Mǎ Zhèng Jì 馬政紀
Records of Horse Administration by 楊時喬 (撰)
About the work
A twelve-juǎn documentary monograph on the imperial horse-administration of the Míng dynasty, compiled by Yáng Shíqiáo 楊時喬 (1531–1609), Vice-Minister of Personnel and former Vice-Director of the Court of the Imperial Stud (Tàipú sì chéng 太僕寺丞 / qián Tàipú sì qīng 前太僕寺卿). Yáng covers the period from Hóngwǔ 1 (1368) to Wànlì 23 (1595) — i.e. from the founding of the dynasty down to almost the end of his own active service. The work is one of the principal Míng administrative monographs and the single most detailed compendium on the hùmǎ 戶馬 / zhǒngmǎ 種馬 / biǎomǎ 俵馬 / jìyǎngmǎ 寄養馬 stud-and-quartering system, preserving precedents, statistical norms, and the polemical anti-commutation argument of the late Míng Tàipú sì establishment.
Tiyao
By Yáng Shíqiáo of the Míng. Shíqiáo, courtesy name Yíqiān 宜遷, a man of Shàngráo 上饒. Jiājìng yǐchǒu (1565) jìnshì. He rose to Vice-Minister of the Left of the Bureau of Personnel. The book records the horse-administration of one Míng dynasty, beginning with the first year of Hóngwǔ (1368) and reaching down to the twenty-third year of Wànlì (1595). It is divided under twelve heads:
- Hùmǎ 戶馬 (household horses);
- Zhǒngmǎ 種馬 (breeding horses);
- Biǎomǎ 俵馬 (allotment-distributed horses);
- Jìyǎngmǎ 寄養馬 (boarded-out horses);
- Zhéliáng gòngshì yánnà shú zhàngōng děng mǎ 折糧貢市鹽納贖戰功等馬 (commuted-grain, tribute-market, salt-redemption, and battle-merit horses);
- Duìmǎ 兊馬 (exchange horses);
- Jǐrǔ yùyòng shànglíng chūfǔ bìng fù gěiyì mǎ 擠乳御用上陵出府并附給驛馬 (milking-mares for imperial use, ascending-to-the-tomb, leaving-the-palace, and post-station horses);
- Kùcáng 庫藏 (treasury reserves);
- Juān xù 蠲恤 (remissions and reliefs);
- Zhèng lì 政例 (administrative precedents);
- Cǎochǎng 草場 (pasturage);
- Gè biānzhèn xíng Tàipú sì, Yuànmǎ sì, Chámǎ sī 各邊鎮行太僕寺、苑馬寺、茶馬司 (the Acting Tàipú offices, the Park-Horse Office, and the Tea-and-Horse Commission, in each frontier garrison-district).
For each, he traces the changes — what was added, what abolished — back to its source. The horse-administration was nowhere more elaborate than under the Míng, and nowhere also more abused; Yáng witnessed its troubles with his own eyes and dealt with its business in person, so that although his work is a compilation of files and case-papers, what he says cuts deeply at the diseases of his time and gives ample material for verification and judgment. Its arrangement is fully systematic.
In his self-preface and at the end of the preface he signs himself “Former Director of the Court of the Imperial Stud” (qián Tàipú sì qīng 前太僕寺卿). But his biography in the Míngshǐ records only that he had been a Tàipú sì chéng (Senior Assistant of the Court of the Imperial Stud). The work was printed by Shíqiáo himself and so should not be wrong; we suspect that the dynastic history is at fault. Submitted respectfully on collation, tenth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781), by Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Editor-in-Chief Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Mǎ zhèng jì is the principal Míng-period documentary handbook on horse-administration, written from inside the bureaucracy by a senior official whose career had taken him through both the Nánjīng and Běijīng Tàipú sì. The composition window is bracketed by the work’s documented coverage to Wànlì 23 (1595) and the author’s death in 1609; the preface postdates 1595 and was written when Yáng was again on retreat (zài qǐng jiǎ zhāijū 再請假齋居). Internal evidence in the preface and fánlì shows the work was assembled in dialogue with the contemporary Huìdiǎn 會典, the two Tàipú sì zhì 太僕寺志 (Nánjīng and Běijīng), and the imperial Shílù, with Yáng cross-checking his exposition against the precedent files of the Bureau of War (Bīngbù) and his own court.
The polemical centre of the work is the late-Míng commutation of horses to silver: Yáng argues that the zhǒngmǎ (breeding stock) is the source from which all the biǎomǎ, jìyǎngmǎ, and bèiyòngmǎ (reserve horses) flow; once the zhǒngmǎ obligation was commuted to a silver levy and the state turned to purchasing horses on the market — first half-sold, then wholly sold — “the source was cut and only the trade in horses remained, which is a matter of merchants and brokers; can the state really conduct policy in this way?” The work’s preface is a direct attack on commutation, contrasting HànTáng practice (with the Tàipú personally responsible for the imperial inner stud) with the late-Míng abandonment of the Yuànmǎ sì and the diversion of Tàipú funds to silver-levies — a stance that aligns Yáng with the more conservative wing of the late-Wànlì court. The argument fed directly into seventeenth-century debates over Míng frontier defence and is cited by Qīng compilers (Sìkù tíyào, Wénxiàn tōngkǎo) as a model administrative monograph.
The catalog meta gives Yáng’s death year as 1609; CBDB (125336) gives 1531–1609 (jīntáng 嘉靖九年 to Wànlì 三十七年), used here.
Translations and research
No translation into a Western language located. The work is the principal primary source for Morris Rossabi, “The Tea and Horse Trade with Inner Asia during the Ming,” Journal of Asian History 4.2 (1970), pp. 136–168, and is heavily cited in Henry Serruys, Sino-Mongol Relations during the Ming, II: The Tribute System and Diplomatic Missions (1400–1600), Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques 14 (Brussels, 1967). On the structural-administrative side, Romeyn Taylor, “Yuan Origins of the Ming Pao-chia System,” in Chinese Government in Ming Times (Columbia, 1969), and Edward Dreyer, Early Ming China: A Political History 1355–1435 (Stanford, 1982), use it for the Hóngwǔ–Yǒnglè horse-pasturage policy. Modern Chinese specialist work: Xiè Chéngrèn 謝成仁, Míngdài mǎzhèng yánjiū 明代馬政研究 (1991), and articles by Wú Yùnzhōng 吳運中 in Zhōngguó shǐ yánjiū 中國史研究.
Other points of interest
The tíyào notes a discrepancy between Yáng’s self-styled signature (qián Tàipú sì qīng 前太僕寺卿, “former Director of the Court of the Imperial Stud”) and the Míngshǐ biography (which records only Tàipú sì chéng, Assistant Director). Jì Yún side with Yáng’s own signature on the principle that an author’s self-printed prefaces are unlikely to mis-state his rank. Míngshǐ is here probably abbreviating a career-line for a relatively minor office.