Study of Institutional Culture in Ancient Tujia Society—Economic System Culture (I)
Chapter 2: Economic System Culture. This chapter discusses the Tujia economic system mainly concerning land ownership relations, distribution of labor products (i.e., taxation forms), and the state of various social production sectors reflecting the level of productive forces and the nature of production relations in ancient Tujia society. We can divide ancient Tujia society into the pre-Qin period...
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Chapter Two: Economic Institutional Culture
The Tujia economic institutions discussed in this chapter mainly involve the land ownership relations that occurred in ancient Tujia society, the distribution relations of labor products—that is, the forms of taxation—and the conditions of various sectors of social production that reflect the level of productive forces and the nature of production relations. We can divide ancient Tujia society into four historical stages of development: the pre-Qin period, the Jimi prefecture and county period, the Tusi period, and the "gaitu guiliu" period, in order to analyze the economic institutional culture of each historical period.
Section One: Economic Institutional Culture of the Pre-Qin Period
Because there was no concept of taxation in the Tujia region during the pre-Qin period, the "Book of Later Han: Biography of the Southern Man" states that they "worked the fields and engaged in trade and peddling, without passing through barriers, tallies, or the taxes of land rent." Therefore, the economic institutional culture of the Tujia pre-Qin period that we will discuss involves only land ownership relations and the conditions of the main sectors of social production.
I. Land Ownership Relations in the Pre-Qin Period
Existing historical materials and archaeological discoveries indicate that Tujia society in the pre-Qin period went through two stages of development: the primitive clan society stage and the serfdom society stage.
(I) Forms of Land Ownership in the Primitive Clan Society Stage
Regarding the early life conditions of Tujia society, there are very few documentary records. The historical materials available for research mainly include the legend of Lin Jun recorded in the "Shiben" written by Liu Xiang of the Western Han, records concerning "Ba Fang" in the oracle bone inscriptions of Yinxu, and the contents of the "Song of Opening Heaven and Earth," "Song of Human Origins," and "Song of Ethnic Migration" in the Tujia "Baishou Song." In addition, archaeological physical materials from Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, and Guizhou can also serve as information resources for research.
The production activities of the Tujia people during the primitive social stage: first, hunting and fishing; second, agricultural cultivation and gathering. On the one hand, because the natural environment where the Tujia people lived was mountainous and densely forested, with many kinds of wild animals; on the other hand, because the level of productivity at that time was low, people's understanding of natural species was relatively insufficient, land development was difficult, and the area for agricultural cultivation was small. Therefore, in the early stage of primitive society, hunting and fishing were important means of survival for the Tujia ancestors and also their main production activities. By the middle and late stages of primitive society, the Tujia ancestors learned to make and use stone tools, and small stone knives and clam knives became their main production tools; people's level of understanding of food resources improved somewhat, and they not only discovered and understood the habits of wild rice, but also learned to cultivate rice, thereby expanding the content of their production activities. When rice farming began to rise and gradually developed into an important production activity in the Tujia region, the Tujia region began to form a new economic system dominated by agriculture, supplemented by animal husbandry, hunting and gathering, and fishing.
In primitive society, in accordance with the level of productive forces, "the village was the residential area of a clan; every person was a clan member, and every house was a pairing-marriage family." Human production labor was uniformly arranged by the clan tribe. All production tools and means of livelihood were commonly owned by clan members. The clan family was merely a combination of clan members related by blood; it had not become an independent entity for the possession and distribution of means of production and means of livelihood. Therefore, during this period, in the Tujia region, means of production such as forests and land were the common property of clan tribe members. Tribal chiefs had no privilege to monopolize means of production such as forests and land; the fruits of labor obtained through people's common labor were distributed according to the principle of average distribution.
(II) Forms of Land Ownership During the Ba State Slave System Period
From the 11th century BCE to 316 BCE was the slave system period in Tujia history. Historians believe that around the middle of the Yin dynasty, the first slave-system vassal state in Tujia history appeared. From then on, the Tujia region basically departed from the primitive clan society stage and formally entered class society. By this period, the Ba State had already established a complete state apparatus, with a ruler, a regular army, and officials such as "generals" and "envoys." It already possessed "the things that constitute the essence of the state," namely "armed forces, prisons, and other means of forcing others' wills to submit to violence." Although the Ba State was mainly composed of the Ba people, it also included many ethnic groups such as the Pu, Ju, Gong, Yi, and Nu. The politics of the Ba State were mainly expressed through military activities; wars between Ba and Chu ran through almost the entire history of the Ba State. The economic form of the Tujia region during this period belonged to a serfdom economy. Agriculture was the main sector of social production. "Later there was a king named Duyu, who taught the people to farm... Ba also transformed under his teaching and devoted itself to farming." In addition to rice cultivation, the Ba people also learned to sow millet and glutinous millet: "The river cliffs are level; their crops are many millets. Fine wine and fine grain can nourish the father. The wild hills are many; there the millet is abundant. Fine grain and fine wine can nourish the mother." Animal husbandry was also an important sector of social production in the Ba State; the Ba State "planted the five grains in its soil and possessed the six domestic animals."
In the ancient Ba State, the contradiction between slave owners and slaves was the principal contradiction in society. The manifestation of this contradiction in the economic sphere was that slave owners extensively used slaves for unpaid labor. "Labor itself, whether it takes the form of slavery or serfdom, is classified together with other natural things as an inorganic condition of production, on a par with livestock, or as an appendage of the land." "If people themselves are also seized together with the land as organic appendages of the land, then this also means seizing them as one of the conditions of production, and thus slavery and serfdom arise, and slavery and serfdom quickly corrupt and transform the original forms of all communities and make themselves their foundation."
Marx pointed out: "The premise of landed property is that some people monopolize a certain amount of land, treating it as a domain that excludes all others and obeys only their own individual will." In the ancient Ba State, the form of land ownership was manifested in the Ba ethnic chiefs, as slave owners, possessing all the land of the capital Minzhong (present-day Langzhong), as well as part of the forests, rivers, and marshes near the capital.
II. Conditions of the Main Sectors of Social Production in the Pre-Qin Period
Marx once pointed out: "The difference between various economic epochs lies not in what is produced, but in how it is produced, with what means of labor it is produced." Changes in the mode of production are always closely linked to improvements in the means of labor. Therefore, through analyzing the conditions of social production, we can understand not only the historical succession of ownership relations but also the epochal characteristics of the socioeconomic system.
(I) Conditions of Social Production in the Primitive Clan Society Stage
The choice of human production and lifestyle can never escape the geographical environment in which they live, nor can it escape the constraints of the level of productive forces. The Tujia have lived for generations in the Wuling Mountain area bordering Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, and Guizhou, where forests are dense, mountains are high, and waters are distant, with abundant natural resources capable of generating and developing a fishing and hunting economy. The Tujia ancestors who lived in the earlier period of primitive society learned hunting and fishing in adapting to the natural environment and used these to satisfy their most basic survival needs. Therefore, in the matrilineal clan society stage, hunting wild animals and catching fish constituted the entire content of the Tujia ancestors' production activities.
At the end of primitive society, the use of polished stone tools was a major marker of the improvement in the level of productive forces. When the Tujia ancestors used sharp stone tools to dig the soil and cultivate wild rice, they had already understood simple cultivation. After continuous accumulation of experience, they gradually learned to use stone knives to harvest rice, learned to use stone knives to loosen soil and remove weeds, and learned to sow miscellaneous grains according to the seasons. At this point, agricultural production had already appeared in the Tujia region and gradually developed into a main sector of social production. "The rice grains discovered at Yuchanyan in Daoxian, Hunan, although very few in number, already tell us that rice agriculture had begun as early as about 15,000 years ago. This is one of the discoveries in areas adjacent to the Tujia."
At the same time, gathering, as a social production activity, still continued. However, the gathering industry was no longer the foundation for the stable life of clan members; it was merely the labor activity of women and children. Compared with agriculture, the gathering industry was only a supplementary form of production activity. Of course, due to the improvement of people's cognitive abilities, the objects they gathered were quite rich, especially for a mountain ethnic group like the Tujia.
(II) Conditions of Social Production During the Ba State Slave System Period
The establishment of the Ba State marked the entry of Tujia society into the stage of class society development. While continuing to develop agricultural production, the Ba State also attached great importance to the development of the salt industry and handicrafts.
According to the Records of Huayang Kingdom: Ba Records, the Ba Kingdom "planted the five grains in its soil and raised the six domestic animals." This shows that agricultural production in the Ba Kingdom had developed to a certain degree, and the range of crops cultivated had expanded beyond millet to include broomcorn millet, panicled millet, oats, beans, and others. Moreover, thanks to the use of iron farming tools, planting techniques and production levels had also improved considerably. During this period, the Ba people had already learned slash-and-burn farming in agricultural production, and this improvement in production methods inevitably brought about a higher rate of land utilization and an expansion of cultivated area. Therefore, the emergence and use of slash-and-burn farming as a production method meant that agricultural production in the Tujia region entered a new historical period. At the same time, animal husbandry, as an independent production sector, had already separated from agriculture and achieved a certain degree of development. However, the animal husbandry of the Ba people was mainly based on raising domestic livestock, and the animals kept in pens included pigs, chickens, dogs, cattle, and others.
The area inhabited by the Ba people contained abundant salt resources, providing favorable conditions for the development of the salt industry. "In their early period, the Ba people once lived in the upper reaches of the Qingjiang River, where 'fish and salt' were produced. Place names in the Lin Jun legend, such as 'Yanshui' and 'Yanyang,' all hint at the abundance of salt production in this region and the people's use of salt. The eastern Sichuan area where the Ba people later settled was also a region where the salt industry flourished in history." History has already shown that "the salt industry was the lifeline and driving force of the Ba people's development, and the rise and fall of the Ba Kingdom accompanied the rise and fall of the salt industry." The Ba people's salt industry development included boiling salt and making salt; using salt to cure bacon and other foods; using salt to make local specialties, and so on.
Judging from the cultural relics unearthed from the Ba king tomb cluster at Xiaotianxi in Fuling, the handicraft industry of the Ba people was quite developed. They were skilled not only in the production of bronze wares, such as bronze swords, bronze spears, and bronze sickles, but also in the production of musical instruments, such as bronze chun and bronze zheng. In addition, the tea processing industry of the Ba Kingdom was also relatively developed, and the Ba Kingdom may have been one of the earliest regions in our country to begin tea processing.