著者

大津 透

出版者

公益財団法人史学会

雑誌

史学雑誌 (ISSN:00182478)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.95, no.12, pp.p1831-1880, 1986-12

---

Because of a shortage of the materials, former studies of the financial administration before the Kai-yuan (開元) period do not elucidate how the administrative departments actually worked. The legislative documents of the period excavated in the Turfan basin in 1972 are thought to be possibly part of the Ordinance of the Department of Public Revenue (度支式). In a former monograph, the writer took up the fragments with 'ampero' marks on of the Ohtani Documents (which the Ohtani Expeditionary Party excavated in Turfan and brought back to Japan in the early twentieth century), and restored them to their original form, which was found to be the main part of the above-said legislative documents. In this monograph the writer studies the documents left in Japan and China, to show that they refer to the national budget during the Yi-feng (儀鳳) period and to throw a light on that budget system, the actual operation of the financial administration and the annual schedule concerning the budget under the Code-Statute (律令) regime of the Tang Dynasty. The documents show the facts that 1)the Department of Public Revenue (度支) reported the national budget for the next year 674 to the throne (in this case, the prince) in the zou-chao (奏抄) form on the 28th day of the tenth month of 673 (儀鳳3) and the throne assigned it ; 2)the Department of Treasury (金部) sent an imperial directive (旨符) to enforce the budget to Xi prefecture (西州), the prefecture received the imperial directive and carried it into effect ; and 3)though the directive was sent to Xi prefecture, it seems to involve the whole national budget applied all through the Tang's territory. The documents not only include the detailed orders concerning conversions of the kind of yong-diao (庸調) tax, official purchases, transportation of the tax, the expense of its transportation and the other various expenditures, but also refer to the permanently applicable regulations about the tax register (計帳), the account-list (勾帳), the delivery date of the goods of tax to the capital or other places and so on. That is to say, they include all kinds of orders concerning financial administration. Important is the procedure that the Emperor examine and assign all the orders every year. By that procedure the Emperor Supervised the financial administration under the Tang Dynasty. The writer makes clear the annual schedule concerning the budget system in the documents. First, every prefecture presents its tax register (計帳) to the Board of Finance (戸部) in the fifth month, and the Board calculates the number of the taxable individuals, on which the budget should be made for the next year. Secondly, every prefecture balances its account at the end of a year, and presents the account-list (勾帳) to the Department of Judical Control (比部) for audit, and the balance is carried over to the revenue of the next year. Thirdly, several departments report their annual expenditures and balances to the Department of Public Revenue in the first decade of the eighth month. According to these reports, the Department of Public Revenue draws up the budget for the next year and reports it to the throne in the zou-chao form by the end of the tenth month. In the beginning of the next year the Department of Treasury sends the imperial directive to enforce the budget to every prefecture. Every prefecture collects the goods for the yong-diao (庸調) tax in the eighth month and transports them to the capital or other designated places in the ninth month. This system of annual budgeting became more and more laborious and clumsy and was abolished in the year 736 (開元24). A new system started, based on 'permanently applicable directives' (長行旨条) consisting of five chapters. The major part of the budget became fixed. In the year 780 (建中元) the liang-shui (両税) tax system was established and the financial administration was fundamentally changed on the policy of 'regulating income by measuring expenditure' (来