The Song law code as it stood in 1200, compiled on the orders of Ningzong's court between 1198 and 1202 and classed by subject: officials and their discipline, the examinations, the army and the frontier garrisons, taxation and corvee, the salt, tea and liquor monopolies, maritime trade and the treatment of foreign merchants, the post roads, criminal procedure and prisons. It is the single best witness to how the Song state actually worked in the year 1200, and it is a text of that year.
About this source
- Title
- Qingyuan tiaofa shilei (慶元條法事類)
- Author
- Xie Shenfu (謝深甫) and the Song law commission
- Author's dates
- Xie Shenfu active 1190s to 1200s
- Written
- compiled 1198 to 1202 and promulgated in 1202
- Language
- Chinese
- Covers
- the statutes, regulations, ordinances and models of the Song state in force at the end of the Qingyuan era; 80 juan originally, of which roughly half survives
- Kind
- Law
Much of the code is lost; the surviving juan are scattered across the original eighty. No translation.
Where to read it
Editions
- Dai Jianguo and others (eds), Qingyuan tiaofa shilei, Heilongjiang Renmin (2002) (not freely online)