Yínquèshān Hànjiǎn Shǒufǎ Shǒulìng děng Shísān Piān 銀雀山漢簡《守法守令等十三篇》
Yinqueshan Bamboo-Slip Thirteen Chapters on Maintaining Laws and Orders anonymous
About the work
An anonymous pre-Qín military-administrative legal text recovered from Tomb No. 1 at Yínquèshān 銀雀山, Línyí 臨沂, Shandong, excavated in April 1972. The tomb is dated to ca. 140–118 BCE (early reign of Hàn Wǔdì), making these slips a Western Hàn copy of a much earlier (Warring States) text.
The text is named after its opening chapter, Shǒufǎ 守法 (Maintaining Laws), and an introductory 篇題木牘 (chapter-label wooden tablet) at the head of this file lists thirteen chapter-titles: 守法, 要言, 庫法, 王兵, 市法, 守令, 李法 [sic], 王法, 委法, 田法, 兵令, 上扁 [= 上篇], 下扁 [= 下篇]. Of these thirteen named chapters, ten survive in recoverable form on the slips; the text begins with Shǒufǎ 守法 and proceeds through the chapters in turn. Two untitled fragments of additional material are also included in the file.
The chapters form a coherent body of Warring States administrative law: Shǒufǎ concerns defensive military organization (city-wall standards, troop allocations, garrison duties, the ladder of urban defenses); Kùfǎ 庫法 regulates the state arsenal (storage, inspection, and maintenance of weapons, including lance-blades, crossbows, swords, and armour); Wáng bīng 王兵 is a treatise on royal military power, setting out the conditions under which states rise and fall through their armies; Shìfǎ 市法 regulates markets (layout, size, market law enforcement, standards for stalls); Lǐ fǎ 李法 (likely the chapter for a local administrative law concerning pear-orchards or similar; the title is possibly corrupt for lǐ 里 = neighborhood); Wáng fǎ 王法 addresses governance principles; Tiánfǎ 田法 (Agriculture Law) specifies land-use ratios, household sizes, crop quotas, and tax computation in systematic detail; and Bīng lìng 兵令 is a military ordinance on troop discipline, desertion, signal systems, and command hierarchies. The Shǒulìng 守令 (Defense Orders) and Wěifǎ 委法 complete the corpus.
Prefaces
This is an excavated bamboo-slip text; it carries no traditional preface or postface.
Abstract
The Shǒufǎ shǒulìng děng shísān piān is one of the most important pre-Qín administrative-legal texts to have survived, and was completely unknown before the 1972 Yínquèshān discovery. Unlike the military classics co-buried in the same tomb (Sūnzǐ, Sūn Bìn, Wèiliáozǐ, Liù tāo), this text had no place in the received bibliographic tradition and left no trace in subsequent literature; it is genuinely “lost.”
Scholarly analysis (notably Wú Jiǔlóng 吳九龍, 1984) has identified the institutional content as characteristic of the pre-Qín state of Qí 齊. The standards given for city walls (郭方七里，城方九里 = outer wall 7 lǐ, inner wall 9 lǐ, for a “ten-thousand-chariot state”), the troop allocations, the market regulations, and the agricultural quota system all reflect the administrative norms of a large Warring States polity, most plausibly Qí. The text is also connected with the intellectual tradition of the Jǐxià Academy 稷下學宮, the famous state-sponsored research centre that flourished in Qí’s capital Lǐnzī 臨淄 during the 4th–3rd centuries BCE, and which produced or associated with works like the Guǎnzǐ 管子.
The Tiánfǎ 田法 chapter is especially rich in administrative detail: it specifies the household composition for upper, middle, and lower families (7, 6, and 5 mouths respectively), the ratio of labour-days to land area at which a state “flourishes” (王) vs. merely “survives” (存) vs. “perishes” (亡), the system for rotating land assignments every ten years, and the calculation of grain taxes. The Bīng lìng 兵令 chapter prescribes the death penalty for multiple categories of military insubordination, including desertion, disobeying a command after it has been repeated three times, and commanding officers who abandon their troops. Both chapters are of direct value for the study of Warring States agrarian law and military law.
The Wilkinson Manual (§59.7.2.2) notes that the Shǒufǎ shǒulìng is also called the Shǒufǎ shǒulìng děng shísān piān 守法守令等十三篇 and classifies it as “a pre-Qin legal text.” It is also noted in §25.2.2 in the context of Warring States legal texts.
Composition date: Warring States period, most likely 4th–3rd centuries BCE, in the state of Qí. The tomb provides a firm terminus ante quem of ca. 118 BCE. The language, orthography, and institutional content are consistent with pre-Qín Qí administrative writing; there is no evidence of post-Qín composition. Bracketed at -450 to -221 (the outer boundary of the Warring States period).
Translations and research
- Wú Jiǔlóng 吳九龍. 1984. “Yínquèshān Hànjiǎn Qíguó fǎlǜ kǎoxī” 銀雀山漢簡齊國法律考析. Shǐxué jíkān 史學集刊 1984.4: 14–20. — the primary study linking the text to Warring States Qí law.
- Yínquèshān Hànmù zhújiǎn 銀雀山漢墓竹簡, vol. 1. Wénwù chūbǎnshè, 1985. — authoritative edition with full transcription.
- Wú Jiǔlóng 吳九龍. 1985. Yínquèshān Hànjiǎn shìwén 银雀山汉简释文. Wénwù. — character transcription of all Yínquèshān slips.
- Wilkinson, Endymion. Chinese History: A New Manual (6th edn, 2022), §25.2.2, §59.7.2.2 — situates the text within the broader Warring States legal corpus.
- No complete English translation located.
Other points of interest
The Shǒufǎ 守法 chapter preserves the most detailed pre-Qín description of city-wall standards and defensive garrison organization yet known. Its specifications — five-step intervals between defenders on the wall, staggered signal towers every two hundred steps, specialized crossbow units reserved for commanders — offer unique evidence for Warring States military engineering. The 守法守令 tradition may be related to the Mòzǐ 墨子 defensive chapters (Bèi chéng mén 備城門 etc.), but is clearly an independent administrative-legal corpus rather than a philosophical text.
The Wángbīng 王兵 chapter contains the striking formulation: “The state without a market is not yet a wealthy state; the state without law is not yet a well-governed state” — an integration of market regulation and rule of law that anticipates later Guǎnzǐ thought.
The partial Shuìhǔdì Qín bamboo texts (Suìhǔdì Qínmù zhújiǎn 睡虎地秦墓竹簡, Hǔbēi 湖北, 1975) provide a later (Qín unification era) comparative corpus of administrative law, illuminating how the pre-Qín Qí legal tradition encoded in the Shǒufǎ shǒulìng relates to the Qín legal system that ultimately prevailed.
Links
- Co-excavated texts: KR3b0024, KR3b0025, KR3b0026, KR3b0027
- Wikipedia: Yinqueshan Han Slips
- ctext.org: 銀雀山漢墓竹簡