Accounts of Grains and Properties

Abstract

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. chapter 5 Accounts of Grains and PropertiesApart from the land and grain taxes, accounts of grains and properties also constitute a part of the excavated corpus of Tangut documents. Although most are in fragments, there is still new information to be extracted from these primary sources, which add to our existing understanding of Tangut society and economy. 1 Accounts of GrainsGrain accounts include those kept by officials in military supervisory districts and those by the unit of liliu. The former, found mostly on the layering page of sutra covers, are rarely complete. However, the liliu accounts are kept as single pages, with the beginning and end more or less intact and the amounts of grains in large numbers. Grain Accounts of the Military Supervisory DistrictsGrain accounts at military supervisory districts survive mostly as page fragments in the inner layer of sutra covers, such as Russian manuscripts Инв. No. 438, Инв. No. 441 and Инв. No. 723 (year of Si). In these mostly incomplete accounts, the titles "military supervisory commission" or "imperial capital" are uniformly featured, suggesting that these grain accounts have to do with Tangut military affairs.Grain account manuscript Инв. No. 438 is written in the cursive style on a 31.2 × 32 cm hemp cover paper, with the top and bottom pieces of paper stitched together into a single page. The Tangut writings are in lines 11 and 12.Grain account manuscript Инв. No. 441 is written in the cursive style on a 31.6 × 32 cm hemp cover paper, with the top and bottom pieces stitched together into a single page. The Tangut writings are in lines 13 and 13.Grain account manuscript Инв. No. 723 (year of Si) is written in the cursive style on a 31.6 × 30.8 cm hemp cover paper, likewise, with the top and bottom pieces stitched together into a single page. Each page features 12 lines of Tangut writings. While the top piece suffers more damages, written in lines 1 and 7 of the bottom piece are "Eleventh month in the Year of Si" and "last month in the Year of Si," respectively.1