The Administrative Systems of the Nanzhao and Dali Kingdoms

Abstract

This article examines geographical arrangement and its changes via the administrative systems established by the Nanzhao _??__??_ and Dali _??__??_ kingdoms in Yunnan, with a view to shedding the new light upon the character and extent of rules excercised by those kingdoms.To begin with, the Nanzhao kingdom had several jian _??_ as provinces in the central area. These jian were mainly established on the west coast of Lake Erhai _??__??_ and the river basins in the south of the Lake, where the royal Meng family _??__??_ and most of the ruling class families had their strongholds. The differences between the jian in appearing Man-shu _??__??_ and that in Xin-tang-shu _??__??__??__??__??__??_ reflect the dates of the original sources. Although some scholars say the word tan_??_, instead of jian, should be used as the name of the resulting system, the difference in usage of two words tells us that tan is a kind of common suffix for a river basin, not a homophone of jian as a province.Secondly, on the periphery were jiedu _??__??_ and dudu _??__??_. The difference between jiedu and dudu is not so clear, but it should be pointed out that the directors of jiedu were Da-jun-jiang _??__??__??_, a title second in rank only to the prime ministers, Qing-ping-guan _??__??__??_ Regarding dudu, the sources say that the kingdom established a dudu for every ten thousand households, which is thought to be a kind of military draft system, such as Fubing-zhi _??__??__??_ in Tang China. The scale of military power, must also have something to do with jiedu and dudu as administrative institutions. On the other hand, jiedu and dudu were established on the major trade routes from the Erhai area to the four quarters. Especially from east to west, on the line around lat. 25°N, there are located many of the major river basins in Yunnan. It can be said that these trade routes formed a skeleton of the Nanzhao kingdom, with the river basins as their joints.Under the Dali kingdom, jiedu and dudu were reconstructed as fu _??_. And some jian, began to be established around those fu. Those jian were settled by immigrants from the Erhai area, who brought administrative systems familiar to them. The directorships of fu and jian gradually came to be transmitted by inheritance, and they often rebelled against the power of the kingdom, which shows that fu had begun to operate autonomously. The time when fu and jian were established in the periphery was also the time when the Bai people _??__??_ and their culture was formed in the Erhai area. Immigrants diffused their culture to those areas leading to a condition for the rapid acceptance of the Han culture that would arrive in the next age.