Journal paper

Issue No.	No. 42
Title	A study on the Wife and Daughter Pawning and Selling Phenomena in T’ang Dynasty – focusing on the Code and Statute
Author	Lee Shwu-Yuan
Page	51-80
Abstract	Human trade has been a serious issue across borderlines and timeframes and in need of solutions; and this is especially true in terms of depriving person freedom from women. Focusing on Tang’s code system, this study explores the female human trade in T'ang dynasty and especially pinpoints the human trade of women as wives or daughters in kinship relations and as victims under dominators at the power center. 　　Exactly under what situations could a man sell his wife and daughters as if they were commodities so cruelly ? In T'ang code were there clauses defining the crimes and penalties to the prevent parents or dominators from trading offspring or families ? What forms and changes did the human trade undergo in practice? How T'ang code defined the borderline between crimes such as human trade ? Simply put, human trade thrived in a large variety of forms by then. 　　Any human trade carried out against his daughter or wife by a man in context of kinship or patriarchy is nothing but a succession of domestic violence. This thesis aims to analyze in depth the code/statute framework and to bring back to life the practice of female human trade in T'ang by locating and collecting evidences, explicit or subtle, from the legal and statute records in the historical materials. At last behind this effort is an expectation to provide several ideas for further reflections on the gender relation and legal systems.
Keyword	T'ang code, human trade, pawn, patriarchy
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