294 LAND REFORMwas returned to the government. Even a pubyong regular soldier first received a
land grant when he attained the age of twenty, and when he reached the age of
sixty, he returned it. If a man had sons and grandsons or close relatives, then his
land was transferred to an adult male [chOng] [on his death] ... ,59Had Yu been more perspicacious, he might have emphasized important dif-
ferences between the early Koryo and Tang equal-field systems, especially since
the basis of land grants in early Koryo was either officeholding or some other
criterion of personal status that differentiated a natural aristocracy from the com-
mon peasantry (or slaves). Yu mentioned, for example, the yokpunjon land grants
instituted by Taejo in 940 that were "given to all the court officials and mili-
tary men at the time, irrespective of their official rank. People were observed
for their character and behavior, whether it was good or bad, and whether their
merit and effort was great or small, and they were given this land in grades."
He also stated that the first chOnsikwa regulations of 976 provided land grants
that "did not depend on the official's rank, but was determined on the basis of
personal quality [inp 'urn J. "60
One might surmise that the early Koryo system, if it actually functioned as
described, served to provide support for an ascriptive, hereditary aristocracy
(albeit somewhat more attenuated than the Silla bone-rank aristocracy) rather
than the elite of merit and virtue as described in the sources. Yu, however, prob-
ably perceived inp 'urn not as an indication of inherited status, but as a mark of
virtue and hence roughly equivalent to the well-field principle that the sadaebu
as a class deserved some mode of support by the state whether or not their mem-
bers held office as individuals. Later revisions in the chOnsikwa system, as copied
by Yu from the Koryosa, showed that inp 'urn was discarded as a criterion for
land grants and replaced by position in the civil and military bureaucratic hier-
archy (rnunmu yangban).6!
Yu's sources on the putative early Koryo version of the equal-field system also
described and analyzed its breakdown. A careful reading of these sections reveals
interesting differences in viewpoint. While there was general agreement that the
equal-field model degenerated into private ownership with the accumulation of
large holdings by certain individuals and families, the causes for this were attrib-
uted variously to foreign intervention, flaws or deficiencies in the original sys-
tem, or the corruption of an originally perfect system by domestic forces
impinging on the model from without the system itself. The laconic explana-
tion of the Koryosa compilers attributed the breakdown to a combination of
domestic politics and the Mongol intervention:
After the reigns of Oijong and Myongjong [the period of military dictatorship
and Ch'oe family hegemony, ca. 1170-1270] the powerful and deceitful ran gov-
ernment affairs as they pleased. The barbarian YUan were not reluctant to make
exactions and demands, and there were all kinds of taxes so that the population
declined by the day. By the time of the fall of the dynasty virtue was lost and the