ROYAL DIVISION MODEL 405
or freedmen would have become eligible for military service. He declined to do
so not only because he was reluctant to deprive the yang ban of its workforce,
but also because slaves had become indispensable to the maintenance of ade-
quate troop quotas for the nation, and he did not want to challenge the slave-
owners directly.
DEGENERATION OF THE FARMER/SOLDIER MILITIA IDEAL
The Chou ModelIt has already been pointed out how the well-field model of the Chou period
provided the basis for Yu's conception of the basic organization of an ideal soci-
ety. This model provided a military as well as a civil dimension. In conjunction
with the temporary assignment of arable land to peasant families, those fami-
lies were required to undergo military training and function as soldiers in wartime- the farmer/soldier militia mode of military service.
The militia model meant that the amount of time spent on duty in peacetime
would be reduced to a minimum, and never so burdensome as to bankrupt the
peasant. Military training would be conducted in the agricultural off-season so
that it would not interfere with production and the subsistence of the peasant
family. Since all adult males were obliged to serve on duty themselves, there
would be no need for a standing army of professional soldiers or a system of
taxation to support that army, both of which were conventionally understood to
be features of China in her age of decline or later age (huse) after the ideal sys-
tems of the Chou were destroyed.
Another hasic principle of the well-field model and the militia ideal was vil-
lage organization and community solidarity. The smallest unit of civil life, whether
the well-field with its cight families, or alternate systems of seven or five fam-
ilies, also served as the has is for the organization of squads and companiesY
The eight-family unit and the village as well were marked by their cohesive-
ness, mutual aid and concern, familiarity, and intimacy. Cheng Hsi.ian, the Later
Han dynasty commentator on the Rites of Chou, praised the advantages of troop
units recruited from men of the same communities because of mutual aid and
relief, and ease of recognition of clothing and voice when in combatY Yu men-
tioned Duke Huan's reorganization of the Ch'i dynasty's military system at the
suggestion of Kuan-tzu (during the Chou period), as recorded in the Kuo-yii.
This system was also based on the five-man squad and the village militia, in
which the solidarity of the village soldiers was described in effusive terms:
Therefore. the men of the squads protected one another. and the families loved
one another. When they were young children, they lived in the same place. and
when they grew up. they went around together. When they performed the ances-
tral rites. they shared their happiness with one another, and when there was a
death or funeral, they commiserated with one another. They had the same eon-