官还是民:唐代三卫补吏称“释褐”小考

Official or Non-official?The Three Capital Guards as “Shihe”

卫官是唐代官僚制度中较为独特的一环,与职、散、勋官并列,其主体构成是三卫。三卫本为品官,但在唐代墓志中常以体现身份从民到官变化的"释褐"一词来描述三卫补吏的过程。本文认为,三卫补吏称"释褐",并非由于"释褐"词义的嬗变,而是由于三卫品官身份的不确定性,唐人眼中的三卫某些时候毋宁说是一种任官资格,性质上介于官民之间。三卫这一身份特征是由其候选官功能所决定的,在其他历史时期的一些候选官上也有体现。

The capital guard in the Tang Dynasty is a unique official title independent from the systems of substantial,prestige,and merit titles.The Three Capital Guards,which in theory are designated as graded substantial positions constitute the body of this system.However,the term 'shihe,'literally 'commoner's attire relinquished,'or more interpretatively,'detaching[oneself]from commoner's status'is often employed to characterize one's promotion to the position of a standby of the Three Capital Guards.This paper argues that this is not due to any change of the meaning of the term 'shihe,'but,rather,to a certain ambiguity embedded in the definition of the Three Capital Guards.In certain periods of the Tang,people viewed the title as a kind of candidacy,which lies in a grey area between people at large and the officialdom.The nature of the Three Capital Guards C essentially standbys of sub-stantial positions-entails this phenomenon,which also occurs to a few other types of 'candidacy' titles.