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:
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.
For English translations of official titles with brief
explanations of changes in function through the ages, see:
Hucker's translations of titles are becoming standard. They
supersede Kracke's translations as given in:
The most comprehensive index to Song official titles is:
(C) JQ1512.Z1 K864 1997
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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:
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":
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.
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:
For abbreviated and alternative names for offices,
see:
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