A Textual Research and Interpretation of Composite Fiscal Units in the Song Dynasty
The phenomenon of simply adding together data of money and goods with different contents and values to produce a composite unit of"guan,shi,pi,liang"frequently appears in the records of the Northern Song Dynasty,which is puzzling.To understand this kind of text,it is necessary to break away from traditional fiscal accounting thinking.Influenced by the system of material taxation,the phenomenon of composite units has long existed.In the Han dynasty,fiscal expenditures were often recorded as"billion"coins,which were merely an expression of imagery and not necessarily an exact figure.Similarly,the composite fiscal units commonly seen in the Song dynasty served as a way of expressing the total amount in fiscal statistics,rather than an actual financial calculation method.By the Southern Song Dynasty,the proportion of coins in fiscal revenue and expenditure had significantly increased,and people began to convert various different items into coins to express the total amount,thus reducing the phenomenon of composite units.Subsequently,as the currency system became increasingly unified,composite fiscal units,which merely served as a form of expression,became more of a historical memory.
Song DynastyFiscal DataComposite Units"Guan,Shi,Pi,Liang"Material Taxation
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