336 LAND REFORMextra land grants were to perform the function of the feudal eh 'aeji of the Chou
period, which meant that they were not perceived as compensation for office-
holding as such, but for membership in the ruling class. Officeholding was to
be rewarded by salaries: "As for those on duty as officials [sija], if they are on
duty [si], they will receive salaries lsurok]. "73
It therefore followed that even though an official might resign or be dismissed
from office, his land grant would not be taken away by the state. "Except in the
case of officials who have violated regulations and morality, or emhezzled funds,
or surrendered to the enemy, or committed other serious crimes, do not confis-
cate their land.'·/4 Therefore, even though Yu defined his system of graded land
grants in terms of functional reciprocity for service performed for the state, in
fact he thought of the ruling sadaebu class as transcending the functional defi-
nition of status.
Nevertheless, Yu was aware of the differences between his system of provid-
ing support for the sadaebu and the eh 'aeji of the well-field system. Under the
well-field system every peasant was supposed to have received a grant of 100
myo (i.e., one kyong), but the families of the taebusa (i.e., sadaebu)75 received
both eh 'aeji and hereditary salary lands (serokehOn) (if they held office). Accord-
ing to Yu the recipients of the eh 'aeji and salary lands in the Chou system were
only entitled to collect public taxes (kongse) from these lands and nothing more;
that is, they were prebends. He remarked that this system was superior because
it did not require any changes in the standard land allotment; no addition in the
size of the land grant had to be made to compensate the sadaebu.
Furthermore, since military service was based on a land unit of constant size,
there were no problems associated with the need to keep accurate records of the
movement of adult males eligible for service, but in the later age of centralized
bureaucracy the recruitment of officials by the central government and their pro-
motion and dismissal was irregular, implying that the sadaebu had much less
security and could never tell whether they would be promoted or dismissed from
office at the whim of the ruler. Conditions under centralized, bureaucratic rule
did not allow for the enactment of a system of prebendal allotments (siksejibOp),
which would have provided stahle income to a sadaebu class and made them
less than totally dependent on the salaries granted them by the central govern-
ment for officeholding.
Why then did Yu not adopt the use of the prebend into his own system as the
means for providing stable economic support to the families of the sadaebu elite,
especially to those who might not be incumbent officeholders? One of the main
reasons was that he conceived of the prebendal systcm as part and parcel of feu-
dalism (pongglJ/l), and if prebends were introduced into a system of centralized
bureaucracy, it would have the adverse effect of producing an undesirable aris-
tocracy of hereditary official families, like the hereditary ministers (segyong) of
the Spring and Autumn period of the Chou. Who knows ifYu was not using a
classical allusion to make an oblique criticism of his own dynasty, for the kwajon
system of the early Chason period had provided prebends to men of rank (with