Journal paper

Issue No.	No. 55
Title	The “Jiuzhou” Concept in the Pre-Qin Period and Its Impact on the Later Generations: From the Department of Prefectural Governor in the Han Dynasty to the Geography Literature Compilation in the Tang Dynasty
Author	Wu, Xiu-an
Page	1-46
Abstract	This article aims to investigate the impact of the “Jiuzhou” concept of the Pre-Qin Period illustrated by Yugong in the Han and Tang Dynasties. The Confucian “Jiuzhou” concept was in fact not the only existing one in the Pre-Qin Period; while the non-Confucian “Jiuzhou” concepts were prevalent in southeast part of ancient China. The uniform “Jiuzhou” concept did not prevail before the Emperor Wu’s policy of advocating exclusively the Confucian doctrine. That is to say, from the Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the Confucian “Jiuzhou” concept brought about actual political effects. As a consequence, the titles and the divisions of the thirteen departments of prefectural governor were based on the Confucian “Jiuzhou” concept expounded by Yugong and Zhifangshi. Even the Wangmang’s Reform still emphasized to abide by those ideas in the Classics. And in the Late Han Dynasty, the constitutional transfer from the “Cishibu” of inspection area to the “Zhou” of administrative area was completed. The key point lay in that ‘Zhou Mu’ and “Ci Shi” were incorporated into the same bureaucratic system by the 5th year of the Zhongping’s Reform. When ‘Jiao Zhou’ was established in Jiaozhi and its ‘Zhou Mu’ was appointed in the 2nd year of Jianan, the constitutional reform was put into practice. However, in consequence of this transformation, the actual administrative system began to deviate from the traditional ‘Jiuzhou’ concept. The incessant fragmentation of the administrative system rendered political actuality alienated from the Classic ‘Jiuzhou’ concept. As a result, ‘Yugong Jiuzhou’ became the substituted geographical concept, playing an important role in the compilation of the geographical literature. In order to corresponding the practical divisions with the Classic concept of ‘Jiuzhou’, there were three approaches of writing evolutionary geography available in the Tang Dynasty, which served as the guidelines in compiling geographical documents for the later generations.
Keyword	the concepts of “Jiuzhou”九州, the Han and Tang Dynasties, “Cishibu”刺史部‘the Department of Prefectural Governor’, the Geography Literature Compilation, Jiaozhou
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