"Mozi Shangxian" says: "Shangxian, Masanomoto". Tang Taizong also said: "For the important government, only in the people." Talent is the productive force of social progress and a necessary condition for maintaining the good operation of society. To this end, the Sui and Tang dynasties creatively invented the imperial examination system, which provided a relatively complete theoretical system and implementation plan for the selection and employment of personnel in later generations, and to this day, it still has strong reference significance and research value. But before the birth of the examination system, China also had a system of selection, that is, the inspection system.
In order to consolidate the power, Liu Bang issued an edict in 196 BC, asking all counties and states to recommend talents, known as "seeking the sages", and opening up the precedent of the system of inspection and lifting, after which Emperor Hui's reign and Lü Hou's reign, there were similar measures, and after Emperor Wen of Han succeeded to the throne, he issued two edicts, "those who can speak out and advise those who are virtuous and good.". In the sixth year of Emperor Wu's reign, he adopted Dong Zhongshu's suggestion and demanded that all counties and states be filial and honest, institutionalize the selection and employment of personnel, and the system of inspection and enumeration was formally established.
The Han Dynasty inspection and examination system is mainly divided into two categories: the special examination and the special branch, the former has no fixed time, mainly examines the four categories of Xianliang literature, Xianliang Fangzheng, MingJing, and Mingfa, and the latter has a fixed time, mainly examining xiaolian and Maocai.
(1) Filial piety
In the Han Dynasty, the country was ruled by filial piety, and the inspection system put the examination of filial piety in the first place, taking the meaning of "filial piety and pro-growth, honesty and integrity", and the objects of filial piety were mainly two types, one was the incumbent official, the other was ordinary people, the two were not distinguished from each other, as long as they met the assessment standards, they could be recommended as filial piety. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the people were also called filial piety, filial piety was always advocated by Confucianism, and "honesty" included incorruptibility, integrity, integrity, honesty, honesty, honesty, and honesty. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty greatly admired "filial piety" and required the county to "raise filial piety and honesty for two people", and after the Eastern Han Dynasty, it was changed to determine the proportion according to the population of the county, and set a separate policy for the border county areas where ethnic minorities lived together. According to later estimates, the two Han Dynasties held up a total of 74,000 filial pieties, which had a great impact.
(2) Maocai
Mao Cai and Xiu Cai agreed that in the Eastern Han Dynasty, in order to avoid Liu Xiu's name, it was changed to Mao Cai, mainly for people with special talents, "Later Han Shu Huang Wan Biography": "The old system, Guanglu held up three departments of Lang, with high merit and long-term talent for Mao Cai four elements." Maocai source is more complex, can be officials, can also be the people, the Western Han Dynasty to officials and filial piety, in general, Maocai's comprehensive quality requirements are higher than filial piety, the number of referrals is also less than filial piety, and once recommended as Maocai, its official appointment is also higher than filial piety. During the Western Han Dynasty, Xiao Lianduo was appointed as a Lang official, and Mao Caiduo served as an official at the county level.
(3) Virtuous
Xianliang is similar to Maocai, focusing on the study of talents, generally called Xianliang Fangzheng, or Xianliang literature. During the reign of Emperor Wen, he consulted hundreds of families, opened up the way of speech, and to a certain extent expanded the scope of selection and employment of people, Xianliang was entrusted with the role of Kuang to supplement the current politics, and the famous Chao mistake was the Xianliang selected by Emperor Wen, and Dong Zhongshu was the Xianliang selected by Emperor Wu. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, natural disasters occurred frequently, and xianliang was also recruited to discuss the gains and losses of the government. The rank of Xianliang was higher, and it had to be recommended by the princes and princes of the Gongqing and the sheriff to be selected, and the emperor could only grant the official position after personally interrogating him, and the emperor of the Western Han Dynasty attached great importance to Xianliang, such as Dong Zhongshu, who was appointed as the governor of Jiang after offering the "Three Strategies of Heaven and Man".
(4) Other subjects
Including "Ming Jing", "Ming Fa", "Art of War", "Taoism", etc., more professional, can be seen as a supplement to the talent selection mechanism, of which "Ming Jing" began in the Qin Dynasty, mainly used to select talents proficient in a hundred schools of thought, the Han Dynasty exclusive respect Confucianism, "Jing" refers specifically to the Confucian classics, the Han Dynasty Kong Anguo is the "Ming Jing" origin, this system has continued until the Song Dynasty; "Ming Law" is mainly aimed at legal talents, the examination system retained the "Ming Law" subject, the Tang and Song Dynasties are still used as assessment subjects; "War Law" as the name suggests, For the military selection reserve talents; "Taoism" has a certain characteristics of the times, the Han Dynasty dynasty, natural disasters occur frequently, according to scholars' statistics, the two Han Dynasties in 400 years a total of 557 natural disasters of various kinds, the Han Dynasty rulers were deeply affected by the "heavenly induction" ideology, in their view, "Taoism" can eliminate natural disasters, fear ghosts and gods. In addition, the Han Dynasty also had a "child family", and teenagers aged 12 to 16 could use it as long as they could understand the classics.
Specific to the selection and employment of personnel, there are also strict standards and procedures, in the Western Han Dynasty, the recommender must be a central or local senior official, the recommended person, there are also status restrictions, such as the children of the secretary of state, not within this scope, not only that, if the recommended person does not meet the relevant regulations, the recommender must also bear joint and several liability. For example, during the reign of Emperor Yuan of the Western Han Dynasty, The Marquis Zhang Bo held Chen Tang as a filial piety, and later Chen Tang broke the law, and Zhang Bo was also implicated and was "cut down three hundred households". It is precisely for these reasons that some officials are reluctant to recommend, such as wei Qing, a famous general in the Western Han Dynasty, who is clean and self-righteous, and has been an official for many years without recommending a single person. In order to avoid this phenomenon, during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he issued an edict that the two thousand stones "do not raise filial piety, do not obey the edict, and should be dismissed as disrespectful, not observed, incompetent, and exempted." Two thousand stones was the threshold for the three dukes, and Emperor Wudi of Han hoped that through such a move, he would give officials appropriate pressure and force them to recommend talents.
The birth of the inspection system greatly alleviated the phenomenon of lack of talent in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, and the ministers who started with Liu Bang at that time were mostly pawns of peddlers and leading cars and selling pulp, and could not undertake the great task of building the country; after the Rebellion of the Seven Kings, the center of the imperial court was very jealous of the princes and princes, hoping that fresh blood would be enriched, effectively curbing the mountain-top doctrine caused by the inbreeding of officials, and the inspection system selected a large number of talents from society, quickly rebuilt the state's upper institutions and bureaucratic system, and played an important role in restoring production and stabilizing political power.
However, there are also many shortcomings of the probation system. Confucianism advocates that "filial piety and loyalty can be transferred to the king, and loyal subjects must be at the door of filial piety", which makes the ruling class regard "virtue" as the primary criterion for selecting and employing people, which also leads to the inspection system overemphasizing "morality" and ignoring talent. The household registration system since the beginning of the Qin Dynasty has made it impossible for the people to move at will, and the township knows very well how a person's conduct is, and it is feasible to take "morality" as the standard for selecting and employing people, but the standard of "morality" cannot be quantified.
The "Later Han Shu Chen Fan Biography" records that when Chen Fan was too punctual, there was a man named Zhao Xuan, who after the death of his parents, he claimed to have kept filial piety for 20 years, and used this to win the fame, in fact, during this period he secretly gave birth to five sons, Chen Fan reprimanded him for "deceiving the public and slandering the ghosts and gods". There is also a person named Xu Wu, in order to get the opportunity to be selected with his younger brother, first proposed to separate the family, monopolize the land property, let the younger brother get the good name of "brother Ke Rang", and then triple the field property to the younger brother, mixed with a strengthened version of "Brother Ke Rang", which can be described as doing everything to the extreme.
However, some local governors, out of consideration for their interests, recommended that the scope of recommendation was limited to protégés and former officials, thus forming a party for personal gain, which not only damaged the selection system, but also posed a certain threat to the stability of the imperial court. Later, "the upper product has no cold door, and the lower product has no scholar", which can be described as a vivid irony.
After Emperor Wu, with the development of Taixue and private schools, the scope of selection began to expand, and the corresponding criteria also tended to be strict, "taking people by virtue" turned to "virtue and official ability", and the appointment of officials was not immediately appointed as soon as they were recommended, and there was a certain probationary period for officials who came from inspection, called "shou" a certain official, after the Shun Emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the inspection system was reformed, the age of inspection was limited, and the examination mechanism was introduced, which was called the Yangjia new system.
The new system of Yang Jia began with a recital by Zuo Xiong of The First Year of Yang Jia' Shang Shu Ling, who was born of filial piety, but had many different opinions on the system of filial piety, especially in terms of age, he believed that it was neither appropriate nor effective to examine filial piety for young people, while the traditional inspection system was concentrated in a subset of the history of the scriptures, too mechanical, and must be reformed.
Emperor Shun of Han adopted Zuo Xiong's suggestion and issued an edict to implement the yangjia new system and reform the filial piety system, which mainly included the following three points:
(1) Age restriction
Under the age of forty can not be selected for the scope of filial piety and honesty, this criterion stems from the Confucian doctrine, the so-called "forty not confused", "forty strong and strong". The age limit effectively circumvents unbridled and arbitrary recommendations, leaving room for the capable to rise.
(2) Introduce an examination mechanism
Previously, the virtuous and liangming were selected through examinations, except for filial piety. Yangjia's new system of examination is divided into two parts: the initial examination and the re-examination, the initial examination is in the public office, and the re-examination is at the end gate, which increases the intensity of the assessment in this way and avoids some fraudulent people from being confused.
(3) Refresh the talent selection criteria
The Yangjia new system increased the proportion of official writing and Confucian classics, and abolished the examination of virtue and political affairs, which can be seen as a revision of the traditional filial piety and more pragmatic. Chen Fan in the "Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion" and Li Bing in the "Disaster of the Party" are both taken from the new xiaolian selection.
The yangjia new system was a major reform of the inspection system, although it failed to save the precarious Eastern Han dynasty, it had a profound impact on the selection of Wei and Jin officials in later generations, and even the birth of the imperial examination system.
In terms of effect, the inspection system of the Western Han Dynasty was superior to that of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the early period was superior to the later period, which not only had a certain relationship with the selection and employment of the king, but also reflected another problem, even if there were available talents, if there was no good official environment, it was still impossible to achieve the expected effect.
Rimu Reviews:
Inspection and examination are the two major inventions of the ancient Chinese talent selection and appointment mechanism, especially the inspection and examination system, which has a distinct background of the times and cultural characteristics, and the selection system adopted by it still has a strong reference significance to this day, but it is also limited to the background of the times, and there are such and such problems in this system, such as the one-sided inspection mentioned in the text, fraud, and official alliances, etc. Although these systems have been compensated to a certain extent during the Eastern Han Dynasty, especially after the Yangjia new system, as far as the system itself is concerned, There are still insurmountable problems, which also lay the groundwork for the birth of the later imperial examination system.
In addition, the "selection of people by virtue" advocated by the inspection and examination system also has certain reference significance, taking "filial piety" as an example, selecting people who are filial piety and honesty to serve as officials can not only enrich the number of officials, but also publicize moral etiquette among the people and guide the people to be good. Than the talent of solving specific problems, De values long-term gains more. The selection methods with strong orientation such as xianliang and mingfa partially make up for the shortcomings of the standardized system and together constitute a complete bureaucratic selection mechanism.