당 정관 연간 경관(京官) 640원(員)의 함의 - 정원 감축과 결원, 겸직의 제도적·재정적 분석을 중심으로

In 627, Emperor Taizong, the second emperor of Tang dynasty, reduced the number of civil and military officials in the central government to 640 according to Essentials for government from the Zhenguan period callend Zhenguan Zhengyao in Chinese, or 643 according to Comprehensive mirror for aid in government callend Zizhi Tongjian in Chinese. Li Shimin’s action was evaluated as a successful reform of government administration by scholars, and historians of the present and the past, reducing the number of officials. However, calculating the percentage of central government officials may lead to different conclusions. The year of 640 or 643 central government officials correspond to 36.1% or 36.3% of the 1,771 officials in the three provinces, six ministries, and nine offices recorded in the Tang institutions of six administrative divisions callend Tang liudian in Chinese. According to the Comprehensive Compendium of Institutions callend Tongdian in Chinese, the number of central government officials in the Tang Dynasty was 2,621, so the number of central government officials in 627 was reduced to 24.4% or 24.5%. I found the vacancy in the head of the three departments, that is to say, Department of the State Affairs, Secretariat, and Chancellery during the reign of The fake sage emperor praised by scholars. To fill this void, he gave other officials titles such as office of participating in state affairs, the third-rank officials equal to the president of the Secretariat-Chancellery, etc., and allowed them to participate in state affairs with the qualifications of prime ministers, filling the vacancies of the vice-president of the Department of State Affairs, the president of the Chancellery, and president of the Secretariat. In addition to the ministers of the three departments, concurrent positions of other officials are also found. In the biographies of the old history of Tang, the history book that records the history of the Tang Dynasty compiled during the Five Dynasties Period, 51 cases of 35 officials holding multi positions are confirmed, and if you include cases omitted from the biographies of the epitaphs and historical records, the number of concurrent positions increases even more. The administrative reformer’s measure to reduce the number of cnntral government officials to 640 or 643, which is 24.5% of the total number of central government officials (2,621), would also have had the mathematical effect of reducing the salaries of officials by approximately 24.5%. However, the administrative handling of vacancies through the use of concurrent positions or temporary positions was not only a temporary measure, but was also accepted as ancestral law that are more authoritative than the Constitution and must be followed by later emperors, and continued not only during the reign of Xuanzong, sixth emperor who restored the population to over 50 million, but also until the end of the Tang dynasty and even until the Song dynasty.