OFFICIAL SALARIES AND EXPENSES 837
compensate meritorious performance, and cause [officials 1 to give all of their
mind and effort." He also stressed that these rewards of rank and salary had to
be recommended to and issued by the ruler, not by ministerial officers alone.
Mencius had already commented that in Chou times there were two separate
systems of rank and grade, the five ranks of noble titles (duke, marquis, earl,
viscount, and baron) and the six grades of office - the Chiin or ruler (the feudal
lord of a state or fief), the Ching or chief minister, and the lesser ranks of Ta-fu
and Upper, Middle, and Lower Shih (i.e., Shang-shih, Chung-shih, and Hsia-
shih). The five grades of nobility corresponded to the size of their fiefs. The Son
of Heaven (the king of Chou) had his own royal estate of 1,000 Ii on each side,
the dukes and marquises had fiefs of 100 Ii square, the earls had 70 Ii, the vis-
counts and barons 50 Ii, and feudal lords (Chu-hou) with less than this amount
were assigned as dependencies (fu-yung) to higher feudal lords. The Chou king
could confer these feudal titles on anyone within the empire while the six grades
of officials were confined to the officials who ran the royal domain and the fiefs
of the feudal lords.
The salaries were ranked in two separate grades defined as multiples of each
lower level official's salary. In the largest fief (a fa-kilO) the ruler (Chiin) or enfo-
effed duke or marquis received ten times the salary of a Ching, the Ching received
a salary four times greater than a Ta-fu. the Ta-fu and each salary down through
the Hsia-shih was each twice as high as his subordinate. In short, the salary of
a ruler was 320 times greater than the salary of a lowly Hsia-shih, but in smaller
fiefs the salary ratio was smaller, 24°/, in fiefs of 70 Ii on each side, and ,6(y, in
those of 50 Ii on each side. The lowest salary of regular officials was defined as
"the same salary as that of commoners serving as officials, a salary sufficient to
replace Ithe income that would have been earned if the man had engaged in]
cultivation." A commentator noted that commoners serving as government offi-
cials referred to the four grades of clerks and runners (Fu, Shih, HsLi and Tu)
discussed previously.
The income of a peasant was also differentiated by estahlishing five different
degrees of production based on the effort and zeal of different peasants. A supe-
rior farmer (Shang neng-fu) was defined as one who could support nine people
from the production of a standard-sized plot of 100 mou (myo in Korean pro-
nunciation, 16.7 acres) assuming the application of manure. The less efficient
peasants were presumed to have supported eight, seven, six, or a minimum of
five persons from the same plot. Thus, commoners who served as officials were
likewise divided into five grades corresponding to the productivity of the five
standards of peasant productivity, and their salaries were ranked according to
the importance of their work.
Chu Hsi of the Sung dynasty summarized the significance of this system by
emphasizing that the salaries of the rulers or feudal lords of states and their sub-
ordinate officials were paid for by the system of Aid (the chu~f{/) or labor ser-
vice on public fields (kung-t'ien, or kongjon in Korean), or taxes or rent (tsu)
on the land they cultivated, while the officials (shih) and commoners who served