Good Confucianism book (pdf) - Department of Physics

From the Han to the Tang Dynasties, 220–907 CE 151each generation to further the family ’ s influence and wealth by enteringthe civil service.The Civil ServiceThe government was divided into national, provincial, and local levels.The civil service consisted of a relatively small number of bureaucrats fora country as large and populous as imperial China. Estimates are that inthe Tang dynasty there were 13,500 officials for 50 million people; by theQing dynasty, with a population of about 425 million people, there wasone magistrate for every 300,000 people. 9The foundation of the civil service was the local magistrate. Most successfulcandidates in the examination system began at this bottom rung.The “ law of avoidance ” meant that magistrates were not allowed to servein their native areas. The new magistrate arrived as a stranger and oftencould not speak the local dialect, so he would usually speak to the localgentry who would be fluent in “ Mandarin ” or “ official ” dialect. To helphim with his duties he had a staff of about a dozen subordinates. A magistrate,as pretty much the sole representative of the imperial government,had enormous duties to perform. He had to investigate and prosecutecrimes, judge civil disputes, collect taxes, impose corv é e, and raise a localmilitia if needed. He acted as the judge, police, and prosecutor at trials.He was required to know all the laws and the punishments that went withthem: punishments varied from ten blows to execution, mitigated in somecircumstances if the person was old or mentally ill. His court proceedingswere public and his sentences and decisions were subject to the people ’ sapproval. His legal duties also included acting as a mediator, especially incivil cases. 10If a magistrate was competent, he would be promoted to the provincialand then national levels. Given the small world of the civil service and itsenormous powers, this was the route to power and wealth. Although paidsmall salaries, civil servants made up for this by accepting “ gifts ” for theconsideration of assistance or to hear civil cases. 11 This was only consideredto be a problem if, for example, a magistrate let himself be so influenced bythe bribes he had received that it caused unrest in his district.The Status of Confucius in Imperial ChinaWith the dominance of Confucianism in the civil service and its examinationsystem and Confucian ideas filtering down through society, what didpeople think about Confucius himself?