Some Characteristics in the "Northern" Central Government Organization of Liao (_??_)

Abstract

I am of opinion that a form of domination more advanced than the blood-ties was already in existence before the formation of Liao. How the offices and officials that were created with the exercise of public power were related to the government organization of Liao-especially, in this case, the "northern" central government organization, and how the Yeh-lü-_??__??_-family (imperial family) that established Liao coped with other families that could produce the executors of public power as the family gained the dictatorship and the hereditary right and established the regality-these two subjects are studied in this essay. The process of the establishment of the central government organization and its characteristic features were examined in relation to the former subject, and that hereditary officials organization in relation to the latter, which is in close contact with the process through which the royal authority of the imperial family extended in the course of the establishment of the " northern " local government organization, but this subject is not taken up again here as it was examined in the first part of my "Study on Social History of Liao." I do not assume in these studies that in the Liao dynasty the dictatorship and the hereditary right were established as the regality rose above a bureaucracy which was of the Chinese type, but I see that there remained many relics of the tribe state peculiar to the northern peoples. Liao may be said to be a body politic that had the Yeh-lü family at the head and was formed on a compromise between this family, and old and new forces. It will be the very edidence that Liao can not be regarded as a Chinese dynasty or a dynasty which was founded through the conquest of China. In Liao, the authorities supervising the affairs of several tribes, as well as the proper government machinery, had great weight in the administrative system of the central government, and an officials system called the hereditary government organization was established-these facts seem to be concrete manifestations of the above compromise. The family of hereditary but qualified officials -_??__??__??__??_- or gentleman -_??__??__??_- is not words meaning chinese noblemen or bureaucratic noblemen who were parasitic in the court, but it is a general term for the families among whom an old blood-relationship still played an important part while they obtained the exclusive possession of slaves and livestock.The characteristic features in the " northern" government organization can not be fully discussed here. In Liao-shi-_??__??_-, there are many offices and officials that we are unable to elucidate, and a lot of new other historical materials are left unexplainable. These problems require further examinations before I set forth my opinion on them in my " Supplementary Studies on the Governmental Officials in Liao-shi " (a tentative title) to be published later.