Cinnabar Mining at Lishui Abolished, 1023 CE

Date and content

In the sixth month of 1023 CE, the first year of the Tiansheng era, the court abolished the cinnabar-mining levy at Lishui. The gazetteer records:

六月，罢溧水采丹砂，从王钦若议也。

Translated: In the sixth month the mining of cinnabar at Lishui was abolished, on the advice of Wang Qinruo. This is a translation, not the words of the original.

The Xu Zizhi Tongjian Changbian, juan 100, records under the same year:

甲辰，罢江宁府溧水县采丹砂。

Translated: On the jiachen day, the mining of cinnabar in Lishui county, Jiangning Prefecture, was abolished. This is a translation, not the words of the original.

The Changbian places this entry in the sixth month of the first year of Tiansheng (it follows entries beginning with "in the sixth month, on the bingshen day"), which agrees with the gazetteer's sixth month and confirms the date. Its wording "Lishui county, Jiangning Prefecture" agrees with the fact that Lishui was then under Jiangning Prefecture. It shows further that the levy was abolished by an order issued to Lishui county, not by the county itself.

The gazetteer puts the abolition and the advice in one sentence, which shows that the measure followed a memorial from a court official. The Changbian does not record that the abolition was on Wang Qinruo's advice, but its juan 101 records that in the eighth month of the first year of Tiansheng Wang Qinruo was made administrator of Jiangning Prefecture with the title of Minister of Punishment, was recalled within the month and became chief councillor in the ninth. Wang Qinruo was therefore in office at Jiangning in that year, which fits the gazetteer's account in time; the Changbian does not state that the abolition followed his advice, so this entry treats the point as circumstantial and does not settle it. What Wang Qinruo proposed is not recorded by either source.

The nature of the levy

Cinnabar is a mineral, used in the past as a material for alchemy and medicine. The gazetteer records only the mining itself; it says nothing of the office that ran it, the quota, or where the miners came from, and nothing of where in Lishui the mineral was worked. The Changbian likewise records only the abolition. A search of the "Mines and Smelting" sections of the History of Song's Treatise on Food and Money found no separate record of cinnabar working at Lishui.

Consequences

The levy stopped in the sixth month of 1023. Whether mining was resumed afterwards is recorded by neither source. In 1281, the eighteenth year of the Zhiyuan era, the same gazetteer records that five thousand Lishui households were made gold-washing households, another extraction levy imposed on the county.

Uncertainties

First, when the mining began, which office supervised it, and whether it was revived after 1023 are recorded neither by the gazetteer nor by the Changbian, and this entry does not supply them; the Treatise on Food and Money of the History of Song likewise has no separate record of cinnabar working at Lishui.

Second, the advice of Wang Qinruo appears only in the gazetteer; the Changbian does not record it. Wang Qinruo was administrator of Jiangning Prefecture in that year, which fits the gazetteer's account in time, but this entry does not conclude from this that the abolition was requested by him.

Third, both the gazetteer and the Changbian place the abolition in the sixth month; the Changbian also gives the day as jiachen. This entry reproduces both and makes no further conversion.