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VIII.D. Offices and Official Titles

For brief overviews of the Sung official system, see the studies by E. A. Kracke, Jr., and Miyazaki Ichisada and the introduction to Charles O. Hucker's Dictionary below. Comprehensive indexes that include official titles will be found in Section VI.

The system of official titles in Sung was made up of several different schedules of titles for denoting rank; these were in turn distinct from the names of the particular functions to which officials were assigned. This is further complicated by the Sung use of T'ang-period functional titles as rank titles and by several Northern Sung reforms of the schedules of titles. The best introduction to this complicated system is:

(W) DS12.A45
LoC: DS12 .A45
"Civil and Military Titles in Sung: The Chi-lu-kuan System."
Umehara Kaoru.
Acta Asiatica 50 (1986): 1-30.


This article includes a chart, in Chinese, giving the rank titles for civil and military officials before and after the system was revised; it also traces normal career routes through the ranks. The index to Umehara's book, a collection of studies on the Sung official system, includes the offices and titles discussed in the book.
J2404/5351(37)
LoC: JQ1512.Z1 U44 1985 Japan
Sōdai kanryōseido kenkyū
宋代官僚制度研究
(Studies of the Sung bureaucracy).
Umehara Kaoru 梅原郁
Kyoto: Dōhōsha, 1985. 622 and 21 p.

For English translations of official titles with brief explanations of changes in function through the ages, see:

(W) Ref JQ1512.Z13 T574 1985
LoC: JQ1512.Z13 T574 1985
A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China.
Charles O. Hucker.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985. 676 p.

Hucker's translations of titles are becoming standard. They supersede Kracke's translations as given in:
(Widener)JQ1512.Z1 K7 1978
LoC: JQ1512.Z1 K7 1978
Translation of Sung Civil Service Titles.
E. A. Kracke, Jr.
Paris: École Pratique des Hautes Études, 1957.
Rev. ed., San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1978. 35 [21] p.


The most comprehensive index to Song official titles is:

 (C) JQ1512.Z1 K864 1997
Songdai guanzhi cidian
宋代官制辞典
(A Dictionary of Song Dynasty Government)
Gong Yanming 龔延明
Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997. 49, 88, 800 p.

See IX.A.2 for a further description.

The most comprehensive dictionary in a European language, listing 4410 with translations into French, references to sources (primarily the "Treatise on the Bureaucracy" of the Sung shih), and some indication of where an office was located within the bureaucracy, is:

(W) JQ1512.Z1 C454
LoC: JQ1512.Z1 C454
Les fonctionnaires des Song: Index des titres
Chang Fu‑jui comp.
Paris: École Pratique des Hautes Études, 1962. 579 p.
McMullen #65.

Saeki Tomi's indexes to various treatises of the Sung History, noted in Section VI above, also index official titles. In particular note the index to the "Treatise on Bureaucracy":
J2404/5351(11)
2665/7171.2
Sōshi shokkanshi sakuin
宋史職官志索引
[Sung-shih chih-kuan-chih so-yin]
(Index to the Treatise on bureaucracy in the Sung History).
Saeki Tomi 佐伯富 comp.
Kyoto: Tōyōshi kenkyūkai, 1963. 63, 25, and 423 p.
McMullen #66.

There are several indexes to the section on fiscal policy in the Sung hui yao. The following indexes bureaucratic and institutional titles and terms. Arranged by Japanese pronunciation; there is a stroke-count index.
J 4353 3810 (3)
Sō kaiyō shūkō: shokka sakuin: shokkan hen
宋會要輯稿:食貨索引:職官編
[Sung hui-yao chi-kao: shih-huo so-yin: chih-kuan pien]
(Index to bureaucratic terms in the fiscal policy section of the Sung hui-yao)
Tokyo: Tōyō bunko, 1995. 5, 328 p.

A convenient source for descriptions of major offices is the Sung volume of the Chung-kuo li-shih ta-tz'u-tien, previously noted, which also explains some of the informal terms used to refer to major offices. The surviving fragments of Wang I-chih's 王益之 late-twelfth century work on the Sung bureaucracy and its historical origins, the [Li-tai] Chih-yuan ts'o-yao,has also been indexed:
J4681/2230
Shokugen satsuyō sakuin
職源撮要索引
[Chih-yuan ts'o-yao so-yin]
(Index to the General history of government systems [through the ages]).
Saeki Tomi 佐伯富 comp.
Kyoto: Tōyōshi kenkyūkai, 1956. 30 p.
McMullen #92.


For abbreviated and alternative names for offices, see:
2665/4347(1)
"Sung-tai chih-kuan chien-ch'eng pieh-ming hui-shih-hsuan"
宋代職官簡稱、別名匯釋選
(Abbreviated and alternative names for selected offices in the Sung dynasty).
Kung Yen-ming 龔延明
Sung-shih yen-chiu chi-k'an 宋史研究集刊 (浙江古籍) 1 (1986): 107-161.
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