唐代乡村基层组织及其演变

The Management Structure of Rural Society and Its Evolution in Tang Dynasty

唐代在县政权以下乡村基层社会设置有两类组织,一个是乡、里,一个是村、坊。前者是准基层政权;后者属于居民社区自治组织。在唐代乡、里机构中,并没有"乡"长官,里正是乡的实际负责人,"里"的作用因而被虚化。里正主持"乡"务的制度化,是中唐以后唐代乡村基层组织发生变化的重要推手。这种变化的基本方向就是"县—乡—里"结构让位于"县—乡—村"结构。具体表现为整齐划一的"里"的功能在逐渐退缩,而自然居民点"村"的功能在扩张和强化。发生这种变化的社会背景是随着户口的增长,乡和村的人口都在扩张,村与里的法定户数之间的差别愈益缩小,村取代里的可能性在提高,村的独立性增强,于是,唐前期的"乡—里"结构向后期的"乡—村"结构转变。不管是涉及赋役和户籍问题,还是涉及居民生活秩序的内容,管理层大多数情况直面乡村或村乡。

There were two sets of management institution in the sub-county districts during Tang dynasty, one was the institution Xiang-Li, a semi-govemment organization for some kind of autonomous organization between villagers. For and the head of Li （Li-zheng） was the real functionary in the rural society; the other was the institution Cun-Fang, the Xiang-Li institution, there was no praetor of Xiang Xiang district. The systematism that Li-zheng managed and controlled the Xiang district was an important driving factor for the changing of the management structure of rural society since Middle Tang, of which the trend was that the system County-Xiang-Li was replaced by the system of County-Xiang-Village. A concrete symbol of the change was that the function of the Li, the unified schemed organization, gradually shrank while the function of village （Cun） as a natural community expanded and consolidated. This change was an accompanied product of the phenomenon that the difference of the prescriptive amount of households between Xiang district and village district continually diminished in the background of the population expansion in both district, which strengthened the independency of the village district and made it more possible for the village district replaced the Li. In most time, the government faced directly the Xiang districts and villages when dealing with either the taxation and the corvee and census register or the problem of ordering the life of residents. The difficult position of the village management under the centralization system in the Tang dynasty existed in the double roles of the village officers, who were both the instruments for the central government to control the villages and the cacodemons persecuting the villagers and endangering the stabilization of villages.