睡虎地秦墓竹簡‧為吏之道

Shuìhǔdì Qín Mù Zhújiǎn‧Wèi Lì Zhī Dào 睡虎地秦墓竹簡‧為吏之道

Bamboo Slips from the Qin Tomb at Shuihudi — The Way of Being an Official

About the work

The Wèi Lì Zhī Dào 為吏之道 (The Way of Being an Official) is a didactic text recovered from Qin tomb no. 11 at Shuìhǔdì 睡虎地, Yúnmèng County 雲夢縣, Hubei Province, excavated in 1975–76 and sealed around 217 BCE. Unlike the legal statutes and model documents from the same tomb (KR2p0140, KR2p0141, KR2p0142, KR2p0177), the Wèi Lì Zhī Dào is an ethical and rhetorical text aimed at inculcating the virtues, character, and conduct appropriate to the Qin official. It combines prose and rhymed verse, includes lists of virtues and faults, and appends several heterogeneous documents — including what appear to be excerpts from Wei 魏 state household registration laws (Wèi Hù Lǜ 魏戶律, Wèi Bēn Mìng Lǜ 魏奔命律). The text is without close parallel among other pre-Han documents and occupies a unique position at the intersection of Legalist administration and classical virtue-ethics. It is the only Shuìhǔdì text that is explicitly didactic in orientation.

Abstract

Structure. The Wèi Lì Zhī Dào is divided into several distinct sections:

1. A long opening passage in rhymed prose enumerating the qualities of the good official;
2. The “Five Goods” (wǔ shàn 五善) and “Five Faults” (wǔ shī 五失) of officials (in two separate lists);
3. A further list of five failures in a different register;
4. Several rhymed passages on political philosophy and administrative conduct;
5. A series of domains of official responsibility, listed in nearly fifty items;
6. Rhymed passages on the official as exemplar;
7. Excerpts from the Wei state Hù Lǜ 戶律 and Bēn Mìng Lǜ 奔命律 (seemingly appended rather than organically part of the text);
8. Short apophthegmatic passages on speech, self-restraint, and frugality.

The opening passage. The text begins: 凡為吏之道，必精絜正直，慎謹堅固，審悉毋私，微密韱察，安靜毋苛，審當賞罰。嚴剛毋暴，廉而毋刖，毋復期勝，毋以忿怒夬。寬俗忠信，和平毋怨，悔過勿重。茲下勿陵，敬上勿犯，聽間勿塞。審智民能，善度民力，勞以𧗵之，正以橋之。 “In general, the way of being an official: one must be pure and upright; careful and resolute; thorough and impartial (shěn xī wú sī 審悉毋私); subtle and closely observant; calm and not harsh; and judicious in apportioning rewards and punishments. Stern and firm, but not violent; incorrupt, but not mean; do not seek to win repeatedly; do not decide [cases] out of anger and resentment. Generous in customs, loyal and trustworthy; peaceful and without grudges; when you err, do not repeat the mistake. Be tender to inferiors, do not oppress them; respect superiors, do not offend them; when listening to informants (tīng jiān 聽間), do not block [the channel]. Thoroughly understand the people’s capabilities; gauge well the people’s strength; labour with them to govern them; rectify them, to improve them.” This opening passage continues with a series of rhetorical antitheses in rhymed verse, presenting character as the ability to hold opposites in productive tension: 怒能喜，樂能哀，智能愚，壯能衰，恿能屈，剛能柔，仁能忍，強良不得 (“Able to be angry yet also joyful; able to be happy yet also sad; able to be wise yet also appear foolish; able to be strong yet also to yield; able to be brave yet also to bow; able to be firm yet also to be soft; able to be benevolent yet also endure — the forcefully dominant cannot achieve this.”).

The Five Goods and Five Faults. The first “Five Goods” (wǔ shàn 五善):

1. Loyal and trustworthy, respectful toward superiors (zhōng xìn jìng shàng 中信敬上);
2. Pure, incorrupt, free from slander (jīng lián wú bàng 精廉毋謗);
3. Judicious in handling affairs (jǔ shì shěn dāng 舉事審當);
4. Keen to perform good deeds (xǐ wéi shàn xíng 喜為善行);
5. Respectful and deferential (gǒng jìng duō ràng 龔敬多讓). If all five are present, there will surely be great reward.

The first “Five Faults” (wǔ shī 五失): (1) Boastful and overbearing; (2) Arrogant and highhanded; (3) Arbitrary in taking and distributing; (4) Offending superiors without knowing the harm; (5) Despising scholars and honouring money and goods.

A second set of five faults: (1) Treating the people with contempt; (2) Not being present at one’s post in the morning; (3) Taking bribes from one’s position; (4) Slow in complying with orders; (5) Neglecting official duties for the sake of the household.

A third list of five faults, framed as explanatory Jie 解 (explanations), links each fault to its consequence: not examining those one is close to leads to frequent resentment; not knowing those one employs leads them to exploit the balance of power for gain; undertaking inappropriate affairs causes the people to point fingers; speaking well but acting differently means officers have nothing to compare [themselves to]; and criticizing superiors leads to death.

The enumeration of official duties. The text then presents a remarkable list of nearly fifty domains that an official must attend to — one of the most comprehensive inventories of Qin administrative responsibilities anywhere preserved: 除害興利，茲愛萬姓 (“Remove harm, promote benefit, cherish all the people”) — followed by specific duties: regulating orphans and widows; managing the corvée and reward-and-punishment system; dealing with violent and unruly persons; household registration and field administration; tax collection; maintenance of walls and gates; keeping paths clear; timely compliance with official documents; management of outstanding debts; bridges and road maintenance; storerooms and granary walls; drainage and waterways; rhinoceros horn, elephant tusks, and hides; storage of weapons and military equipment; management of towers and parapets; keeping records of official seals and tallies; fire prevention and theft prevention; monetary and feather-banner administration; monitoring of dependants and slaves; work quotas; care of the aged and ill; provision of food and clothing; thatching and plastering of leaking roofs; management of parks and ponds; livestock condition; and storage of cinnabar, pearls, and pigments. This comprehensive list reflects the totality of the mid-level Qin official’s administrative world.

The appended Wei statutes. The final sections of the Wèi Lì Zhī Dào append what appear to be two excerpts from Wei 魏 state law, introduced by a precise date: 廿五年閏再十二月丙午朔辛亥 (“Year 25, intercalary second twelfth month, day bǐngwǔ as first of month, day xīnhài”). Scholars identify this as Year 25 of King Ān-Lí of Wei 魏安釐王 (272 BCE). The first excerpt (Wèi Hù Lǜ 魏戶律) orders the Chancellor (xiāng bāng 相邦) to prohibit households headed by jiā mén nì lǚ 叚門逆呂 (sojourners who have married into households) and zhuì xù hòu fù 贅壻後父 (sons-in-law living in the wife’s household, step-fathers) from registering households or receiving land and housing. The second (Wèi Bēn Mìng Lǜ 魏奔命律) orders generals to send such persons on military campaign — treating them as expendable assault troops (gōng chéng yòng qí bù zú 攻城用其不足). The reason for the inclusion of Wei state law in a Qin official’s tomb is debated: it may reflect the absorption of Wei legal material into Qin practice after Qin conquered Wei territories; or it may represent material that Xǐ used as a comparative reference in his legal work.

The text closes with short, almost apophthegmatic statements on silence and self-restraint: 口者，關也；舌者，幾也。一堵失言，四馬弗能追也 (“The mouth is the gate; the tongue is the mechanism. A single wall’s worth of careless words — four horses cannot overtake [them].”).

Genre and significance. The Wèi Lì Zhī Dào belongs to a broad genre of “conduct texts” for officials that flourished in the Warring States and early imperial periods. It shares themes with the Guǎnzǐ 管子, the Shāng Jūn Shū 商君書, and early Han texts on official conduct, but its specific combination of virtue-ethics rhetoric with an exhaustive practical inventory of administrative duties is distinctive. It is the only Shuìhǔdì text that can be read as an attempt at ethical formation (lǐ 禮 in the practical sense) of the Qin official as a type.

Dating. The Wei 魏 dates embedded in the appended statutes suggest that material from Wei state practice was incorporated into the text no earlier than 272 BCE. The tomb was sealed c. 217 BCE.

Translations and research

• Hulsewé, A.F.P. Remnants of Ch’in Law. Brill, 1985, pp. 212–232 — English translation with notes.
• 睡虎地秦墓竹簡整理小組, 《睡虎地秦墓竹簡》, 文物出版社, 1990 — editio princeps.
• Caldwell, Ernest. Writing Chinese Laws: The Form and Function of Legal Statutes Found in the Qin Shuihudi Corpus. Routledge, 2018, pp. 171–206.
• Pines, Yuri. The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy. Princeton University Press, 2012 — contextualizes official virtue discourse.
• Lewis, Mark Edward. The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han. Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 115–120 — discusses the text in relation to Qin administrative culture.
• Kern, Martin. “The Poetry of Tang Shu.” T’oung Pao 89.4–5 (2003) — methodological comparison for rhymed administrative texts.

Other points of interest

The Wèi Lì Zhī Dào is notable for what it reveals about the self-image of the Qin state’s administrative class. The opening injunction — not to be harsh (wú kē 毋苛), not to decide cases out of anger, to be gentle toward inferiors — stands in conspicuous tension with the stereotyped image of Qin as a harshly Legalist state interested only in punishment and force. The text suggests that at least at the level of practical administrative training, Qin officials were expected to internalize a considerably more nuanced, virtue-based conception of their role. The rhetorical strategy of presenting character as the capacity to hold contradictions in balance — 怒能喜，樂能哀 (“able to be angry yet also joyful; able to be happy yet also sad”) — draws on the Confucian tradition of zhōngyōng 中庸 (the Mean) while remaining firmly embedded in an administrative framework.

Links

• Wikipedia (Shuihudi bamboo slips): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuihudi_bamboo_slips