Ranks and Stipends in the Zhou Court

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Beigong Qi (written 𨪆 in the fixed text) asked, “How did the Zhou court assign ranks and stipends?” Mencius replied, “The full details cannot now be known. The feudal rulers feared the system would constrain them, so they destroyed the records. I have heard its general outline. There were five ranks: Son of Heaven, Duke, Marquis, Earl, and a shared rank for Viscount and Baron. There were six official grades: ruler, minister, senior officer, and upper, middle, and lower knight. The Son of Heaven’s territory measured a thousand li on each side; a duke’s or marquis’s, one hundred li; an earl’s, seventy; and a viscount’s or baron’s, fifty—four territorial grades. A state smaller than fifty li could not have direct access to the Son of Heaven and attached itself to a larger lord; it was called an attached domain. The land granted to a Son of Heaven’s minister matched a marquis’s allotment, that of a senior officer an earl’s, and that of a principal knight a viscount’s or baron’s. In a large state of one hundred li, the ruler’s stipend was ten times a minister’s; a minister received the combined stipend of four senior officers. Each lower grade followed the stated doubling pattern; lower knights received the same as commoners serving in office, enough to replace their farm earnings. A middle state of seventy li assigned a minister the equivalent of three senior officers; a small state of fifty li, two. The remaining ratios were the same. Each farmer cultivated one hundred mu: from the produce of a hundred mu, a top-grade farmer could support nine people, the next grade eight, the middle grade seven, the next lower grade six, and the lowest grade five. Stipends for commoners in office followed this scale.”

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