Collection of Lishui's Grain Tax Suspended, 1261 CE

Date and content

In the sixth month of 1261 CE, the second year of the Jingding era, the collection of Lishui's grain tax was suspended. The gazetteer records:

二年辛酉，六月倚阁溧水苗税。

Translated: In the second year, in the sixth month, the collection of Lishui's grain tax was suspended. This is a translation, not the words of the original.

The term used, yige, is a formula of Song official writing meaning to set a tax aside and suspend its collection, often in times of disaster or dearth. The gazetteer had already recorded a suspension of Lishui's grain tax in the eleventh month of 1260, the first year of the same era; the two entries fall within two years.

The Jiankang gazetteer of the same year

The second year of Jingding was the year in which the Jingding Jiankang Zhi was compiled. Its juan 41, "Treatise on Land Tax, Part Two", records for the same year a disposal of the land rents of the counties of Jiankang Prefecture, in which Lishui and Shangyuan appear together:

景定二年，准省劄坐下江东转运司括到吴府圩田租数，隶建康府上元、溧水两县者，岁计租米一万三千七百七十八石八斗八升四合五勺、租麦一千四石五斗九升五合，并文思院斛，拨入淮西总领所理充支遣。税田租米不在此数。

Translated: In the second year of Jingding, by order of a secretariat instruction, the Jiangdong transport office surveyed the rents of the polders of the Wu estate; the portion belonging to the two counties of Shangyuan and Lishui of Jiankang Prefecture came yearly to 13,778 shi, 8 dou, 8 sheng and 4 ge of rent rice and 1,004 shi, 5 dou, 9 sheng and 5 ge of rent wheat, measured in Wensi-bureau dou, and was turned over to the Huai-west general accounting office for its disbursements. The rent rice of tax fields is not included in this figure. This is a translation, not the words of the original.

The same juan records separately the camp-field rents of Lishui county (3,640 mu, three jiao) and its sand rents, and in a section of miscellaneous records of tax remissions includes a proclamation of the fifth year of Baoyou, 1257, ordering that collection be "suspended for the relief of the people". Together these show that in the second year of Jingding the court disposed by secretariat instruction of the polder rents of the two counties of Shangyuan and Lishui of Jiankang Prefecture, an affair of Lishui's land tax in the same year as the gazetteer's suspension of Lishui's grain tax; and that the Jiankang authorities did have a practice of suspending collection "for the relief of the people".

A search of the History of Song's basic annals for Lizong found no text on the suspension of Lishui's grain tax. The affair therefore still rests chiefly on the county gazetteer, with the land-tax measures in the contemporary Jingding Jiankang Zhi as a counterpart of its period.

Other records of the period

Under 1262 the gazetteer records that Lishui's farmland was "planned and laid out", and under 1263 a remission of the county's grain tax. The gazetteer has a series of entries on Lishui's land tax in the Jingding years.

Consequences

The collection of Lishui's grain tax was suspended. The gazetteer records neither the share affected nor the term, and does not say whether the arrears were collected later.

Uncertainties

First, how the suspension was carried out is not recorded, nor is it clear what the phrase about Lishui's farmland under 1262 refers to; the gazetteer offers no explanation.

Second, a search of the History of Song's basic annals for Lizong found no text on the suspension of Lishui's grain tax, so this entry rests on the county gazetteer as its chief source; the disposal of the polder rents of Shangyuan and Lishui recorded in the Jingding Jiankang Zhi for the same year is a counterpart of the period only, and is not used to identify the two affairs.

Third, the Jingding Jiankang Zhi does not explain who the "Wu estate" of the polder rents was, nor the ground of the survey, and this entry draws no conclusion.