292 LAND REFORMexisted before doing anything. The reason why their systems were well regulated
was all due to this intention. That is why in discussing learning it is said: "The
extension of knowledge depends on the investigation of things"; it is not said
you extend your knowledge and then investigate things.^54Yu thus claimed that his deductions (and those of Ma Tuan-lin and others)
were based on empirical investigation of circumstance, but in fact Yu did not
conduct an exhaustive analysis of the reality of the Chou well-field system by
a collation and comparison of all facts available from that era, whether in tomb,
vessel, monument inscriptions, or written documents. His conclusions on the
principles of the well-field were obtained by a simple process of elimination.
The equal-field system failed because certain elements of the well-field system
were not included in it; those key elements of the well-field system left out of
the equal-field system were thus indispensable for the successful operation of
any system of national ownership and distribution.
The Koryo Land SystemYu Hyongwon believed that the land system of the early Koryo dynasty in Korea,
from the early tenth through the late twelfth centuries, was a copy of the Tang
equal-field system. Contemporary scholars, however, have rejected this view
because of important anomalies and contradictions between the early Koryo land
system and the Tang equal-field regulations. 55 Descriptions ofthe early Koryo
land grant system, for example, do not indicate that fixed land allotments of
uniform size were granted to all peasant cultivators or that the basic land grant
to the peasant was the main building block of the system as a whole. The early
Koryo chonsikll'(l system was, in fact, a graded system of land grants to men
of rank with or without office or service obligations. Functionaries who did
receivc land grants included local clerks in magistrates' yarnen and ordinary
soldiers as well as regular officials of the central government. Since neither clerks
nor soldiers were rewarded by land or prebendal grants in the late Koryo or
early Choson dynasties. it was natural for scholars of that period to assume that
the early Koryo grants of land to soldiers and yamen clerks and runners meant
that everyone in society was provided with a land grant and that the only dif-
ference from the Tang equal-field system was in the use of terminology. Hence,
instead of the k'ou-fen-t'ien or lu-t'ien (per capita mouth-share land or the tree-
less open land) of the Northern Wei through Tang, the smallest and most basic
grant under the Koryo system seemed to be the kunjon or soldier's land. Put
another way, in the Tang dynasty the peasant received a per capita share of
land, and in return he owed military service, but in the Koryo system it appeared
that the individual performed military service in return for which he was granted
a piece of land. This interpretation would help to explain why kubunjon or
"mouth-share land" in the Koryo system did not refer to the basic peasant grant
(i.e., the Tang k'ou~fen-t'ien), but had a restricted and specialized meaning-