Yu's COMMUNITY COMPACT REGULATIONS 741the training of young orphans to keep them from bad company, and grant loans
to help them in economic distress.
The head and secretary of the community compact association were respon-
sible for overseeing these obligations of the association's members to provide
aid to the afflicted by loaning goods, tools, carts, horses, and servants -if they
possessed those resources. They would have the duty to punish recalcitrant mem-
bers who failed to meet these obligations, or recipients of aid who failed to make
repayment, and record the names of those who met their responsibilities as a
permanent endorsement of their magnanimity and responsibility.9
Surveillance Functions
Under the second category of "keeping watch on one another's mistakes," Yu
copied many of the provisions that had come down from the Lil-Family com-
pact. He omitted unfilial behavior since it was already penalized in the law code,
but he did specify punishment within the compact for failure to look after one
parents, raising one's voice or getting angry at them, reproaching them, or squat-
ting disrespectfully in front of them. Other punishable offenses in the conduct
of funeral arrangements or ancestral rites included tardiness at burials of family
members, so-called straw funerals (ch ()SW1R) where straw was laid over the corpse
instead of proper burial, drunkenness. neglect of proper rites. failure to conduct
ancestral sacrifice on the anniversary of the death of one's parents, or visiting
Buddhist temples in the mountains and feeding the monks as an act of piety.Civil Suits and SlanderYu adopted the usual admonitions against interpersonal disputes by condemn-
ing lawsuits, false accusation to entrap others in the law, mendacity, fabrication.
and exaggeration. Civil disputes or lawsuits were to be judged by the head of
the compact who would also order the party in the wrong to cease any further
action to gain redress. If he failed to do so, the association as a whole would
either punish him or report his recalcitrance to the district magistrate, in thc old
compact tradition.Moral Checks on BusinessYu's rules governing business and commercial activity were particularly impor-
tant, especially since scholars like Yi T'aejin have suggested that the sarimp 'a
of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries favored the promotion of commer-
cial development. Yu's rules, however. enjoined members not to "go to extremes"
in making profits in business transactions, and not to injure others in the con-
duct of trade. They were not simply to devote themselves solely to making a
profit without any consideration of whether their actions were right or wrong,