- 著者
-
髙村 武幸
- 出版者
- 東洋文庫
- 雑誌
- 東洋学報 = The Toyo Gakuho (ISSN:03869067)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.99, no.3, pp.1-34, 2017-12
This article examines the kinds of people who passed through Jianshui Jinguan 肩水金關, a Han period garrisoned checkpoint in the northwestern frontier region, in order to clarify the mobility of commoners and the actual relationship between frontier and interior commanderies (jun 郡), utilizing mainly the Han period bamboo slips unearthed at Jianshui Jinguan.Although carrying a passport (chuan 傳) was required when travelling during the Han Period, there were no strict institutional restrictions on long-distance travel, even in the case of commoners on the road for personal reasons. The author’s examination of the Han bamboo slips from Jianshui Jinguan reveals that not a few people from the interior commanderies passed through this checkpoint, a considerable number of whom had obtained passports for the purpose of “private commerce for family business,” and shows that many people were transporting goods from the interior to the frontier commanderies to sell and then returning with cash that had been originally sent as taxes from the interior commanderies. Thus, not only did frontier commanderies obtain from the interior goods that the state alone could not distribute in sufficient quantities, but they were also sending back money to the interior. Such transactions reveal one more link between the interior and frontier commanderies separate from the state-controlled distribution of goods between the two regions.That being said, the majority of the people of the interior commanderies did not directly traded their products with the frontier commanderies of Hexi 河西 and elsewhere, but chose either to stay at home to sell their wares locally, or to commission agents to carry and peddle them in the frontier commanderies. Therefore, most of the private-sector interaction between interior and frontier commanderies was in fact conducted by professional merchants and transport agents acting on behalf of commoners of the interior, passing through Jianshui Jinguan with passports obtained on the pretext of “private commerce for family business.” In the case of Hexi, the overwhelming majority of these agents were from the nearby commanderies of Henan 河南, where commerce had traditionally flourished. In other words, the actual interaction that occurred between the northwestern frontier commanderies, starting with the four commanderies of Hexi, and the interior commanderies was characterized by formal state-operated commodity distribution and military service, on the one hand, and by merchants and transport agents from the commanderies of Henan travelling to and from the interior and the frontier on behalf of clients.