performance of delegated duties within a codified institutional framework, but rather a transcendence of bureaucratic behavior.

The Community Granary in Action

The original granary at Ch'ung-an prospered, but not until ten years after its founding did Chu begin to promote the community granary as a national policy for rural relief. In January 1182, while serving as intendant for Ever-Normal Granaries, Tea, and Salt in eastern Liang-che, Chu petitioned the emperor to adopt the community granary on an empire-wide basis. With little hesitation the court formally accepted Chu's recommendation and directed all prefectures throughout the realm to establish community granaries. But Chu's factional opponents at the capital succeeded in blocking state subsidies, effectively killing official sponsorship of the program. Lu

[67] "Wu-chou Chin-hua-hsien she-ts'ang chi," CWKWC 79/17a-18b. The debate over the relative merits of the "Green Sprouts" system and the community granaries remained very much alive in eighteenth-century discussions of relief policies. While majority opinion still championed Chu's point of view, it is worth pointing out that Ch'ing commentators endorsed a far more significant role for the commercial system and merchants (as individuals or through their guilds) than Chu Hsi (or, indeed, Wang An-shih) would allow. See R. Bin Wong and Peter Perdue, "Famine's Foes in Ch'ing China," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43, no. 1 (1983): 312-15. For representative eighteenth-century views on this issue, see Ho Ch'ang-ling et al., Huang-ch'ao ching-shih wen-pien , 40/7a-16a.

[68] "Ch'ang-chou I-hsing-hsien she-ts'ang chi," CWKWC 80/18a; see also Chu Hsi, Chu-tzu yü-lei , 106/4b.

[69] "Hsin-ch'ou yen-he tsou-che (4)," CWKWC 13/18a; "Chien-ning-fu Chien-yang-hsien Ta-shan she-ts'ang chi," CWKWC 79/21a; "Shao-wu-chün Kuang-tse-hsien she-ts'ang chi," CWKWC 80/9a. Two leading Japanese scholars interpret Chu's stress on the need for personal inspection and investigation as a concrete application of his epistemological imperative ke-wu , "investigation of things": Kusumoto, SoMin jidai jugaku shiso no kenkyu , pp. 252-64; Tomoeda, Shushi no shiso keisei , pp. 373-418.

Chiu-yuan, in a letter written at the end of the decade, observed that "the authorities no longer post the edict on the yamen walls, and in far-off places no one has even heard of [the community granary]."^[70]

Although the central government failed to take an active role in the propagation of community granaries, the concept was championed by Chu Hsi's friends, students, and colleagues. For the most part, sponsorship of community granaries extended no further than isolated acts by individuals. When the granary intendant of Chiang-hsi issued a circular promoting community granaries, apparently the only person to respond was Lu Chiu-shao, brother of Chu Hsi's philosophical adversary, Lu Chiu-yuan. Given Lu's limited resources, his community granary encompassed only two of the forty-nine wards in the county.^[71]

Only in Fu-chien did community granaries receive significant official encouragement. In 1174 Chu reported that the concept had won the enthusiastic support of Liang K'e-chia, the former prime minister who had become prefect of Chien-ning the previous year. Apparently Chu's expectation that Liang's endorsement would lead to widespread adoption of his model went unfulfilled.^[72] But Sung Jo-shui, who became the granary intendant of Fu-chien in 1184, strongly urged local notables to establish community granaries. One of Sung's first official acts was to revive the granary founded by Wei Shan-chih. After Wei's death in 1171 local officials assumed control of the granary and eventually, through mismanagement, brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. Sung asked a friend in Chien-yang, Chou Ming-chung, to recruit "patricians among his fellow countrymen" who would manage the original granary plus a new one founded in a remote corner of the county.^[73]

The main impetus behind the proliferation of community granaries in Fu-chien came from Chao Ju-yü, a fervent admirer of Chu Hsi and twice governor of the circuit. Chao was one of the earliest proponents of the community granary. While prefect of Hsin-chou (Chiang-tung) in 1174 he proposed that half of the revenues intended for charitable granaries be

[70] For Chu's 1182 memorial, see "Hsin-ch'ou yen-he tsou-cha (4)," CWKWC 13/16a-18b; the imperial directive promulgating community granaries can be found in CHSC 59/12a-b. According to Chu, many local officials in Che-tung, where he was then serving as granary intendant, began to establish community granaries: "Ch'üfian-li she-ts'ang pang," CWKWC 99/ 23a-b. However, this activity apparently did not long survive Chu's resignation of this office early in 1183. For Lu Chiu-yuan's letter, see Lu Chiu-yuan, "Yü Chao chien (2)," Hsiang-shan hsien-sheng ch'üan-chi , 1/7.

[71] On Lu Chiu-shao and community granaries in Fu-chou, see Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen , pp. 152-53.

[72] "Chien-ning-fu Ch'ung-an-hsien Wu-fu she-ts'ang chi," CWKWC 77/26b.

[73] "Yun-p'an Sung kung mu-chih-ming," CWKWC 93/22a; "Chien-ning-fu Chien-yang-hsien Ch'ang-t'an she-ts'ang chi," CWKWC 79/19a; "Chien-ning-fu Ta-ch'an she-ts'ang chi," CWKWC 79/20a-21 a.

earmarked for distribution to community granaries in the countryside.^[74] Nothing came of this suggestion, but during his two tenures as governor in Fu-chien (1182-1186 and 1190-1191) Chao supervised the founding of numerous granaries throughout the four prefectures of the Fu-chien interior. But Chao sought to remold the community granaries to serve a purpose entirely different from Chu Hsi's original intention. Rather than promoting the granaries as a rural credit institution, he dedicated them to the specific goal of curbing the intractable evils of infanticide and child abandonment. Consequently, Chu and Chao engaged in a heated debate over the function of the community granaries, while Chao proceeded to sponsor "foundling granaries" (chü-tzu ts'ang ) as well as community granaries.^[75]

The widespread problem of infanticide emerged as a matter of national concern from the inception of the Southern Sung. The court was persuaded in 1138 to provide cash subsidies to families who could not afford to feed their infant children. At the same time the court gave its approval to the practice, widely employed in Fu-chien, of allowing nonagnatic kin to adopt children from indigent families.^[76] An administrative order of 1169 directed local officials in Fu-chien to supply indigent families with a thousand cash and a picul of rice for the nourishment of infant children. But the origin of the foundling granaries remains obscure.^[77] The practice of using land rents to endow foundling granaries perhaps originated with private individuals at the local level. By 1176, at the latest, Fu-chien governors were allocating land rents from "charitable estates" (i-chuang )^[78] to stock granaries expressly

[74] Chao Ju-yü, "Ch'i-chih she-ts'ang chi hsiang-min shu," cited in Chang P'u, Li-tai ming-ch'en tsou-i , 247/la-b.

[75] For a discussion of the conflict between Chu Hsi and Chao Ju-yü, see Watanabe Hiroyoshi, "Junki matsunen no Kenneifu: Shasogome no kontai to tairyo to," in Nakajima Satoshi sensei koki kinen ronshu , 2:195-217. A survey of institutions developed to provide for children is given in Imahori Seiji, "Sodai ni okeru eiji hogo jigyo ni tsuite," Hiroshima daigaku bun-gakubu kiyo 8 (1955): 127-51.

[76] CHSC 23/8b, 12a. In 1145 the court approved the use of Ever-Normal-Granary and charitable-granary reserves for the support of children of indigent families: SHY, shih-huo 62/ 29a-b.

[77] According to Lin-t'ing chih (1258), in YLTT 7513/12a, the court issued an order in 1135 to establish foundling granaries in the four interior prefectures of Fu-chien. I have found no contemporary corroboration of this claim (Wang Te-i, p. 174, n. 29, suggests that 1135 is a corruption of 1195). Chu Hsi noted in 1191 that even in his day the precise origin of the foundling granaries was uncertain. He cited documents indicating that the granaries were operating in the mid-1170's, but also mentioned claims for a slightly later date: "Yü Chao shang-shu lun chü-tzu-t'ien shih," CWKWC 29/4a-b.

[78] These charitable estates, which were public lands acquired by the state through eminent domain (principally lands whose owner died without an heir and lands attached to defunct monasteries), must be distinguished from the privately owned charitable estates set up to support fellow clansmen, typified by the famous model of the Fan clan. Prior to this time a portion of the proceeds from sales of such properties had been allocated to the Ever-Normal Granaries: SHY, chih-kuan 43/32b.

dedicated to the nurture of infants. Local officials in Chien-ning prefecture had begun using revenues from charitable estates for this purpose two years earlier, in 1174.^[79]

Chu Hsi expressed his misgivings about the foundling-granary concept to Huang Wan, brother of his preeminent disciple, Huang Kan, in a letter of 1189:

The theory behind purchasing lands to provide revenues for the nurture of infants is excellent. On this issue Chou [Ming-chung] and Liu [Yao] [both were active in the establishment of community granaries in Chien-yang county] have made similar suggestions. Yet in my humble opinion to do so only solves a single problem. It would be far better to distribute loans of grain [through community granaries]. Then not only can one provide for foundlings, but simultaneously provide relief from dearth as well. Moreover, in the future we can expect the magnates to renege on payment of rents for foundling granary lands, and collecting delinquent rents will prove costly and time-consuming. These abuses are already evident in Chien-yang.^[80]

Chu recognized that tenancies on public lands nearly always fell into the hands of the rich and powerful, whose domination over clerks and petty bureaucrats made it unlikely that rents from these lands would be collected. No real benefit would issue from a relief system funded with revenues from public lands. Chu hammered away at this theme in a letter to Chao Ju-yü in the fall of 1190:

Support for foundlings in essence depends entirely on the payment of rents by tenants on various categories of public lands and rice collected as interest from people in the ward. Today most of these tenants are powerful and cunning patricians (hao-hua shih-jen ) or the sons and brothers of active officials whose power suffices to coerce both private individuals and public functionaries. Frequently they hedge and delay paying rent, to the point where even by the following summer or autumn they have not paid up and none dare press them to do so. The "influential families" (hsing-shih chih chia ) illegally request grain from the foundling granaries under false names. A single family obtains as much as ten or even a hundred piculs. The canton clerks know well enough that this is going on, but they are constrained by personal ties and unable to turn down their petitions.

[79] Yen-p'ing chih (ca. 1237), cited in YLTT 7513/11a; Chien-an chih (1198), cited in YLTT 7513/12b; "Yü Chao shang-shu lun chü-tzu-t'ien shih," CWKWC 29/4a-b. In 1173 the prefect of Fu-chou (Fu-chien), Shih Hao, petitioned the emperor to set aside income from government lands in the four interior prefectures of Fu-chien to support pregnant women and children under the age of three. But there is no indication that the court acted on Shih's proposal. In the same year the prefect of Chien-ning, Chao Yen-tuan, recommended subventions for children of the poor, but Chao made no mention of income from government lands: Shih Hao, "Fu-chou ch'i chih kuan-chuang ch'an-yung sheng-tzu chih chia cha-tzu," Mao-feng chen-yin man-lu , 8/5b-8a; SHY, shih-huo 66/11b- 12a.

[80] "Yü Huang Jen-ch'ing shu," CWKWC 28/11a.

The second charge adduced by Chu, that the very usurers the system was supposed to circumvent garnered most of the loans from the foundling granaries, applied equally to community granaries, as Chu himself was forced to admit.^[81]

In the winter of 1190-1191, following a shortfall in that year's harvest, Chao agreed to a petition from local notables to cancel outstanding debts on loans made by community granaries in Chien-ning. Chao's action provoked instant outrage within Chu Hsi's camp. Chu, then serving as prefect of Chang-chou on Fu-chien's southern coast, immediately wrote to his close friend Liu Yao in Chien-yang, registering his dismay that Chao had subverted the integrity of the system. By forfeiting outstanding loans Chao had created a situation where "within a few years the canton clerks will merely administer empty granaries, and families requiring assistance to raise their children will no longer have any hope of getting grain."^[82] Huang Kan acknowledged that although the community granaries in Chien-ning had worked well for twenty years, now the "great houses" secured most of the loans under false pretenses. Poor peasants, seeing that Chao granted an amnesty to the big borrowers, decided not to repay their loans either. Thus in the summer of 1191 the community granaries had no stores, those with insufficient means were forced to borrow from usurers, and grain prices tripled. In the end food riots broke out and angry mobs put to death anyone found hoarding grain, though most of the "great houses" had fled to the safety of the county seat.^[83]

Despite Chu Hsi's strident objections, Chao Ju-yü continued to promote the foundling granaries. By the beginning of the thirteenth century over one hundred foundling granaries had been established in Chien-ning, T'ing, and Nan-chien prefectures. Even some granaries nominally designated as community granaries actually operated as foundling granaries. For example, the magistrate of Kuang-tse county (Shao-wu) set up a "community granary" expressly to provide for children of the poor. Like the foundling granaries, it was funded through rents on public lands rather than by donations from altruistic patricians.^[84] In 1191 the governor of Fu-chien pooled the funds for both granary systems. Henceforth the community granaries as

[81] "Ta Chao shuai lun chü-tzu-ts'ang shih," CWKWC 28/12a-b. Chu recounted the case of a "recently successful examination candidate" who had borrowed over one hundred piculs of grain from the community granary in Ma-sha-chen (Chien-yang) and after Chao declared an amnesty on community granary debts refused to make good on the loan.

[82] "Ta Liu Hui-po," CWKWC, hsu-chi 4A/5a.

[83] Huang Kan, "Chien-ning she-ts'ang li-ping," Mien-chai hsien-sheng Huang Wen-su kung wen-chi , 15/18a-b.

[84] "Shao-wu Kuang-tse-hsien she-ts'ang chi," CWKWC 80/8b-9b; Li Lu, "Tai hsien-tsai she-ts'ang chen-chi-p'u hsu," Tan-hsien chi , 5/8a-10b.

well as the foundling granaries would be funded by revenues, principally land rents, disbursed by the governor and the granary intendant.^[85]

As Chu Hsi and Huang Kan predicted, powerful magnates used their influence to gain tenancies on public lands and garner most of the granaries' lending capital, thus denying any real benefit to the poor. A court discussion of 1214 confirmed these trends.^[86] The outbreak of food riots in Chien-ning in 1188, 1191, 1194, and 1207 underscored the ineffectiveness of relief policies.^[87] By 1219 the community-granary system in Chien-ning had largely collapsed. In that year the prefect Shih Mi-chien established a new granary system, called the "liberal beneficence granaries" (kuang-hui-ts'ang ). Like the community granaries, the new granaries were widely dispersed throughout the countryside, but rather than providing loans to individual households they sold grain to stabilize prices. Shih at first considered rehabilitating the community granaries but ultimately gave up in the face of the insuperable problem of collecting delinquent loans.^[88] In 1232, when rebellion ravaged Chien-ning and the entire Fu-chien interior, the governor in Fu-chou dispatched "community granary" rice upstream to supplement local famine relief supplies.^[89] Thus in Fu-chien, where the first community granaries were founded, the concept had been turned on its head: rather than serve as locally controlled resources established to redress the failings of the state-run relief administration, the community granaries operated as just another arm of the state bureaucracy.

Local officials and private individuals continued to set up community-granary networks throughout the thirteenth century, particularly in Chiang-hsi and Hunan, but the limitations of Chu's original plan became more and more manifest. Though community-granary networks might last for a considerable length of time, almost invariably they underwent mutations, to the point where Chu Hsi would hardly have recognized them. This conclusion holds true even for the most successful ones. Wang Ying-lin (1223-1296), an enthusiastic proponent of the community granary, stated at the close of the Sung dynasty that the system worked best in Shao-hsing, Chin-hua (Wu-chou), Chen-chiang, Chien-ch'ang (Nan-k'ang-chün),

[85] Chien-an chih (1198), in YLTT 7513/12b; Yen-p'ing chih (ca. 1237), in YLTT 7513/11a-b. For the most part these revenues came from abandoned monastery lands that reverted to public ownership and were rented out to tenants: Yuan Hsieh, "Ch'ao-san tai-fu Chao kung muchih-ming," Chieh-chai chi , 17/24b; SHY, shih-huo 62/50a-b.

[86] SHY, shih-huo 62/50a-b.

[87] Watanabe, "Junki matsunen no Kenneifu," pp. 203-5.

[88] "Chien-ning-fu kuang-hui-ts'ang chi," HSCWC 24/13b-16a; Hsu t'ung-chien ch'ang-pien , cited in YLTT 7513/16a-b. A similar system was established in T'ing prefecture to replace the defunct foundling granaries: Lin-t'ing chih (1258), in YLTT 7892/20a-b.

[89] "Tsou-ch'i po P'ing-chiang pai-wan-ts'ang mi shen-t'iao Fu-chien ssu-chou chuang," HSCWC 15/20b.

P'ing-hsiang (Yuan-chou), and Ch'ang-sha.^[90] Since we can study five of these cases (excepting Shao-hsing) across time, Wang supplies us with a representative sample to appraise the community granary's institutional viability.

The community granary in Wu-nu canton, Chin-hua, was perhaps the most long-lived of all. Founded in 1178 by a disciple of Lü Tsu-ch'ien, it endured into the second half of the thirteenth century. But by then the granary no longer was in the hands of the "venerable elders of the canton" but instead was operated by government clerks under the supervision of the county magistrate. Moreover, rather than conducting all transactions in grain, the clerks demanded that loans be repaid in cash. Fearing that borrowers would default, the clerks consented to lend grain only after poor harvests. Thus this granary network became an instrument of episodic famine relief rather than a provider of perennial credit assistance as Chu had envisioned.^[91]

P'ing-hsiang's community granaries, founded in 1181 and 1189, numbered eleven altogether. Like those in Chin-hua, P'ing-hsiang's granaries were held up as a model because of the active participation and leadership of local literati. However, by the early 1220s three of the granaries had closed, while three others no longer followed the guidelines specified by the founders. Some dealt in grain to stabilize prices, others lent grain at reduced interest, and a few granary managers used the granary stocks to supply soup kitchens. In one case the trustees had purchased about a hundred mu of land to provide a steady income and protect the granary's resources from exhaustion due to unpaid loans.^[92]

Fewer details are known about the community granary established by Liu Tsai and his fellow patricians in Chin-t'an county, Chen-chiang.^[93] Writing circa 1230, Liu boasted that the granary had prospered for more than twenty years, providing loans in rural areas as well as selling grain (to hold down prices) in the markets. Liu attributed the success of Chin-t'an's community granary to the division of responsibility among many persons who nonetheless could coordinate their respective tasks. Yet he expressed pessimism about the future survival of this institution, grimly noting that higher officials had their eyes on the granary stores and might commandeer them in the event of even minor food shortages.

[90] Wang Ying-lin, Yü-hai , 184/26b-27a. Chen Te-hsiu, writing roughly half a century earlier, stated that the most notable instances of successful community granaries were those in Chien-ch'ang and P'ing-hsiang: cited in Ku-lo chih , in YLTT 7510/22a.

[91] Wang Po, "She-ts'ang li-hai shu," Lu-chai Wang Wen-hsien kung wen-chi , 7/9b-12b. Although this text is undated, in another essay dated 1251 (ibid., 15/9b) Wang stated that the granaries existed in name only.

[92] I-ch'un chih , in YLTT 7510/13b-14a.

[93] See the texts and discussion in James T. C. Liu, "Liu Tsai (1165-1238): His Philanthropy and Neo-Confucian Limitations," Oriens Extremus 25, no. 1 (1978): 19.

Chin-t'an's community granary directly inspired the Hu family of Chien-ch'ang to revive a community-granary network originally founded by the prefect of Nan-k'ang in 1215. Hu Yung, formerly one of Chu Hsi's students, visited Liu Tsai in about 1230 to observe the community granary at Chin-t'an and discuss the merits of different organizational principles with Liu. In Chien-ch'ang the canton clerks took charge of all granary operations, an arrangement that struck Liu as too centralized and susceptible to abuse.^[94] The Hu family still was active in the supervision of Chien-ch'ang's community granaries more than two decades later, but corruption had indeed crept into the system. The granary officers often lent grain to their own estate managers or embezzled grain by juggling the books. The prefect of Nan-k'ang attempted to reform the institution in 1252, but in the judgment of a local historian, "not all malfeasance could be weeded out."^[95]

A final case was that of Ch'ang-sha, where a community granary network had been in existence since 1196. In 1224 Chen Te-hsiu, heir to the mantle of Chu's philosophical tradition, increased the number of granaries from twenty-eight to one hundred, using funds diverted from the Hu-kuang General Commissariat (tsung-ling-so ). Chen discovered that the food supply situation in the city was far worse than in the countryside, however, and devoted most of his energies to stocking granaries for urban residents. In imitation of the community granaries, the operations of the new granaries within the city walls would be solely entrusted to substantial property owners, who also were expected to make contributions to the granaries' reserves.^[96] Within a fairly short time familiar abuses—expropriation by higher officials and peculation by village officers—began to undermine the granary systems.^[97] The same refrain recurs in many other late Sung assessments of the community granaries.^[98] Despite a few successful ventures in the closing years of the dynasty, notably in Fu-chou and Chi-shui in Chiang-hsi,^[99] by the beginning of the fourteenth century, Ch'eng Chü-fu (1249-1318) sadly observed, few survived.^[100] Ma Tuan-lin, in his encyclopedia of institutional history completed in about 1308, concluded that

[94] Ibid.; Liu Tsai, "Nan-k'ang Hu-shih she-ts'ang chi," Man-t'ang wen-chi , 22/8b-10a.

[95] Nan-k'ang chih , cited in YLTT 7510/15a-16a.

[96] "Ch'üan-li i-k'u wen," HSCWC 40/12a-13a; see also the texts translated in von Glahn, "The Country of Streams and Grottoes," pp. 433-34.

[97] Lu-chiang chih , cited in YLTT 7510/23b-24a.

[98] "Chao Hua-wen mu-chih-ming," HSCWC 44/11a; Lin Hsi-i, "Pa Che-hsi t'i-chu-ssu she-ts'ang kuei," Chu-hsi Chuan-chai shih-i-kao hsu-chi , 13/1b; Huang Chen, "Fu-chou Chin-ch'i hsien Li-shih she-ts'ang chi," Tzu-hsi Huang-shih jih-ch'ao , 87/17a-18b.

[99] On Chi-shui, see Chi-shui chih , cited in YLTT 7510/31b, and Lin Gh'en-weng, "Chi-shui i-hui she-ts'ang chi," Hsu-hsi chi , 4/29a-30a. On Fu-chou, see Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen , pp. 152-57.

[100] Ch'eng Chü-fu, "Pa Yu-shan Li-shih she-ts'ang shih-hou," Ch'u-kuo Wen-hsien kung Hsueh-lou hsien-sheng wen-chi , 24/1 a.

all too frequently a noble idea had been turned into an instrument of tyranny.^[101]

As Chu Hsi emphasized at the outset, the long-term viability of the community granary hinged on its financial soundness. The Confucian abhorrence of usury, intensified by contemporary reproof of Wang An-shih's rural credit program, clashed with the community granaries' need for a margin of profit, especially given the high rate of default. Sympathetic critics observed that the large percentage of bad loans not only threatened the community granary's solvency, but also deterred potential contributors from risking their assets in such an unpromising venture.^[102] Consequently, community granaries tended to evolve in the direction of pure charity. Trustees commonly used the granary's capital to purchase lands whose rental income in turn would be dispensed as charity to indigent peasants. In other cases community granaries shed their credit functions and simply bought and sold grain to stabilize prices. In either event the community granaries duplicated welfare services performed by the state, and not infrequently were absorbed by the state bureaucracy. Chu Hsi's original idea, the creation of a self-governing rural credit association, was lost.

The Community Granary As Ideology

Voluntary mutual aid associations dedicated to the material well-being of their members of course antedated Chu Hsi's efforts to establish community granaries. The diffusion of Buddhism throughout Chinese society since the fifth century spawned a host of religious institutions, which administered to the material as well as the spiritual needs of the faithful. Everywhere Buddhist laity formed congregations (i-i, she-i ), which pooled money for religious devotions (such as making images of the Buddha), dispensed charity (particularly in the form of contributions for funeral and burial expenses), and took over formerly secular community observances such as the planting and harvest festivals (ch'un-ch'iu erh-she ). Though imbued with Buddhist beliefs and liturgy, these groups took on a life of their own independent of the sangha. Compared with the mass convocations typical of the sixth century, which encompassed the entire social hierarchy, the lay congregations of late T'ang and Sung times were smaller, more intimate gatherings bound together by explicit obligations of mutual aid. Many fell under suspicion as "profane cults" (yin-tz'u ) and became targets of state persecution. The monk Tsan-ning, in his history of Buddhism presented to the Sung court in

[101] WHTK 21/213c.

[102] Lu Chiu-yuan's reservations on this point are discussed in Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen , p. 155. See also Wang Po, "She-ts'ang li-hai shu," Lu-chai Wang Wen-hsien kung wen-chi , 7/11a; Jui-yang chih , in YLTT 7510/32b.

999, took pains to distinguish associations he viewed as truly devoted to pious charity and good works from cults tainted by heterodox rites. Yet whether or not they received the approbation of Confucian officials or the Buddhist clergy, these congregations promoted sociability and a sense of community, strengthening collective self-interest and alleviating intramural conflict.^[103]

From the inception of Buddhism in China the sangha had dedicated itself to toiling in the "fields of compassion" (pei-t'ien ), that is, to performing charitable works. The promotion of charity among lay adherents was enhanced by the popularization of the plain teachings of Ch'an and Pure Land Buddhism during the Sung. The irresistible allure of gaining merit toward salvation prompted the faithful of high and low station alike to express their piety through individual acts of charity or by making donations to monastic orders engaged in charitable activities on a grander scale. Nowhere was this more true than in Fu-chien.

In Sung times Fu-chien was often referred to as "the land of the Buddha."^[104] The settlement of Fu-chien coincided with the flowering of Buddhist monastic institutions during the T'ang and even more so under the patronage of the Min kingdom in the tenth century. Consequently, the monastic orders were blessed with munificent gifts of lands and property and in some places garnered more than half of the income from cultivated lands. We know nothing about monastic landholdings in Chien-ning, but according to Yang I (974-1020), a native of P'u-ch'eng county, the prefecture numbered 912 monasteries in his day, or one for every one hundred households.^[105]

The Sung court, far less hospitable to the monastic orders than previous dynasties, attempted to strictly regulate the sangha and especially the disposition of the monasteries' wealth. In Fu-chien the state controlled the investiture of abbots for all except the forty largest (of more than five thousand) monasteries. Monks routinely were reduced to suborning local officials to gain an abbothood. Beyond petty corruption, though, the Sung state regularly appropriated monastic assets to meet public needs. In Fu-chien, beginning in 1152 the state audited the accounts of the monasteries, and all income regarded as "surplus" (tsan-sheng )—that is, in excess of the

[103] Chikusa Masaaki, "Tonko shutsudo 'sha' munjo no kenkyu," in idem., Chugoku bukkyo shakaishi kenkyu, pp. 477-557. See also Jacques Gernet, Les aspects économiques du Bouddhisme dans la société chinoise du Ve au Xe siécle , pp. 250-68.

[104] This discussion is based on Chikusa Masaaki, "Fukken no jiin to shakai," in Chugoku bukkyo shakaishi kenkyu, pp. 145-98.

[105] Cited in Chiang Shao-yu, Huang-ch'ao lei-yuan , 61/13a. In Fu-chou at the end of the twelfth century the ratio was 216:1 (Chikusa, "Fukken no jiin to shakai," pp. 149-50). Although the number of monks in Fu-chou had drastically declined since the early Sung, the number of monasteries had not.

minimum required to support monks and acolytes, pay local taxes, and maintain temples in good repair—was transmitted to the Privy Purse.^[106] The year before, in response to the growing problem of theft of public lands by "influential households," the court ordered that the "permanent sustenance" properties of defunct temples (ch'ang-chu chueh-ch'an ) be used to support schools. Ch'ung-an's county school, built in 1180, received operating subsidies from the lands of five defunct monasteries.^[107]

Sung officials argued that since the avowed purpose of the monastic endowments was to perform good works and provide charity to the distressed, the state's expropriation of monastic wealth for public works and services amounted to no more than a rerouting of aid. The much weakened sangha was in no position to contest the will of the state. Without a doubt the actions of local officials and the court represented a concerted effort to place all welfare activities under the control and discretion of officialdom. The foundling granaries established under Chao Ju-yü's aegis served—implicitly, at least—this goal of secularizing social welfare. Providing for foundlings and orphans had traditionally been one of the major charitable undertakings of the monastic orders. Moreover, many indigent parents entrusted children they could not afford to feed to the care of the Buddhist clergy. Given Chu Hsi's well-documented antipathy to Buddhism, one wonders whether his sponsorship of the community granary and other social welfare institutions stemmed from a desire to wrest the hearts and minds of the populace away from a religion and social institution he detested. Chu himself did not speak to this issue, but tantalizing hints abound. In his later years Chu frequently wrote diatribes against the Buddhist clergy for usurping the place of public cults, particularly the sacrifices at the Altar of Grain and Soil (she-chi ).^[108]

Obviously, Chu did not have in mind lay Buddhist congregations when he set himself to the task of devising institutions that would heal the ruptured bonds of communal solidarity. A more likely source of inspiration was Ch'eng Hao (1032-1085):

When [Ch'eng Hao] was magistrate of Chin-ch'eng [Shansi] he organized the villages and settlements into units of five and twenty-five families to enable them to help each other with physical labor and to come to each other's relief in case of difficulty, and to make it impossible for the treacherous and wicked to hide in their midst. To the relatives and fellow villagers of orphans, the lame, and the homeless he assigned the responsibility to ensure that these un-

[106] Collection of tsan-sheng revenues was halted by the mid-1170s because of the debilitating impact on monastery finances: Chikusa, "Fukken no jiin to shakai," pp. 165-68.

[107] SHY, shih-huo 61/14a; "Chien-ning-fu Ch'ung-an-hsien hsueh-t'ien chi," CWKWC 79/14a.

[108] For examples see "Shu Shih-tsun shen-ming chih-hui hou," CWKWC 83/21a-22a; "Ch'ao-san Huang kung mu-chih-ming," CWKWC 93/9a-b.

fortunates would have someone to turn to. . . . When villagers formed an association or held an assembly (she-hui ), Ch'eng drew up regulations for them that made clear the distinctions between good and bad [actions] so that the people might be encouraged to do good and ashamed to do evil.^[109]

Ch'eng Hao envisioned the revival of the regulated and well-ordered society of antiquity described in the classic Rituals of Chou (Chou li ). In his famous 1069 memorial to the throne Ch'eng emphasized among other things that in antiquity social cohesion derived from the natural human affection felt toward members of one's own community; intimate contact and camaraderie (ch'in-mu ) among fellow villagers produced a sense of integrity and shame (lien-ch'ih ) that induced all to conduct themselves in accordance with their station, thus eliminating conflict.^[110] Ignoring the complexity of Sung society, Ch'eng Hao exuded supreme confidence in the emperor's capacity, through moral example, to instill such virtues in his subjects.

Chu Hsi concurred with Ch'eng Hao on several key points. First, Chu affirmed that a well-ordered society required everyone to fulfill the duties and obligations of his station. Most of the world's troubles could be attributed to the failure to recognize and respect the distinctions and reciprocal responsibilities embedded in the natural social hierarchy. Primary responsibility for clarifying the social hierarchy and ensuring the cooperation of all its elements rested with society's leaders, the patricians, and above all the emperor, and Chu Hsi directed his prescriptions and exhortations to them.^[111] Seen from this perspective, the community granary was merely an articulation of the lineaments of the social hierarchy, a vehicle for the expression of the sense of compassion that defined the relationship between the upper and lower orders.

Chu also shared Ch'eng Hao's atavistic yearning for a reversion to a simple rural society unbesmirched by the sordid social flotsam—"displaced persons" (fu-min ) and "idlers" (yu-shou )^[112] —symptomatic of a society in decay. Social stability could be achieved only through a renewal of the ethic of the mutual interdependence of the upper and lower orders, an inter-

[109] Chu Hsi and Lü Tsu-ch'ien, Chin-ssu-lu chi-chu , 9/42b-44a, translation adapted from Wing-tsit Chan, trans., Reflections on Things at Hand , p. 225. The term she-hui ("associations and assemblies") did include groups involved in purely secular activities, but most commonly it denoted convocations devoted to a particular patron saint or celebrating specific religious festivals. See, for example, the catalogue of she-hui in Southern Sung Hang-chou in Wu Tzu-mu, Meng-liang lu , 19/8a-10a.

[110] Chu Hsi and Lü Tsu-ch'ien, Chin-ssu-lu chi-chu , 9/17b-18a (not translated by Chan).

[111] On Chu's emphasis on the principal role of the emperor, see Julia Ching, "Neo-Confucian Utopian Theories and Political Ethics," Monumenta Serica 20 (1972-73): 46-47, and Schirokauer, "Chu Hsi's Political Thought," pp. 131-33.

[112] Ch'eng Hao's words, cited in Chu Hsi and Lü Tsu-ch'ien, Chin-ssu-lu chi-chu , 9/34b.

dependence nurtured by the sympathetic intimacy of personal ties. Thus Chu repeatedly stated that the superior households' chief obligation was to provide for the welfare of their own tenants and bondservants, and only secondarily to that of society as a whole. In the same fashion the community granary was a formal expression of the ethic of subsistence cementing the social hierarchy. Welfare institutions run by the state, Chu noted, lacked this moral ethos. He often complained that the benefits of public welfare institutions favored the idlers who gathered in the towns rather than the deserving needy, the peasantry. In his view only those engaged in honest toil and earning their living from agriculture should receive relief.^[113]

Chu Hsi also agreed with Ch'eng Hao's assertion that, human nature being immutable, the moral potential of mankind had not diminished since the Golden Age of the sage-kings. One of the central tenets of Tao-hsueh affirmed that latter-day patricians could aspire to realizing the ideal of sagehood.^[114] But Chu Hsi backed away from the proposition upheld by the Northern Sung progenitors of Tao-hsueh that contemporary statesmen should seek to revive the actual institutions of antiquity as described in the classics. Chu's dissent on this issue took several forms. To begin with, he regarded any institutional framework as insufficient in itself. Good government ultimately depended on the perspicacity of its leadership, whose discerning judgment derived from study and self-cultivation rather than familiarity with the laws. Furthermore, Chu regarded the age of the sage-kings as a unique phase of human history. The world that confronted him and his contemporaries differed substantially from that of antiquity, and government institutions had to be adjusted accordingly. Chu drew a distinction between the utopian vision of a moral and just society embodied in the ideal of antiquity, which had universal and eternal relevance, and the historical reality of antiquity, which passed away long ago.^[115]

At the same time, Chu stridently objected to the use of the precedents of recent history as models for social and political institutions.^[116] Robert Hart-well has coined the phrase "historical analogism" to describe the trend, current in late T'ang and Sung times, to utilize history as a fund of knowl-

[113] "Chien-ning Ch'ung-an-hsien Wu-fu she-ts'ang chi," CWKWC 77/26b. Chu also protested that the foundling granaries favored urban-dwelling idlers over the rural peasantry: "Ta Kung Chung-chih," CWKWC 64/11a. This sentiment went back to the beginning of his political career. When Chu served as master of records in T'ung-an county in the mid-1150s he complained that T'ung-an's city-dwelling official households, wealthy families, government clerks, and merchants used their wealth to purchase land mortgages and thus dispossessed the peasantry: "Ta Ch'en Ming-chung," CWKWC 43/4a-b.

[114] Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Utilitarian Confucianism: Ch'en Liang's Challenge to Chu Hsi , p. 43.

[115] Ibid., pp. 42-44, 201-4; Schirokauer, "Chu Hsi's Political Thought," p. 129.

[116] For a fuller discussion of Chu's views on the use of history as a model for political action, see Conrad Schirokauer's treatment in chapter 4 of this volume.

edge and experience from which statesmen could derive lessons applicable to similar situations in the present.^[117] From the mid-T'ang onwards these scholars traced the evolution of laws and institutions throughout history to provide guides for public policy and decision making in their own day. Their emphasis on historical contingency and cumulative change across time ramified into a conservative political orientation that militated against radical institutional innovation. Not surprisingly, practitioners of historical analogism, such as Ssu-ma Kuang, Chang Fang-p'ing, and Fan Tsu-yü, led the opposition to Wang An-shih's New Policies.^[118] In the Southern Sung historical analogism was embraced by utilitarian-minded theorists such as Ch'en Liang, who combined the conservatives' distaste for radical reform with admiration for the ability of the Han and T'ang rulers to use power to augment the might of the empire. In his debate with Ch'en Liang, Chu Hsi rejected both the utilitarian focus on the uses of power and the historical analogists' contention that political institutions could be evaluated apart from the men who operate them.^[119]

Thus Chu Hsi's political philosophy diverged markedly from the gradualist and conservative approach of historical analogism and also from the classical revivalism espoused by the eleventh-century luminaries of Tao-hsueh . Indeed, Chu's political ideas shared certain congruities with the nemesis of both of these orientations, none other than Wang An-shih. Chu, like Wang, denied that history restricted the scope of political activism to mere amelioration of the existing social and political order. Both men were inspired by the utopian integration of state and society detailed in the Rituals of Chou , yet neither believed that ancient institutions could be resurrected in the present day. Instead, Wang and Chu alike advocated study of "the Tao made manifest in affairs of government" as laid out in the Rituals

[117] Robert M. Hartwell, "Historical Analogism, Public Policy, and Social Science in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century China," American Historical Review 76, no. 3 (1971): 690-727. In chapter 3 in this volume Peter Bol contends that Ssu-ma Kuang was not a historical analogist in Harwell's sense of the term as one who "uses principles abstracted from historical models" to determine public policy. According to Bol, Ssu-ma Kuang used history, not to derive the "necessary principles" indispensable to proper government, but merely to prove their validity. Hartwell perhaps has overstated the case for the incipient development of a social science methodology in Sung times. Yet he also concedes the limits of analogism as employed by Sung political theorists: the methods of historical analogism focused attention on the particular crisis of the moment, and hindered the extrapolation of general analytical hypotheses from analogical propositions (Hartwell, 725-27). To my mind the concept of historical analogism is still valid if we understand by the term a positivist assumption that history served as an accurate guide in predicting the consequences of specific policies.

[118] The political conservatism of this group is also emphasized in Anthony W. Sariti, "Monarchy, Bureaucracy, and Absolutism in the Political Thought of Ssu-ma Kuang," Journal of Asian Studies 32, no. 1 (1972): 57; James T. C. Liu, Reform in Sung China: Wang An-shih and His New Policies , p. 33.

[119] Tillman, Utilitarian Confucianism , passim, especially pp. 145-48, 212-13.

of Chou and "modelling institutions on the intentions (i )" of the sage-kings.^[120] Internalization of the classical ethos of moral cultivation would provide the inspiration for political activism. This orientation, which perhaps could be termed "classical analogism," posited (1) contrary to the precepts of historical analogism, the range of political choices was not confined to the narrow spectrum of the recent past; instead it envisioned the creation of new institutions infused with the spirit of antiquity exemplified in the Rituals of Chou ; (2) contrary to classical revivalism, historical exigencies required institutions appropriate to the actual social context; thus Chu opposed the facile revival of mythic archetypes such as the "well-field" system of land allocation.^[121] In sum, classical analogism provided a justification for institutional change unencumbered by the strictures of recent history.

Beyond the shared assumptions justifying institutional innovation based on the prototypes in the Rituals of Chou , Wang An-shih and Chu Hsi parted company. Although Wang, like Chu, frequently affirmed the primacy of moral cultivation and education, Chu found his policies sorely deficient in this respect. Nonetheless, Chu Hsi held Wang in higher esteem than did most of Chu's contemporaries, including the utilitarian thinkers often classified together with Wang.^[122] Chu criticized Wang's most zealous detrac-

[120] Quotations are taken from Wang An-shih, "Chou-li hsin-i hsu," Wang Lin-ch'uan ch'üan-chi , 84/533, and "Ni shang-tien cha-tzu," ibid., 41/237. Chu Hsi emphasized studying the ideas of the Chou sage-kings contained in the Rituals of Chou in his 1188 memorial to the throne: Schirokauer, "Chu Hsi's Political Thought," p. 133; Tillman, Utilitarian Confucianism , p. 204. For Wang An-shih's concern to ground policy in "the original truth of the Classics," see Peter K. Bol, "Wang An-shih's Theory of the Activist State," paper presented at the 36th Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, March, 1984.

[121] For Chu Hsi's views on the infeasibility of reviving ancient institutions, see Chu-tzu yü-lei 108, passim. Chu's frequent discourses on the "well-field" system cogently illustrate his preference for developing institutions analogous in function to those presumed to have prevailed in antiquity rather than simply trying to revivify ancient institutions. Chu pointed out to his students that efforts to recreate the "well-field" system according to the precise details recorded in the Rituals of Chou would produce "not the land tenure system of the Three Dynasties, but rather that of Wang Mang" (the infamous usurper of the first century A.D. who tried to recast his government in the shape of the institutions specified in the Rituals of Chou ): Chu-tzu yü-lei 55/4b. In his response to a student's question about the passage in Mencius 3A.3 extolling the merits of the "well-field" system, Chu Hsi provided a succinct statement of what I describe as classical analogism (Chu-tzu i-shu, Meng-tzu huo-wen 5/3a): "In general, although it is said that Mencius traced the institutions handed down from the Three Dynasties back to their sources, he always grasped the essence of those institutions without becoming totally absorbed in their details; he patterned his ideas after the intentions [of the sages], without becoming mired in textual semantics. Now clarifying understanding and making manifest the simple truths [of antiquity] constitutes the only viable method of managing affairs of state. But how can we expect rigid pedants and petty scholastics who insist on the literal meaning of the text to be able to understand this?"

[122] Ishida Hajime, "Shu Ki no Kinei sengo ken," Gumma daigaku kyoiku kiyo, jimbun shakai kagaku hen 30 (1980): 65-82. On the disjuncture between Wang's political ideas and those of the utilitarian Ch'en Liang, see Tillman, Utilitarian Confucianism , pp. 212-13.

tors for insisting that "the precedents of the dynastic founders" were immutable and for their unrelenting hostility to institutional reform. In Chu's mind the perilous situation of the dynasty in Wang's day did indeed demand sweeping reform, but Wang's policies failed because of Wang's misguided faith in the rule of law, which led him into the folly of ignoring the moral character of the men he chose to execute his policies.^[123]

Chu Hsi strongly condemned Wang An-shih's use of the Rituals of Chou , accusing Wang of "merely selecting elements that were congenial to his own ideas while availing himself of the lofty reputation of the text to silence the voices of a host of critics."^[124] For example, Wang An-shih justified his Bureau of Markets and Exchange (shih-i-ssu ) as a means of replicating the Duke of Chou's Repository of Wealth (ch'üan-fu ), a public office that was supposed to intervene in the market to keep the supply and demand for goods in balance. Chu regarded Wang's classical analogism as a disingenuous attempt to enrich the state by collecting profits through the buying and selling of commodities, which the Duke of Chou had never intended.^[125] Wang An-shih, in Chu's estimation, violated the spirit of the Rituals of Chou by imposing institutional change from above through legislative fiat. Chu's concept of reform, symbolized by the community granary, was predicated on renewing the bonds of communal solidarity within local society, primarily through the agency of patricians rooted in moral and intellectual discipline. The Rituals of Chou provided appropriate models for institutional reform, but ultimately positive reform depended on the quality of leadership.^[126] This distinction constituted the crucial difference between Chu Hsi's community-granary concept and Wang An-shih's New Policies.

Yet it cannot be said that Chu Hsi's more locally centered approach to political activism was more successful in creating viable institutions. The community granary presupposed a commonly shared sense of social obligations, which did not exist. While Chu recognized the acute class antagonisms within Sung society, he was mistaken in his belief that conscious moral and intellectual effort alone could resolve these tensions. The upper orders—officials, "influential families," landlords, and even the patricians—failed to fulfill their assigned role; instead, they continued to exploit the poor and the desperate. As often as not, the community granary

[123] "Tu liang Ch'en lien-i i-mo," CWKWC 70/7a-14a; Chu, Chu-tzu yü-lei , 108/9a, 128/6b.

[124] "Tu liang Ch'en lien-i i-mo," CWKWC 70/10b.

[125] Chu, Chu-tzu yü-lei 130/2a.

[126] For a discussion of this point specifically related to the community granaries, see "Chien-ning-fu Chien-yang-hsien Ta-shan she-ts'ang chi," CWKWC 79/21a.

became an instrument of, rather than a counterweight against, this exploitation. Still, Chu Hsi's reordering of government priorities, the narrowing of the focus of political activism from the broad domain of national administration to the confines of the locality, was a significant landmark in Chinese political and institutional history. The community granary stood midway between a faith in centralized government institutions, which animated the Northern Sung reform movements, and a quest for personal rectification and the corresponding contraction of the sphere of "world-ordering" to the family, the school, the patrician circle, and the local community, which characterized Neo-Confucianism in the late imperial era.