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Sec. vi]   SERVICE AND CONDITIONS OF LIFE ON THE LIMES   757

from the captain of their company who made delivery on behalf of particular individuals. This suggests that the du y of maintaining the men stationed for the time being along the wall fell upon the (ing from whichlthey were drawn, and was looked after by the captain of its company.30 It is on this assumption that we can also best explain receipts given by scribes for certain monthly contributions of food-stuffs which had been furnished by the captain or individual soldiers of specified companies or cantons of the Tun-huang area.31 With such documents, we may, perhaps, group also other records which contain receipts for food-stuffs or statements of account given by officers of the Limes or others, less clear in their bearing or incomplete.32)

To a different category belongs the interesting recörd No. 415, already discussed, from the great magazine of the Limes, T. xviii, in which some official of the granary acknowledges the receipt of two cart-loads of grain delivered by ` the chief of the t`ing of the Wan-nien canton.' 33 Such supplies are most likely to have been stored at the magazine for meeting the needs of troops, political missions, and the like moving along thejroute to or from Lou-lan. Two documents from the Jade Gate, which we have already had occasion to mention, furnish us with actual records of grain issues made for this purpose to certain attendants and to the escort of eighty-seven soldiers accompanying a Chinese envoy to So-chii or Yârkand.34 It is from these records and some others of similar kind, also from T. xiv, that M. Chavannes has been able to determine the regular daily ration for each man as 6 shêng If, or Chinese pints, of grain."

Whether the common soldiers received pay for the time of their actual service at the watch-stations of the Limés, besides being provided with food, is a point which the avail le documents do not enable us to decide. If the bulk of them were agricultural colonists ', rate convict settlers forced to do military service, the absence of records concerning pay in cash for them could well be accounted for. Nevertheless the curious document, No. 592, from T. xii. a, furnishes very interesting evidencjof the careful method with which in their case, too, as in that of officers, the length of service used to be calculated. The record concerns ' the simple soldier ... corporal Wang', whose origin and subordination in the service we hava already had occasion to discuss.36 For the details of the reckoning by which the actual length of his service in A. D. 20-2 i is determined as amounting) to 355 days, I may refer to M. Chavannes' explanations.37 What is of special interest to us here is the application of ' the rule according to which 2 days count as 3 ', resulting in the addition of a ' service supplement of 177 and a half 'days.' We have in this concession a clear recognition of the hardships involved in service on this desolate desert border.

It is very probable that the same methods of calculation were applied also to the statements of total service which other documents, less detailed, record in the case of officers.38 That officers

Grain delivery and issues at magazine.

Calculation of soldiers' service period.

Officers' pay records.

S0 For the relation which I have assumed between the agricultural settlements organized in ting and the companies maintained by them, cf. above, pp. 747 sqq.

31 See Doc. Nos. 484.-6, from T. xv. a, dated from A.D. 46-56. The individual soldiers who furnished the food contributions mentioned in the last two documents were obviously military settlers holding land in cultivation.

In Nos. 579, 58o, from T. xvr, of A. D. 68, 77 respectively, the food contributions acknowledged are furnished by men inhabiting the Fu-kuei canton of Tun-huang. In No. 39o, of A.D. 87, the person furnishing the contribution of ' granary wheat' to a certain watch-post commandant (hou chang) is described as a tenant' (chiu jén aA).

Perhaps some significance may be attached to the fact that allâecords mentioning such contributions date from the Later Han period.

32 See Doc. Nos. 162-5, 220,'221, 271 (of 98 B.c.), 303, 441.

33 See Doc. No. 415 ; above, p..715.

34 See Doc. Nos. 310, 3r r. The fragmentary record No. 836, which mentions the rationing of eighty-seven men, is) also likely to refer to the escort of this envoy, as suggested by M. Chavannes. Cf. also above, p. 69o.

3e Cf. Doc. Nos. 3ro, 311, 326, 328, 336.

3G See above, p. 746.

'4 Cf. Documents, pp. xv, 128.

38 See Doc. Nos. 46, 394, 6or, 642. In No. 6or we observe that, besides taking due note of ` short months ' (twenty-nine instead of thirty days), a deduction appears to have been made for ' 5 days spent on travel'., Such rigorous parsimony might help to comfort those who are inclined to complain of the 'retrenchments' made by the Indian Military Accounts' Babu!

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