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Appendix I. Required Military Service
Valuable information concerning the Former Han
Dynasty's ordinances regarding conscript military service and payment in lieu
therefor is to be found in an ancient note at the end of 7: 8b. Ju Shun writes,
" `Periodic military service (keng 更)' was of three kinds. There was `the
required service as a soldier (tsu-keng 卒更)', there was `hired service
(chien-keng 踐更)', and there was `transferred frontier
service (kuo-keng 過更)'. In
ancient times, for the `regularly [drafted] soldiers (cheng-tsu 正卒)' there was no
definite number, [but] every person had to serve in his turn [in the army,
serving] one month as one `turn 更'. This was called required service as a
soldier.
"When poor people wished to obtain the money for
periodic military service by being hired [as substitutes], a person who next
was to serve his turn [as a soldier] paid out the money to hire them, two
thousand cash per month. This was called hired service.
"All the people of the empire [had to] occupy the
position of frontier guard for three days, which was also called periodic
military service 更 and was what the Code called corvée garrison service (yao-shu
繇戍). Although one might be the son of the Lieutenant Chancellor, he was
nevertheless among those summoned to frontier guard [duty]. Every person could
not himself [undertake] the journey to serve as a frontier guard for three
days, and moreover those who [undertook] the journey, after fulfilling the duty
of serving in person for three days, could not go there and return immediately.
Because of the convenience [of the following system, those who served], lived
[at the frontier] for a year as one turn 更. Those who did not serve, paid three
hundred cash to the government, and the government used it to pay those who
[actually] served as frontier guards. This was called transferred frontier
service.
"[According to] the explanation of the Code,
soldiers doing required service and soldiers who do hired service are settled
居 [soldiers]. Those settled [soldiers who serve] a turn in their [native]
prefectures [served] five months as a turn. Later, in accordance with the Code
for Military Officers 尉律, soldiers doing required service and hired service
[served] one month [and then] were relieved for eleven months. The `Treatise on
Food and Merchandise' [HS 24 A: 16b; this is a quotation
from a memorial of Tung Chung-shu, ii cent. B.C.], says, `[The Ch'in dynasty .
. . moreover added to the requirements of the government] that for a month
[each person] should become a soldier serving his turn 更卒; when [this period] was
completed, he in turn became a regular [soldier, who served] one year as a
garrison guard at the frontier and one year at service on the public works 力伇
---[which service] is thirty times [more] than in ancient [times].' Thus the
Han [dynasty] at first took over the practises of the Ch'in [dynasty] and
followed them. Later they were thereupon changed and altered; only those who
were reprobated, who were in arrears and had not paid money [to transfer their
duty of serving] a turn, [served] as frontier guards for one year." For other
details of the Han and Ch'in military arrangements, cf. HFHD I, 80, n. 2; 5: n.
3.8.
Ho Ch'uo (1661-1722) adds, "Ju [Shun] explains that
`periodic military service was of three kinds. There was required service as a
soldier, there was hired service, and there was transferred frontier service.'
In my opinion, they were in reality of [only] two [sorts]. Hired service was
required service as a soldier in place of others, in which they only
individually obtained the value of their time counted by the month. Transferred
frontier service was general corvée garrison service in place of others, and
was counted by the year. A person would pay to the government the value of
three days' service as a frontier guard and the government would in his behalf
give it to people who lived [at the frontier] for a long time. Required service
as a soldier was indeed the ancient institution of military taxes on cultivated
fields for putting an army into the field; garrison service at the frontier for
three days resembled the institution of corvée service, and to be hired [to
serve] a turn in place of [service] was the source for the practise of hired
military service, [i.e., a standing army]."
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