KING AND COURT 591on military training. The tradition was continued by dukes and other feudal lords
later in the Chou, and Emperor Wen of the Former Han in I78 B.C. performed
the same ceremony.
Yu's concerns extended beyond the symbolic cultivation of a plot by the king
to practical methods for increasing crop yield. He cited Chao Ts'o's remarks to
Emperor Wen that agricultural production was essential to provide the surpluses
that were needed to stave off the tragedy of flood or drought that would result
in poverty and starvation. Hardship gave rise to corruption and heterodox beliefs
because peasants could not be expected to maintain moral standards in the face
of starvation. Poverty occurred because not enough people stayed on the land
and devoted their time to agriculture, and the reason why many had abandoned
agriculture was because they were afflicted by the vicissitudes of onerous agri-
cultural work, the vagaries of nature, and the depredations of the tax collectors,
clerks, and creditors. The only way out of these troubles was for the emperor to
concentrate on raising agricultural production. In other words, the ruler's ritual
cultivation was intended to symbolize his commitment to maintaining agricul-
tural production and to eliminating official malfeasance in the care and nurtur-
ing of the peasant producers.
Emperor Ching of the Han dynasty (r. 156- 140 B.C.) also personally culti-
vated his small plot (chi-t 'ien) and his empress personally raised her silkworms
on her mulberry leaves, and both performed rites at the ancestral shrine in honor
of primary production. In the last year of his reign (87 B.c.) Emperor Wu issued
a statement deploring his own past excessive attention to warfare, and declared
that he had then to concentrate on agricultural production. He appointed Chao
Kuo to be grain commissioner, and Chao instituted a crop rotation system (tai-
t'ien) based on raising three furrows in a one-Illou field, using oxen for plow-
ing, and cultivating two of the fun'ows per year by "weeding and pushing the
mounds of earth down around the roots." By this means crop production was
doubled over normal methods of cultivation. 15
Yu commented that the Chinese system of furrows and rotating cultivation
had to be the reason for far higher productivity in contemporary Manchuria around
the Liao River than in Korea. He recommended that Koreans make their hoes
and plowshares narrower and smaller, dig furrows, plant the seeds in them, and
pull out the weeds on the ridges to nurture the sprouts.
Stressing the importance of agricultural production would obviously be
important in any preindustrial economy, but Yu felt that the religious signifi-
cance of the king's act of personal cultivation was necessary to stimulate the
peasants to work harder and adopt more advanced methods. After the Chou
dynasty in China emperors only conducted this rite intermittently, and in the
Tang, Sung, and later dynasties, the rite lost its meaning because emperors only
used the ceremony as an excuse for a pleasure trip or party. Yu therefore urged
not only that parties and drinking be abandoned at such times, but that all other
business not related to agriculture, slIch as praising the emperor, pardoning crim-
inals, and appointing men to office, had to be abandoned. In addition to his own