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The fing an administrative area maintaining a company (tut).

Strength of a fing's contingent.

748   HISTORY AND RECORDS OF THE TUN-HUANG LIMES [Chap. XX

a priori all the more justified because in Former Han times the term ring was regularly applied to

an administrative subdivision comprising io li    , or groups éach of twenty-five families. That its
meaning could not have been very different as used in the Tun-huang area and its military colonies is brought out quite clearly by an analysis of the dozen odd documents in which ` T`ings' are mentioned.

The discussion in the note below S1 shows us that the term tins', as used in our documents, designated a small area, situated within the oasis but under military administration, the population of which was expected to maintain a company (lui) for the guarding of the Limes and, in case of need, for military service beyond it. In addition to the contribution in men, the Ting had evidently, in keeping with its character as part of an agricultural colony ', to furnish certain supplies of grain to the military magazines of the Tun-huang command.3" That the food-supplies which company commanders issued to their men 33 also came from the stores of the respective 'Pings is very probable. Thus the Ting was both the permanent recruiting area as well as the supply base in ordinary times for the company contingent which it furnished. Considering that besides providing the usual pickets for one or more watch-towers on the Limes the ` company of the Ting', as the documents call it, might be called up as.a whole for service in case of emergency, it is easy to recognize that the maintenance of two distinct appointments, of ` head of the Ting ', 1'ing chang, and of company commander', lui-chang, was a reasonable, nay necessary, arrangement. It seems clear that a village group of such size as the notice in the Former Han Annals referred to above indicates, viz. one comprising about 259 families, could, under the defensive arrangements necessitated by border conditions, raise a body of men approximately corresponding to a modern company.33a Fortunately we have a document directly confirming this in No. 198, T. vi. b. i. 64, which states : `the aforesaid hundred and forty-five men are soldiers of the ling.' Though the wording does not explicitly show that this was the total number of the contingent, it yet appears reasonable to conclude from this, with M. Chavannes, that the average effective strength of each company was about a hundred and fifty men.34

81 In the first place we should note Doc. Nos. 207, 273, 415, in which mention is made of ` heads of fings' ,4

these being clearly distinguished from the commandants of companies. No. 273 is of interest because it is a general order to be posted at the fings of the barrier ', directing that ` when the companies of the northern barrier have set in movement ', reports are to be sent regularly southward to the heads of fings, etc. That fings were situated within the cultivated area is indicated by No. 415, which is a receipt from an official of the granary T. xvut for two cart-loads of grain furnished by the head of the fing of the Wan-nien canton in the sub-prefecture of Lung-lo' from a specified acreage (for Lung-lo, containing the barriers of Yti-mên and Yang, see above, pp. 6zo sq.).

The situation of a certain fing within inhabited ground is proved with equal clearness by No. 302, which reports the planting of ten elms ` in the fing of Ch'in-su, dependent on the hou-kuan'. We have seen that this term designates a sub-section of the administrative area of the Limes. Yet it is certain that then, as now, elms could grow only within cultivated ground, and not at desert stations.

In No. 536 we have a notice intended for circulation ` in the company of the Yü-mên harrier', issued by a post-commandant after an official inspection at which certain men had been found absent, and urgently requesting that a certain

`soldier of the barrier should on no account be allowed to leave the ling. A Yü-mên kuan fing is directly named in the fragment No. 357. In No. 681 we are told of a certain indigenous officer and the captain of the Tang•ku company having left the area of the ring. No. x72 reports the approach of an armed horseman towards a fing and orders troops to be on their guard and fire-signals to be watched at the Limes towers. Doc. Nos. 432, 46o, 55z, which mention `the company of the ling' in connexion with movements or fire-signal service, furnish no definite evidence. The interpretation of the fing referred to in No. 592 seems doubtful; for No. I 98, see the text above.

32 Cf. above, note 31, for No. 415; also above, p. 747, for No. 157, which mentions the deputation of certain company commanders for service at granaries.

n See above, p. 747.

na The poem of the third century n. n. quoted by M. Chavannes, Documents, p. xxii, shows how heavy the incidence of military service on the frontier might be. It tells of a householder there being called up thrice in one year and of five of his sons being away with the armies.

34 Cf. Documents, p. x. It should be noted that this record must, in view of what has been explained above, pp. 647 sq., date back to the first half of the first century B. C.