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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 [OMITTED])' was of three kinds. There was `the required
service as a soldier (tsu-keng [OMITTED])', there was `hired service (chien-keng
[OMITTED])', and there was `transferred frontier service (kuo-keng [OMITTED])'.
In ancient times, for the `regularly [drafted] soldiers (cheng-tsu [OMITTED])'
there was no definite number, [but] every person had to serve in his turn
[in the army, serving] one month as one `turn [OMITTED]'. 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 [OMITTED]
and was what the Code called corvée garrison service (yao-shu [OMITTED]).
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 [OMITTED]. 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 [OMITTED] [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 [OMITTED], 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 [OMITTED];
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 [OMITTED]—[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]."