Research Of The Officials’ Rewards In Han Dynasty

In Han Dynasty,Rewards from the Emperor comprise of two types:one is grace rewards and the other is achievement rewards. Grace rewards refer to the rewards granted by the emperor on some special festivals, events or some other occasions. Typical grace rewards include holiday rewards, loyal celebration rewards, auspicious rewards, inspection tour rewards and funerals rewards and so on. Different from the grace rewards, achievement rewards emphasize the rewarding of officers’ achievements accomplished by their own abilities. Generally, achievement rewards consist of exploits rewards, performance rewards and merits rewards. That is, rewards are granted by the emperor according to the officers’ military exploits, administrative performances and personal virtues. Comparatively speaking, grace rewards without direct relations with the officers’ behaviors, are more of a type of grace or kindness granted by the emperor or the nation; while achievement rewards closely connected with the officers’ administrative performances, are affirmations and encouragements to the achievements they have made.The emperor’s rewards in Han Dynasty possess some salient features. First of all, the rewards are of great diversities. From the content of rewards, there are material rewards including money, grains and so on as well as reputation rewards including promotion, commendation and so on. From the frequency of rewards, the rewards can be divided into systematic rewards and casual rewards. Secondly, the rewards bring with them the feature of "personal kindness" from the emperor. Different from the officers’ salary which only includes money and grains, the rewards granted by the emperor are various and all-inclusive—from supplies for the basic necessities of life to that of the funerals—which are more like personal kindness given by the emperor. Thirdly, compared with previous dynasties, obvious changes of the nobility title rewarding are taking place in Han Dynasty:one is that there is a strict boundary between the official nobility and the nobility of average person; the other is that the rewarding system of nobility titles becomes loose and impetuous. Fourthly, great quantities of gold are used while rewarding in Han Dynasty and the amount of gold in use between the Western Han and the Eastern Han is also of great differences.The influences of the emperor’s rewards cover two aspects. From the positive aspect, the rewards can win over officials from different ranks so as to maintain political stability to set a good example to improve the social values; while on the other hand, due to some subjective reasons of the emperor as well as some other uncontrollable factors during the process of rewarding, over reward or unfairness may emerge which can weaken the positive effects of rewarding and even bring forth some unstable factors to the whole dominion.