184
BOOK REVIEWS
However, Mr. da Silva has much to offer us, and I hope will go on to develop his earlier work, taking further, among other good things, his interesting study of the terms used in agriculture and land use, extending them into the other dialects of the area in which some at least may have originated, and developing their connection with the cosmology of the peasant universe. I hope, too, that he will return to Hong Kong to trace for us the continued process of erosion of the traditional coastal pattern of life in a South Chinese island.*
Hong Kong. March 1974.
JAMES HAYES
* Interested readers may wish to know that Mr. da Silva wrote on the Fan Lau fort (on Lantau) in the 1968 Journal, and some notes on Ethno-botany in the 1969 issue.
VILLAGE AND BUREAUCRACY IN SOUTHERN SUNG CHINA. Brian E. McKnight, University of Chicago Press, 1971, pp. xi, 219.
As its title indicates, this book is concerned with local administration in Sung China. Using the Sung Hui Yao Chi Kao, an official repository of imperial documents, and the collected papers of Sung officials, annalistic histories, local gazetteers and other miscellaneous works, Dr. McKnight describes the structure and staffing of village administration in this period. These sources enable him to recreate an otherwise little known aspect of Sung times; government at the village and sub-prefectural (hsien) level.
Local administration in the Southern Sung was carried out by employing local residents; at first by obliging members of higher-class families to serve for limited periods and, by the end of the dynasty, by employing persons for long periods. The latter were often professionals paid either by individual families or from the income of endowed estates and chosen from among the clerks in the local government offices.
The author provides a useful preface that deals with his sources and their limitations, and an introduction that places the governmental and social aspects of the Southern Sung period in the perspective of earlier practice and later developments. Besides any
184
BOOK REVIEWS
However, Mr. da Silva has much to offer us, and I hope will go on to develop his earlier work, taking further, among other good things, his interesting study of the terms used in agriculture and land use, extending them into the other dialects of the area in which some at least may have originated, and developing their connection with the cosmology of the peasant universe. I hope, too, that he will return to Hong Kong to trace for us the continued process of erosion of the traditional coastal pattern of life in a South Chinese island.*
Hong Kong. March 1974.
JAMES HAYES
* Interested readers may wish to know that Mr. da Silva wrote on the Fan Lau fort (on Lantau) in the 1968 Journal, and some notes on Ethno- botany in the 1969 issue.
VILLAGE AND BUREAUCRACY IN SOUTHERN SUNG CHINA. Brian E. McKnight, University of Chicago Press, 1971, pp. xi, 219.
As its title indicates, this book is concerned with local adminis- tration in Sung China. Using the Sung Hui Yao Chi Kao, an offi- cial repository of imperial documents, and the collected papers of Sung officials, annalistic histories, local gazetteers and other mis- cellaneous works, Dr. McKnight describes the structure and staff- ing of village administration in this period. These sources enable him to recreate an otherwise little known aspect of Sung times; government at the village and sub-prefectural (hsien) level.
Local administration in the Southern Sung was carried out by employing local residents; at first by obliging members of higher- class families to serve for limited periods and, by the end of the dynasty, by employing persons for long periods. The latter were often professionals paid either by individual families or from the income of endowed estates and chosen from among the clerks in the local government offices.
The author provides a useful preface that deals with his sources and their limitations, and an introduction that places the govern- mental and social aspects of the Southern Sung period in the per- spective of earlier practice and later developments. Besides any
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