Three Hundred and Fifty-Nine Chapters: How Many Laws Did Han China Have?

Four numbers and one sentence about desks. The Han treatise on punishment, after describing the tightening of the law under Emperor Wu: 'the statutes and ordinances came to three hundred and fifty-nine chapters; capital clauses, four hundred and nine; items, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-two; comparable precedents for capital cases, thirteen thousand four hundred and seventy-two' (律令凡三百五十九章，大辟四百九條，千八百八十二事，死罪決事比萬三千四百七十二事). Then the sentence that makes the numbers matter: 'documents filled the desks and shelves, so that those in charge could not read them all' (文書盈於几閣，典者不能遍睹). Not a shortage of law, but a surplus nobody could finish.

One: four numbers, four words

The four words must be kept apart. Chapter (章) is the unit of the statutes and ordinances; clause (條) counts capital offences; item (事) is counted separately, in the same sentence; precedent (比) is a decided case that may be compared to. Only the last is explained by its context: 'the same crime was judged differently' (罪同而論異) is what a store of precedents produced. That 比 means a citable case is the usual reading, and the page carries no definition; that 條 and 事 are not the same unit is inferred from their being counted side by side (the page does not explain the difference). So this piece adds none of the four together, converts none into another, and computes no average per clause.

The consequence is stated as observation: 'the commanderies and kingdoms that applied them were inconsistent, and the same crime was judged differently. Corrupt clerks traded on it — where they wished a man to live they attached a living argument, where they wished to trap him they gave him a death precedent — and those who discussed it were all grieved and wounded by it' (郡國承用者駮……議者咸冤傷之). That last clause is the voice of contemporaries, and it is marked as opinion, not as the historian's own verdict.

Two: how a judgment becomes a law

First, who wrote the statutes down. The treatise: 'thereupon Zhang Tang, Zhao Yu and their kind were brought in, and they itemised and fixed the statutes and ordinances, creating the offences of knowing and failing to report, and of supervising officials' (於是招進張湯、趙禹之屬，條定法令，作見知故縱、監臨部主之法). The Shiji says the same in two places: Zhao Yu 'discussed and fixed the statutes and ordinances with Zhang Tang, creating knowing-without-reporting, so that officials might police one another; the use of law grew harsher from this point' (與張湯論定諸律令，作見知，吏傳得相監司。用法益刻，蓋自此始); Zhang Tang 'fixed the statutes with Zhao Yu, aiming at deep writing, to pin down officials holding office' (務在深文，拘守職之吏). Deep writing, 深文, is the phrase both pages use.

How a judgment became a rule is one sentence, and it is clear. Zhang Tang, wanting to attach ancient meanings, asked that erudite disciples who studied the Documents and the Springs and Autumns be made clerks of the commandant of justice; when a doubtful case went up and 'the emperor approved it, he received it and recorded it as the model judgment and statute of the commandant's office' (上所是，受而著讞決法廷尉絜令). One decision, once approved, becomes what the next decision follows. The count in the treatise — thirteen thousand four hundred and seventy-two precedents — is what that mechanism produces over time.

Three: Du Zhou's sentence

Du Zhou says it plainly. A visitor reproached him: 'you decide for the Son of Heaven and do not follow the three-foot law; you judge solely by the ruler's intent — is that what judging is?' He answered: 'Where does the three-foot law come from? What the former ruler deemed right was written as statute; what the present ruler deems right is set out as ordinance — whatever is right at the time, what ancient law is there?' (三尺安出哉？前主所是著為律，後主所是疏為令，當時為是，何古之法乎). The sentence is his own account, not the historian's judgement. 'Three-foot law' is generally taken to mean the law written on three-foot slips; the page only uses the phrase and does not explain it.

The scale is given in figures, kept in their own sentences: 'cases sent up to the commandant by the commanderies and the great offices reached more than a thousand chapters a year; in a large chapter the arrested and the witnesses ran to several hundred, in a small one to several tens' (一歲至千餘章。章大者連逮證案數百，小者數十人). And: 'those arrested by the commandant and the imperial prisons reached sixty or seventy thousand; those added by the clerks, more than a hundred thousand' (逮至六七萬人，吏所增加十萬餘人). Copied as they stand, not added together, and not used to estimate the whole realm.

Four: three attempts to cut it down

The first attempt added officials. Emperor Xuan's edict: 'let there be appointed for them arbiters of justice, rank six hundred shi, four in number' (其為置廷平，秩六百石，員四人). Yu Dingguo was made commandant of justice, cases were submitted after late autumn, and 'the emperor often went to the Xuan chamber, fasted and decided cases there, and punishment was said to be fair' (齋居而決事，獄刑號為平矣). The governor of Zhuo, Zheng Chang, objected that this treated the branches: 'if the root is not corrected and arbiters are set up to manage the twigs… it would be better to cut down and fix the statutes and ordinances; once fixed, the common people will know what to avoid and corrupt clerks will have nothing to play with' (今不正其本，而置廷平以理其末也……不若刪定律令). The emperor did not get to the revision.

The next two edicts ask for the same thing. Emperor Yuan: 'the statutes and ordinances are numerous and not concise, so that even those who keep the texts cannot distinguish them… let there be discussion of what can be removed or lightened, item by item' (今律令煩多而不約……其議律令可蠲除輕減者，條奏). Emperor Cheng, in the Heping era, sets the old figures against the new: 'the five punishments have three thousand items, of which the capital ones are two hundred', while now there are 'more than a thousand capital clauses, the statutes numerous, a million-odd words, extraordinary petitions and other precedents growing daily, so that even the well-versed do not know the way' (大辟之刑千有餘條，律令煩多，百有餘萬言). The result is recorded without comment: 'the officials had not the talent of Zhongshan Fu to make the ruler's intent shine; they merely picked at trifles and listed a few items to answer the edict. So no great decision was made, and so it remains to this day' (徒鉤摭微細，毛舉數事，以塞詔而已。是以大議不立，遂以至今).

Five: beyond the statutes

Two more sets of numbers. 'In the commanderies and kingdoms those killed by punishment are counted by the ten thousand yearly; the prisons of the realm are more than two thousand, and the wrongfully dead overlap one another, yet the prisons are not reduced by a single man' (歲以萬數，天下獄二千餘所……獄不減一人). And a rate: 'from the six reigns of Zhao, Xuan, Yuan, Cheng, Ai and Ping, executions on the capital charge came to about one person in a thousand of the population each year, and penal labour up to the right foot to more than three times that' (率歲千餘口而一人，耐罪上至右止，三倍有餘). The rate is copied; no population is computed from it here, and 'a million-odd words' is left as the four characters the page gives, not turned into a word count.

What the two pages do not give: the text of any single statute, any one case file, the cost of copying, or the table of contents behind the three hundred and fifty-nine chapters. The excavated Han statute slips are not among these sources, and this piece does not import them. Nor does it write about a Chinese legal tradition, or call any of this harshness, or compare with the Tang code or with Rome. The earlier story of how the code began — the three-point agreement, the nine chapters, the abolition of mutilation — belongs to other pieces and is only gestured at here. What these pages leave is four numbers, one unreadable desk, one man saying 'what ancient law is there?', and three attempts that did not reduce anything.

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