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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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IATHPublished by The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, © Copyright 2003 by Anne Kinney and the University of Virginia