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 gazetteer puts the abolition and the advice in one sentence, which shows that the measure followed a memorial from a court official. What Wang Qinruo proposed is not recorded.

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.

Consequences

The levy stopped in the sixth month of 1023. Whether mining was resumed afterwards is not recorded. 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

When the mining began, which office supervised it, and whether it was revived after 1023 are all unrecorded, and this entry does not supply them.