Tang Code

The Tang Code (Chinese: 唐律; pinyin: Táng lǜ) was a penal code that was established and used during the Tang Dynasty in China. Supplemented by civil statutes and regulations, it became the basis for later dynastic codes not only in China but elsewhere in East Asia. The Code synthesised Legalist and Confucian interpretations of law. It is composed of 12 sections that contain a total of more than 500 articles.^[1] It was created in 624, modified in 627 and 637, and enhanced with a commentary (the Tánglǜ shūyì 唐律疏議) in 653.^[2] Considered as one of the greatest achievements of traditional Chinese law, the Tang Code is also the earliest Chinese Code to have been transmitted to the present in its complete form.^[2]

Origin and context

The Tang code took its roots in the code of the Northern Zhou (564) dynasty, which was itself based on the earlier codes of the Cao-Wei and Western Jin (268).^[2] Aiming to smooth the earlier laws and reduce physical punishments (such as mutilations) in order to appease social tensions in the newly pacified Tang territories, it was created in AD 624 at the request of Emperor Gaozu of Tang. After further revisions in 627 and 637 under Emperor Taizong, the code was completed by commentaries in 653, under Gaozong.^[2]

Organization and system of punishments

French historian and sinologist Jacques Gernet has called the Tang Code "an admirable composition of faultless logic in spite of its size and complexity."^[2] It contained more than 500 articles divided into twelve large sections (see right-side table).

The penalty for an offence was determined according to two factors:^[1]

• Offence : The Tang Code clearly associated each offence with a penalty.
• Relational position :^[1] For relatives, this position was measured by the kind and duration of mourning that had to be observed for each degree of kinship. Relations outside the family were defined according to positions in a social hierarchy capped by the emperor himself. In this hierarchy, officials were higher than ordinary men, who were themselves superior to persons of servile status.^[1] For instance, a slave committing a crime against his master was punished more severely than if an ordinary person had committed the same crime. The same offence committed by the master against his slave, on the other hand, resulted in a lower penalty than the same crime committed by a common person.^[1]

The local magistrate acted as examiner and sometimes as investigator, but his final role in legal cases was to determine the proper penalty for the offense that had been committed: he had to fix the nature of the offense as defined by the code, and to increase or reduce the associated penalty depending on the social relation between offender and victim.^[1]

The offence modulated according to the degree of social relation determined the final penalty which could range from flagellation using a rattan and bastinado with a bamboo stick, to penal labour, exile with penal labour, and death by strangulation (garrote) or decapitation.^[1]

See also

• Great Qing Legal Code

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Gernet (1996), 245.
2. ^ ^{a b c d e} Gernet (1996), 244.
3. ^ Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization, p. 245.

Bibliography

• Gernet, Jacques (1996), A History of Chinese Civilization (Second edition ed.), Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, pp. 801 pages, ISBN 0521497817, http://books.google.com/books?id=jqb7L-pKCV8C  Originally published in French as Le monde chinois.
• Johnson, Wallace, trans., The Tang Code: Volume One: General Principles. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.