从南北卷到南北中卷——明洪熙、宣德间会试分区配额政策之演变

From North,South to North,South and Middle:the Origin and Progress of the Regional Recruitment Strategy and Quota System for Metropolitan Examinations from Hongxi Era to Xuande Era in the Ming Dynasty

明初会试取士不分南北,凭文而取,中试者中南人比例往往远超北人。仁宗即位后,有意革除科举之弊,包括南北人才悬殊问题。为此,阁臣杨士奇从制度设计入手,提出分区而取的南北卷方案。该方案得到允准,成为明代首个分区配额政策。后因虑及四川等地举人不能'概以南省并校',又立中卷区,南北卷被调整为南北中卷。然而史籍对其调整的时间及南北卷是否行用,说法不一。通过对宣德至正统初年会试相关科次各卷区录取情况的考察,大体可以推知,这一政策调整当于宣德二年会试之前完成,并于该科付诸实施。即是说,就明代会试分区配额政策而言,经历了由南北卷到南北中卷的演变,但在实践层面,南北卷可能未曾行用,南北中卷当是实践层面的唯一制度内容。

At the beginning of the Ming dynasty,the recruitment through metropolitan exams only concerned about the quality of the essays,not the provinces the examinees came from.However,under this condition,the examinees from southern provinces usually predominated in the recruitment list.When Renzong ascended to the throne,he decided to reform the imperial exam,including the disparity between number of recruits from southern and northern provinces.In solution to this problem,Yang Shiqi proposed that the whole country be divided into a southern and a northern exam district,each with a certain quota for the recruits through metropolitan exams.The proposal was approved by the emperor and became the first regional recruitment strategy for metropolitan exams.Later on,considering certain places,like Sichuan province,in the southern region were less advanced in education and could be at a disadvantage competing with other southern regions,a middle exam district was set up.But historical records didn’t agree on when the middle district was set up and some even said the regional recruitment strategy was applied with the division of 3 exam districts since the very beginning.By tracking the ancestral home information of the exam participants ofthe metropolitan examinations from Xuande era to early years of the reign of Zhengtong,classifying them into corresponding district among the 3,and comparing the empirical ratio with the set quota,we believe that the regional recruitment strategy was firstly applied at the metropolitan examination at the second year of the reign of Xuande,and in practice,the middle district may have already been set up since then.