From Archive to Handbook: Anthologies of Administrative Documents in the Qing

~--~-~----------'-=====""""""'---~:-------~

-~~J!l~ ti ~~11~1* 5t ,p]f1t

<Ml~*)

~ ~ 1§ (Pierre-Étienne Will)

Papers from the Fourth International Conference on Sinology

EXPLORING THE ARCHIVES AND

RETHINKING QING STUDIES (Offprint)

From Archive to Handbook: Anthologies of Administrative

Documents in the Qing

Pierre-Étienne Will (~~ 1§)

Collège de France

Academia Sinica

Exploring the Archives and Rethinking Qing Studies Papers from the Fourth International Conference on Sinology Taipei: Academia Sinica, 2013

From Archive to Handbook: Anthologies of Administrative

Documents in the Qing

Pierre-Étienne Will ( ~~1t )*

This essay is about two different types of anthologies of administrative

documents intended as models for officiais. The first type, which emerged in the late

Ming, consists of (mostly) published collections of administrative papers (gongdu)

by individual officiais. They include administrative correspondence, reports,

proclamations , judgments, and other genres. Questions such as actual authorship,

why and how gongdù anthologies were compiled, and the connection between

public and private archives are examined. A few collective gongdu anthologies were

also published in the l 660s and l 670s. The second type consists of anonymous

compilations of judicial materials culled from government archives, both printed and

manuscript. They are typical of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and mostly

feature leading cases (cheng'an) and Board memoranda (shuotie). Whereas the first

type was meant to offer individual examples of administrative excellence, the second

type provided administrators with convenient overviews of the legislation in force and

with authoritative interpretations of the Penal Code. A large number of titles are cited

* Collège de France

146 / Pierre-Étienne Will

and described along the way.

Keywords: official handbooks '§'Ji& , official documents i}l\R , leading cases J5.lG

~ , Board memoranda filt~i!i , Bureau of Codification ~-f§dâê;

From Archive to Handbook / 14 7

It has long been remarked that official handbooks ( guanzhen '§~) and

anthologies of documents ( gongdu 0mf ) are two sides of the same thing, namely,

didactic materials for administrators: the former include admonitions on the

ethical and technical aspects of government, whereas the latter provide examples

of actual government. 1

Anthologies of documents are the subject of this essay. Their shared

characteristic is that they are composed of administrative pieces of various

descriptions, sometimes in abbreviated form, in principle faithfully reproducing

the language of the original documents, and with no or very little commentary.

In other words, their form and contents are fairly close to those of the actual

archives from which they have been extracted. Beyond these commonalities,

however, several important distinctions need to be made. The first of these is the

one between, on the one hand, anthologies of their own documents published by

individual authors (or "private anthologies"), and on the other hand, anonymous

collections of documents-judicial documents in the majority of cases-directly

extracted from the public record or from government archives.

As we shall see later, further distinctions need to be made within each

of these two large categories. Before going into details, however, it seems to

me necessary to stress the basic difference of intent that distinguishes them

from one another. Though both categories were meant to provide their users

with documents that might guide them in their everyday administrative work,

private anthologies were premised on the notion that their authors (i.e., the

authors of the documents anthologized) were model officiais: typically, while

1 See for example Niida Noboru 1::.-11'- ta~, "Ôki bunko yinxiangji" .:k.-*3(.Jf fp ~"tê., in Riben guo Ôki Kan'ichi suocang Zhongguo faxue guji shumu El ;.f..~ .:k.-*-T-?!T,i. tf ~ * -!ffe;lr,fi:f § (Beijing: Falü chubanshe, 1991).


the authors themselves would claim in their preface that they were no more than

ordinary officials-just very hard-working and uncompromisingly upright-the

colleagues, disciples, and sons who wrote the other prefaces spared no words

to celebrate them as outstanding exemplars and insisted that publishing their

papers would provide a model of dedication and excellence to the profession.

In contrast, the anonymous collections of documents are more like databases

o:ffering a collective and neutral view of current and correct practice.

In other words, the persona! dimension of private (individual) anthologies

is what de:fines them: despite many variations, their central subject remains the

official and his individual agency, as perceived through his words and deeds;

whereas in the collective anthologies the officiais recede into anonymity:

inasmuch as they f eature at all in the documents, they are no more than

servants-more or less efficient and reliable servants-of a government machine

de:fined by its regulations and procedures; and it is the last that are at the center

of the entire effort.

1. lndividual Anthologies

With rare exceptions, individual anthologies of administrative documents

started to be compiled and published in the sixteenth century. 2 In the :first known

instances the authors are provincial officiais (investigating censors or grand

coordinators), but thereafter we :find anthologies by officiais of all ranks, from

govemor-general down to district magistrate. Such collections were published in

increasing numbers until the end of the imperial regime and beyond.

2 The exceptions include, essentially, a few collections of directives by Zhen Dexiu Jt f.t !§

(1178-1235), found in various congshu under the titles Zhen Xis han zhengxun Jt i1fu J.i .iQ iJI! ,

Yu liaoshu wen ~1*-~ :X. , and Yu su wen ~%:X. .

From Archive to Handbook / 149

1.1. The Question of Authorship

The authorial dimension in individual anthologies is emphasized by the fact

that the pieces they contain are almost always presented as texts written by the

official whose name usually features as "author" (with words like zhu ~or zhuan

~) on the cover-leaf and at the beginning of the chapters. The main categories

of documents in the anthologies of a "generalist" character-i.e., dealing with

every aspect of local government-include (1) communications with other

officiais, both above and below, (2) proclamations ( gao '5- , or jin ~ when they

are prohibitions) to the population, gentry, and lower administrative personnel,

and (3) judicial decisions. Even though their contents may be fairly routine, the

:first two genres imply at least some personal commitment and responsibility on

the part of the official who speaks in the :first person (whatever the level of self

effacement or self-assertion, depending on whom he is addressing, suggested by

the different phrases used to say "I"). In official correspondences he routinely

insists either on his devotion to his duties and submission to his superiors or on

his requests to and expectations of his subordinates. In the case of exhortations ·

and prohibitions aimed at the populace, the rhetoric usually conveys the notion

that the official has been dismayed to see with his own eyes that this or that

regrettable or reprehensive custom remains prevalent and that he is absolutely

intent on correcting it-hence the present proclamation, in the efficiency of

which he has "much hope" (houwang W~ ). The personal touch is also much

in evidence in judicial decisions, either judgments ( pan *U , and several other

terms) or "rescripts" (pi :Jtt, i.e., responses to litigants), especially those directly

addressed to the litigants: they are documents in which the official/judge is

expected to display his resourcefulness, legal knowledge, and ability to educate

and morally improve his constituents. (Many specialized gongdu anthologies are

speci:fically devoted to the judgments and rescripts of the author.)


Yet in a majority of cases such authorship was plainly a fiction. Magistrates,

not to mention prefects or provincial officials, had an enormous amount of

paperwork to handle, and even the most hard-working among them could not

possibly draft all the documents that were issued in their name. In the Qing

at least, it was commonly acknowledged that most pieces were drafted by the

private secretaries (muyou ~R) hired by the official to do just that, and for the

more routine affairs the task could be entrusted to specialized clerks as well.

In the Ming-that is, before the emergence of the muyou-most of the work

seems to have been done by the yamen clerks. In fact, in the Qing certain muyou

of repute might be personally known among the bureaucratie hierarchy to be

the real authors of the documents sent up by their employers to argue their

case. Thus, Wang Huizu 5.I.~lt§_ (1731-1807)-the patron saint of Qing private

secretaries-brags at one point in his autobiography that "his name is quite well

known to the govemor" and mentions the laudatory comments made by the

latter in front of his employer. 3 As a matter of fact, there exist a few examples of

anthologies whose author is a muyou who wrote the documents assembled in the

work for the sake of one or several employers, whose name he may or may not

reveal: here, the "models" are explicitly his own production.4

3 See Bingta menghen lu~~ f-*-iî< (1876 ed.), J:_ /lla-b, 12a-b; in this particular instance, dated 1756 and taking place in Jiangsu, the govemor in question was the famous Zhuang Yougong fi± :1ï ~ (1713-1767). Wang also mentions the no less famous Chen Hongmou Ft :t~ (1696-1771) among his "govemor admirers".

4 One example is a manuscript in five thick fascicles, entitled Duyu lu ~~if< (1913 preface, held by the CASS lnstitute ofHistory), extremely rich in information, whose author appears to have been a judicial secretary named Sun Yulin ~4\i#, who signed the preface. The documents were written in the name of several Jiangsu magistrates and prefects, obviously Sun's former employers. The preface claims that these materials may be useful as models for the future administrators of the new Republican regime.


Still, the pretense of authorship is very strong in individual gongdu

anthologies, for the very reason indicated above: as most authors of such

collections aimed to emphasize their own individuality as good officials, to

admit openly that they were not the actual writers of the documents supposed

to exemplify their qualities would be self-defeating. And, t~ be sure, it was

not always a pretense. Sorne actually insist (lest people might doubt it) that

everything in the book is of their own writing. This claim seems to have been

especially valued in the case of the "rescripts" (pi) delivered in court to litigants

in the course of "civil" affairs, as it was seen as a proof of the official's hard

working habits as well as his persona! concem for and closeness to the people.

For example, the prolific and respected Fan Zengxiang ~!~t~ (1846-1931) says

in the prefaces to several of his many collections of public papers that he always

wrote his rescripts in his own hand, and other preface authors add that he handed

down "several thousands" ofthem.5 The same sort of claim is found conceming

other authors as well.6 One might also mention the case of Zheng Xie I)~

5 See Fan Zengxiang, prefaces to Fanshan pandu ~ J.di•J ~ (Fazheng xuexi suo )!-;&_" '& Pff 1911 ed. ), Fans han zhengshu ~ J.i ;&. :t , and Fans han pipan ~ J.i :f<t..f•J ; anonymous preface to Fanshan pandu (all editions); editor's preface to Fanshan pandu xubian (1912 Datong shuju ed.). Except at the very end ofhis career (in 1908-1911), all the positions occupied by Fan Zengxiang were in Shaanxi.

6 Such authors include Yu Chenglong f- Pli. ;W. (1617-1684) ( according to the assistant who edited his archives as Yushan zoudu f- J.i ~ ~ ); Zhao Shenqiao M 'fi ?.î- ( 1644-1720) (according to the compiler ofhis Zhao Gongyi gong zizhi guanshu M~~ -0- §l if; -g :t and to his grandson); or Qiu Huang fi~:J:i (jinshi 1805), a prefect in Shaanxi in the 1830s and 1840s who published a remarkable collection of judgments entitled Fupan lucun JÎf .f•J l>f< # . Qiu writes in his preface (dated 1839) that when he went through his documents after the closure of the seals (jengzhuan #*-) ofFengxiang prefecture (ofwhich he was acting prefect) at the beginning of winter 1839, saw this accumulation of judgments and "remembered they had all been on my own decision and not entrusted to another hand' ( ~1~ §l :li·~~ ' .::i:::

1R ~ -t ), he could not resolve to throw them away and instead copied them into a volume.


(Zheng Banqiao 1.&fit, 1693-1765), whose reputation as a calligrapher was such

that his successors in the counties where he had served would eut offhis rescripts

from the documents in the archives and keep them as collectors' items.7

Yet, Fan Zengxiang also says in the preface to his Fanshan pipan (Mr.

Fanshan's Rescripts and Judgments) that regarding final decisions (as opposed

to rescripts ), except for difficult affairs he would entrust the clerks with writing

the record of testimonies and proposing a judgment, and accept it as is, provided

of course that it did not seem unreasonable; only for affairs of some import or

presenting special difficulties would he write the judgment himself.8 One may

assume that many of his colleagues did the same. As for proclamations to the

populace and to yamen personnel, while many of them sound like standard

pieces on mandatory topics (such as prohibitions against gambling, lawsuits,

women's suicide, and many more, or rules regarding student behavior, clerks

and runners work, yamen organization and the like ), some undeniably display

a persona! voice and may actually have been pondered over and drafted by the

official who published them. But even in such cases the presence of a talented

muyou acting as ghostwriter can never be excluded. Thus, it has been claimed

that the memorials and administrative writings of the famous Henan govemor,

Tian Wenjing B3X:~l (1662-1732), anthologized in the Fu Yu xuanhua lu~~

7 The calligraphie treasures ended up in various public and private collections. For an anthology of them, see Zheng Banqiao pandu ~~:t&.~-*11 J:t , ed. Li Yimang $-* (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1987).

8 See Fan's preface to Fanshan pipan (undated). The passage is to explain why there are many pi and very few pan in the work, since he would only reproduce what was from his own hand. It reads: "Once a case has been investigated and closed, 1 have the clerks record the testimonies and propose a judgment; if the general idea does not contain incongruities, then 1 won't add any embellishments. Only for comparatively serious cases or cases looking odd will 1 sit down and write ajudgment in my own hand" ( .i.. •~&:m.~ ' J!IJ re Jl:A.#i#t-~-*1 '

~*·~~~···~~-···*•lt••&~**'~··+~~~·)


'ê'fci-JZ (Records on Propagating Civilization as Henan Govemor, 1727) and

its several sequels, which do display a strong personality and individual voice,

were in fact written by a private secretary named Wu Sidao ,~~}Gl~ ; some

of Tian's biographers doubt whether this is true, however. 9 The same sort of

question might be raised regarding at least some of Chen Hongmou's numerous '

proclamations, circulars, and directives to his subordinates compiled and printed

by his son and grandson under the title Peiyuan tang oucun gao t.g. ~ g ff-1& ff f~ (Surviving Drafts from the Peiyuan Studio), which cover the years 1733-

63.10 Many sound like heartfelt documents, full of indignation and urgency;

and yet the same texts with few variants are often found in several sections of

the work, corresponding to Chen's different postings, which suggests at least a

secretarial hand, and certainly a degree of routine.

In this as well as in other cases nothing certain can be said, in fact: while

the image of the official producing all his paperwork brush in hand seems

improbable, he might occasionally insist on doing the writing himself. This is

again confirmed by the interesting distinction made in the preface to a relatively

short collection of "instructions" (tiaojiao f~~) handed down by Yin Huiyi j3"

W!- (1691-1748) during his govemorship of Henan in 1737-39: this collection

was compiled posthumously by a "disciple" (menren F~.A ) of Yin's named Zhang

Shouzhang *~-&, who specifies that he did not retain the "ordinary directives

whose composition is left to the care of private secretaries" ( fLw1lt~~

if!1-=F-.tr'Nif!ff~ )-implying that the ones he did include had been written by

9 See Li Qiao $ ~ , Qingdai guanchang baitai )t 1.!.Ç. 't J,W 8 ~ (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 1990), p. 6; Qinghai leichao ~;f*!Jiji:W), 28/6-7; Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, p. 720.

10 The title Peiyuan tang aucun gao covers in fact more than the administrative pieces that concem us here, which are grouped un der the subtitle wenxi :5{.. #t. , in 48 juan, and represent by far the larger part of the whole.


Yin in person. 11 This is the same pattern as in Fan Zengxiang's judgments. To

cite yet another configuration, the "principles of compilation" (fanli fL-WIT ) of the

massive 50-juan anthology of Ding Richang's T B §ri papers from his Jiangsu

govemorship (1867-70), published by a colleague in the 1870s under the title Fu

Wu gongdu ~~0-Jll (Administrative Documents from a Jiangsu Govemorship ),

informs us that the work is based on a bunch of documents delivered by Ding

that included drafts from the hand of clerks or composed in the inner cabinet,

with variable degrees of revision by Ding himself.

In short, many degrees of collaboration between an·official and his

secretarial staff were possible: in some cases the writing would be entrusted to

seasoned secretaries who knew perfectly the issues as well as the rhetoric and

did not need the help of their employer to produce the required texts, which he

would sign; in other cases.the assistants' task was limited to putting on paper the

official's directives and admonitions and submitting their drafts to him;12 and in

still other cases the official would write more personal pieces directly in his own

hand.

1.2. Private Archive and Public Archive

In most cases the pieces in individual anthologies are said in the prefaces

11 Fu Yu tiaojiao, inJifù congshu chubian ~-fiillJ::f";FJJJ:$i (1913), Zhang Shouzhang preface (1750). Interestingly, Zhang says that Yin's son Jiaquan /.;ft, who helped him in the compilation, confessed tearfully to having been negligent in keeping his father's administrative papers (as opposed to his memorials, which were published as a separate work), hence the small number that survived.

12 For typical ways of collaboration in writing judicial decisions, see Wejen Chang, Administration of Justice in Late Imperia! China (unpublished draft), chap. 15, p. 4-5.


or fanli to have been drawn from their author's personal archive. Many explain

that they looked into their "old trunk" (jiuqie jjm) to collect the texts issued

during their career-that is to say, the copies or drafts of such texts, which they

had preserved for their own archive. Everything suggests that such personal

archives were built very systematically by most administrators, one assumes

at great scribal cost, and that they could reach a considerable size. There were

various reasons for doing so, such as documenting one's official career for future

biographers, preserving evidence to set the record straight if the need arose,

keeping material for one's future Collected works-or more precisely in this case,

one's future gongdu anthology13 -or perhaps simply the Chinese consideration

for any piece of written material. The desire to keep track of one's interventions

is also illustrated by one early nineteenth-century manuscript daybook in which

an unnamed Sichuan magistrate (or possibly prefect) had the rescripts (pi) he had

been writing day after day systematically listed, with a brief description of each

case.14 Obviously, almost all the publications based on such personal archives,

even the most extensive among them, would only include the pieces that the "'"" '\.,,_

-\"' author or compiler deemed sufficiently representative or interesting to be given , ~

as examples; or, as the case might be, those necessary to highlight a particular

episode or achievement. This is why I call gongdu collections "anthologies": by

de:finition an anthology is based on choice.15

13 Except possibly memorials, administrative documents were not normally material for a wenji.

14 The manuscript, which is held at the Tôyô Bunko and is obviously a fragment of a larger series, has been named Shu sang pi'an Jj t;;.;}H:. ~ by the librarians. It is undated, and the name of the official whose pi are listed is not known, but circumstantial evidence suggests the early 1820s. The name of the copyist ( -'[-4')' )-a certain Wang Dingzhu J:. it#., probably a private secretary-is indicated.

15 For example, the large quantity of pieces collected in Tian Wenjing's Fu Yu xuanhua


It is not always clear what proportion of such private archives was also

preserved in the public archives of the various yamen in which the author had

served, or with which he had been corresponding. Sorne kinds of documents

were not meant to be archived in the administrative bureaus. A typical example

is the informal missives (bing ~) that officials would send to their superiors

to discuss any kind of problem with them. They appear to have been routinely

resorted to and are found in large quantities in some anthologies. They can

be defined, it seems tome, as semi-public documents inasmuch as they dealt

exclusively with administrative matters, but went directly to their addressees

without copies being placed in the public archive. As a matter of fact, one meets

occasional criticism of the practice of informally submitting problems to one's

superiors in the form of non-bureaucratie missives, and only after the superior's

opinion was known submitting a formal communication, a copy of which would

definitely be kept in the yamen's files. It may be assumed that in many cases the

exchange was actually taking place between the muyou of the officials involved.

In contrast, the "letters" (shu ~, qi ID:, and the like), which are also found

occasionally in individual collections of administrative documents, were of a

completely private nature, even when discussing public matters.

The situation is perhaps less clear regarding a variety of ad hoc

communications officials constantly exchanged among themselves, either along

hierarchic lines or horizontally, to provide information, consult each other, give

instructions, submit reports, and so forth, which are found in abundance in many

gongdu anthologies based on private archives. Sorne of them, for example the

instructions sent down by higher officials in the form of circulars often called xi

lu is said by the compilers to have been only ten percent of what he kept in his archive corresponding to the same time period. Similar claims are made in innumerable prefaces.


;fjt , or zha ;-jt , went through the yamen services in charge of communications

and were archived in the relevant bureaus. The same is obviously true of the

proclamations, prohibitions, procedural rules (shili $-Wrr ), "covenants" (yue

~~ ), instructions (tiaojiao {~~ ), and other sets of regulations (zhangcheng ~

fî ), which might be appended to such directives and feature prominently in

private anthologies. They were obviously public documents, and at county level

it was incumbent on the relevant yamen bureaus to have them posted wherever

necessary or circulated among the people concemed. But as I have already

suggested, the situation may have been different regarding communications from

official to official (as opposed to circulars ), which were managed by the officials'

private cabinets and may not have been copied into the public archive.

As far as judicial documents are concemed, in the case of criminal justice-

that is, cases for which judgment proposals had to be submitted to the higher

courts-judgment proposals and all the accompanying paperwork were definitely

public documents, copies of which had to be kept in the yamen archives. The

situation was apparently the same with the "rescripts" (pi) that magistrates or , . . '-"'-' \.,,_

prefects delivered to litigants either to answer a request in the course of the > t

procedure or to deliver the final decision (which in many cases is best described

as an arbitration between the competing parties) in so-called "minor affairs"

(xishi ~Hl$ ).16 In the preface to his Fanshan pipan, Fan Zengxiang states that

until 1887 he did not keep copies of his rescripts, which he always wrote in his

own hand and which, according to him, were widely copied by the citizenry and

sought eagerly by admiring colleagues whom he could not satisfy since he did

not have copies at home. Then, following the advice of several colleagues, from

16 See above conceming the autograph rescripts of Zheng Banqiao that were removed from public archives by some of his successors.


the time of his appointment to Xianning Jg\G $ in 1892 he ordered his scribes

to make copies-only to discover, after having been transferred to Weinan 5W

m sometime later, that the larger part of the ten volumes of rescripts he had

accumulated had disappeared; he wondered who might have taken them away.

In Weinan 5WF-f'ff he collected again his pronouncements and retained about one

tenth of them for the present publication. However, these autograph documents

ofwhich Fan had at first neglected to keep copies were normally copied and kept

in the yamen archives, since the disputes brought to court had to be accepted and

managed through the yamen administration: in principle a file was systematically

opened by ·the clerks of the bureau of justice, then closed and archived when

the case was concluded, and that file would contain all the relevant documents,

including the rescripts.17

In short, the situation would seem to be one of dual filing, with originals

filed in the relevant yamen bureaus (where they still can be found today when

the archive has survived) and copies of at least part of them kept in the official's

private cabinet (mufu), which operated in his private residence and whose

paperwork was his own property. As we have just seen with the example of Fan

Zengxiang, it might happen that the magistrate's private file, which he would

take along when moving from one position to the other and on his retirement,

was more or less complete, or even that it could get lost.

Even assuming that the pieces kept in public and in private archives were

identical, one may of course wonder if the texts extracted from the latter for

publication in an anthology might not be submitted to a degree of editing,

whether for the sake of literary polish or to emphasize the author's qualities-let

17 For a most detailed account of the procedure in such "civil" cases, see Wejen Chang, Administration of Justice, chapter 6. See also chapter 18, p. 1-2.


us remember that in many cases the proclaimed aim of publishing an anthology

was pedagogical. The only thing one can say is that the situation must have

been variable: only direct comparison would allow us to form an opinion in

any particular case, but as we know such comparison is rarely possible at all.

According to colleagues who consulted the Baxian ES ~ archives, comparing

documents kept there with the corresponding pieces in the works of the

celebrated Liu Heng ~Uf~j (1776-1841), who was Baxian magistrate in the 1820s,

reveals some differences-but what kinctof differences and how significant they

are remains to be assessed carefully.

To conclude this section, let me compare two almost exactly

contemporaneous collections of judgments which are very similar in form and

content, but differ in nature and intention: one, the Fupan lucun R~.f5g·U~j{ff:

(Surviving Judgments from a Prefect, 1839 preface), is by an individual author,

Qiu Huang fi:~11§. , and originated from his personal archive;18 the other is a joint

collection entitled Xue'an chumo ~;t:f_)]î~ (Elementary Models for Studying

Cases), published in 1838 under the sponsorship of the govemor-general of.

Yunnan and Guizhou, Yilibu W .JI!.::ffî , and composed of documents culled from ,/'° " a public archive.19 The Xue'an chumo is rather unusual and may be unique. It

features the files of twenty recent cases selected from the provincial archives

of Yunnan, with only a few notes in the upper margin, and arranged by type of

crime in the order of the statutes in the Penal Code. Bach step of the procedure

is in evidence, from the initial report by the local constable to the magistrate's

18 See note 6 above. The Fupan lucun exists in two versions, in 4 and 5 juan respectively. The latter includes material down to 1845.

19 Twenty more cases were published as a sequel in 1839 as Xue'an chumo xubian ~~;fJJf~

f.Ji ~ . There is also an 1881 edition, the woodblocks for which were eut at the offices of the Gansu Provincial Judge.


sentence proposai and ensuing communications with the higher authorities.

Everything in the file is quoted in its entirety, or nearly so, which entails no little

repetition but at the same titne allows us to follow the development of the case.

The point here is that the aim of the work was not to emphasize the qualities

of the judges-as individuals the magistrates are almost indistinguishable in

the files. Rather, it was to provide the readers with examples of how "ordinary"

homicides and suicides, that is to say, straightforward affairs with no recanting or

appealing on the part of the defendant or relatives of the victim, should be dealt

with so as to avoid procedural errors likely to lead to rejectiorr of the judgment

proposai by the provincial authorities and the Board of Punishments.

In contrast, Qiu Huang's anthology is very much intended to enhance the

reputation of its author, who according to the prefaces was widely known for

his efficiency and faimess as a judge. In a general way, the cases introduced in

the work are not criminal affairs like those in the Xue'an chumo, but family and

economic conflicts, and more often than not they are fairly complicated, they

entail a lot of haggling with tough or elusive litigants, and they are therefore

subject to appeals to Prefect Huang and above. I mention this example because,

unlike most authors of administrative anthologies, Huang occasionally provides

sizable chunks of the dossiers, including the rescripts of the higher authorities

and his answers to them, documents attached to the sentence proposais as

evidence, and the final assessment of his situation regarding the deadlines

imposed by regulation. In other words, though extracted from his personal

archive, the entries look like fragments of actual files rather than neatly rounded

pieces as is usually the case with published judgments.

FromArchive to Handbook / 161

1.3. The Process of Compilation

Two questions are worth raising at this point: (1) Why would a particular

official decide to assemble an anthology of the administrative documents written

under his name? And (2) What was the process of compilation? Several scenarios

are possible in both cases.

As I have mentioned, many published anthologies were intended as models

for their colleagues by authors who implicitly or explicitly prided themselves

on the excellence of their administration and decided therefore to publish a

collection of their own documents retrieved from their personal archive. To give

but one example, in the preface already mentioned Fan Zengxiang does not

pretend to be modest: people make copies of his rescripts (they were posted at

the gate of the yamen) and circulate them, his colleagues eagerly ask him to show

them the texts, in Beijing his mentor Li Ciming *~~ (1830-1894) encourages

him to publish his administrative pieces, and the official and law specialist Shen

Zengzhi ).'.t~î.i (1850-1922) proclaims that no judgments are as satisfying in

their combination of sentiment and reason, elegance and plainness, and so forth,

as those of Pan Zengxiang.20

An interesting twist, occasionally encountered, is the claim by an author

that his govemment was in fact very flawed and that his intention is to expose

his errors as a waming to his readers. Thus, in 1636 a certain Zhang Erzhong * m,~, (1631 jinshi) published an anthology of documents from his tenure as

20 See Fan Zengxiang, preface to Fanshan pipan (no date). Likewise, in the preface to his Fanshan zhengshu ~Ji ;&.-j: (1910), Fan claims that as soon as his rescripts were posted the clerks and commoners would rush to make copies of them, and that later, when he was Jiangsu administration commissioner, his occasional rescripts were "on everybody's lips" ~ A..1'tiîi .


magistrate of Linzhang IBfr;)! (Henan) entitled Zhi Zhang zuilüe ~5!$~

(Brief account of my offenses as the Linzhang Magistrate ); he insisted in his

preface on the difficulty of administering even a comparatively smaU and quiet

place like Linzhang and explained that, while most of his coUeagues compose

similar anthologies to advertise their own successes (zi pu qi gong E! ~jtJ)J ), he had chosen to enumerate his errors in order to correct himself and help his

successors: for this reason, he claims, the word zui (offenses) in the title is

perfectly sincere.21

Whatever the motivation and intention, an official might compile one or

several anthologies of his documents in several different circumstances: after

retirement, after he had left a particular position (the one in which the documents

published had been written), during a period of mouming,22 or even right in

the middle of a posting. AU of this is usuaUy specified in the preface, though

sometimes one can only guess-especiaUy, of course, when there is no preface.

Such is the case with the several collections of documents left in manuscript

form by Qi Biaojia 113~{:1. (1602-1645), one of the most remarkable officiais of

the late Ming. Qi appears to have systematicaUy documented his comparatively

short but extremely brilliant career, first in his immense diary, which covers

the years 1631-1645, then in collections of administrative and judiciary

documents corresponding to the various positions he occupied in the provinces:

as prefectural judge and acting magistrate in Fujian ( during the years 1624-31 ),

21 Using zui to refer to one's administration was a common form of self-deprecation among officials.

22 An interesting example is a manuscript gongdu anthology (possibly intended for publication) held by the National Library, Beijing, entitled Huanyou zaji 'îi#-lf.ittC. and compiled by a certain Yuzhang ~:t3 (with 1869 prefaces): Yuzhang took advantage of a mourning leave to make a compilation of documents from his tenure as magistrate of Jiangzhou ~ )~~ (Shanxi) in the l 860s.


as provincial judge in Suzhou (for a few months in 1633), and, again for a short

period, as Jiangnan inspecting censor under the Southern Ming govemment

immediately after the faU of the North (in 1645). AU ofthese works, the carefuUy

composed manuscripts of which are now preserved in the National Library in

Beijing and a few other places, would certainly have been published at some

point had not Qi committed suicide while the Qing armies were approaching his

native Shaoxing. They were most probably compiled immediately after Qi had

left the positions to which each ofthem corresponds.23

Quite often the actual work of selecting the documents, arranging them (by

chronological order, by content, by genre, or by position occupied), and editing

them (giving them titles, building a table of contents, possibly correcting the

text), was effected with the help of muyou, junior coUeagues, disciples, or family

members, whose names and roles may or may not be indicated in the preface

orfanli, or sometimes on the cover-leaf.24 It might also happen that the work

was prepared entirely by such people, either while the author was still alive or

posthumously. For example, the anthology of the administrative documents

of the famous Yu Chenglong was originally compiled by an assistant named

Li Zhongsu * cp ~ and published under the title Yushan zoudu (Memorials and

Documents by Mr. Yushan) shortly before Yu's death in the post of Liang-

23 Examples include the anthology known as Puyang bingdu, pingyu, zalu i !'# l J;f ' tt"* ' $~, corresponding to Qi's tenure in Fujian; the An Wu xigao, paishigao -*-::1':>!&~' Ill iÏ' ~ , corresponding to his first stint in Jiangnan in the l 630s; the Xun 'an Su Song dengchu

jietie ~* .~t~ *-~ ;f& N; , corresponding to his tenure as Su-Song inspecting censor under the Hongguang regime (held by the Zhejiang provincial library); and other similar works. Severa! ofthese texts are now available as reprints.

24 A well-known example is Liu Heng's Yongli yongyan Jt 3tlt1' (Ordinary Words from an Ordinary Official, 1830), of which Liu says himself in his preface that it was compiled by his private secretary, Wu Shouchun :1':~ti- , based on proclamations and directives from his eight years in Sichuan.


Jiang govemor-general in 1684; then in 1707 an enlarged version was compiled

by two disciples, Cai Fangbing ~JJITT and Zhu Kuangding ~~JiEI~ and

"respectfully written out" ( :fMli-JZ ) by the author's grandson, Yu Zhun -T$ . In the

same way, the complete version of Chen Hongmou's Peiyuan tang oucun gao

(the one currently available today) seems to have been compiled posthumously

by his son and grandson, though it was probably a project conceived by Chen

himself. Yet another example is the Huaiqing zhengji t51HêPï&• (Records of

Huaiqing's Govemance) by Shen Yanqing 5.t1>r!!: (1813-1853), an anthology

of proclamations and administrative correspondence related to the author's

magistracies in several counties of Jiangxi: the work was edited and published in

1862, several years after Shen's death combatting the Taiping. As for the Huamin

lu 1~B;;i-JZ (A Record of Transforming the People) by Qi Wenhan tl3X:~ (with

1 729 prefaces ), it off ers an interesting pattern since it is a set of proclamations

posted by the author while he was magistrate of Jiangyin 5I~"€i (Jiangsu), published

by his constituents after he had been dismissed against their wishes in 1 727

for failure to prevent tribute grain from being spoiled during heavy rain: the

efficacy of his proclamations against such rampant evils as suicide, lawsuits, and

gambling, say the prefaces, had been so great that they wanted to prevent their

loss by putting them into print.

Not a few authors modestly insist that they did not in fact intend to print

their anthology of administrative texts, but had to yield to the entreaties of

colleagues and assistants who could not bear the idea that such wonderful

material might not be made available to inexperienced beginners and help them

leam their craft. A typical claim is that the author originally kept his anthology

of papers as a manuscript intended for junior family members aspiring to an


official career, and perhaps a narrow circle of acquaintances.25 Indeed, we

find more than occasional mention of the private model whereby a manuscript

magistrate handbook or gongdu collection is passed down from generation

to generation within a family dedicated to public service-a "government

handbook for sons and grandsons" (zisun zhipu -T1*5éî~ ), as the phrase goes.

We even :find a Kunqu play, composed and published in the 1850s, combining J'

the intergenerational transmission of an official handbook called Juguan jian Fd g~ (which gives its title to the play: The Mirror of the Official) with a narrative

of patriotic resistance against the English. 26 Such privately kept anthologies

might eventually be printed and made public because of their author's reputation

or public demand, or as an act of filial piety on the part ofhis descendants.27

No doubt, more often than not such claimed reluctance to be published was

pure posturing. An author who was positively keen to have his administrative

25 Yuzhang's unpublished Huanyou zaji, mentioned in note 22 above, is a typical example: the author states that he is keeping the manuscript for his descendants, but one of the preface

writers claims that the writings of such a model official absolutely must be published as a

manual for everyone to use. In this particular case, however, publication seems not to have followed.

26 See my essay, "La vertu administrative au théâtre: Huang Xieqing (1805-1864) et le Miroir du fonctionnaire", Études chinoises, 18, 1-2 (1999): 289-367.

27 Another variant was the printed book whose continued availability was ensured by

successive generations. An example is the Shou He riji "l' ;f;. El R, (A Day-by-Day Account

of Administering Jiaxing), a highly interesting anthology of proclamations, judgments,

and various other pieces dating from the tenure of its author, Lu Chongxing J.Î **, as Jiaxing $.* prefect in 1675-1678: Lu's son in turn became the prefect of Jiaxing during

the Yongzheng period and is said to have used the work as a model; likewise he gave it as a model to his own son, Lu Zhuo JJ.;bj!., who had a new set ofprinting blocks engraved

after he became governor of Zhejiang in 1738; again, when Lu Chongxing's great grandson

arrived in the region in 1788 with the position of salt intendant, he managed to retrieve about

half the printing blocks and put out a new edition after supplying the missing text from a surviving copy.


papers published could pretend that in fact the idea had corne from his disciples

or subordinates, who wished that his important directives be made available to

the whole profession. To cite one outstanding example, Tian Wenjing's Fu Yu

xuanhua lu contains no author's preface but is introduced by a communication

signed by the four highest Henan officials subordinate to him asking his

permission to print the work for the sake of enlightening the province's

officialdom. He gives his consent in a brief rescript. Exactly the same pattern

is followed in the Xinzheng lu JG\i&~-JZ (A Record of Governing with Heart)

of 1741, a similar compilation of the directives of one of. Tian's successors

as Henan governor, Yaertu 2tmliil (?-1767). Not all individual compilations

of documents were meant to increase their author's glory through widespread

distribution, however. Sorne works actually look more like a compilation for

personal reference than a didactic anthology; they have usually been preserved in

manuscript form and were probably not intended for publication at all.

Whatever the motives of their authors, the individual gongdu collections

constitute an immensely useful database for the history of local societies and

polities; in the same way, they are highly informative on everyday administrative

life in the various provinces and counties of late imperial China. To single out

one particular-and extremely popular-genre, the collections of their own

judgments compiled by local officials, besides being a unique source for social

history, inform us on actual judicial practice better than any handbook or body

of regulations. On all these aspects, the anthologies of administrative documents

considerably supplement the few accessible repositories of local archives, from

which they more or less directly derived.28

28 For the description of a large number of gongdu anthologies of all sorts, see my Official Handbooks and Anthologies of Imperia/ China: A Descriptive and Critical Bibliography


2. Collective Compilations

There were other anthologies that were not devoted to pieces selected by

one individual author from his private archive, but introduced their readers to

documents coming from many officiais. Most of the works discussed below

are collections of judicial documents culled from government archives. 1 begin,

however, by discussing a genre that appears to have flourished at the beginning

of the Kangxi period (1662-1722) and whose principal characteristic was that it

anthologized administrative documents by many individual authors, covering in

systematic fashion the whole range of government activities. '~

2.1. Collective Gongdu Anthologies

By far the best-known example ofthis genre, and the only one that survived

through many editions, is the Zizhi xinshu Ji5Éi~JT~ (A New Book to Assist in

Government) in 14 juan, compiled and published in 1663 by the famous fiction

writer and playwright Li Yu '.$ 5f!i\ (1611-1680?), with a second installment in

20 juan (the Zizhi xinshu erji = ~ ) published in 1667. Li Yu was never an

official, and as far as he was concerned publishing the Zizhi xinshu was first

and foremost a commercial venture-obviously very successful-dating to the

period when he strove to make a living as a publisher and bookseller in Nanjing.

Still, Li demonstrates a learned and quasi-professional interest in judicial

matters in the two groups of essays with which he prefaced the work, entitled,

(Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). The current manuscript is available from the author in electronic form. The works cited in the second part of this essay are also described in the Bibliography.


respectively, Xiangxing moyi t~ HU ?K iii (A Modest Proposition on Auspicious

Punishments) and Shenyu chuyan 'fJUMJ!f§ (Humble Opinions on Cautiousness

in Judgments). More generally, the organization and contents of the Zizhi xinshu

offer an impressive overview of the various seventeenth-century administrative

disciplines and documentary genres, all seen through original documents

borrowed from a large number of Ming and early Qing authors. The work is

in fact structured by documentary genres: the first half includes a section on

"communications" (wenyi bu )ZJ~îi3 ), one on "proclamations" (wengao bu X.. -'Sîi3 ), and one on "proposais" (tiaoyi bu f~iiiîi3 ), each divided into a number

of subsections corresponding to diff erent types of administrative activity, the

subsections being in tum split into more specialized categories, each featuring

a variable number of documents. The same is true of the last section, on

"judgments" ( panyu bu *U~fi3 ), which fills the second half of the compilation

(juan 8-14).29 The pedagogical intent is further demonstrated by the occasional

commentaries added in the upper margin and the over-abundant punctuation,

while the commercial nature of the publication is suggested by the poor printing

on mediocre paper of all the editions consulted. How Li Yu collected the

documents is unclear, but, interestingly, the Zizhi xinshu introductory matter

includes a "call for contributions" in which the publisher indicates the address of

the bookstore to which authors should send their texts for publication in the next

installment. 30

The publication of the Zizhi xinshu clearly responded to demand in the

29 The same organization, with some variants, was found in the Zizhi xinshu erji. That such a large proportion of the Zizhi xinshu was devoted to judicial matters explains why it is often described as a collection of legal cases. See for example Patrick Hanan, The Invention of Li

Yu (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 25-26. 30 Thefanli of the Zhi'an wenxian, discussed below, contains a similar call.


market-presumably from all sorts of persons concemed with administration,

be they officiais, private secretaries, clerks, or possibly examination candidates.

This is confirmed by the existence of several other collective anthologies of

administrative documents published at about the same time and more or less

following the same editorial principles. One is the Zhengxing daguan l& HU

*e (A Compendium on Govemment and Justice), compiled by a certain Liu

Banghan ~U3=3~, whose preface is dated 1664. This makes it almost exactly

contemporary with the Zizhi xinshu, whose recent publication Liu does mention

in his foreword (liyan 'WU"§ ), admitting that there is inevitably some overl~p.

He also cites three other works of a similar nature, all of them published in

Hangzhou (Liu himself was a Hangzhou native), and all of them impossible to

trace today.31 The administrative pieces which are assembled in this collection,

originating mostly from Qing authors,32 are organized into eight sections:

memorials (zoushu ~iffrt ), lateral communications (ziyi -â~ ), reports to superiors

(shenxiang $§$ ), answers to reports (pida :fi:t:'.lf ), proclamations (gaoshi -'5 7G ), directives to subordinates (paixi M-'îl: ), yamen regulations (kuanyue ~

~'g ), and-by far the more numerous-judgments (shenyu ~~).In each of

the first seven sections, the entries are arranged under the "statutes pertaining to

the six domains of govemment" (lilü 5e:W , hulü p 1$ , and so forth), a mode

of organization that was modeled on the Penal Code and used in many late

Ming handbooks that aimed, like Liu's anthology, at encyclopedic coverage of

31 The titles were Zhizheng quanshu %; .iW:. ~cf (Complete Book on Govemance ), Lizhi quanpian

~ ~{-; ~ ~ (Complete Writing on Administrative Discipline), and Qiezhong jingji Il 1f ~&.ift (Political Economy in the Trunk), respectively.

32 Or so Liu claims in his foreword, but the names of the authors quoted are not provided: only their office is indicated, like such-and-such section of the censorate, such-and-such board, govemor of such-and-such province, and so on. In other instances it is the title of the work quoted that is given.


all administrative activities. Indeed, Liu explains that his anthology is meant to

complement the Ming "books on administrative discipline" (lizhi zhi shu 5e: )él'::L.~ )-that is, handbooks of a prescriptive nature-of which he cites several

titles as the most popular in his own time. In other words, we find the same

opposition and complementary that I mentioned at the beginning of this essay

when comparing official handbooks (guanzhen) and anthologies of documents

(gongdu)-in other words, general recommendations and concrete examples.

Another similar work published at exactly the same time is the Zhi'an

wenxian )éJ'~X:JiX (Documents on Administering and Pacifying) in tenjuan,

compiled by Lu Shouming ~_iW;:g and Han Na ~lfillg, whose prefaces are dated

1664; there are two different sequels bearing the same title, Zhi'an wenxian erji

=~ , one in two juan and one in ten juan, both with Lu Shouming as compiler,

and the latter with a 1670 preface. Anthologized documents by Ming and early

Qing authors dominate the contents, but in the present case they are enriched

with a variety of essays, laws and regulations, model documents, and more.

Here again the Ming encyclopedic model is much in evidence, and indeed the

compilers acknowledge some well-known exemplars. Again the Zizhi xinshu is

mentioned in the foreword, but this time it is to deplore that it concentrates on

literary quality but is weak on structural principles ( I~ X:NâJifü *Edl-Wtl )the present compilation, it is said, is attempting to combine both. The principle of

orgapization is not documentary genres but domains of administrative activity. In

the main work, the latter follow a list ofheadings of the author's own devising

such as taxes, military affairs, justice, schools, and so on-whereas in the ten

juan supplement the material is organized according to the more conventional

"six ministries".

One last example is a rather massive compilation entitled Zengding fenlei

linmin zhizheng quanshu !~ 5E fr~~ ~ )Él' î& ~ ~ (A Complete Book on the


Art of Governance and Attending the People, Augmented and Classified),

edited by a certain Wang Yilin 3:. -M . The only copy in existence (at the

Naikaku Bunko in Tokyo) bears no date, and the preface is likewise undated,

but everything suggests that the work can only be slightly posterior to the

compilations just mentioned, from which it extracts some of its material. Unlike

the Zhi'an wenxian, the dominant principle of organization is genres, such as

memorials, reports, proclamations, proposals, administrative correspondence,

judgments, and the like, each of the ten juan that comprise the body of the work

being devoted to one genre; however, within each juan the material is classi:fied

according to the "six ministries". A feature shared with the Zhi'an wenxian is the

large number of general discussions (!un §#ff ), either by the compiler or quoted

from other authors, laws and regulations of the state, and extracts from a variety

ofhandbooks that supplement the documents anthologized in the work.

None of the last three titles enjoyed the same commercial success as the

Zizhi xinshu, which seems to have comered the market and whose many editions

are found everywhere in libraries today. In contrast, only a handful of copies,

or even one single copy, of the Zhixing daguan, Zhi'an wenxian, and Linmin

zhizheng quanshu can be traced in present-day library catalogues. But all four

works share common characteristics, which makes it possible to speak of a

"genre". What remains puzzling is that this genre, which apparently flourished in

Jiangnan and Zhejiang, was so short-lived: the works in question, and possibly

others of the same type, 33 were all produced during the 1660s or, at the latest,

the 1670s. Pending further discoveries, there do not seem to have been other

collective collections of gongdu either before or after this period.

33 As mentioned in note 31, a few titles are still known tous.


It may be that their appearance was spurred by the sorry condition of

local administration during the first three o~ four decades of the Qing. This was

a period during which the military still dominated the scene in vast areas

including, prominently, the Lower Yangzi-and fiscal extraction by whatever

means to fund defense was a priority. Magistrates where at pains to implement

the rules of civilian government, mostly inherited from the Ming. A significant

proportion of local officials were Manchus and, especially, Chinese bannermen

without academic credentials or a family background in administration. Finally,

Qing institution building was still in its infancy: the first edition of the Da

Qing huidian 7\.5~~ ~ , which featured the precedents in force at the time, was

not completed until 1690. Demand for guides to administrative practice based

on reliable models, which must have been strong in such transitional times,

was answered by private publishers whose eagemess to take advantage of it is

revealed by the poor printing and shoddy paper oftheir productions.

The pedagogic intention of all the collections just described is emphasized

by the addition of marginal commentaries and heavy punctuation. Most striking

is the frequent reference to and quotation from late Ming administrative

handbooks, several of which appear to have been in wide circulation during the

first decades of the Qing, though they had all but disappeared from the market

by the end of the seventeenth century. These late Ming handbooks display an

encyclopedic bent that is typical of the period and is also found in the private

commentaries to the Ming Penal Code published during the Wanli (1573-

1620), Tianqi (1621-1627), and Chongzhen (1628-1644) eras. Indeed, the late

Ming magistrate handbook that seems to have been the most used in the early

Qing34 -a composite work entitled Da Ming lüli linmin baojing 7\.E!FJ:tfiJUWr;

34 A quantity of early Qing imprints, which can be identified by the fact that the characters


§ÇJ;fw.l (The Precious Mirror for Attending to the People, Based on the Penal

Code of the Great Ming, 1632 preface ), compiled by a Board of Punishments

pre'sident named Su Maoxiang ~litt§ (1567-1630)-presents itself as a kind of

multifunction commentary touching upon all sorts of subject that were of interest

to local o:f:ficials, appended to and running alongside the text of the Ming Penal

Code. Its structure is determined, in other words, by that of the penal code of the

ruling dynasty, from its seven main categories to its 460 individual statutes.

2.2. Collections of Archivai Legal Materials

The same structure dominates practically all the compilations of legal

documents-both manuscript and printed works-that introduced their users to

materials culled from Qing government archives, in particular the collections

of leading cases (cheng'an RlG* ), Board memoranda (shuotie mM ), and other

similar documents that were assembled in significant numbers in the eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries. Compilations of provincial regulations and precedents

(shengli ~'WU ), both official and private, belong to the same category (but are not

discussed in the present essay). In all such instances, the aim was to provide

administrators with convenient overviews of the legislation in force and of

authoritative interpretations of the Penal Code, rather than with documents

produced by model officials. In other words, the emphasis was not on individual

excellence or exemplary writing but on expediency and information: the works

belonging to these genres were like databases, and they were used as reference

works and guides for daily practice.

Da Ming ABfaJ (Great Ming) in the title have been scraped and replaced with phrases like guanban W ~& (official publication) or mingxing BfaJ 711 ( clarifying punishments ), have been preserved.


Indeed, in most cases this use is reflected in the compilations' structure

determined by that of the Penal Code-and in the layout of the pages. The seven

parts of the Code (the mingli lü 1:11Jtl1$, or "gefleralities", and the six domains

of government corresponding to the six ministries), its 30 sections, and its 436

statutes-the number was reduced to 459 after the fall of the Ming and then to

436 in the Yongzheng edition-provided a convenient grid for finding practically

any sort of content, and not just for judicial administration. In many works the

name of the section and/or statute corresponding to the contents is written in the

central margin, making browsing easy for anybody familiar with the structure

of the Penal Code. In addition, most compilations included extensive tables of

contents, listing the cases one by one and following the same organization.

2.2.1. Board Memoranda

The transition from archive to reference work is particularly well

illustrated in the case of the compilations of Board memoranda (shuotie) that

made their appearance in the early nineteenth century. A large number exist in

manuscript form (sometimes in multiple copies), but printed collections are not

rare. The process through which the shuotie, which were essentially juridical

commentaries on the cases under discussion at the Board, or on relevant sections

of these cases, started accumulating as an archive in the Board of Punishment

from the 1780s onwards is well described in the prefaces to several such works. ~

The key institution was the Bureau of Codification (Lüli guan 1f 17tl!B ), which

was created as an ad hoc office entrusted with revising the penal code at the

beginning of the Qing dynasty and became a permanent bureau attached to the

Board of Punishments in 1742. (1742 was the year that saw the publication of

the new Qianlong Da Qing lüli *5~1$1Jtl and the inauguration of a new system

of periodic revisions of the code-one "small revision" every five years and one

"major revision" every ten years.)


The role of the Lüli guan was, first of all, to prepare the substatutes (li

Vtl ) that would be integrated into the next edition of the Perial Code. These

substatutes were selected from either judicial cases the resolutions of which,

sanctioned by imperial rescript, would be rewritten as law, or from proposals

submitted by provincial officials. However, the Lüli guan's influence went well

beyond this highly technical but limited task.

Several authors describe the heated discussions ("without shyness to

argue and gesticulate" =t"'t~D~:f'§~) that took place at the Board whenever

a case submitted by the provinces raised difficulties and doubts were expressed

regarding its proper interpretation and resolution. The Lüli guan came to

occupy a strategic position at the confluence of the factual information and

sentence proposals that flowed in from the provinces with the debates among

Board officials. In the words of the compiler of an important nineteenth-century

collection of Board memoranda, the Shuotie bianli xinbian wt ~tî W!f vtl ~Jf ~!ni (A

New Collection ofMemoranda Discussing the Substatutes),

The Board of Punishments is where the criminal cases of the whole

empire converge; likewise, the Bureau of Codification is where [the

recommendations of] each bureau [of the Board] converge. Its officials

carefully select the [relevant] archives without leaving anything out.

When a request for punishment allows for doubt, or the provincial

governments cite decisions inappropriate to a proposa! by analogy,

the case is always forwarded to the Bureau of Codification. [Its

officials] refer to other articles [in the Code] and carefully compare

the commentaries and substatutes, so as to find out about what is right

and wrong in the light of such models. Only when a conclusion that is

appropriate and final has been reached will they be satisfied.


~~A~TM~•·,#~BXA~~~···~-~-~-*~

~;i::J;:qt • fl.~#-1r1±.~1i;{' ~7r~5l~l::l:.~*Wi~•' ~X.#1~tl

B'*~~-,#~tt~,·-~~,~-~I#~~~-~

Archives were clearly central in the process. According to several

testimonies, the exchanges just described between the Lüli guan and the various

departments of the Board ( each of which had charge of the judicial affairs of a

specific province) were instituted in the late eighteenth century (most sources

say 1784), and they took place through written documents-the memos called

shuotie.36 This was following a decision by Hu Jitang i!îJHJ~-1it (1729-1800),

certainly an old hand at Board of Punishments affairs by then, as he had been a

Board vice-president since 1775 and president since 1779 (he would hold this

position right up until 1798). From 1784 on, the shuotie were kept as an archive.

According to at least one author, the archive comprised not only the Lüli guan

memoranda, but also the records of the entire discussions of which they were

part:

35 Wang Jingzhi )3'..~~, first preface (1831) to the Shuotie bianli xinbian (1836). See also

Chen Tinggui f!~;fi, preface (1811) to the Shuotiejiyao 15H!;fl.* (undated manuscript at

the Fu Sinian Library, Academia Sinica, Taipei). Bibu ~t.~~ (the Ministry of Analogy) is of

course a name for the Board of Punishments. Chen Tinggui's preface is also found under the (

title "Shuotie mulu xu" 15t+.5 El itJî. in two more or less identical manuscript compilations

entitled Shuotie held by the Kent Library, Columbia University, New York. 36 It should be noted that the term shuotie also applied to memoranda that did not involve the

Lüli guan, for example when the regional bureaus of the Board of Punishments discussed the

judgment proposais submitted by the provinces directly with the Board directors: only when

the directors were not satisfied with the regional bureau's conclusions would they submit

the case to the Lüli guan, which would in turn deliver its opinion through its own shuotie. See the comparatively clear account of the process provided by Shen Jiaben i7i:.*-*- (1837-

1910) in the preface to his Xing'an hui/an sanbian :1ftl ~ ;t ~;.MQ (completed in 1897 but

never published), as found in Shen Jiyi xiansheng yishu i1i:.~~$ :ît.i.:i!t", Wencun X.#, 6/17a-18a.


The Board of Punishments shuotie consist in the notes exchanged among

the three judicial courts [the Board itself, the Censorate and the Court of

Judicial Review] in their collective discussions as well as the decisions

of the leaders of the Board concerning the approval or rejection of

each case. They are copied by the Bureau of Codification and kept for

reference. In the years when the Code undergoes major revision, [the

Bureau of Codification] considers whether or not to incorporate them as

substatutes. Those which have not been adopted as established precedents

are kept at the Bureau for further reference.

M~~~~~*~~•~*~•am~~~~~-·~•'*~• #•#•·~À§#~~·'~i.AA~·~*••A~~*' 1JJ#f.$11ij-. 0 37

Indeed, in the compilation in which this statement is found, and in others as well,

the commentaries of the Lüli guan mày or may not be accompanied by fuller

quotations from the cases at hand.

In addition, at about the time when the role of the Lüli guan was redefined,

in 1784, the concluded cases from the preceding decades were entrusted to it

for reference. Not long after that, a large selection of them-more specifically,

of those that had entailed a rejection of the provincial government's judgment

proposal-was compiled by a group of six Board of Punishments officiais led

by one Quan Shichao ~±~ and published in a classified compendium entitled

37 See Shuotie zhaiyao chaocun 15t+.5.:lùi*~'.J.-;{.f, comp. Qingnian 7tif- (1831, available in an

1848 revised edition published by the prefecture ofKaifeng),fan/i. This work is not directly

based on the Board archive (Qingnian was a local official, with apparently no connection to

the Board), but is a classified selection of shuotie that had been circulated (tongxing !!fr) by the Board to all the provinces.


Bo'an xinbian ,l§)l~~JT~i (A New Compilation of Rejected Cases).38 Although

the preface to the work is dated 1781-its author, Ruan Kuisheng fü~±. , was

a censor charged with supervising the Lüli guan-the cases cover the period

1736-1784.39 Each entry in the Bo'an xinbian reproduces the original memorial

of the governor who forwarded the case to the Board with a judgment proposai,

as well as more or less full quotations of the memorials of the various agencies

that participated in the discussion and of the imperial edicts that answered them,

"so that the reader can know at a glance why a certain case has been rejected

and rectified and why a certain article of the Code has been changed" (i.e., in the

case of proposais that became established precedents). The cases are arranged in

the order of the sections and statutes in the Penal Code. According to the Bo'an

xinbian's modem editors, the work reproduces the original archivai documents

with very little rewriting, as opposed to the better-known Xing'an hui/an lfU ~ * ~ (A Conspectus of Judicial Cases, 1834), where they are subjected to

considerable abridgment.40

The Bo'an xinbian was the first published compendium directly based on the

archives of the Board of Punishments, and as we have just seen, it was produced

by legal specialists who were Board personnel, some of them with considerable

38 rSee Dai Dunyuan :illtî.t;ït, preface to the Shuotie leibian ~t.!;~f.<ia (1834). 39 There is an undated sequel entitledXuzeng Mt.:!1? Bo'an xinbian, with cases covering the period

.1783-1797, and another one entitled Bo 'an xubian Mt f<Jii , with cases covering the period 1796-

1816. 40 See Bo'an huibian .~ ~ '.tf<ia, ed. He Qinhua 1"JliJ f. et al. (Beijing: Falü chubanshe, 2007),

p. 3. The original edition of the Bo'an huibian was published in 1884; it included the Bo'an

xinbian, the Bo 'an xubian, and a compilation of cases reviewed at the Autumn Assizes during the Xianfeng and Tongzhi periods (1851-1874), the Qiushen shihuan bijiao hui'an tk • 'Jf ~ ~ttît '!'. ~ . On the limitations of the Xing'an huilan, see also Matthew H. Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperia! China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), p.

24.


experience. A sizable number of similar compilations featuring later materials,

both leading cases and Board memoranda, saw the light of day during the

nineteenth century. Most of the collections of Board memoranda were directly

or indirectly drawing from the archives of the Lüli guan-the compilers either

had made copies from these archives when they were serving as Board officiais

or were using copies made by others.41 Such direct access endowed their work

with an authority, an immediacy, and an exhaustiveness denied to works based

on such secondary sources as the Peking Gazette (dibao ~~~),or on provincial

archives.42

What seems to have happened is that, even though after 1784 (or so) the

Lüli guan systematically archived the materials it produced, this was done in a

purely chronological way, which made the archives unpractical to consult even

for those who had direct access to them. Bao Shuyun j§i!i~ , the author of the

Xing'an hui/an (first published in 1834, and with an 1840 supplement entitled

41 A typical example is Hu Tiaoyuan i5JHfol ;ït , the compiler of a work entitled Xingbu shuotie

jieyao 7fHF~t.5.t&-t- (first published in 1830), who spent a long time as an official in the Board of Punishments, during which he was able to collect materials; after his appointment as prefect in Anhui in the 1820s he had his former colleagues at the Board hand copy more than a hundred volumes of shuotie. All of this formed the database from which he selected the cases included in his compilation, covering the period 1784-1829. Another example is Wang Jinzhi )3'.. i! z , the compiler of a large collection entitled Shuotie bianli xinbian ~

t.5J'JH1#Jî"f.<Jii (1836), who is described in one preface as a literatus with a strong interest in statecraft; he was able to access the shuotie kept at the Board thanks to one ofhis sons-in

law when the latter was head of the Autumn Assizes office. 42 In his 1811 preface mentioned above, Chen Tinggui contrasts the work of the compiler, Song

Qian *-"tl , with the private editions of the Code with commentaries that flourished from the late eighteenth century onward: the latter were prepared by private secretaries working in the provinces who consulted "old cases" for insertion in their commentaries, and, though useful, their work is full of lacunae. In his 1834 preface to the Shuotie leibian ~ t.5 i/iji ~ , a compilation made directly at the Board of Punishments by the officials in charge of the Autumn Assizes, Dai Dunyuan :illt î.t ;ït makes the same comments almost word for word.


Xuzeng ~t~ Xing'an huilan), tells us that he conceived the idea of compiling

a systematic collection of leading cases after he had joined the Board of

Punishments in 1823 and had been able to see how the cases from the successive

years were accumulating without any organization, forming a mass "as vast as an

ocean" ( 55:5<05*!~ ). More specifically, he says that the Lüli guan memoranda

(which constitute about one half of the contents of the Xing'an huilan) were

bound into annual registers devoid of any classification.

The high point in the compilation of shuotie anthologies seems to have been

the mid-Daoguang years (around the 1830s). This may have corresponded with a

high point in their production. The famous late Qing jurist Shen Jiaben explains

that from that period onward, the Lüli guan officials tended to make their work

simpler by giving their advice orally and writing less and less memoranda; by

the 18808, according to him, they had completely disappeared.43 This situation

seems reflected in the contents of the successive installments of the Xing'an

hui/an: whereas in the original work, completed in 1834, shuotie make up about

a half of the ca: 5,600 cases, the rest being leading cases and other materials, in

the Xu xing'an huilan of 1840 the proportion is only one tenth of the ca. 1,670

cases. The much later Xinzeng ~jf t~ xing'an huilan, which covers the period

1842-1885, contains virtually no shuotie.

Still, Shen Jiaben's claim should not necessarily be taken at face value. For

example, there exists another sequel to the Xing'an huilan, the Xing'an huilan

xubian Jfij~~'.it~lUi, whose contents cover the years 1838-1871 and which

features about 1,200 shuotie out of a total close to 1,700 entries.44 Likewise, a

43 See Shen Jiaben's preface quoted above. 44 The draft of the Xing'an hui/an xubian, completed in 1871 and first printed ( after some

further editing) in 1887, was assembled by a group of capital officials including two officials of the Autumn Assizes Bureau of the Board of Punishments, Wu Chao !<: i*'1l and Xue

FromArchive to Handbook / 181

large manuscript compilation of Board memoranda in 27 juan, held at Columbia

University (it is entitled Shuotie in the catalogue), covers the period 1840-

1890 approximately, with the largest number of cases dating from the Guangxu

period. The same library also has a work entitled Zengding xingbu shuotie t~~iT

Jfij :gG §>î $tî (Memoranda from the Board of Punishments, Augmented), published

in Guangxi in 1883, which features shuotie dating from the years since 1850

approximately. There exist a few more examples suggesting that shuotie

continued to be circulated within the Board of Punishment through the very end

of the nineteenth century.

2.2.2. Leading Cases

The considerations above concern Board memoranda, in other words,

unedited documents coming from the archives of the Bureau of Codification,

either directly copied there or already circulated by the Board. As we have seen,

not a few compilations mix up the memoranda properly speaking and "leading

cases" (cheng'an), in other words, the memorials approved by the throne that

concluded a case, following exchanges with provincial governors as well as

interna! discussions at the Board wholly or partly led through memoranda.

Published compilations of leading cases antedate compilations of shuotie,

for the simple reason that the Lüli guan archive of shuotie was only started in the

1780s. To my knowledge, the earliest compilation ofleading cases is a composite

collection entitled Dingli cheng'an hejuan JË-WŒfflG~~~ (A Combined Engraving

of Regulations and Leading Cases), assembled by a private secretary by the

name of Sun Lun ~~and published in 1707 in Wujiang (Jiangsu).45 The work

Yunsheng iîf Jt, 11- . 45 Several supplements were published, featuring entries down to the mid-l 740s.


introduces a variety of substatutes, leading cases, edicts, and administrative

regulations (chufen 11& 5J- ) covering the first four decades and a half of the

Kangxi reign. It is organized according to the parts and sections of the Penal

Code and follows the same outline in 30 chapters; cheng'an, which are printed

in smaller characters and feature as complements to the regulations and other

materials, are in fact abstracts of the original cases, as they introduce only the

minimum of detail necessary to explain the sentence proposed at the end, or why

a sentence proposa! was rejected. The sources used are obviously the collections

of regulations published by the govemment and materl.als circulated through

various media, including the Peking Gazette. This is in fact true of a number

of other such works, though some of them could also feature unpublished

documents drawn from central govemment or provincial archives.46

Several important collections more specifically devoted to leading cases,

covering periods of various length, appeared during the eighteenth century, such

as the Cheng'an huibian P.lt~-~i (A Compilation ofLeading Cases), compiled

by an imperial clansman named Yaerhashan l':mft ~ '*:§: (1746 preface);

its bulky follow-up, the Cheng'an xubian fflG ~ ~ ~i , compiled by Tongde leu t~ and Li Zhiyun *-5ÉJ~ and engraved in 1755 in the yamen of the Zhejiang

provincial judge, to which a supplement ( =~U) was added in 1763 and another

one ( ff§) in 1771; the Cheng'an zhiyi g\G~Jf~ (Asking about Doubtful Points

iI)- Leading Cases), of which a 1746 and a 1755 editions have been preserved:

46 Examples include the Cheng'an xubian ~ ~ $l ~ , published in Hangzhou in 1755, which drew from the Zhejiang archives for the documents concerning that province and from the Peking Gazette for the rest; and the Yuedong cheng'an chubian -IY-~~ ~ ;fJJfa,jQ of 1828, based on documents kept in the provincial archive at Canton. (See below for these two works.) For a collection combining leading cases culled from the Peking Gazette and from the archives of the Board of Punishments, see the Xingbu bo 'an huichao 711-%~ .~ ~ '.t t)' compiled by Ding Renke T J..... ;;r (1764 prefaces).


this is a collection of over 4,300 leading cases covering the first hundred years

of the Qing, assembled by a legal private secretary named Hong Hongxu 53*5l ~ (who also authored an important revision of the most infiuential commentary

to the Qing Penal Code, Shen Zhiqi's 5%::(:: ~ 1715 Da Qing lü jizhu :k5%1$f:ij 5± ); the Mouyi beikao ~8{~~ (Reference Materials to Make Plans for One's

County, 1758 preface), the result of years of taking notes on cheng'an, also

compiled by a private secretary, Wu Guanghua ~:716~, with a strong emphasis

on the problems raised by resorting to analogy to judge cases not provided for

by the statutes and substatutes in the Code; the already mentioned Bo 'an xinbian;

the massive Cheng'an suojian ji fflG ~ pfT 5ê, ~ (A Collection of Leading Cases

That I Could Access ), in four installments totaling 95 juan and covering the

years 1736-1805; and several others.

Still, the bulk of cheng'an compilations is definitely nineteenth-century. The

titles are too numerous to be cited here-some have been mentioned earlier in

this essay. Principles of organization differing from the standard Penal Code grid

are occasionally encountered. An interesting example is a collection of leading .

cases conceming affairs that occurred in Guangdong, the Yuedong cheng'ari1/ "

chubian -*P.lG~~JHi (Leading Cases from Guangdong, First Installment)

of 1828. This work in 38 juan was compiled by a private secretary named Zhu

Yun *~ who was employed in the provincial judge offices during the years

1815-1828 and apparently drafted most of the judgment proposals discussed in

the text. The latter is organized according to eight categories of crimes, with a

variable number of subcategories: they include homicides (ming'an $~ ), injuries

(shangren {~A.), bandits and robbers (daofei ~~ ), escaped prisoners (shiqiu

*. IEI ), accusations (kongjie ~H ), miscellaneous cases (zayan ~- ), crimes

committed by of:ficials (zhiguan ~ '§ ), and administrative punishments (yichu

~11& ). As in many other collections, the cases are in the form of communications (zi

'---- ·-·--------=-=~-_:_:_:_~--=======-==--=========""""'-----~[11111111-"""""~-----------------=========------


'a ) notifying the provincial authorities of the final decision. Each communication

reproduces the memorial submitted by the Board of Punishments (or the Board

of Civil Service in the last two categories), followed by the emperor's rescript.

The Board memorial first quotes from the original Guangdong governor

memorial submitting the case and proposing a sentence, comments on it, and

proposes a final decision.

2.2.3. Autumn Assizes Decisions

Finally, I should mention an important subset of documentary compilations

emanating from the Board of Punishments: the compilations of cases submitted

for decision at the Autumn Assizes. The object of such submissions was

to validate, defer, or in a few instances pardon a capital sentence already

pronounced-the respective categories being called "circumstances confirmed"

(qingshi '~'If), "decision postponed" (huanjue ~.,15~ ), and "can be pardoned"

(kejin BJî-t ). All of the examples I have been able to see date from the nineteenth

century,47 and their format is very specific. Allowing for some variants, a typical

entry would include the name of the criminal, the name of the Board department

involved (i.e., corresponding to the province where the case had occurred), the

year, a short abstract of the case and a brief argument for either execution or

deferment, and finally the decision proposed by the Autumn Assizes office and

approved by the emperor. Another peculiarity is the order in which the cases are

listed, which is different from the order of statutes in the Penal Code followed

47 Among the earliest examples k:nown to me are a manuscript entitled Bu ni qiushen shihuan .g~~t.k.~ 'Jf" .~ (Board's Proposals for Immediate Execution or Deferment at the Autumn Assizes), held by the CASS Institute of Law, whose contents cover the years 1809-1830; and another manuscript (apparently ready for publication) entitled Qiuyan bi t.k.~Ht. , covering the years 1805-1837, at the Beijing University library.


in most collections of shuotie and cheng'an. This order was prescribed by the

Autumn Assizes regulations, published under such titles as "Rules on Confirming

or Postponing Execution in the Autumn Assizes" (Qiushen shihuan bijiao

tiaokuan f')(~Jf~lt:t®l{~jfX ), or variants thereof, which were first promulgated

in 1767 and are sometimes reproduced in the compilations of cases themselves.

The order is as follows: (1) Crimes by officiais and crimes against people related

by mouming (zhiguanfutu ~'§ij~il! ); (2) homicides (renming A.$); (3)

sexual crimes, robbery and theft (jiandao qiangqie ~5.:;r:t.ê~ ); (4) various

crimes (zaxiang ~J~ ); and (5) cases adjudicated by analogy.

The aim of both the regulations and the lists of cases offered as examples

was to help the provincial authorities to send correct recommendations for the

Autumn Assizes regarding the cases that had originated in their jurisdictions (and

first of all, regarding the criminals who were awaiting execution in the localities

where the crimes had taken place). In other words, it was to inform them about

the principles goveming the recent decisions worked out by the specialized

bureaus in Beijing, so that their own recommendations for either deferment Qr ,; ,

immediate execution would not risk being reversed by the Board-for example;~· a recommendation for immediate execution being "changed into deferment"

(gaihuan "&~l ), and so on. In fact, the prefaces to one of the most important

works in this category-it covers the period 1828-1870-claim that the decisions

listed in it, which resulted from debates among the Board's high officiais and had

been approved by the emperor, are especially precious for provincial officiais

because of their precision and faimess, but that their consultation should be

useful to magistrates as well.48

48 See Qiushen shihuan bijiao cheng'an t.k.~j\~~t.~~~, prefaces by Yingxiang ~# (1872) and Lin Enshou #.@..~(no date). Yingxiang, the sponsor of the work, was Sichuan


Concluding Remarks

Whatever the case may have been, all the compilations described in the

previous section-of leading cases, of Board memoranda, and of Autumn

Assizes assessments-shared the same goal: it was to make the decisions arrived

at by the central judicial bodies known to the widest possible audience, when

many of them lay buried in the archives. Only then could the vast jurisprudence

accumulated by the ultimate authorities in legal matters be used to help the local

courts confronted with legally difficult situations make infôrmed proposals-and

especially, proposals with a good chance of escaping rejection. To be sure, only

the limited part of that jurisprudence that was officially circulated (tongxing :W fi) through the Peking Gazette or other such conduits could be cited as precedents

in judgment proposals. Yet preface after preface emphasizes the importance of

having access to as large as possible a corpus of "leading cases" and other such

documents, even if non quotable in judgments proposals, in order to familiarize

oneself through constant consultation with the type of le gal reasoning developed

by the Board specialists in the countless cases involving facts and situations for

which the Code made no straightforward provisions.

As anybody familiar with Qing legal matters knows, it is a topos among

legal specialists to recall the contradiction between the invariability of the law

and the infinite variety of facts and behaviors, to which it is not infrequently

added that with the passing of time people tend to be more and more inclined

provincial judge, and he had brought to his office cases that he had copied or collected when he served at the Board of Punishments. The work was compiled and edited by Lin Ershou, a private secretary. It was published in Sichuan in 1873 and again in 1881 (with a supplement); there is also an 1876 edition published at Liulichang in Beijing, and a manuscript copy in the Ôki collection at the University of Tokyo.


to craftiness and trickery. Yet facts cannot by any means be distorted to fit into

the categories provided by the Penal Code (the zuiming $iJ ): the only way to

deal with circumstances for which the Code makes no provision and ensure a

fair judgment is to resort to analogy, and for this to do one needs to take account

of the precedents accumulated in the past. In the words of one preface writer,

"The law is based on circumstances, but circumstances cannot be predicted and

laws do not change; having to adjudicate circumstances that cannot be predicted

with laws that do not change, if one does not refer to what has been done in the

past, there will inevitably be confusion and mistakes" ( :*5!::zts:-'f-'~ ' '~~JE iffi)t;;::f~ ' PJ::f~z5tIJL~JÈZ'~ ' ~~~~ttlftJJi ' ~::f~~~ ). Hence the

indispensability of compilations of cases complementing the body of officially

circulated cheng'an. As the same writer remarks, the decisions based on analogy

made by the central judicial offices are known only to the govemments of

the provinces where the cases occurred. As a result, if the decisions are not

circulated, officials in the empire will hold views limited to their localities and

will be unable to gain comprehensive knowledge.49

The compilations of leading cases and Board memoranda, whether

published or manuscript, were anthologies: their authors selected the documents

they deemed the most useful and the most significant from a vast body of

archives otherwise inaccessible, they submitted them to a variable amount of

abridgment and editing-sometimes minimal, sometimes quite drastic-and

they organized them in such a way that the reader would find his way easily.

The approach, in other words, was not unlike that of the authors of individual

anthologies discussed in the first section of this essay. The goal was in part the

49 Zhou Xuejian %] Jf:1ii , preface to Yaerhashan $. ~ •%%- , comp., Cheng'an huibian fi5i.. #-;l'. f.<~ (1746).


same: it was to disseminate the best knowledge, the best values aiid the best

practices available to the widest possible audience, with the ultimate aim of

improving government. And in both cases the process consisted in transmuting

the contents of archives inaccessible to most into books available to everyone.

The difference, as already noted, was that the authors of individual anthologies

emphasized the individual, either as an ideal-type-the model official-or as an

eminent person-themselves. In contrast, the compilations of judicial cases and

other such materials, which were often anonymous or collective efforts, ignored

the individual but emphasized the institutions and the niles that presided over

their operation.


1fttri ~ ltl 1! Jt -~5~1~1iiE~3t~8{]&6

;t. ~ 1t ( Pierre-Étienne Will )

*~•~~-~~•m~H•~•••·*•~••~~•*·•-••m ilim~~~·A-~kèœm~••~•~8ili&~~·~•~8·t•·•~·

~-&·~~··*~~~~·M·~#î~·~·L-~·~~AMX~M• .l-iH!:-~•• • · .i:;.a~t"':it * ~r.i ~~Ml! • tt.rr.-tt. 1660 a 1610 .if.1.1Ç. • i! ili m -~~*•A~~····•~e•m~k~4Mfy~~~-~:Jt•ta•ili~

*~ij~#~•fy~•·•-1-•~#·••m~~•~*ilim.-tt.+A·+~~~·

~r~•J~ra~JAA~•tt·•-••m~H•~•~*Amœm#~ff

-~h~·~··~-~---··*•*•rth~~fl-~·~·-·-~~ ;.f.li,!i<XJij-~ • ~ t1îBI Ai:~$§ ~#fJutttii- •

From Archive to Handbook: Anthologies of Administrative Documents in the Qing

Documents

Transcript of From Archive to Handbook: Anthologies of Administrative Documents in the Qing