唐後半期の藩鎭辟召制についての再檢討 : 淮南・浙西藩鎭における幕職官の人的構成などを手がかりに

Abstract

The role of the recruiting system 辟召 in the provincial commands 藩鎭 during the Tang has heretofore been seen in terms of theories of Tang-Song transformation, emphasizing its function as providing a foothold on the bureaucratic ladder for the so-called class of newly risen regional gentry. In short, these theories generally judge the systems historical significance as having an effect antithethical to the aristocratic system. However, successive revelations of records of tomb inscriptions made public in recent years have provided much new data concerning ancillary posts 幕職. And as a result, it has become clear that the ancillary posts in the provincial commands were intricately and intimately linked to the Tang central bureaucracy and that they functioned as a universal path of advancement in the bureaucracy, and even as a path that might hasten one advance into the elite. Based on the above, and through an analysis of class background of the appointees to ancillary posts in the two provincial commands of the Jianghuai region, i.e., Huainan and Zhexi, the area of greatest economic expansion at the time (where it is thought the growth of the newly risen regional gentry was most conspicuous), this article aims to explore which class appeared on the new stage in the ancillary posts in the provincial commands and to reexamine the received wisdom regarding the recruitment system in the provincial commands. The following points have been made clear by this analysis. 1) In both provincial commands, among those who could be identified as having been posted in ancillary offices, over 40 percent came from families that could identified as menfa 門閥, families that had been of highest status since the period of Northern and Southern Dynasties. And if the jun xing 郡姓, the class of local nobility, is added, then the total of aristocratic origins rises to 60 percent. 2) The above situation concords perfectly with the situation marked by the conspicuous revival of the hegemony of the class of elite families in the central bureaucracy begun in mid-Tang and the privileged position of the nobility within the system of recruitment by examination. 3) The conventional understanding of the significance of the ancillary posts in provincial commands, that they were upper-ranking ancillary posts servings as a ladder for the advancement for the newly risen local gentry, should be revised. It seems that the posts which served as the stage on which this class was to make its advance were set on a lower plane; and that the posts were menial ones in regional government, military postings in the provincial commands･and functionary-level lower-ranking ancillary posts, which must be distinguished from the upper-ranking ancillary posts.