In the Tang Dynasty, there were 28 kinds of official texts, and with the passage of time, nearly 50 kinds of texts, including edicts, pardons, decrees, tables, and edicts, were derived, which were much more complicated than the 15 styles stipulated by the current party and government organs at all levels in China.
In the "Quan Tang Wen", "Tang Wen Collection", "Tang Wen Continued Collection", a total of more than 20,000 Tang Dynasty articles are included, almost half of which belong to the category of official documents, and the Tang Dynasty documents unearthed in Dunhuang, Turpan and other places have greatly enriched the content in this regard.
【Tang Dynasty Government Workflow】
During the Tang Dynasty, government agencies implemented a three-province and six-ministry system, namely Shangshu Province, Zhongshu Province, and Menxia Province, and the six ministries were the executive bodies under Shangshu Province.
The specific work process is that Shangshu Province reports on state affairs that require the emperor's approval, Zhongshu Province drafts an edict for the emperor, menxia Province approves the final draft, and then returns to Shangshu Province for operation and implementation. In practice, in order to improve work efficiency, the prime minister team, including the heads of the three provinces, will generally focus on discussing and then going through procedures.
The general principle of handling state affairs is to report major events to the emperor, subordinates to the zhongshu and menxia, and routine affairs to the six departments and departments. Among them, the six departments of Shangshu Province are responsible for the handling of general official documents, and the work content is the most in the early Tang and Sheng Tang dynasties, which is the entrance and exit of all official documents, and it is also a period of relatively large power.
However, after the Anshi Rebellion, with the weakening of the central authority of the Tang Dynasty, the temporary sensitive issues increased, and some official documents needed to be handled directly by the prime minister, and even some official documents were reported directly to the emperor, so the tasks of Zhongshu Province and Menxia Province began to increase, and the work process also underwent some changes.
In particular, the local feudal towns that held real power did not have the heart to take care of Shangshu Province and the six divisions, and the official documents played directly entered the Zhongshu Gate and skipped Shangshu Province. Moreover, often the official positions of the feudal towns and the envoys are very high, and even some of them themselves have the false position of the prime minister, which is the same level as the Zhongshu Menxia, and the official language used is often a parallel style such as muwen. After receiving such an official document, the prime minister's team consulted, and reported it to the emperor in a form, and the emperor approved it with a pardon, and if it was agreed to be implemented, the Zhongshu Menxia then adopted the pardon reply, or parallel style.
【Basic Classification of Tang Dynasty Official Documents: Descending, Upward and Parallel Texts】
According to the provisions of the Six Classics of Tang, official documents are divided into three categories: downward, upward, and parallel, which covers most of the official texts, which are from emperors, princes, princes, and empresses, as well as the three provinces and local governments at all levels.
The main body of the lower text is the order issued by the institutions at all levels on behalf of the emperor, mainly from Shangshu Province and Zhongshu Province. The person in charge of Shangshu Province is Shangshu Ling and Shangshu Left and Right Servants, which is the standard chancellor official position in the Tang Dynasty, generally Shang Shu Ling is vacant, And Shangshu Zuo Servant Is the head of the hundred officials; the person in charge of Zhongshu Province is Zhongshu Ling, who is generally also one of the Prime Ministers. Zhongshu Province was responsible for drafting the edict and providing the first draft of the emperor's approval documents, equivalent to the emperor's secretarial team.
The descending texts from Shangshu Province can be divided into six types, including the emperor's system, pardon, and book, the order of the crown prince and empress, the teachings of princes and princesses, and the shangshu province issued to the state, the prefecture to the county, and the county to the township, collectively referred to as the symbol.
What should be particularly explained here is that the highest level of the emperor's will can be called both an edict and a book, the reason is that during the Wu Zetian period, because the edict and the edict were homophonous, the edict was changed to a book, and later Although Emperor Zhongzong of Tang restored the name of the edict, the actual operation process was still mixed with the edict. The amnesty is slightly lower, but it is widely used and the most numerous. These official documents generally begin with "Menxia" or "Pardon", rather than the "Fengtian Emperor's Edict" adopted by later generations.
Beginning with Li Yuan, the Tang Dynasty added the new profession of Emperor Taishang, and the documents issued by Emperor Taishang and Empress Dowager were collectively called 诰. This is also a more special place, this style, as early as the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, is synonymous with the edict, but during the Tang Dynasty, this style became the exclusive use of the Emperor Taishang and the Empress Dowager;
The downgoing documents from Zhongshu Province can be divided into seven types, including books on the titles of the emperor's concubines and children, major awards, amnesties and other related books, commendations and consolation systems, appointments and dismissals of middle- and low-level officials, abolition of prefectures and counties, material allocation, conscription of soldiers and horses, and so on, the emperor's initiative to issue amnesty for the day, officials ask for instructions to approve the implementation of the pardon, condolences and admonitions to the ministers of the secretary of state, and pardons for temporary affairs.
(Folk Tang Dynasty Sacred Will - Doubtful)
Not all the following texts are issued in the name of the emperor, and in the name of the prime minister, the orders issued can come from the "Zhongshu Menxia", representing the heads of the two major departments of Zhongshu Province and Menxia Province, from the Tang Dynasty, there was a new style, called pardon, especially for the prime minister's reply to the local government's request for instructions, such as "Zhongshu Menxia Mu County", which is the prime minister's approval opinion on a certain county's request.
The appointment of officials is an important content in the following text, according to the different grades of officials, respectively, the use of canons, system of grants, pardons and conferral, of which officials with more than three pins are awarded, more than five pins are awarded by the system, the court counselors and worship officials below six pins are pardoned, and the other six pins or less of the general officials are granted. In fact, only the first three are the core of The Tang officials, written by the emperor or the emperor's secretarial team, while the last type of official is enough to draft the emperor's approval.
In practice, the following documents also include various official documents of governments at all levels, such as judgments, official certificates, etc.;
(Tianjin Museum collection of Tang Dynasty Shazhou official documents)
There are also six kinds of upper text, the name table and the form for the emperor, the note and qi for the crown prince, the name for the chief, and the speech and speech for the common people, and these official documents must in principle pass through the province and then to the emperor.
Parallel texts are divided into three types, guantong is guan, stabbing is stabbing, and moving things to other divisions is moving. The fact that the heads of all the agencies handling the transfer of official duties must be signed together is a very reasonable provision, which has the meaning of the modern first question of responsibility. In practice, it was originally written on the top, but was generally used as a parallel text.
(Tang Dynasty official documents unearthed in Turpan, Xinjiang)
These are most of the types of official documents during the Tang Dynasty, and others include Yuzha, Bei Paper, WeiQu, 檄文, Bangwen, Mengshu and other languages, some of which are variants of the above-mentioned languages.
Some official documents can also add additional vocabulary, such as the seal of the emperor can be called the seal book, the emperor's own handwriting called hand pardon, handmade, hand curse, etc., only to indicate the importance and importance, and the normal official documents are actually the same, including even the special wax bullet book or wax pill book for confidential documents.
Not all official documents must be stamped with the emperor's seal, and according to the regulations, the emperor's eight seals have their own roles. In practice, most of the official documents are only stamped with the seals of the three provinces, and the number of seal books that can be counted is very small, but they are only used in a few languages, such as books, consolation books, amnesty books, approvals, hanging ritual documents, and iron coupons.
(Emperor Ai of Tang's succession to the throne)
According to the average annual number of various official documents issued by successive emperors of the Tang Dynasty, the highest was Li Dan of Tang Ruizong, who left 72 official documents during his two-year reign, which should have done a lot of work to eliminate the remaining problems of Wu Zetian, Wei Hou and others; the last emperor of the Tang Dynasty, Li Tao, was emperor under Zhu Wen's control for 3 years and also issued 60 official documents, but this obviously had nothing to do with himself.
Li Longji, who is familiar with Tang Xuanzong, ranked third in the average annual number of official documents, leaving nearly 900 official documents in his 45 years of reign, reaching the first place in total, accounting for 30% of the number of official documents issued by all Tang emperors;
The number of official documents left by the emperors in the early Tang Dynasty was relatively small, and Li Shimin's average annual number of official documents ranked only 11th, ranking in the middle. The three emperors at least were Emperor Gaozong of Tang, Li Zhi of Tang, Li Yan of Tang, and Wu Zetian.
(Official documents of the Tang Xuanzong period)
【Specific Requirements and Legal Protection of Tang Dynasty Official Documents】
Kumon writing has been a certain professional discipline in all dynasties and dynasties, and the famous Xianglu Zhen of the Middle and Tang Dynasties once wrote a "Preparation for The Words of Literature" to help with kumon writing; Bai Juyi also wrote a "Bai Pu", which is equivalent to a modern encyclopedia of Kumon writing.
Since there was no punctuation mark in ancient times, and the style of kumon could not be ambiguous, it gradually formed a standard format of kumon, using some fixed characters as a sign of the distinction between various parts of the kumon, such as the beginning of the "quasi" word to lead, the end of the use of the word "sincere", just as the beginning of modern kumon is used according to the provisions of so-and-so, the end is hereby notified and so on. During the late Tang Dynasty, Li Deyu created a system of official documents for one article and one matter, and the official documents were more concise and standardized.
At that time, Ouyang Qian, Yu Shinan, and Yan Zhenqing were still no one who could surpass the calligraphy in modern times, so the calligraphy developed to the peak during the Tang Dynasty and maintained the seriousness of the official text.
(Ouyang Inquiry Letter)
There are also specific requirements for the paper on which official documents are written, originally white paper was used, but it was easy to be mothed, so during the Tang Gaozong period, a special edict stipulated, "From now on, Shangshu Province will issue the prefectures and counties of the provinces, and it is advisable to use yellow paper." "Dyed yellow paper bugs are not eaten, and they will be stored longer. Jute paper and yellow rattan paper produced in Yizhou and other places have also become special writing papers for various official documents.
Later, Emperor Xianzong of Tang changed it back during the yuan and years, stipulating that some emperors should use white linen paper for important book making.
So many official documents, in ancient times, when there was no printing, there had to be a special person to copy it. Shangshu Province is the specific implementation agency of various official documents, and the number of personnel arranged is also the largest, according to the organization, there are 18 People in LingShi, 36 people in Shu Ling History, and 100 people in various scribes, including special calligraphers.
Official documents were protected by the laws of the Tang Dynasty, officials who wrote typos had to be beaten with sticks, and those who forged or changed official documents ranged from being beaten with sticks and exiled to hanging, of course, the emperor's book making was the most important, and only by forging and changing the book could they enjoy the treatment of hanging.
(Jute Paper)
【The biggest feature of Tang Dynasty official documents is that they are both practical and literary】
In the official documents of the Tang Dynasty, whether it is the official documents played by the courtiers to the emperor, or the books written by the courtiers instead of the emperor, they both reflect the standardization of the official documents and show the outstanding literary style of some officials. These official documents, which are themselves literary masters, are themselves excellent articles, and Zhang Jiuling, Lu Zhen, Han Yu, Yuan Shu, Bai Juyi and others are among the representatives.
In ancient times, when communication and transportation were not developed, all meanings could only be expressed clearly through one article, which was obviously different from modern communication and coordination before writing.
Judging from the content, although the early Tang Dynasty attached importance to the literary nature of official documents, the eldest son Wuji, Fang Xuanling, Wei Zheng, Yu Shinan, Kong Yingda, and others at that time were not known for their literary style, and these people did not have any literary masterpieces handed down except for official documents; from the Wu Zetian period onwards, official documents began to be literary, literary style but pragmatic was relatively poor, relatively exaggerated, and the Tang Dynasty improved; in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, due to the examination system for many years, officials at all levels in the DPRK and China often had a higher literary level, or those in power often recruited literary masters as staff. Kumon is also characterized by both pragmatism and literature.
Tang Shi was able to write books for the emperor and pardon books can be called "big strokes", some scholars have summarized, of which Chen Shuda, Cen Wenwen, Su Huan, Li Zhao, Su Yong, Zhang Shu, Chang Gong, Li Jifu, Ling Huchu, Li Deyu and other 10 people are the most worthy of the name, namely 5 in the early Tang Dynasty, 1 in the Sheng Tang, and 4 in the middle and late Tang.
(Li Deyu, the first minister of the late Tang Dynasty)
The system and evolution of official documents in the Tang Dynasty were very complex, and trying to sort out a basic context with the simplest words would always be missed. But having the basic concepts is helpful for us to consult the first-hand historical materials of the time.
Interpret history in a mathematical and engineering way of thinking, in a vain attempt to use the past as a metaphor for the present. Polytechnic men read history, welcome to pay attention to and discuss.