The Qin's Concepts of State and Capital District during the Warring States Period

本稿は二〇一六年一一月に東洋史硏究會大會の席上で報吿した「秦統一前後の「邦」と畿內」の內容に加筆・訂正を施したものである。This paper reconsiders several important aspects of the Qin's concepts of state and capital district during the Warring States period, particularly in terms of interregional relationships and the process by which they expanded their area of dominion. In this paper I considered three major issues. First, I reconsidered the character bang 邦 that appears in Qin period documents. While bang basically means nation or state, it also had a range of ambiguous uses, with recent theories being posited that bang referred only to the capital district, the central precinct. This paper refutes that theory, stating that the only specific examples of the term referring solely to the capital district are found at an older stage of the legal system when the Qin domain was limited, and thus clarify that bang refers to the state or city-state. Second, I analyzed the terminology used to differentiate areas within the Qin domain, and those to indicate the capital district. Earlier scholarship has strongly supported the theory that the Qin strictly differentiated between guqin 故秦 or “district of original dominion” and those areas and populace outside that district, which were newly under their rule. Those theories further believed that guqin was a “set state”. However, reexamination of related historical documents indicates that it is wrong to interpret guqin as a “set state.” Rather, strict differentiation and exclusion was no longer apparent during the Qin's process of expanding its territory and absorbing new populations. Third, I confirmed the terminology used for the Qin capital district, and sought the process by which the state government system was applied to the newly acquired regions. This process clarified the following various points. Namely, until the late Warring State period the Qin established a division between the center zhong 中, specifically the ruler's capital district, and jun 郡, the provincial government. However, the Qin applied their existing legal framework essentially unchanged as they expanded their territory from the former to include the latter. Thus the relationship between capital district and provincial government was not one of differentiation or different but equal, but rather should be grasped as a continuation/expansion relationship. Thus, this article posits the establishment process of the Qin state government, divides that process into three major periods, and discusses how more of the older laws established in the mid Warring States period are preserved in the important Yunmeng Shuihudi Qin jian 雲夢睡虎地秦蕑 bamboo slips than in contemporaneous late Warring States period documents